Just before it all blows to pieces

• Armistice Day. Just go read it.

• How did Internet “evangelist” Joshua Feuerstein’s follow up his viral rant against Starbucks’ red Christmas cups? How else? By explaining why he’s morally superior to Satanic baby-killers.

• Charlie Manson’s Big Idea was to go on a killing spree that would thereby provoke a “race war.” The fact that Manson has been in prison for decades, becoming the poster boy for lethal stupidity, doesn’t seem to stop others from attempting to imitate his Big Idea. I suppose pointing out that this plan never, ever works the way it’s intended wouldn’t do any more to prevent this sort of thing than pointing out that it’s utterly immoral does.

There’s a word for these would-be Mansons who plot violence against civilians with the intention of intimidating larger populations and advancing their political agendas. The technical term for that is “terrorism.”

• From Twitter:

• A funny thing happened in the comments to a GetReligion post anchored on the unstated assumption that white evangelical Christians are best-positioned to define Satanism. A handful of self-identified Satanists and Luciferians showed up and, very politely, shared their response. Those commenters, I think, do a better job of demonstrating how to “get religion” than many of the posts at that site usually do.

• Turns out those awful biblical passages we’ve been looking at in the Sunday WTF? feature here all sound a lot better when read by Scarlett Johansson on Mike O’Brien’s “Sexy Radio.”

• “Only conservative Christians are allowed to say other Christians aren’t real Christians,” Wonkette tweeted yesterday, linking to this story about a candidate for mayor of Lewiston, Maine, who also happens to be an Episcopal lay preacher, and therefore, according to Maine’s tea-party Republicans, an “anti-Christian bigot.”

It’s not so much that only self-proclaimed “conservative” Christians are allowed to “say other Christians aren’t real Christians,” but that only they are inclined to do so. Or, perhaps, compelled to do so, due to a fever-swamp of anxieties, fears and insecurities stemming from that “conservative” theology. Those of us who don’t share that theology don’t share those fears and, thus, don’t share that compulsion.

• This is a Good Story from Libby Anne. It is, in a sense, a personal testimony and a conversion narrative. But the best thing about it is that it’s not wholly unique — many, many people have similar stories. More every day.