Pat McCrory really, really wants to look in your young daughter's pants. And the North Carolina governor's fascination with inspecting the private parts of private citizens is going to wind up costing residents of his state millions of dollars defending the lawsuits that will inevitably 1) challenge, and 2) overturn the law he just signed, which was hastily drafted and passed by Republicans in the state legislature in a special session yesterday. Read more
John Ehrlichman explains just what the Nixon administration intended when it launched the "War on Drugs." It wasn't about drugs. It was about hippies and black people. Plus: John Paul 2 was never "neoliberal;" wrong turns on the "Romans Road;" African Proverbs and old Cherokee stories; and Phyllis Schlafly is still not dead. Read more
Scot McKnight writes that we must read Paul "in a Jewish context in which Judaism is not understood as works righteousness over against which Christianity teaches election by grace." That's the "new perspective on Paul," and it's really a much bigger deal than most of our dry, academic discussion of it sometimes makes it sound. We're having to retrace our steps to correct for a wrong turn our theology took almost 500 years ago. Read more
Why I've opted not to talk The Only Thing Everyone Is Supposed To Be Talking About this time around. Read more
Here again is your periodic reminder that the Pledge of Allegiance is the creepiest creepy thing from Creepytown. Also: A terrific Nick Cave/Dr. Seuss mash-up; fossils from Noah's flood found in Texas; and the apotheosis of white American Christianity. Read more
One way or another, characterization happens. It's unavoidable, even for the worst writers and the worst story-tellers. Jerry Jenkins may have no interest in developing his characters and no patience for it, but he's constantly revealing character despite that -- doing so accidentally, unconsciously, and unintentionally. And what he shows us contradicts what he tells us. Read more
"Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love." Read more
What popular stories deserve a place in the Sermon Illustration Hall of Fame? What hackneyed stories need to be forever-retired from all future use as sermon illustrations? And what urban legends, myths and outright lies belong on a list of the Most Outrageous Sermon Legends of All Time? What have you heard? Read more
"When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.'" Read more
"Which wolf will win?" "The one I feed the most." I heard this story dozens and dozens of times from pulpits and in small groups and around campfires. Sometimes it was attributed to an old Indian, sometimes to an old Eskimo, sometimes it was an old African speaking to missionaries on the Dark Continent [sic]. Nope. Read more
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