Every once in a while, some disturbed person absorbs the language and logic of white evangelicalism's Satanic baby-killer fantasies and, not realizing it's all a disingenuous game, acts on it. "Pro-life" evangelicals are then forced to condemn that person's actions in an awkward dance that forces them to admit, at least implicitly, that they do not take their own words and arguments seriously. Read more
Restocking the shelves at the Big Box doesn't fully occupy one's mind, giving me plenty of time to meditate on the meaning of the songs being piped in on the store's music service. Maybe too much time. Herein I ponder if there is any way to redeem the lyrics to the BeeGees' "More Than a Woman" and attempt to identify the shifting antecedents in the Little River Band's "Lonesome Loser." Read more
We could just file this under Bad Writing, but it's more than that. The self-centered, sociopathic lack of empathy displayed by Rayford and Buck is held up as model behavior. By implicit example, and sometimes more explicitly, this book is trying to teach its readers that Other People do not matter. Read more
Thank you for reading this. Thank you for commenting here -- for sharing jokes and encouragement, kitten pics, and the insights and criticisms that help me learn and keep me honest. Thank you for sharing, liking, retweeting and linking. Thank you for reading ebooks and posting reviews. Thank you for donating to the tip jar. Thank you for sticking up for one another, for bearing one another's burdens, rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn. Read more
The National Association of Evangelicals invites you to bow down and worship the "highest authority." No, not God, silly. The Bible -- the "highest authority" before which even White Jesus must kneel in submission. Read more
Monday miscellany, including: revisiting the Problem of Susan; Donald Trump's racist lying tweet; looking forward to April; and a bad month for sleazy debt collectors and "supplement" sellers. Read more
"In order to maintain a voice within the evangelical world and make progress on a single issue," Deborah Jian Lee writes, "one must toe the conservative line on every other issue." That's from her new book, "Rescuing Jesus," which has been reviewed by Dr. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott -- someone whose history makes her an expert on exactly what Lee is describing there. Read more
This isn't just the "Constantinian" thinking that Empire-criticism theologians constantly rail against. It's worse than that. Ferguson's premise isn't just that imperial Christendom is a legitimate expression of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but that this gospel is valuable only to the extent that it enables imperial Christendom. Read more
The deer have decided it was time to take down our Halloween/autumn decorations. Plus: Jessica Jones, Julia Stiles, Jim Bakker, Jar-Jar Binks, and how direct-mail ecclesiology redefines "prayer." Read more
"Then they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand of the Ephraimites fell at that time." Read more
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