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Today is my last day with Beliefnet, and my last day as the author of this blog. The Text Messages archives will remain live at this location, but posting will cease.  If that sounds gloomy, it’s an accurate reflection of my mind this afternoon. I’ve chosen to pursue new opportunities, but I’m not without pangs…

Why do people stop going to church? This big question is the subject of Julia Duin’s small book, Quitting Church: Why teh Faithful are Fleeing and What To Do About It. Duin is not a disinterested observer of the phenomenon of church-dropping; rather, she’s a churchgoer who wants churches to work well, and also a…

I’m overjoyed that my good friend Rob Stennett has won the Award of Merit from Christianity Today for his novel The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher. (Here’s CT’s review of the book.) Stennett’s hilarious book is about a real estate agent who joins a suburban church in order to reach the Christian home-buying market,…

Slate asked for an essay on Ted Haggard’s spiritual restoration. I’m okay with what I came up with for now, but the more I think about it, the more I think we need better thinking on what restoration looks like for very public, outspoken, influential men and women like Haggard: Most people who fail need…

A blog might not be the best medium for an essay like this. But I want to offer some more considered thoughts on Ted Haggard and his HBO documentary; I hope this performs some kind of service in a story that I hope will end–in its public iteration–very soon. This was written as a stand-alone…

Alexandra Pelosi is the talented filmmaker behind “The Trials of Ted Haggard”–though, as she put it in the New York Times yesterday, she prefers to be considered a maker of television, not documentaries. Fair enough, as her light, earthy, humanizing touch is just right for the small screen. It is also the right touch for…

Yesterday, Mike Jones posted the YouTube video below, upping the ante on the breaking news about Ted Haggard: there were other young men involved with Ted, he says, and their parents knew about it. He does not, and probably will not, explain specifically what he means by “others,” and much of the video is dedicated…

I remember a lot of gaping, earnest love for George W. Bush among his supporters during the early years of his presidency. I remember an admiration for the man and his manners that fueled a kind of blind hope in America’s future. I remember being frightened and a little confused by all that Bush piety. …

Ted Haggard has been making the media rounds in advance of next week’s release of HBO’s “The Trials of Ted Haggard” and an Oprah Winfrey episode featuring Haggard and his family. The documentary captures Haggard’s life in the months after his downfall, as he ranges from a weird excitement at starting over to personal misery…

Steven Waldman and David Gibson list a bunch of data from a group called Third Way that attempts to prove that lifting the so-called gag rule, which would allow U.S. dollars to go to clinics in developing countries that perform abortions (among a range of health care services), would actually reduce the number of abortions. The…
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