Never gonna fall for modern love: A personal testimony in The New York Times

Last updated on: June 4, 2015 at 5:25 pm By Fred Clark

But the main thing in that youth group -- the paramount, central thing -- was sex. Sex, and the not having of it, was the essential defining characteristic of that youth group, and of the subculture and tribe that produced it. In practice, in the undeniable day-to-day experience of that youth group and that tribe, sex and the not having of it were the most important thing that was said and taught and experienced of God. Sex and the not having of it were conveyed as the essential meaning of the faith. Read more

Nothing is secret that will not become known

Last updated on: June 3, 2015 at 4:56 pm By Fred Clark

The astonishing thing to me about the Dennis Hastert story -- the part I can't manage to wrap my mind around -- is that knowing this about himself, knowing his own secret history, he still chose to run for office and to place himself in the public eye. Read more

Denny Hastert, Speaker of the House, 1999-2007

Last updated on: June 3, 2015 at 10:19 am By Fred Clark

A sex scandal is not the same thing as "public corruption or a corruption scandal." But when a sex scandal leads to extortion, that distinction goes away. A politician who is willing to pay someone millions of dollars to keep quiet may also be a politician who is willing to vote or deregulate or administer their duties in a way that favors those leveraging their secrets against them. And that is the very definition of public corruption. Read more

Two gnus, Voodoo woo woo, the Hoodoo Gurus, and other news

Last updated on: June 3, 2015 at 8:04 am By Fred Clark

Gay lions on an anachronistic ark, curses on people who don't believe in superstition, an honest assessment of George Weigel and/or Robert George, the great Michigan waffle war, and nothing in veterinary medicine makes sense. Read more

The Council of Women for Home Missions this ain’t

Last updated on: June 2, 2015 at 3:44 pm By Fred Clark

There's a lot to criticize in the early-20th-century "Americanization" efforts of the various Protestant home mission societies, but there's also a lot to admire. A hundred years later, a new council of prominent spokespeople for America's Christian Values wants to revive all of the worst aspects of those efforts, while rejecting all that was good about them. Read more

Walmart.manatee

Last updated on: June 2, 2015 at 10:09 am By Fred Clark

I've found something that's sort of a piece of good news from the evangelical subculture. Plus: The holes in Swiss cheese; the loneliness of the small-town librarian; and Charlie the pencil-pushing Mexican demon is now also, apparently, gay. Read more

God is not like Ramsey Snow

Last updated on: June 1, 2015 at 10:40 am By Fred Clark

For those unfamiliar with the TV show "Game of Thrones," this is a picture of Ramsey Snow, and he's a monster. He's smiling in that picture, and that can't be good, because the only thing that makes Ramsey Snow smile is hurting people. His proudest achievement is the horrible torture he has wreaked on the wicked traitor Theon Greyjoy -- a kind of Hell. Read more

It’s Heresy Sunday — don’t fall for the trap

Last updated on: May 30, 2015 at 7:36 pm By Fred Clark

The doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery. Or, more specifically, it's an attempt at articulating mystery. You're expected to affirm it, but anything you try to say beyond that can and will be used against you to convict you of heresy. It's a trap, an efficient machine for the manufacture of "heresies" -- with "heresy" there being defined as a failure to define the infinite in the way that orthodoxy supposes it has somehow managed to do. Read more

Sunday WTF?

Last updated on: May 30, 2015 at 6:03 pm By Fred Clark

"I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows." Read more

Walmart.indricotherium

Last updated on: May 30, 2015 at 6:55 pm By Fred Clark

Some 50 million years ago, the ancestors of the rhinoceros ruled the world. But they've tapired off since then. Also: Greenland looks good on the map; the incomprehensible claim of Christianity; and how the market for donations from credulous and fearful white Christians is like the market for fizzy sugar water. Read more