George Orwell, “Charles Dickens” It seems that in every attack Dickens makes upon society he is always pointing to a change of spirit rather than a change of structure. It is hopeless to try and pin him down to any definite remedy, still more to any political doctrine. His approach is always along the moral plane, and his attitude is sufficiently summed up in that remark about Strong’s school being as different from Creakle’s ‘as good is from evil’. Two things can be very... Read more
Nearly every adjective the protagonists apply to themselves is inaccurate. Nearly everything they say or think about themselves is immediately thereafter contradicted by their actions. Read more
White evangelicals are complicit in the evil of Jennings v. Rodriguez just as they are complicit in the evil of Shelby County. A tree that bears such evil fruit should be cut down and cast on the fire. Plus: Facebook optimization is a fantasy; Eric Metaxas is a silly man; and Focus on the Family is now a "church." Read more
White evangelical scholars are suspicious of any hermeneutic of suspicion, and thus are insufficiently suspicious of themselves. Read more
Burton calls Graham "a religious leader whose convictions informed his politics, and not the other way around." Would that this distinction were so easy to make, or to practice. Graham didn't do this. Nobody does. Read more
It works like this: 1. I am a hero because I’m opposed to the imaginary Satanic baby-killers who are, by definition, the greatest evil of our time. 2. This makes me the equivalent (at least) of the heroes of other times who opposed the greatest evils of their day. 3. Therefore, when I read about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie Ten Boom, Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Anne Hutchinson, Jesus, or Robin Hood, I’m really reading about myself and... Read more
Maybe the best way to understand that is to think of Graham not as a great thinker or teacher (which he really wasn’t), but as a father figure. Billy Graham is the Daddy of white evangelicalism. Read more
"Your wrath has come, and the time for ... rewarding your servants and for destroying those who destroy the earth." Read more
It’s hard to worry about the Antichrist;s nefarious Master Plan, though, when he can’t even put together a proper seating chart. Read more
Millions were "saved" through Graham's evangelism -- many of them more than once. But if Graham's evangelism produced converts, we have to ask what it was these folks were converted to. Read more
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