Don’t Force Us To Obey The Bible!

Someone made a point on Facebook that I thought was really insightful and worth turning into a brief post here. Time and again, I have heard conservatives say that taxing the rich to care for the poor is antithetical to Biblical teaching because it is essentially forcing people “at gunpoint” to give, rather than allowing [...]

School Prayer Contradiction

I commented previously on some of the conservative Christian reactions to the Newtown school shooting, including in particular the attempt to connect it with the removal of prayer from schools. Today in church, as a longstanding public school principal who is a member of my church gave a children’s talk about prayer, my thoughts turned [...]

The American Samaritan

In a comment on yesterday’s post depicting a “Bad Samaritan,” it was suggested that there were ways of depicting a conservative American outlook that might be more accurate. It inspired the above image. What do you think? If the “Good Samaritan” in the story in Luke’s Gospel reflected conservative American values, rather than those of [...]

The Meaning of Christmas

For a great many conservative Christians and their atheist counterparts, Christmas is about believing that angels really told shepherds about the birth of a baby, and that a star did the same for Persian astrologers – and the annual seasonal activity of fighting over the literal truthfulness or falsehood of those stories. For some, Christmas [...]

Skewed Conservative Christian Priorities

Bob Cargill created and shared this checklist: I think Bob is right about some things and sort of wrong about some things. I think he is right when he says that the skewed prioritization has to change, and that there is reason to be hopeful that it is indeed changing. I think he is sort [...]

Review of Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood

I’m grateful to Rachel Held Evans for having sent me an advance review copy of her book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master”. I confess I am a bit embarrassed that I’m only blogging about it after the [...]

Does Life Begin at Creation?

“Life begins at conception” is a common phrase to encounter in discussions of abortion and related issues. Despite what those with short memories may genuinely believe, the issue of abortion and the view that it is murder have not been the views of most Evangelical Protestants for all that long (as we’ve been reminded recently [...]