The recent wave of discussion about whether or not to go back in time to kill baby Hitler really doesn't have anything to do with the contingencies and mechanics of time travel. It has to do with the contingencies and mechanics of killing -- of violence. Could we fix everything if we just made sure to kill the right people? Read more
"If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are caught in the act, the man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife. Because he violated her he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives." Read more
According to a ridiculously incoherent Internet rumor, an alignment of the planets will cast the entire earth into darkness for 15 days, starting tomorrow. That's not going to happen, but it reminds us of a time when something like it really did happen -- New England's Dark Day, on May 19, 1780. The sun failed, the sky grew dark at noon, and no one had any idea why. Read more
After calamity, we seem to wish that someone, somewhere, would say something else, something more. We want to hear someone explain this, explain how to correct it somehow, how to prevent it from ever happening again (or, less nobly, how to prevent it from ever happening to us). And there can be a pressure, or a temptation, to try to be the person who says all of that. Our desperate need to hear something that will make sense of it all can lead us to try to say something that might appear to make sense of it all. Read more
Here are my predictions for the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary you'll be hearing preached on in sermons this Sunday, ranked from least- to most-likely. Read more
To tea-party Republicans in Maine, Episcopalians are dangerous "anti-Christian bigots." Plus: An inspiring conversion narrative from Libby Anne; Scarlett Johansson reads the Bible; Mansonite white terrorists; and the red-cup guy battles imaginary Satanists while real Satanists take "GetReligion" to school. Read more
Al Mohler is not saying anything Southern Baptists haven't said for 170 years. He is only taking their argument and altering a handful of words in five paragraphs to apply it to a new subject. By restoring his op-ed to something more like the original ca.-1845 template Mohler is copying from and re-applying we can see not just how and why Mohler's argument is wrong. We can see how and why Mohler himself has to know that it has been wrong all along. Read more
Here the travel narrative becomes difficult to follow. Jerry Jenkins is as obsessed as ever with the logistics of planes, trains and automobiles, but the rest of Buck Williams' journey seems to take place in an alternate geography in which the subway goes all the way across New Jersey and the island of Manhattan is 30 miles long. Read more
What I’ve pieced together from all these stories sounds unbelievable, and I certainly cannot prove any of it. But there are more things in heaven and earth than I can prove. All I can tell you is what I believe. And what I believe is this: Somewhere in America, just before midnight on every Friday the 13th, the ghost of Frederick Douglass appears at the bedside of some racist wretch. Read more
This is America. We don't need kings. "When in the Course of human events ..." and all that. We shouldn't be allowing some would be double-reed monarch to assume a triple-throne atop our online religious humor best-selling lists. That's the same kind of royal sense of entitlement that led to the Stamp Act and the execution of Anne Boleyn. Read more
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