1. “There is no one correct way of reading the Bible,” Dr. Guy Nave writes. That’s certainly true. But he also notes that there’s far more than one incorrect way of reading the Bible.
2. So I’m reading this John Shore post about Bob Jones University’s special series of anti-gay chapel services, and it leads me to wondering whatever did happen to Bob Jones IV?
I found the surprising answer in the Marvel Universe Wiki: “Little is known about his past before he was altered by the American Purity Foundation into Captain Rectitude. His biological drives were sublimated into an anti-smut instinct making him speak and act quite oddly …”
I never read Sensational She-Hulk. Maybe I should start.
3. “Iowa Imam in Sex Assault Case Says His Religious Freedom Is Being Violated.” I’d like to think this strange case would spark a bit of cognitive dissonance among the Christianists currently trying to redefine “religious liberty” as the right to be exempt from any laws they’d prefer to be exempt from. But, alas, that won’t happen. The Christianist bishops, activists and pseudo-intellectuals championing this redefinition of religious liberty won’t see that because, in their view, religious liberty only applies to Christianists like themselves, and not to Muslims.
4. This, right here, is Old School: “San Joaquin deputies: Father, son kidnapped mother for exorcism.” Forget about demonic voices, levitation, spinning heads and all that Hollywood nonsense. This is what exorcism has always been for — keeping unruly women in line. If the exorcism doesn’t work, well, you know what that means: She’s a witch!
5. General rule-of-thumb in American politics and public opinion: If you’re resorting to grotesque giant puppets, your side probably isn’t winning.
6. “David Barton & Kenneth Copeland: Soldiers should not suffer from PTSD, according to the Bible“:
“Any of you suffering from PTSD right now, you listen to me,” Copeland said as Barton affirmed him. ”You get rid of that right now. You don’t take drugs to get rid of it. It doesn’t take psychology. That promise right there will get rid of it.”
Copeland & Barton are telling soldiers with PTSD that their real problem is lack of faith — a failure to “name it and claim it.” That’s abuse. That’s pastoral malpractice. Barton and Copeland are like anti-pastors.
7. Katherine Stewart: “Government shutdown just the start for America’s biblical revolutionaries”
The facts have never stood in the way of [David] Barton’s “history”, because the history merely serves as a platform for more ambitious goals.
Barton’s political agenda couldn’t be clearer. The organization he founded, Wallbuilders, holds the idea that church-state separation is a myth as its chief talking point. Barton also launched the Black Robe Regiment, an association of clergy members and “concerned patriots” whose goal is to establish “the American Church” as “overseer of all principalities and governing officials, as was rightfully established long ago.”
… If Barton were some out-in-the-woods extremist, we could appreciate him as a colorful detail in the diverse and vibrant landscape of American religion. But he is on a first-name basis with Newt Gingrich, Rand Paul,Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Michele Bachmann.
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