Bless my heart and bless yours too

April 9, 2012 By 21 Comments
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“Four months ago we couldn’t even get a gig in our own home town.”

“People are commemorating Mike Wallace’s death at 93 by quoting his entertainingly rude questions. But unlike many askers of rude questions, Wallace often got pretty interesting answers.”

“Using Satan as an explanation for everything you personally do not like is not only theologically problematic, it is also terribly dangerous. It opens the door to the rampant demonization of other people …”

“Two Latino immigrants … were shot last night when a group of men wearing camouflage ambushed their pickup truck.”

“Their persecution drove the great theologian and linguist Roger Williams to flee the Massachusetts Bay Colony and establish Providence Plantations — now Rhode Island — where, as he envisioned it, ‘the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish [Muslim] or antichristian consciences and worships’ could live together in liberty.”

Mark Silk 1, Ross Douthat 0.

“An historic perspective should teach us humility if nothing else.” (via)

“If you don’t want to be thought of as a bigot, you should try to avoid talking like one.”

“Some day we will all look back on this and wonder what the opponents of marriage equality were thinking.”

“It takes a lot of guts to post things on a plain HTML page these days.”

“Laws such as Alabama’s HB 56 and federal enforcement measures such as 287g have injected fear and anguish into even the most routine aspects of many women’s daily lives: going to work or taking kids to school, or seeing the doctor.”

“Drug safety, vaccines, antibiotics and reproductive medicine — all have become proxies for the culture war, often tripping up public health in the process.”

“Climate change provokes such visceral arguments because it allows ancient battles — about personal responsibility, state intervention, the regulation of industry, the distribution of resources and wealth, or the role of technologies in society — to be fought all over again.”

“A usually reliable source of workers, the local government-financed job center, could offer little help, because the federal money that local officials had designated to help train drivers was already exhausted.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized 21 Comments
  • Jenny Islander

    The link about immigrant women being disappeared in Alabama yielded an extremely useful definition of family values: “certain value being placed on certain families.”  Kudos to Mallika Dutt for her pithy summation of this modern plague.

  • http://douglife1.wordpress.com/ Doug

    Lots of commentary on Douthat’s work. Here’s a fun one, in which a conservative Christian claims that opposing gay marriage actually makes you a Christian, while belief in the Trinity is somewhat tertiary. 

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295594/theological-orthodoxy-moral-orthodoxy-david-french

  • Amaryllis

    “Mark Silk 1, Ross Douthat 0.”

    Oh thank goodness, it wasn’t just me reading that piece and muttering, “But what is that supposed to mean?” and “I don’t think so!”

    That link about immigrant women is heartbreaking. Family values, yeah.

  • Cradicus

    I love all this content that has been on the site recently, but when will there be more Left Behind? That’s what hooked me on this site and I can’t wait for more!

    (Slightly) on topic: I can’t read about the TAPPS situation without thinking of John Goodman in “The Big Lebowski”

  • Anonymous

    Moreover, the semi-final playoffs were deliberately scheduled for March 2, a Friday night, which meant that Orthodox Jewish students could not participate. TAPPS angrily and steadfastly denied all requests for accommodation for Beren’s Jewish kids, refusing to move the game up just a few hours even though Covenant, the team Beren was scheduled to play, agreed to the proposed revised game time.

    The Texas Sabbath Showdown

  • Anonymous

    Was this now an opportunity for TAPPS to reach out and embrace other faiths in its midst? Burleson rebuked that notion. Asked if he, as the director of a parochial school association, even knew any Jewish people, Burleson paused, and then answered, “I can’t think of a Jewish person that I have any contact with.”

  • Sgt. Pepper’s Bleeding Heart

    That Facebook coming out page is why nerds are the best friends

  • http://www.linkmeister.com/wordpress/ Linkmeister

     Can we declare that Silk was playing football to Douthat’s baseball? ‘Cause I think Silk deserves a touchdown’s worth of points, not just an extra point’s worth.

  • Lori

    “It comes down to whether the school has a right to be treated
    differently, or is it a matter of grace to be treated differently by the
    league or by the other schools?” Linzer said. “I think it comes down to
    a question of grace. You don’t have a right not to have to play
    basketball on Friday or Saturday.”

