Young evangelicals listen to their pastors. Do pastors listen to them?

“When students come back at semester breaks, that’s when the conversations really pick up,” said Jon-Michael Phillips, 35, a youth pastor at a nondenominational church in Jackson, Michigan, a city of about 31,000 between Ann Arbor and Lansing, the state’s two big college towns.

As students from the University of Michigan and Michigan State return home for the holidays, Phillips is less concerned about college football rivalries than about the political discussions he is bound to have. “Every year, students want to talk to me about things they are struggling with,” he said, “and one of the topics a few are sure to bring up is politics.” 

Phillips said students often share that when it comes to LGBT issues, the environment or the Republican Party, they increasingly feel at odds with the politics they often heard from the pulpit as they grew up or what was shared at home. 

As they become more politically aware and active, Phillips said, they start to question how their evangelical Christian parents and pastors have presented these issues and others. 

“The nice thing is they still want to talk and want to know what I think,” Phillips said. “The question is what I can do with these conversations.” 

"Brewery church" story goes down smooth, but questions still bubble up

If you know me at all, you know that my interests in beer and religion are both relatively high.

That’s why when I came across Castle Church Brewing Community in Orlando, Florida I jumped at the opportunity to report on the “brewery church” for the Religion News Service (RNS).

Beyond the surface phenomena (and all the beer+religion puns like, “frothy faith”) there was a deeper resonant story at Castle Church that I wanted to tell — a story of church changing as we know it, of 30-somethings looking for home, and issues surrounding notions of class, gender, and race.

The story I wrote for RNS touches on these themes and invites you to reflect a little more on the significance of a brewery that is a church, a church that is also a brewery. As you read the story, enjoy the gimmick. Sure. But beyond the “beer church” novelty, take a moment to reflect on questions such as:

• What can a “brewery church” tell us about American religion? American Christianity?

• Why — at this moment in time — is such an idea popular let alone feasible?

• Who might be attracted by such a model? Why?

• Who is potentially marginalized by such a model? Women? People in the neighborhood north of Orlando International Airport that can’t afford craft beer? Good ole’ Florida boys looking for a Budweiser? Is this just a place for cis white males who want to play Settlers of Catan, drink beer, and debate Augustine?

These questions and conversations are still fermenting in my own mind (sorry, couldn’t help another beer pun!) and I don’t have any ready answers after my reporting. Furthermore, each of the people I interviewed for this story — Rev. Jared Witt, Dr. Annie Blazer, Jeremy Carnes, and others — had also thought about these issues and had some weighty and worthwhile comments to make on each.

With that in mind, I invite you to share your thoughts, send your questions, or post a comment on this blog or at ReligionNews.com by clicking the link below.

What's up with Westworld?

Westworld -- a sci-fi Western thriller on HBO -- has taken the television world by storm. It features a cast of characters navigating a theme park where guests can pay to indulge any adventure with the android population in the park, including sexual encounters or fights to the death. As you could imagine, things get weird. 

One of the weirdest things is that there is the question of whether or not these androids have souls. Or, if doing whatever humans want to these beings is ethical or sinful. 

To talk about these quandaries, Kimberly Winston of Religion News Service interviewed me for a piece entitled, "HBO'S Westworld: Robot Sex and the Nature of the Soul." 

She opens with:

...as unsettling as some of the scenes in “Westworld” are, the show raises theological questions about what it means to be human and what it costs us to sacrifice our humanity for momentary pleasure.

Continue reading to explore more about android souls and affect theory, robot sex and sin.