We don't have readily available data on the historic or current rates of arson attacks targeting black churches. We thus don't know if the current wave of reports of such attacks represents an increase in the number of incidents or an increase in the amount of attention paid to them in the media. Whether or not the number or rate of such attacks is currently on the rise, the more important fact is that such attacks on black churches in America have never stopped. Read more
Ann Coulter's anti-immigrant campaign is based on an argument that is indistinguishable from the racist manifesto of alleged killer Dylann Roof. "You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go." And supposedly respectable "mainstream" white evangelicals like Eric Metaxas are enthusiastically saying "Amen!" Read more
Smith's payoff secured a change in his behavior. Jones' payoff ensured that his behavior will not change. We might argue that Jones has more integrity because he never strays from his original ideology, but this is faint praise -- like arguing that Pete Rose had more integrity than the Chicago Black Sox because he was betting on his team to win instead of deliberately throwing the game. Read more
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
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