    Shorter Linzer: Those People should realize that they’re on sufferance and just accept it.

  • JessicaR

    Not that you need another reason to dislike Rick Warren and to be honest I’d be more surprised if “America’s Pastor” *wanted* to help the poor, http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/04/helping-poor-now-apparently-anti-bible

  • Tonio

    A question about Mark Silk’s otherwise excellent criticism of Douthat – why does he classify Unitarians as “non-Protestants”? I had thought that Protestant was a generic term for any type of Christianity separate from Catholicism and from the eastern denominations like Orthodox and Coptic.

  • Anonymous

    Protestants are Trinitarian. Unitarians are, well, Unitarian. When we’re not polytheist, atheist, looking for a church that welcomes both halves of an interfaith couple, or simply confused.

  • Tonio

    Since modern unitarianism arose long after the defection from Catholicism, when did Protestantism become defined as specifically trinitarian?

  • Anonymous

    Probably in contrast to Unitarianism. I don’t know.

  • Tonio

    Pugh is quoted as saying that “If God is using Tim Tebow to win football games, but not feeding
    starving children, then atheism is the only option of integrity left.” Sounds like Pugh defines atheism not as a lack of belief in the existence of gods, but as a refusal to praise or worship gods, which is not the same thing. One can believe that a god exists but also believe that the god is indifferent or malevolent, caring more about football games than about human suffering. 

  • Sarah Ennals

    Dave! Malki refers to that as “Maltheism.”  http://wondermark.com/804/

  • Tonio

    Interesting. I would have assumed that maltheism would have entailed hopelessness, since the only way to make life better would be to persuade the god not to inflict cruelty on humans, and such persuasion would be outside human ability.

  • Tricksterson

    Sigh, National Review.  After Buckley died you could almost see the sanity leaking out issue by issue (No, he hadn’t had an official position for years but he still wielded a great deal of influence just by being around) and now that Florence king has left rhere’s not much reason to keep reading it at all.

  • http://meditatingontherain.wordpress.com/ meditatingontherain

     There were noises about being properly Trinitarian as far back as the Reformation- I’m not sure there was anyone arguing against Trinitarianism at that point, but it has always been an article of faith. Also, faiths that developed more recently than the Reformation are not always considered “protestant” in the sense of “Protesters against the pre-reformation RC church”- Quakers, Mormons, and even sometimes Anglicans get singled out separately sometimes, as do groups that formed in areas that were already largely Protestant and thusly were essentially counters to Protestantism itself.

  • BaseDeltaZero

    Sounds like Pugh defines atheism not as a lack of belief in the existence of gods, but as a refusal to praise or worship gods, which is not the same thing. One can believe that a god exists but also believe that the god is indifferent or malevolent, caring more about football games than about human suffering.

    I’ve definently heard ‘atheism’ used that way before: Not worshipping gods, regardless of their possible existence.  Granted, it’s mostly used that way in fictional universes where proof of the existence of ‘gods’ is readily manifest…

    Alternatively, maybe God isn’t so much evil or indifferent as He is really, really into football.

    Interesting. I would have assumed that maltheism would have entailed hopelessness, since the only way to make life better would be to persuade the god not to inflict cruelty on humans, and such persuasion would be outside human ability.

    Hopeless?  Maybe.  But that has nothing to do with ‘integrity’.  Besides, if it can be observed…

  • Tonio

    Outside of fiction, I’ve only heard atheism defined as addressing the claim that gods exist, not as addressing worship. The idea of believing that a god exists but not worshipping it sounds like deism. 

    I had read Pugh’s “integrity” comment as meaning that if a god cares more about winning football games than about feeding starving children, that one could not in good conscience voluntarily praise such a god. Did you see Pugh as using the term a different way? Whenever I’ve said that there’s no reason to assume that a god would be good or just, I’ve gotten responses such as “Why would one worship such a god?” I had been trying to make a distinction between believing that a god exists who has a certain personality and holding an opinion about that personality.

    But maltheism wouldn’t preclude worship of the god if one allows for the possibility that the worship is done under duress or from fear of punishment. The latter may be different from the old concept of “God-fearing.”