Putting the Protest in Protestant
As if the repeated castigation of white evangelicals for voting Republican in the last POTUS election was not enough... Read more
As if the repeated castigation of white evangelicals for voting Republican in the last POTUS election was not enough... Read more
In 1992 justice Anthony Kennedy wrote on behalf of abortion rights that the sort of decision a woman faced was too personal and poignant for the state ever to interfere: These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning,... Read more
Apparently when Eminem performs, by Rev. Jemar Tisby’s logic, the white rapper is guilty of putting on black-face. In the context of a controversy over Baptist seminary professors who dressed up as gang members, posed for a photo later tweeted, to send off a white colleague who sometimes performs Christian rap, Pastor Tisby argues the professors belittled blacks: Whatever their intentions, the photo is problematic for at least three main reasons. First, as a comparison, consider why blackface is so... Read more
If evangelicals were not political would they generate any more attention than the Amish? Read more
America is the land of the free but liberty comes with its limits. Protestants can’t have prayer and Bible reading in public schools, Roman Catholics have to get right with the separation of church and state, Jews can’t have a king, and Muslims can’t have Sharia law. A similar dynamic has been at work in Mormonism. Whey Joseph Smith started out, Mormons were a group set apart thanks to many beliefs and practices. But once Utah became a state and... Read more
Molly Worthen heaps scorn on the evangelicals who voted for Trump by blaming our post-truth moment on the Protestants who insist on a world-and-life view. Conservative evangelicals are not the only ones who think that an authority trusted by the other side is probably lying. But they believe that their own authority — the inerrant Bible — is both supernatural and scientifically sound, and this conviction gives that natural human aversion to unwelcome facts a special power on the right.... Read more
The story of Peter’s denial of Christ, on Good Friday Eve (I hear some Christians refer to it as Maundy Thursday) has to be one of the most moving aside from the trial, beating, and death of Christ — a big exception. I often think of Peter as the yellow lab of the apostles, always eager to please his master, full of energy, remarkably naive, and so prone to get himself in a boatload of trouble, as all four evangelists... Read more
While Rod Dreher complains about the dictatorship of moral relativism that has triumphed in the United States, states and athletic associations are showing the resilience of secession as an option for those Americans who cling to moral norms. After the Atlantic Coast Conference boycotted the state of North Carolina for the conference basketball tournament, the legislators of the Tar Hell State have decided to fight back: North Carolina legislators filed a bill this week that would require North Carolina and... Read more
Turns out when you make food affordable, you increase the costs of health care. Addison Del Mastro connects the dots. First, Americans suffer from high rates of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity: Among its wealthy, industrialized peers, the United States is close to having the highest diabetes rate in the world, and the same is true for obesity. Deaths from heart disease are similarly high. Due in no small part to this massive disease burden, U.S. life expectancy lags behind... Read more
Total depravity, the T in the infamous mnemonic, T-U-L-I-P, the so-called Five Points of Calvinism, is not one of those doctrines that congers up Hallmark Card images of cats, cute babies, and spring flowers. In fact, H. L. Mencken quipped that Calvinism occupied a place in his cabinet but “little removed from Cannibalism.” His reason for repulsion no doubt stemmed from the Calvinists’ admission that human beings and sinners all the way down and can do nothing to merit God’s... Read more
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