Translating Away Justice

Last updated on: November 21, 2017 at 9:19 am By Fred Clark

Came across this today on the Twitters, an important point well-expressed by Jemar Tisby: I wish I had realized sooner how some American Christians make social justice into a boogeyman by constantly saying that such concerns "replace" the gospel. In reality, a gospel without justice is no gospel at all. — JemarTisby.Substack.com. (@JemarTisby) November 20, 2017 This bogeyman concern he refers to — the idea that justice must not “replace” the gospel — goes way back in white evangelicalism. This... Read more

Sunday favorites

Last updated on: November 18, 2017 at 5:54 pm By Fred Clark

"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known." Read more

LBCF, No. 160: ‘Transactions’

Last updated on: November 16, 2017 at 7:32 pm By Fred Clark

Bruce’s assertion there about “perilous times” in which we can’t know “how much … time we have” is another reminder of how premillennial dispensationalism is shaped by the denial of death. What mortals these fools be. Read more

Christmas [stuff]

Last updated on: November 16, 2017 at 6:18 pm By Fred Clark

The Christmas stuff starts arriving in early September. It has to because shortly after that, in early October, it's going on the shelves. Christmas "stuff" isn't what you call it, though. Read more

Fundamentalists and Other White Evangelicals Who Support Roy Moore

Last updated on: November 17, 2017 at 8:53 am By Fred Clark

For both flavors of evangelical, "God Save America" means revival -- and that means ensuring a Republican majority in the Senate to confirm "conservative" judges who will restore Gilded Age jurisprudence. Read more

Roy Moore Misrepresented Pastors’ Support (Creepy Bigot Also Turns Out to be Dishonest)

Last updated on: November 16, 2017 at 8:01 am By Fred Clark

This is, apparently, less utterly disgraceful than the way Moore presented it. It's still disgraceful, mind you -- still indefensible, sinful, ugly and evil -- just not disgraceful in quite the way that Moore made it seem. Read more

Churches List Themselves as Unsafe for Children

Last updated on: November 15, 2017 at 7:35 am By Fred Clark

The pastors of these churches chose, on their own, to come forward and to announce publicly that their communities are unwilling and unable to protect children, and that their churches will, in fact, eagerly defend adults who prey on them. Read more

LBCF, No. 159: ‘Buck and the preacher’

Last updated on: November 10, 2017 at 7:17 am By Fred Clark

Look again at that initial summary — “being raised in a Christian home, going to Bible college, marrying a Christian, becoming a pastor, the whole thing” — and see if even the authors themselves don’t sound a bit bored by the mundane tedium of it. Read more

Roy Moore is Even Worse than You Thought

Last updated on: November 12, 2017 at 11:00 am By Fred Clark

Disgraced former judge Roy Moore has always seemed like a caricature of some Southern Gothic monster -- some bastard creation pieced together out of left-overs from Tennessee Williams and Flannery O'Connor and maybe a pinch of Carl Hiassen. Today we learned he's worse than we knew. Read more

‘They are filled with new wine’

Last updated on: November 8, 2017 at 6:38 pm By Fred Clark

Part of what the disciples were struggling with, I think, was the mistaken idea that Pentecost had to be a zero-sum game. If we start letting in the Pamphylians and Cyrenians, then won't we have to kick somebody else out to make room? Read more

What does Paul tell the Thessalonians to do without ceasing?