The one hundred and fifty or so resentments sent me in response to my post Send Your Resentments Up in Smoke were last night consumed in the flames of the Easter Vigil service held at Trinity Episcopal Church in Escondido, CA. It was a beautiful and deeply moving ceremony. Below are some pictures of it taken by my wife Catherine. (To see photos from last year’s burning, go here.) Beside me in the top picture is Trinity’s reverend, the great Meg Decker.... Read more
[UPDATE: It’s done. Pictures are up.] Last year for Easter over two hundred people sent me resentments that they were carrying and desired to be rid of. I prayed over each and every one of those resentments, and then brought them to a church, where, on the dawn of Easter morning, they were burned to ashes in a bonfire. (See The Burning of the Resentments.) (more…) Read more
Recently (via such posts as A Christianity to Make Satan Proud, Pastor Marc Monte: Satan Called. Loves Your Work, and The Fundamentally Toxic Christianity) we’ve been discussing Independent Fundamental Baptists (or, for short, the IFB). One of the questions raised in the comments to those posts is how or why anyone would attend an unaccredited IFB “college” such as Bob Jones University. (more…) Read more
Every Sunday or Monday morning I sit down, close my eyes, and do Ye Oldye Communing with God. In that exceptionally rich moment a prayer comes to me. I then write down that prayer, which I send out to subscribers to my John’s Prayer for the Week newsletter. I don’t make those prayers available anywhere but through that newsletter. But by way of introducing the newsletter (which is only five weeks old), here is … well, the prayer I sent... Read more
Apropos to my last post, Six Things to Know About Sexual Abuse and Forgiveness, I late last night wrote as a status on my Facebook page: I think if there’s one message that victims of abuse need to hear and believe, it’s that every single ounce of the total power of their lives is still with them. (more…) Read more
People who are sexually abused are very often, however subtly or overtly, pressured to forgive their assailants. (A subject which, as you might know, has lately come up here.) If you are in any way burdened by the notion that you are not, as comprehensively as you or others feel that you’re obliged to, forgiving the person who sexually abused you, please consider these six truths about forgiveness (which, being universal, hold as true for the Christian as they do... Read more
On Monday I published my piece on “Dr.” Pastor Marc Monte. Later that day “Dr.” Monte tweeted this: (more…) Read more
As part of his ongoing responses to yesterday’s post (Pastor Marc Monte: Satan called. Loves your work), this morning pastor Monte continued to press his case that victims of abuse should simply “radically forgive” by posting these two tweets: (more…) Read more
Meet “Dr.” Marc Monte, the lead pastor of Indiana’s Faith Baptist Avon, an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church. (The quote marks around “Dr.” are because Monte is a doctor like I’m an astrophysicist. He has nothing but one of those “honorific” faux-doctorate degrees that IFB leaders hand out to each other like little boys playing Now you knight me!—except, of course, these pretentious, potato-headed potentates then use their fraudulent titles to bolster the authority they wield over their churches with such impunity. Interesting,... Read more
Here’s a letter I just got in: (more…) Read more
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