There are always people who will have silly objections to things bloggers write, but “This is clickbait!” is the most incoherent. Readers objecting to clickbait makes as much sense as driving cars and complaining that they burn fossil fuels, or use electricity. Every writer, not just bloggers, wants to be reflected in the eyes of readers. It doesn’t matter who the reader is. This is a deeply human need that the novelist Witold Gombrowicz captured in his Ferdydurke: Man is... Read more
Dramatis Personae: David Daleiden is a 27 year old investigative journalist who caused a national uproar after exposing Planned Parenthood’s practice of selling baby body parts. Daleiden, a graduate of Claremont McKenna College, is the Project Lead for the Center for Medical Progress (“CMP”) and the mastermind behind CMP’s Human Capital Project – a 30-month-long investigative journalism study documenting how the abortion industry buys and sells the body parts of aborted babies. CMP’s journalists spent years gathering hundreds of hours... Read more
Was Jesus married? Shocking news pieces attempting to debunk the orthodox version of the life of Jesus are an annual festival, but The Atlantic’s piece “The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife” turns the tables on the demythologizers. It is no doubt the most riveting piece of investigative reporting I’ve read in the recent past. The Atlantic’s blurb doesn’t do justice to the essay’s psychological depth, it’s spellbinding tale of confirmation bias: Where did that papyrus that mentions Jesus’s wife come from? And... Read more
The Palm Beach Post seems to be the only news source reporting on some very uncomfortable facts. They start with what everybody seems to know, a bit of information that could be read several ways: At least five people have come forward saying they saw Mateen at gay clubs, painting a complicated portrait of the American-born Muslim whom the FBI believes was radicalized by terrorist groups. Then comes the following from someone who was an intimate of the Orlando gay... Read more
What follows is a guest post. Omar Mateen, the fiftieth casualty in Sunday’s Orlando massacre, deserves and needs our prayers. By all counts, the man accused of murdering 49 people at a gay bar in Orlando wasn’t a nice person. His moral compass was askew. In addition to slaughtering dozens and wounding even more, he allegedly abused his ex-wife and acted unhinged in a prior work environment. He also claimed loyalty to the Muslim terrorist group ISIS in a phone... Read more
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. –Jesus, Matthew 10:34, in his native KJV dialect The latest round of gun violence has relaunched the never ending debate on... Read more
It may be little comfort to have the realization terrorism has its rather quotidian logic. Yet, if you really think about it, it is much less comforting to have the realization that if terrorism is automatically declared out of the bounds of rationality, then responses to it will likely be equally irrational. I suspect many of us are still reeling from the fallout of the Orlando night club shooting. Yesterday I reported on the pope’s reaction to it in the... Read more
These are strange times we live in, but they are not incomprehensible. It didn’t take long for folks to demand Christians unequivocally condemn the shootings perpetrated by (it appears) a Muslim Florida man, Omar Mateen, in the Pulse night club, which bills itself as “the hottest gay bar in Orlando”: https://www.facebook.com/edstetzer/posts/10154289862165909 What these well-meaning activists don’t seem to realize is how difficult it is for most Protestant Christian and nearly all Muslim denominations to make such gestures, because they are not... Read more
Poland is not becoming a theocracy over abortion, because it was never a secular democracy to start with. Western commentators forget this. The Patheos “Religion Now” portal recently published a piece full of interesting contradictions on Poland entitled “Poland’s Battle Between Theocracy and Secular Democracy” by Beth Holmgren. Professor Holmgren teaches Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke. She specializes in writing about women in the former Soviet sphere of influence, especially in excellent scholarly tomes such as Poles Apart: Women in Modern Polish... Read more
My wanderings you have noted; are my tears not stored in your flask, recorded in your book? My foes turn back when I call on you. This I know: God is on my side. –Psalm 56 The app Laudate Liturgy of the Hours app is a boon to my engagement with what the 20th century’s greatest Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, called the strange world of the Bible. It is the chief reason why I’ve taken a more bible-centered approach recently... Read more
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