“It all seemed so real, like it made so much sense, but it wasn’t right.”

“Some people — in this case 63 percent — never learn.”

“Before we can ‘do something’ for the poor, there are some things we need to stop doing to them.”

“Climate change isn’t just making maple syrup scarcer — it’s making it taste way worse.”

“This kind of bullying can happen to any woman who speaks her mind.”

“Some women are worried that a President Mitt Romney and Republican Congress would — as they have promised — move against fair pay for equal work, toss between 14 and 27 million people off Medicaid (of whom about two-thirds are women), cut child care, health care, and food assistance for about 20 million children, defund Planned Parenthood, do away with Title X, and maybe seat a Supreme Court willing to reverse Roe v. Wade.”

“If the ACA had been in effect, these two young women who give so much to their community would never have been turned away at the hospital after suffering such grievous injuries.”

“When we see Muslim countries forcing non-Muslims (including Christians) to live according to strict Sharia law, we cringe. But we Christians are all-too-willing to force non-Christians to live according to our standards.”

“Plenty of churches, synagogues, etc., do allow same-sex weddings, and this bill would prohibit chaplains in those faiths from performing marriages that their tradition and the state recognizes as valid.”

“The Presbytery of the Redwoods opposes imposition of the rebuke … as inconsistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“I leave it to you to judge which of those statements from 2005 stands up better seven years later as a guide to John Roberts’s temperament and jurisprudence.”

“The pain inflicted by the idiocy of using the phrase ‘boundary violation’ for child rape is impossible to quantify, and for the survivor, it is devastating.”

“And she’ll come home, throw her bloody clothes in her washing machine, down a beer or six, and sleep that night just as sound as she could be, secure in her conviction that she’s a perfectly good, perfectly God-fearing woman.”

“We petition the obama administration to: Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.”

“Red Square Revolt: Quebec Students on Strike“ (via)

“You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness.”

“Elective abortions are not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.”

“The truth is that spending, taxes and the deficit are all lower today than when President Obama took office.”

“For the first time in my lifetime, a house of government has dictated what is acceptable theology and has banned sacraments from its properties that do not meet the religious beliefs of legislators.”

“Evangelical churches are usually refuge houses for certain kinds of sinners — the loveless, the self-righteous, those apathetic toward the poor and unconcerned with issues of justice and race, the greedy, the gluttons, and so on.”

“Why do homosexuals bother you so much?”

“There’s that fine line between what I call a confident optimism and arrogance. And I think people who think like the old Hemingway line — ‘The world is worth fighting for‘ — are appealing.”

“If the United States Congress is serious about cutting costs, it may eventually have to stand up to thirsty car-culture lobbies and back infrastructure that pays durable dividends.”

“Dressed in the clothing of consumer protection, the bill strips away Pennsylvania’s long-held and strongly enforced protections against predatory short-term loans.”

“Welcome to the Vatican death panels.”

“I am far more worried about my church joining the war against the poor than their war against the nuns. After all, we have each other and we have work to do.”

“You know, 94 percent of the quotes of the Founding Fathers contemporaneous to our nation’s founding either came directly or indirectly from the Bible.”

“How do you pronounce ‘Faneuil?’”

Point. Counterpoint.

I enjoyed this trippy, riffing and rambling reflection from John Van Sloten at Think Christian: “Spiritual perception and the science of color.” It’s half sermon illustration, half stoner epiphany.

I probably enjoyed the stoner-ish aspects more, but Von Slaten’s sermon ain’t bad either. He writes:

Dogs are bi-chromates, meaning their eyes have two cones enabling them to see blue/yellow and black/white, while most humans are tri-chromates, enabling us to see many more colors. Some butterflies have five cones and can see an even broader range. The mantis shrimp, amazingly, has sixteen cones! If all these different species might be looking at the same thing, some would see more colors than others, who, “though seeing, they do not see.”

We can’t perceive the colors that a mantis shrimp can perceive. And thus we find it impossible to conceive of them either. Those colors are, to us, like up and down are to a Flatlander.

As Keanu would say, “Whoa.”

She sees colors that you can't even imagine.

I like where Van Sloten wants to go with this as a theological analogy. Theology, like cosmology, requires us to think about things we’re not quite capable of thinking about — ideas that confront us with the tri-chromate, Flatlander limitations of our kind (“infinity,” for example). When it comes to understanding God, he writes, “we’re a few cones short of full perceptive capacity” and “we must be missing most of what’s really going on.”

The playwright of Job would certainly agree with that.

I do want to quibble, though, with Von Slaten’s suggestion that this lack of “full perceptive capacity” is “because of sin.”

