LBCF, No. 136: ‘Chairface Stonagal’
It is only after our heroes confess this particular sin and embrace the “Bible-prophecy” teachings of Tim LaHaye that they become Real, True Christians and receive divine forgiveness and salvation. In Left Behind, the refusal to acknowledge LaHaye’s teaching as supreme truth is the equivalent of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the unforgivable sin that condemns one to Hell along with the preterists, the a-Millennialists and the Jews. [Read more…]
There is a feeling that you should just go home
Every day of the “Trump Era” it’s something new — something completely new that you’ve never seen before and can’t quite process because you never expected such a thing and have no experience responding to it. And before you can manage to wrap your head around this strange and unbelievable thing, you’re forced to consider something else — some other horror or astonishment you’ve never seen before either. [Read more…]
Some questions about DE and AiG
What do our friends the young-Earth creationists make of diatomaceous earth? Here, after all, is a tangible, fluffy-white embodiment of deep time. It’s one more thing that such illiteralist fundamentalists cannot allow themselves to look at or think about. So I wonder what kind of filter system Ken Ham uses for his hot tub. Or if Al Mohler allows himself to use D.E. in his garden. [Read more…]
White evangelical colleges vs. white evangelical parents
That reads like a caricature — a fantasy stereotype concocted by someone who has recently been told about the existence of white evangelical colleges, but who has never actually seen one. What do you suppose students learn at such a school? Who knows? Ronald Reagan, probably. And maybe C.S. Lewis? Oh, and the Bible, of course. This isn’t what students are really studying at these schools, but it’s what their nervous evangelical parents want to hear. [Read more…]
‘Fighting for our children’
Today’s protest anthem and Monday morning open thread comes courtesy of Mavis Staples. If necessary, you can invent and add an infinite number of verses to this song, and sing it forever. I mention this because that may soon, again, be necessary. So this is a good one to learn, just in case. [Read more…]
The ‘work ethic’ can be unethical (part 1)
You should always work hard and do your best. This is a moral obligation. That seems reasonable. Who doesn’t think that working harder is better than slacking off? And who could possibly quarrel with something as uncontroversially wholesome as “always do your best”? But it’s misleading —
and morally wrong — in at least two ways. [Read more…]
LBCF, No. 135: ‘A billion Samanthas’
LaHaye and Jenkins seem to think that this alien-abduction theory would be comforting to those who settled on it. As though the idea that some alien species had, without warning and without explanation, whisked away two billion people, and might do so again at any moment for all we know, would somehow settle things. As though it would simply make people say, “OK, then, that explains that” and go on with their daily lives. [Read more…]
[in Just-] spring fundraising
It’s spring, when the world is mud-lucious and the goat-footed balloonman is whistling far and wee. And so it’s time for a spring fundraiser, during which I will be passing the plate for a free-will love offering (or, for those who do not speak evangelicalese, when I’ll be asking for money). [Read more…]
Speaking truth of the dead
I’m suspicious of the notion that the recently deceased should be spoken of only in terms of “nothing but good” and sweetness and light. Let your yes be yes; call bitter bitter and call sweetness sweet. De mortuis nil nisi verum. [Read more…]
The Creation of adam
Harmonia Rosales, an artist based in Chicago, has revisited Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Like Michelangelo’s original, Rosales’ painting leads us to think about what it means to believe that we have been created in the image of God. Both paintings do so, of course, by envisioning God in our own image, which also leads us [Read More…]
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