It's a funny scene for what it is -- a child's childish fantasy of the swaggering hero he wishes/imagines he will be transformed into thanks to the purchase of a product (that product being, of course, an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock). But it's not so funny when alleged adults -- people of the legal age to be considered "grown-ups" -- repeat this exact fantasy as the basis for public policy or the lack thereof. Read more
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. But for every Rudolph and Frosty, there are a dozen such characters who never caught on. For instance, do you recall, the most cynical cash-in attempt of all ... "Jingle-O the Brownie." Read more
"Women Distrust Church on Abortion" reads the headline from the Southern Baptist LifeWay Research, announcing the results of a recent survey. This is precisely backwards. The truth is that LifeWay's church distrusts women. They distrust women when it comes to abortion, and when it comes to almost everything else. Read more
NPR: "At least 14 people were killed and more than a dozen others wounded when up to three suspects armed with long guns entered a facility in San Bernardino, Calif., and opened fire, authorities said Wednesday." Read more
Before we get to "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," most of us start with a different kind of waiting and awaiting during Advent. As a kid, I didn't associate early December with mourning in lonely exile, but with the greedy anticipation of presents. Here's an Advent hymn, of sorts, for the anxious, greedy children some of us used to be. Read more
With the rejection of Syrian refugees becoming an ugly political issue for Republican presidential candidates, and with those same candidates campaigning in and around Elkader, Iowa, it seems like a good time to revisit the story of the man that city is named after. This story has something to teach all of us about protecting and sheltering refugees. It's something those candidates desperately need to learn. Read more
Advent hymns aren't about angels on high singing gloria in excelsis. They're more about whatever those shepherds were singing before the angels interrupted. Advent songs are about waiting for that interruption -- longing for it even if we're not really sure what it is we're waiting and longing for. Read more
But this church-y interest has relatively little influence within or over white evangelicalism as a whole. Its concerns are usually drowned out by the far-louder voices from the much larger platforms of the direct-mail fundraising industry and the donor-devoted institutions. And both of those factions are inextricably linked to Republican politics and thus, in 2015, to being predominantly and almost exclusively white. Read more
Today is the birthday of Samuel Clemens and the Feast Day of St. Huckleberry. We celebrate that occasion around here by re-reading this. If you want to know what I believe about conversion, salvation, and what it means to be "born again," and what ought to happen after that, this will show you. It's all right here, whole hog. Read more
"When a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged to be married, and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. But if her father refuses to give her to him, he shall pay an amount equal to the bride-price for virgins." Read more
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