Why revisit this post now? Because the original post was a lamentation over my old friend Ron Sider's 2009 endorsement of the pompous and ridiculous "Manhattan Declaration," and Sider is now doubling down -- adding his endorsement to the equally fatuous 2015 statement, "Here We Stand: An Evangelical Declaration on Marriage." And also because today we learn that J.R. Daniel Kirk is getting the heave-ho from Fuller Theological Seminary. Read more
This story of Thomas, from the 20th chapter of John's Gospel, is aptly chosen for its relevance to the subject of body cameras, but Pinckney doesn't simply appeal to the story as a simple parable affirming the value of visual evidence. His argument is framed by his affirmation of resurrection -- and thus of vindication. The resurrection and vindication of Jesus Christ becomes the vindication, too, of Walter Scott. Read more
"I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance." Read more
“We come against … hatred, oppression, and violence. I come against you in the name of God,” Bree Newsome said, high in the air above the statehouse grounds in Columbia, South Carolina on Saturday. Newsome was arrested — charged with defacing monuments on state capitol grounds — but only after she had climbed all the way to the top of the 30-foot flagpole and removed the state’s Confederate battle flag, which was affixed there by legislative decree in celebration of... Read more
"No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. ... You shall never promote their welfare or their prosperity as long as you live." Read more
"They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right." Yes. Yes it does. Read more
It's one of the most awful and awesome panoramas of human suffering ever imagined in a work of fiction. But the audacity of the wholesale suffering that LaHaye & Jenkins imagine is dwarfed by the greater audacity of their wholly disregarding the very scenario they have presented. The authors and their protagonists seem wholly unperturbed by all of this death and destruction, save in how it presents a logistical inconvenience and cramps the travel plans of our heroes. Read more
So far, season 2 of "True Detective" looks like a grimmer, slower version of "Terriers." Here's a plea for Netflix to bring back that surf-noir classic for a second season. Plus: Found poetry in a fundamentalist survey on modesty; and why paleontologists should study Franklin Graham. Read more
Protestant Christians today still revere much of Martin Luther's theology, even as we (mostly) reject his truly vicious anti-Semitism. Mohler is arguing, or perhaps simply hoping, that we can do the same with Boyce and Broadus and Manly -- preserving and venerating most of their theology while rejecting their white supremacy as an unfortunate, unnecessary, tangent. But abstracting some "pure" form of Luther-minus-the-anti-Semitism or Southern-Baptist-minus-the-white-supremacy isn't quite so easy. Read more
The founders of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary did not affirm biblical orthodoxy, Baptist beliefs, and missionary zeal. They affirmed white biblical orthodoxy, white Baptist beliefs, and white missionary zeal. Like Mohler, these 19th-century white Baptists did not perceive any distinction between those things. They saw no difference between "biblical orthodoxy" and white biblical orthodoxy, and thus were unable to perceive or conceive of any way the latter might not live up to the former. Read more
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