If you ask those of us who are 18-53 years old for our opinions about what life was like before we either existed or have any memory, we'll give you an answer. And that speculative, possibly even informed, opinion may mean something or other in the aggregate. Maybe it tells us something fuzzy about general optimism or pessimism. Or maybe something about the dismal state of history, social studies, civics and science education. Read more
Charisma's senior editor asks: "Is Hillary Clinton the Antichrist or an Illuminati Witch?" They report, you decide. Plus: Emails!1!; offshore wind for America; the Nephilim of Afghanistan; and Phyllis Schlafly celebrates living long enough to realize how awful her children have turned out to be. Read more
When looking for the next Niebuhr, or for the next nationally influential Christian public intellectual, for some reason, Martin Luther King Jr. doesn't count. This is never explained. We can guess at one very bad reason for why this might be so, but I suspect it's due to another, slightly less-bad reason. I'm guessing it's because Jacobs doesn't think King fits neatly into the standard mold for what he imagines a "Christian intellectual" should be. Read more
Haidt's use of that word "righteous" is primarily, almost entirely, negative, implying a kind of self-righteousness or a sense of self-justification. This is righteousness as rectitude, as uprightness, or moral purity and correctness. It is righteousness as the acquisitive and proprietary possession of truth. This form of righteousness is not a virtue, but it's what American Christians have learned from their American Bibles. Read more
I'm a big fan of Marie Callender's frozen dutch apple pies. Please consider this an open thread to recommend any other variety of prepared pies and/or simply to escape the heated arguments and hordes of trolls likely to surface in comments to the previous thread about you-know-what. Read more
Accepting the premise of abortion-as-murder provides no justification for forming a partisan voting bloc in the hopes of one day perhaps changing the composition of the Supreme Court. That would be an utterly, miserably, monstrously inadequate response. The implications of John Piper's suggestion that this should make us "single-issue voters" is reprehensible -- akin to suggesting that we should willingly collaborate in the Holocaust 364 days a year, while on that one other day voting for the reformist elements of our Vichy Republic in the hopes of eventual change. Read more
Christianity Today interviews Nate Parker about his film "The Birth of a Nation," which is, among other things, one of the most Bible-saturated movies of all time. Plus: Donald Trump's ever-shifting history on Iraq; 23 years of tax returns; and the Train Job in India. Read more
This is a world in which mothers don't just urge their college-bound children to eat right, get enough sleep, keep up with their studies and avoid the party crowd. They also warn their children against the imminent One World Government, quiz them on the seven bowls and the seven seals, and offer words of encouragement about the birth of a red heifer. They do this "All the time." Read more
The popular right-Reformed, anti-feminist Christian-gatekeeping website The Gospel Coalition ran a painfully earnest piece by a Very Nice White Lady struggling to come to grips with the spiritual challenge of "When God Sends Your White Daughter a Black Husband." It did not go well. Also: Donald Trump under oath; the Clinton Rules; a Texas execution; and the Storehouse Theory of weather. Read more
White evangelicals vote based on the Supreme Court. The best that can be said for this voting strategy is that it intended to produce an overturn of Roe v. Wade but instead, accidentally it produced the Roberts Court's ruling in Shelby County, ripping out the guts of the Voting Rights Act. That may be overly generous, though. If we consider the real history of the religious right, it seems Shelby County was the real goal of this Supreme Court voting strategy all along. Read more
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