June 19, 2026

The church is arguing this week about who gets to define the human person — and what's at stake when it gets the answer wrong. The Aquila Report runs a piece insisting the body is not the self's deepest truth, which sounds counterintuitive until you realize it's arguing against gender ideology, not for it. Relevant Magazine takes a softer line on gender roles, trying to separate what Scripture commands from what American culture wars have projected onto it. TGC, meanwhile, posted a long complementarian retrospective — not a defense so much as an accounting. Three outlets, three registers. None of them quite talking to each other. Then First Things pulls the camera back: the real pressure on human identity isn't the culture war, it's transhumanism — the old secular dream of escaping the body entirely, now dressed in theological clothes. That question — what the body is for, and whether the self is reducible to it — has been threading through this space for weeks. On March 27 several writers were asking what transformation actually looks like and what it costs. The answers looked different then. They still do.

The Gospel Coalition takes on the atheist commentator Alex O'Connor directly, responding to his claim that Scripture endorses slavery. Scholars push back sharply. It's a useful exchange — not because O'Connor is a serious theological interlocutor, but because the church's answer to that charge reveals what it actually believes about biblical authority. Tim Challies notes something quieter: every generation rewrites received wisdom in its own image, convinced it's finally reading the text clearly. That's a word for both sides of every argument in today's feed. Christianity Today publishes a personal piece from someone who grew up in church feeling like a perpetual spiritual failure — no mentor, no father in the faith, just an institution that assumed formation happened automatically. Ligonier answers the father question theologically: God names himself Father on purpose, and the name carries weight. Ryan Burge has data showing evangelicals want a Christian America; almost no one else does. That gap is not new. What's new is how wide it's gotten.

human identity and embodiment

biblical authority

formation and discipleship

church and culture

gender and theological anthropology