1. Everything about this poll is disheartening — with lots of bad questions prompting even worse answers. One of the lowlights: In the 2006 version of this survey, white mainline Protestants were found to be slightly less resentful of black people than white evangelicals were, but by 2012 “regardless of religious affiliation, whites were statistically identical to each other.” Meaning, alas, that white mainline Protestants now seemed to be just as resentful as white evangelicals.
Maybe it’s time to update the lectionary so that all white churches spend the entirety of 2014 reading nothing but 1 John.
2. Tina Casey reports that “The global wind turbine leader Siemens has just inked a deal to provide its offshore turbines to the massive new Cape Wind wind power project,” meaning that this project may finally be moving from pipe-dream toward reality. So now the odds are slightly better that the U.S. may one day have an operational offshore wind farm before climate change sinks the city of Miami. Maybe.
3. Your periodic reminder that the presumption of charity is like the presumption of innocence in criminal justice. It does not mean that we are required to disregard all the evidence from the prosecution. The benefit of the doubt is a starting point, not a conclusion, and certainly not the only acceptable conclusion in all cases. Or, as Ari Kohen says, “Most of the time, you don’t get to be rich and famous if you’re actually a fool. You get to be rich and famous by figuring out how to prey on people who desperately want to believe what you’re selling without seeming to them to be preying on them.”
4. “If you attack a group of people, expecting them to be silent is insulting. It’s as if you are expecting them to have such a low opinion of themselves as you do.”
5. Charles J. Reid: “Shadow Over Springfield: The Failures of a Warrior Bishop”
But there is a shadow hanging over the Diocese of Springfield. Ever fewer children are enjoying the Catholic rites of initiation that were such a wondrous part of my own youth. And this precipitous decline has been hastened by the arrival in Springfield of Thomas Paprocki, one of America’s fiercest culture-warrior bishops.
6. Douglas Hagler: “Francis Chan Takes ‘Doug’s Wager’”
Doug’s Wager is this: If I am right that there is no Hell, then God is not a monster, no one has to be consciously tormented for eternity, and words like “good” and “just” and “loving” have actual meaning when we apply them to God. We are all living in a world that is not a Lovecraftian horror when the credits roll, and the only real issue with Hell is whether it is something that drives people away from something that might otherwise be a good part of their lives (religion and/or spirituality), and whether individuals experience suffering due to the false belief in Hell. …
If, however, Francis Chan is right, and there is a Hell, then no matter what we believe we will all be tormented for eternity. Because how could anyone but a sociopath enjoy an eternity in the knowledge that billions of other conscious beings were being tortured? And obvously, the ones being tortured are even worse off – but every conscious being will suffer forever if there is a Hell. Even the sociopaths will probably be bummed out by everyone else. Also, if Francis Chan is right about Hell, then words like “good” and “just” and “loving” are just noisy air we push out of our mouths when we talk about God. Those words are rendered entirely arbitrary, because we have to define them as “whatever God happens to do.” So no matter what we believe in life, we will all suffer forever, and God’s relationship to us and the world is entirely arbitrary.
7. Another year over, and a new one just begun.
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