Writings

As a Christian it’s easy to become discouraged by the world around us. While most Americans still claim a Christian identity, wouldn’t know it based on media reports. The press rarely mentions the existence of Christians, and when Christians are described or cited, it is typically in less than flattering …

There is an unfortunate legacy of false prophecy related to Joseph Smith, the “prophet” and founder of Mormonism. Just type “False Prophecy of Joseph Smith” into any search engine and you’ll discover what I mean. But there appears to be some confusion surrounding Joseph’s prophesies, and neither Mormons nor non-Mormons …

We planted a church from a youth group several years ago, and as a result, I pastored a congregation of college aged men and women for a number of years. During this time, one of our young women sent me an email telling me she was about to participate in …

I became a Christian at the same time I became a “Not Mormon”. By taking an investigative approach to the Christian and Mormon scripture (as I’ve described in Cold-Case Christianity), I was able to verify the truth claims of Christianity, even as I falsified the truth claims of Mormonism. This …

I remember when COVID-19 was first being discussed in the news. The idea that a pandemic was on the horizon was totally foreign to most of us; we simply had not experienced such an event in our lifetime. Early reactions seemed extreme and inconsistent. Some of us rushed to buy …

Words matter. Ideas have consequences. In the years that I have been engaging Mormons about matters of faith, I’ve learned to define terms very carefully. Christians and Mormons use many of the same terms: “grace”, “heaven”, “Jesus”, “God”, “salvation” and many more. But when the definitions of these terms are …

For most of my life, I have been unabashedly and unflinchingly pro-choice. For many years, I saw abortion as little more than another form of birth control. Today, I am pro-life. What changed my mind? It wasn’t my conversion to Christianity. My position changed when I started to think carefully …

In my career as a cold-case detective, i frequently celebrated when a jury came back with a guilty verdict. But when I read the press clippings and reports related to my cases, I nearly always observe that reporters write about “closure”. One article cited a police official who said, “We …

In our Rapid Response series, we tackle common concerns about (and objections to) the Christian worldview by providing short, conversational responses. These posts are designed to model what our answers might look like in a one-on-one setting, while talking to a friend or family member. Imagine if someone made the following claim: …

Brett Kunkle, Sean McDowell and I took students to Berkeley for several years, creating and facilitating trips to challenge young Christians and expose them to the arguments they may eventually face in their university experience. We typically invited local atheists to join us on these trips to make the case …