If You Care About Justice and the Future of Our World Stand Up to Saudi Terror and Promote, Read, Buy THIS BOOK!

Last updated on: August 10, 2015 at 5:19 am By Frank Schaeffer

Here is a message I just got on my Facebook Messages. If you care about our world, justice and our future, read, pray, help, buy, spread the word! Ensaf Haidar Aug 9th, 9:31pm Hello Dear Mr. Frank, I hope you are fine, Just i want tell you about my husband Raif Badawi Book 1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think http://amzn.com/1771642092I hope you find time to talk about it with Thanks. facebook.com/raifofficialpageEnsaf Haidar. Canada. facebook.com/ensafofficial Frank Schaeffer is a writer. His latest... Read more

Don’t Miss the 2 Best Pieces (By Camille Paglia) on Sexual Politics and American Society I Ever Read

Last updated on: July 30, 2015 at 10:18 am By Frank Schaeffer

Camille Paglia (Credit: Michael Lionstar) Camille Paglia takes on Jon Stewart, Trump, Sanders: “Liberals think of themselves as very open-minded, but that’s simply not true!” You’re an atheist, and yet I don’t ever see you sneer at religion in the way that the very aggressive atheist class right now often will. What do you make of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and the religion critics who seem not to have respect for religions for faith? I regard them as adolescents.... Read more

We Are a Hardhearted People– Jesus, the Planned Parenthood Videos, Politics and Guns

Last updated on: July 27, 2015 at 9:16 am By Frank Schaeffer

We are a hardhearted people. From southern racists flying confederate flags, notwithstanding the pain this causes black passersby, to the New York Times defending using fetal body parts for experimentation– as if the only problem is one of legal technicalities– we human primates lack empathy. The gun lobby insists on the right to carry weapons notwithstanding that children are gunned down as a result of easy access to assault weapons. And a Planned Parenthood official is taped eating lunch while casually discussing the dismemberment of... Read more

Why Are Progressive Christians AND Right Wing American Fundamentalists Lying to Ourselves About the Islamic Destruction of Christianity in the Middle East?

Last updated on: July 23, 2015 at 5:55 am By Frank Schaeffer

The American evangelical right wing gave George W. Bush and the Republicans a pass for founding ISIS. ISIS is the only real “result” from our so-called War on Terror. The War on Terror is a creation of big oil married to Saudi lies, radical Islam, and neoconservative pro-Israel stupidity. The big loser is twofold– the credibility of the US Military and the Christians of the Middle East. And both right and left have preferred to believe their own lies rather than admit... Read more

Why Is the Mainstream Media Running Away From Max Blumenthal’s New Book About Israel?

Last updated on: July 20, 2015 at 1:31 am By Frank Schaeffer

“Is it possible for right-wingers and AIPAC adherents to speak about his work without either blowing a carotid artery; or attacking him personally, huffing and puffing about his being “anti-Semitic,” a self-loathing Jew, an anti-Israeli propagandist, and a bullying anti-Zionist? It doesn’t appear it is.[But] Max Blumenthal — a gutsy award-winning journalist whose on-the-ground reporting often shatters the confabulated wisdom of the Mainstream Media Misinformation and Disinformation Complex — speaks for itself in its insights and fearlessness.” So writes Bill Berkowitz / Truthout in... Read more

U2 Becomes Cirque du Soleil Meets George Balanchine Rock as a Surgical Strike

Last updated on: July 18, 2015 at 9:01 am By Frank Schaeffer

Last week my granddaughter Amanda (22), and me watched U2 do their stuff in Boston at the TD Garden– the U2 INNOCENCE + EXPERIENCE TOUR 2015. The music was good (fuck that, perfect) but forget that for the moment. The real story was the production and the energy this old band displayed blowing all conceptions of lazy old rockers resting on their laurels out of the water. George Balanchine never produced a better or more precise ballet. This was rock as choreographed... Read more

What Is BAD (and Good) Sex & Art?

Last updated on: July 17, 2015 at 1:27 pm By Frank Schaeffer

Bad art and bad sex matter for the same reason that bad religion matters. A brain can get used to anything. Once we’re used to something, it starts to seem okay. That capacity to normalize failures is why there are people who think that child abuse is “just discipline,” a Big Mac is “good food,” a rotting shark is “good art,” and hooking up with a predatory stranger is “good sex.” The same pattern of brain damage happens to the... Read more

Peggy Campolo, Brian McLaren, My Granddaughter Amanda, and Me Having a Wild Time at Wild Goose!

Last updated on: July 14, 2015 at 11:30 am By Frank Schaeffer

Here’s Peggy Campolo, one of my most loved and favorite people with me at Wild Goose, and Brian McLaren and Amanda, my 22 year old granddaughter who is visiting from Finland where she goes to the University of Helsinki. Amanda is studying sociology and to put it mildly we had a great time. She’s been working on a project about USA mass incarceration of black men, so Amanda was thrilled at all the social justice projects at the festival… And here’s someone looking at... Read more

The Truth About Christian ‘Sexual Purity’ — A Former Evangelical Speaks Out

Last updated on: July 6, 2015 at 3:45 am By Frank Schaeffer

The sexual purity “movement” is one of several to have deformed American politics as a battleground in the so-called culture wars. Now in a book and the interview below former evangelical and captive to the purity movement, author Sara Moslener, has movingly examined both the politics and the personal price extracted from those–like herself– who are and were most touched by this corrosive (and odd if not perverse) sex/morality/hard right religious “purity” movement. The human price in disillusionment is high... Read more

If there were no “holy books” how much easier it would be to believe in God!

Last updated on: July 5, 2015 at 7:11 am By Frank Schaeffer

(The “Last Judgement” by Michelangelo, Courtesy the Vatican archive) If there were no “holy books” how much easier it would be to believe in God! An oral tradition and a rich liturgical expression of divinity lovingly shared in a faith community are much more convincing than words on a page. The images I see from the Hubble telescope do more to suggest a loving creative God besotted by beauty than most Bible passages. One hug from my grandchildren Amanda, Ben,... Read more