In the world of "Left Behind," simply attending church isn't enough. It seems you have to attend the right kind of church -- the kind of church where they teach you the specific formulas and the precise propositional content of belief that will enable you to say the magic words, compelling God to extend you his grace. It's a matter of learning the spells that can bind the djinni-God to do your will. Read more
The modern assertion of "biblical inerrancy" is best explained in a 1978 document called the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy." That statement includes 19 denials that tell you everything you need to know about inerrancy and inerrantists. Just read through those denials and, in each case, replace "We Deny that ..." with "We Are Very Much Afraid that ..." Read more
Hall of Fame catcher Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra died Tuesday at the age of 90 and today millions of us are saddened. And smiling. We have to smile because thinking about Yogi, or talking about him, tends to make people smile. Quoting him always does. Read more
A great magician reveals a trick; the end of the season and the End of the World; standing athwart algebra, yelling Stop; coherent theodicies; "How to Get a Drink at a Crowded Bar;" and the twilight of the answering-machine song. Read more
Such hoaxes take on a seeming-reality for many of those who first believed them. After their initial disappointment when this story was proven a hoax, the fall-back position for many who wanted it to be true was to say that, OK, while this particular story was false, it still was believable because it fits with a larger pattern of such incidents, and that larger pattern is true. That this supposed larger pattern consists entirely of similar hoaxes doesn't diminish their faith in the truthiness of this larger pattern. Read more
"A little courage goes a long, long way / Get's you a little bit further down the road each day / And before you know it, you'll hear someone say / That'll do, pig, that'll do." And in other news: Elizabeth Warren takes on the lords of credit-scoring, bad Lifetime movies, messy ecclesiology, and Jimmy Carter's presidential film festival. Read more
GOP analyst Steve Schmidt analyzes the GOP. Amy Davidson on the right's backwards Dred Scott analogies. Reggie L. Williams on the whiteness of American theology. Benjamin Park on Kim Davis' Christian nationalism. And the New England Journal of Medicine on Planned Parenthood. Read more
"You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." Read more
If "Gotham" endures as a popular TV show, it could run for years and we could end up watching Bruce and Selina (and Mazouz and Bicondova) growing up in real time. But this wouldn't be like "Boyhood" or like the Harry Potter movies (which arguably did the "Boyhood" thing before Richard Linklater started his project). This would be a coming-of-age story that didn't end up in a happier place. Read more
We were there during the First Intifada and things were a bit tense in and around Jerusalem. But that unrest was, in 1990, far removed from the Temple Mount. That site was off-limits, held in too great reverence by everyone in the region -- Jews, Muslims, Christians, secular scholars -- for it to become part of the field of play for the roiling political struggle unfolding throughout the rest of the region. Read more
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