“People may stop professing to be Christians, and people may stop going to a building they call “church.” But people don’t depart the faith because of interpersonal disputes or perceived societal wrongs. Rather they leave these institutions because they were never genuinely rooted in Christ, to begin with.”
(The Dissenter) The Gospel Coalition has made quite the proposition suggesting that a novel source of enlightenment awaits the Church in the most unlikely of places: Barbie. Their article confidently boasts, “Why ‘Barbie’ Matters for the Church.” Indeed, amidst centuries of church history, doctrinal councils, and rigorous biblical exegesis, it seems we’ve inadvertently overlooked the profound spiritual insights that might be gleaned from Hollywood’s take on our favorite plastic protagonist. A remarkable oversight, truly. How did Augustine or Luther, the Apostle Paul, or even Jesus Himself, miss that?
When John wrote, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19), he set a clear benchmark for understanding departures from the faith. Yet, as we dive into the contemporary landscape of “New Evangelical” discourse, it becomes alarmingly clear that certain sects of Evangelicalism are more inclined to rely on cultural artifacts rather than Scripture.
Research