We humans have all sorts of shortcomings that have nothing to do with sin or sinfulness. Sin and sinfulness may be part of the human condition, and they can certainly cloud our perception, but we shouldn’t confuse sin with finitude and fallibility. Nor should we mistakenly think of finitude and fallibility as being sinful.

This is kind of important. If we believe that human misperceptions and misconceptions and incomplete (and thus inaccurate) comprehensions are mainly due to sin, then we’re tempted to conclude that anyone who is fallible is therefore evil. But if we believe that misperceptions, misconceptions and incomplete comprehensions are an unavoidable aspect of the human condition, then we’re encouraged to regard others with more empathy, and to realize that we need each other to improve our own, finite and fallible perspectives.

An emphasis on human sinfulness leads us to avoid the wicked temptation of engaging diverse perspectives. An emphasis on fallibility and finitude leads us to seek out and value diverse perspectives as a necessary corrective of our own blind-men-and-the-elephant limitations. I prefer the latter.

In Bangladesh, apparently, the sexual harassment of women is called “Eve teasing.”

This social problem exists everywhere be it in rural or in urban areas. One of the main reasons of girls being married off at an early age or them dropping out of school is “eve teasing.” Many times these incidents lead to violence and even deaths.

Just look at that term — “Eve teasing” — and ponder its biblical roots.

The etymology of this term is an accusing finger pointing directly at the patriarchal religion that men use to justify this debasing, predatory behavior. That term is a powerful indictment of this patriarchal religion — a reminder that it is directly linked to daily, relentless abuse, harassment, “violence and even deaths.”

* * * * * * * * *

At Jesus Radicals, Andy Alexis-Baker wrestles with what it means for the legacy of John Howard Yoder that the great Mennonite theologian was also a horrific Eve-teaser.

For Jesus Radicals like Alexis-Baker, Yoder is a big name — a man whose books shaped the thinking of a generation. I’m part of that generation, and I understand Alexis-Baker’s anguished disappointment here.

Yoder was the equivalent, for Christian progressives and peacemakers, of those un-named “big names” whom Ericka M. Johnson discusses at Friendly Atheist in a post titled “It’s Almost Time to Start Naming Names.”

“Private conversations with these people have to come first,” Johnson writes. “These are our allies and we have to give them a chance to make amends. But if none of those efforts work, then we have to start naming names. Not to shame them but to protect women in our community.”

I appreciate the painful difficulty here, but whether the Eve-teaser in question is a revered theologian or a revered non-theist, I think Johnson has steps 1 and 2 backwards. Protect the vulnerable first and foremost. Then — and only then — can you start to worry about protecting the reputation of any person, institution or affiliated movement.

* * * * * * * * *

Roman Catholic priest Jonathan Morris says the Department of Health and Human Service’s regulations requiring equal health insurance coverage for women entails “the obvious raping of our First Amendment rights.”

This is appalling for at least three reasons:

1) No one should be using rape metaphors.

2) No one should be using rape metaphors to argue against equal health coverage for women.

3) No one should be using rape metaphors to argue against equal health coverage for women when he belongs to a hierarchy that has been committing, facilitating and defending actual rape for decades and is now, at this moment, fighting to prevent changes to statutes of limitations that would ensure rapists can be brought to justice.

* * * * * * * * *

This post by David French exemplifies how the politics of abortion is used to define the boundaries of the evangelical tribe.

This is one of the main functions of the politics of abortion in American evangelicalism. It’s not about being “pro-life.” It’s about ensuring that you can’t be accused of not being sufficiently “pro-life.” It’s about keeping people in line, keeping them obedient and voting as they are told. It’s about control of women, yes, but it’s also about control of everyone who wishes to be allowed to remain in the community.

French sees Millennials and younger evangelicals losing their taste for the culture wars of their elders and he’s terrified that this will mean that the Republican Party will lose their votes. So he plays the only card he’s got left: the baby-killer card.

Do as you’re told, young people. Repeat the required phrases or you’re not really Christians. Do as you’re told or you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. Do as you’re told or we will question the firmness of your “pro-life” stance and thereby cast you into the outer darkness with the Satanic baby-killers and the evolutionists and the homosexuals, where there is weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and fabulous gay weddings.

Do as you’re told. Or else. That’s what being “pro-life” is all about in American evangelicalism.

* * * * * * * * *

Now go read this: “I Am (Not) That Mom: Raising a Kid with Cardiomyopathy,” by Laura Fitch.

And if you’re one who prays, say a prayer for every name in that story.