• Gretchen McCulloch on the best way to answer a negative question. Is that not helpful?
• From Kim Fabricius:
Some Christians think they are being “fools for Christ” when they are ridiculed for standing up in the public square, say, by picketing cinemas that show “blasphemous” films, or by making apocalyptic pronouncements about same-sex relationships, or by deploying pseudo-science in defense of young-earth creationism. These people fail to consider the possibility that their felt integrity is but mulish obstinacy; that their nonconformity is actually a form of self-validation confirmed by the applause of “the faithful;” and, above all, that their claims of persecution are fatally compromised by the sanctimoniousness of their witness. Self-proclaimed victims are, ipso facto, bogus victims; there is nothing cruciform about them. Secular contempt is neither here nor there, but bringing the faith into theological disrepute – that is not to be a fool for Christ, just a jerk for Jesus.
• Kudos to Mike Bell at Internet Monk for pushing back forcefully against the pernicious No True Scotsman nonsense of the latest attempt to claim that Real, True Christians are immune to divorce.
The longstanding finding that the divorce rate among Christians is indistinct from the divorce rate among everyone else has inspired multiple efforts to rejigger the statistics into some more flattering form. The latest such effort is an attempt to tease out some group of really, truly devout Christians and then to show that these RTCs are less likely to divorce than filthy heathens and “nominal Christians.” Recrunching the numbers, then, these folks produced the remarkable finding that Catholics who regularly attend Mass are far less likely to be divorced than “nominal” Catholics.
It takes a really special kind of sociologist to conclude that this is proof church attendance reduces the risk of divorce and not simply the obvious no-duh result one ought to expect from a church policy that tells the divorced they are no longer permitted to receive the sacraments. Whether this specialness is due to a lack of integrity or a lack of common sense I can’t say, but it’s one or the other of those.
• So, is Dr. Thomas White, the new president of Cedarville University, deliberately trying to destroy the school? Or is he merely doing it by accident?
• This was not an accident. This was meticulously planned and designed.
• Have you read the Jack Chick tract “Dark Dungeons“? It features every urban legend and credulous lie ever told about Dungeons & Dragons, mixed with Chick’s trademark grotesquery, brimstone and paranoia.
And now, Christian Nightmares says, it’s becoming a feature film:
Thanks to Jay E., too, for alerting me of this via e-mail. Jay notes the most promising aspect of this project — they say they’re playing it straight. No need to camp up this material, that’d be like sprinkling sugar on Frosted Flakes. Just present the original Chick material and the original tone as earnestly and understatedly as possible and you’ll have all the camp you need for an anti-cult cult classic.
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