In a biology classroom at most evangelical colleges, professors teach the truth of evolutionary science without qualification or defensiveness. But this science becomes a kind of shared secret. Here in this classroom, we all agree that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. But don't go home and talk about this with your parents or the church you grew up in. That might get us all in trouble. Read more
Some very smart smart people indeed, including: Jamelle Bouie, Crystal St. Marie Lewis, Jarvis Williams, Joy Reid, and Frederick Douglass. Read more
The story was fake -- an outrageous, impossible lie involving a massive evil conspiracy. The millions of people spreading it couldn't possibly believe it was true, even as they insisted that it determined their voting decisions. And yet their disingenuous enthusiasm for spreading the story meant that its inflammatory lies eventually reached the ears of a disturbed individual -- someone with a history of erratic violence who heard this tall tale, believed it, and loaded his guns. Read more
If you wrote something that was half in poetry and half in prose, you'd probably have a good reason why you made that choice. You'd mean it to mean something. The same was probably true for whoever wrote the book of Joel, but what that choice meant for them is, to us, a bit of a mystery. (Plus: Suggestions wanted for a First Testament iTunes playlist.) Read more
"He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty." Read more
Think some awful thoughts and say some awful words and don't think no more about reforming. Take up the wickedness of liberation, and if you can think of anything worse, do that, too. As long as you're in, and in for good, you might as well go the whole hog. Read more
A president doesn't need a deep, personal understanding of every nuance of every complex international issue. He just needs to have people around him who do have such an understanding. And then -- and this seems to be the vital, missing piece for Donald Trump -- he needs to listen to those people and pay attention when they tell him what he needs to know. Read more
Wherein Buck and Steve watch TV, a couple of comic bits fall flat, and Nicolae tells the Beave, in detail, about his plans to bring the U.N. into accord with premillennial dispensationalist numerology. Read more
"The commandments are summed up in this word, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." Read more
So evangelicals believe that most people die without ever being born. And for evangelical Christians, death means Heaven or Hell. Evangelicals don't have the comforting elastic consolation offered by some notion of Limbo or Purgatory for unbaptized Pagan Babies. It's simply Heaven or Hell. So where do these "people" go? Read more
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