The 40 Fools in Congress (the extremist driving this shutdown show) might as well be a global militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden in Peshawar, Pakistan. Speaking as the father of a US Marine who spent 2 tours in Afghanistan hunting for bin Laden, I say to the Tea Party/Congressional 40: Please take off those flag pins! After the faith, credit and economy of the US risks being shattered, then recovers, and this shutdown is all said and... Read more
Don’t like the shutdown? Send the bill to the evangelicals. People schooled to live in a make-believe magical facts-be-damned world took over the Republican Party. The Tea Party is the pro-life evangelical subculture reborn with a few libertarian nuts thrown in. I’m talking about the bedrock mostly southern and mountain state evangelical conservatives that are anything but conservative. The pro-life, home-school, anti-government far right is the evangelical movement. And it’s radically anti American. Without this movement the 40 extremists in... Read more
There is something extraordinarily dangerous and ugly at the heart of American life: literalistic religion. There is something extraordinarily beautiful and enlightening at the heart of American life: literalistic religion. Now there is a movie that explores this paradox: what’s uniquely best about America — religious freedom — is also our continuous downfall. I’m an author and commentator not a journalist. So it’s not often I get the pleasure of stumbling on what’s called a “scoop.” This time I’m beating... Read more
I understand the delusional thinking leading to the potential government shutdown. I understand it from the from the inside and better than the editors of the New York Times do. See, they leave God out of the equation. Rational people just don’t “get” holy war. I’ve spent the last twenty-five years writing my way out of my false past certainties. My latest attempt to explain myself to myself is my book about religious delusion: And God Said, “Billy!” Yet in... Read more
With the disgusting acquiescence of the Russian Orthodox bishops, Vladimir Putin has accomplished what Sarah Palin, Franklin Graham and Michele Bachmann could only dream of doing in America. He’s made it okay to persecute gay people people in Russia. As Adam Lee notes, Putin has built his power base of corruption and terror with the help of the religious and conservative elements of his society. He’s become expert at courting the alliance of the Russian Orthodox Church. And here in... Read more
This is the Nadia picture I’m tattooing on my chest. From: Nadia Bolz-Webber To: Frank Schaeffer Subject: your new book And God Said, “Billy!” Fri, Sep 20, 2013 7:40 am It’s like nothing I’ve ever read, Frank. Amazing! Here you go! “Only Frank Schaeffer could write a novel that details the hilarious absurdity of Christian Fundamentalism only to then enter the confounding beauty and redemptive mystery of Christian liturgical transition. A novel for anyone who dares to walk away... Read more
Pope Francis said in an interview published Thursday that the Roman Catholic Church must no longer focus on abortion, contraception and gay marriage. Trouble is the American Roman Catholic Church is being manipulated by some very extreme people. They will not be happy! Robert George, (the Princeton professor behind the extreme recent rightward tilt of the American Roman Catholic bishops and, according to the New York Times one time mentor to Glenn Beck) Antonin Scalia, and the other “Natural... Read more
Sojourners likes And God Said, “Billy!” I love and respect Jim Wallis. Seeing a rave review of my new book on his personal Sojo blog page made my day! Here’s what Mark Sandlin (who I also love and respect) writing on Wallis’s God’s Politics Blog page said: (Reprinted here with permission from of the author) God’s Politics Blog The Book Every Christian Needs to Read This Fall by Mark Sandlin 09-19-2013 | 4:22pm Share on email Share on twitter Share... Read more
It was my dad and I that, along with people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, turned millions of Christians into politicized dupes of corporate America. Thirty years later Speaker John A. Boehner surrendered to demands that he tie money to keep the government open after Sept. 30 to stripping President Obama’s health care law of any financing. There’s a connection. In my new book And God Said, “Billy!” I expose the paranoid religious delusion that fed this beast and... Read more
This post is by Brian McLaren. It is a review of Frank Schaeffer’s new book, “And God Said, Billy!” currently featured on Tony Campolo’s Red Letter Book Club. Anyone who asks me for a recommendation for good reading in the fiction category always gets the same response: Have you read Frank Schaeffer’s Portofino trilogy? Now, Frank has a new novel out, and it’s excellent too: “And God Said, ‘Billy!’” First, a word about Frank’s earlier trilogy, featuring young Calvin Becker... Read more
Why I Still Talk to Jesus -- In Spite of Everything
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