revanon

Santa is an obese elderly man who gets chauffeured not just from continent to continent but house to house and lives on a diet of cookies. The Easter Bunny would have agility, stamina, and possibly rabies on its side. Santa would be toast.

Merry Christmas to you as well!

Since we don't have a historical source attesting to the birth date of Jesus, my personal belief is that Christmas really is the latter. Although I do have a gloriously hideous Christmas sweater with the words 'birthday boy' embroidered under a picture of Jesus, so...

I promise I'm not just saying this to plug it--that is basically the entire premise of my book. I'm a member of the so-called "Oregon Trail Generation" of younger Gen-X'ers and older millennials, and there are an awful lot of reasons behind the migration of our generation--and younger millennials--away from organized religion. I'll quickly offer a few that I address in the book:

-Static versus fluid culture. Churches that have been around for decades or centuries can very easily become time capsules not just in architecture, but in ways of doing things that are more about how things were done in decades past than how things are done now. The need to keep those systems and structures in place can become a form of idolatry, especially when it is used to close doors off to new generations of leadership.

-Economics. My generation has been royally hosed by the economics of the time. I graduated from college right as the stock market and the banks were imploding, and when I finished seminary three years later, the job market had only improved somewhat. I was profoundly fortunate to find a pastorate in a matter of months; I have immensely qualified classmates who needed years to find theirs. A lack of income available to tithe has led to severe resource shortages at churches as younger generations simply have not had the chance to earn what their elders have by that point in their lives.

-Trump. And by "Trump," I sort of mean the hyper-partisan nature of the church that got him to the presidency and all that it entails. The election of Trump laid bare for public consumption what many, many young Christians and ex-Christians have known for years: that many in the church care about being homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, and misogynist Republican voters first and good Christians second. The nature of the white evangelical vote was so stark that this particular chapter on it that I had planned to write last I ended up writing first. It urgently requires a cure.

And Merry Christmas to you too!

I don't know which was a funnier role from you in my childhood--Marv in Home Alone or Brickma in Rookie of the Year. But in a no-holds-barred arm wrestling contest, who do you think wins?

Martin's lesser-known kid brother?! ;)

Edit: Thank you for the gold!