Bell's interview marks the first time that he has openly supported marriage equality and perhaps the first time he has definitively separated himself from politically conservative evangelicalism.

God is love, but love is not God. Oft-vilified Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle has been riding this pony for a while now.

Bell doesn't have to call himself a liberal or anything else, short of lover of Jesus. But it might be wise to reach out in a new way to people who have been his partners even before he preached his first sermon.

Whatever the subject, there's more uncomfortable tension in the evangelical family than a Sacha Baron Cohen movie. This has many evangelicals wondering if we have a future together at all.

After its release in 2011, Rob Bell's book "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And The Fate Of Every Person Who Ever Lived" made huge waves in the ...

Chad has eliminated all online traces possible of his former self. I would be surprised if he hasn't already signed to write at least one book with a Christian publisher in the evergreen "He was lost to the sin of sexual addiction, but now he's found genre.

Unlike so many other Christian films, Hellbound? is neither sentimental nor sensationalist. The word that comes to mind instead is depth.

"Let the Spirit do what the Spirit will. And while you're at it, relinquish the need to label everything "Christian" or "not Christian." Be a Christian. People can figure the rest out. It's a noun, after all.

To say that something like sexual orientation, race, economic status, gender are not issues to us is to speak from a position of privilege.

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald Religion News Service (RNS) For pastors with ambitions to reach huge audiences, there's often no better platform than the ...

It is in relationship that we find out who we are as humans, and what matters most in life. We as humans are made for relationship, and outside of relationship cannot be truly ourselves.

By Kim Lawton Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) For millennia, people have been trying to imagine what happens after death. I...

By Adelle M. Banks c. 2011 Religion News Service (RNS) Southern Baptists on Wednesday (June 14) called hell an "eternal, conscious punishment" for...

While in every last way pretending to be about practicing love, it's really about instilling fear. What Chan is really saying here is, "Be afraid. Being wrong about hell has terrible, terrible consequences."

Anecdotal evidence suggests that karma has become a ubiquitous shorthand for reap-what-you-sow justice. The term crops up increasingly in song lyrics, sitcoms, news and casual conversation.

His fundamental premise was that if you are not afraid of hell, you are going to do whatever you want. I believe that true and authentic faith should motivate us to love -- never to fear.

That innate tendency toward finding what we're already looking for is why now, since returning to a faith that saved my life, I try to listen, not just talk.

If that message and that conviction cause controversy, I'll accept that. Because good news is what we need.

DURHAM, N.C. -- When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job. The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wr...

I imagine Rob Bell feels a lot like I have on many occasions: it's not that the critics have understood what I'm trying to say and have explained why they disagree. They've misrepresented what I'm trying to say and have explained why the misrepresentation is audacious and ludicrous.