6 @ 8: Principalities and powers

6 @ 8: Principalities and powers February 5, 2014

1. A bunch of conservative evangelical boys, including Rick Warren and whoever’s left at the Manhattan Declaration, have filed an amicus brief in support of employers’ right to dictate the religious practices of employees. Specifically, they’re arguing that for-profit retail chain Hobby Lobby has a “religious right” to restrict the health care options available to its female employees.

What else does this group of religious boys have in common? They all oppose women’s ordination. Coincidence?

2. I keep coming across articles about anti-Semitic French “comedian” Dieudonne. So far I’ve seen plenty of ugly evidence to confirm that he is, in fact, an anti-Semitic bigot. But I haven’t seen a shred of evidence to confirm that he is, in fact, a comedian. Has he ever said or done anything that was, you know, funny?

3. Richard Beck blogs through William Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land: Prelude; Chapter 1, America as Babylon; Chapter 2, Where is Jerusalem?; Chapter 3, The Moral Reality Named Death; Chapter 4, Strategems of the Demonic Powers; Chapter 5, The Christian Resistance to Death; Chapter 6, The Charismatic Gifts; Epilogue: How Can a Person Live?

Good stuff.

4. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

5. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins got a special sneak preview of an early rough-cut of the Left Behind reboot starring Nic Cage. They agreed it looked fantastic. “Two enthusiastic thumbs up,” Jenkins said, offering the unbiased opinion of both authors — an opinion wholly uninfluenced by the prospect that hyping this movie could lead to more book sales and a bigger cut of the profits.

6. Paul Waldman: “Why Republicans Keep Calling Women Sluts

These kinds of statements tend to come from older conservative men who have no idea how ladyparts work, and really don’t want to know. That extends to contraception, which as far as they’re concerned is something that is women’s responsibility and therefore there’s no need to understand it. That accounts for the bizarrely widespread belief that all forms of contraception work like condoms: a one-use kind of thing that is employed whenever sex is desired. Which is why Rush Limbaugh said that Sandra Fluke was obviously a “slut” if she wanted contraception to be covered by the insurance she was paying for, because “She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception.” And Huckabee believes that you only need birth control every month if you have a rampaging libido, while if you were more chaste, it would be something that would sit at the back of the cabinet, seldom brought out but there if necessary, like that little container of tumeric you once bought for a particularly exotic recipe and might some day use again.

 


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