Pacifists still have to pay for bullets, but they’re allowed to discriminate against LGBT students. Profiles of two delusional nativists. Why some Christian colleges refuse to be trustworthy. Plus Johnny Cash proclaims woe unto the rich, Junia is a little less alone, dubious decor from Sears, and, oh, also too, the excerpt function on WordPress still isn’t working on my front page.
• The Friends have been seeking a religious exemption from war taxes since the days of colonial Governor William Penn. But the War Tax Resisters are still forced to fund the military despite their religious objection. Is there no accommodation for the religious liberty of Quakers? Well, sort of: Quakers are now allowed a religious exemption from the anti-discrimination provisions of Title IX so that they can set their own housing rules for transgender students. They still have to pay for nuclear bombs, though.
• Jason Horowitz’s New York Times piece on Jewish Republicans in Congress includes this delicious summary of the career of “Lewis Charles Levin of Pennsylvania, a member of the Know-Nothing Party, staunch nativist and anti-Catholic”:
Mr. Levin argued for a limit to the cubic footage of ships from Ireland, accused the pope of plotting to build a tunnel to America under the Atlantic Ocean and died in a mental hospital. His widow converted to Catholicism.
• In Rolling Stone, Alexander Zaitchik has a long profile of Larry Pratt, the paranoid conspiracy theorist and racist head of Gun Owners of America (as well as the founder of a host of other less-successful right-wing efforts, like the nativist “English First” group). Pratt has been a regular presence on Christian-brand talk radio for decades. My then-boss Ron Sider debated him on gun control on Christian radio back in the 1990s. As I’ve said before, that debate was highly controversial — not because of Pratt’s rabid ammosexual fetish, his chummy relationship with white supremacists and the militia movement, or his bizarre fever-dream politics. It was controversial because of Ron Sider, who wanted rich Christians to voluntarily tithe more of their income to help poor people.
• Kelly James Clark writes about “The Science-Religion Crisis at Christian Colleges.” Clark (no relation) writes primarily about the inability of good Christian professors to speak what they know to be true about evolution, and specifically about the historicity of the story of Adam and Eve. This is an old story at places like Bryan College, but it’s added a new complication for places like Wheaton, where the school’s president is now on record as rejecting what every OB/GYN knows about conception. Whether Philip Ryken is genuinely that confused about basic human biology or not, he’s following the same pattern: Deny the truth of science and say only what the big-money donors (Hi there, David Green!) want to hear.
When you refuse to allow professors to speak the truth because money, then you’ve got a big problem with integrity and trustworthiness. If you’re sincerely ignorant then congratulations, your integrity might still be intact. But you’re still not trustworthy because, well, you’re telling people that the universe is 6,000 years old or that emergency contraception is “abortifacient,” and those things are not true.
• It costs about $60,000 a year to attend Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York. That’s a lot of money to charge for a place that doesn’t seem to care if students get raped.
• “Johnny Cash Reads the Entire New Testament.” I appreciate the impulse to skip right to Revelation (the four horsemen passage starts at around 18:14). Personally, though, I started with James. Chapter 5 begins at 11:36 in that video, and it is not to be missed.
• The Church of England has voted to finally begin appointing women bishops. Mark the occasion by treating yourself to Scot McKnight’s excellent essay/e-book Junia Is Not Alone, which tells the story of the biblical apostle who was translated out of the scripture by the gatekeepers of the patriarchy.
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