Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend. Some stuff, including: Evangelicals still fighting over gender roles; a historic apology from The Economist; Doctor Who and teshuvah; and if you're against social justice and empathy, then what exactly are you for? Read more
It's a rare Thursday night off, so instead of shelving hardware, let me pack out some links, including: Saint Joseph the wimp, pre-emptively arresting black voters, renegade clerics (in more than one sense), and the staggering ignorance of Internet mythicists. Read more
Culture-war Christians are convinced that staying true to their beliefs requires them to "be a jerk about it," lest they begin to waver in their commitment. And they are convinced that staying true to their beliefs requires them "to make our secular government impose" those beliefs on everyone else. As long as they are convinced of those two things, they can never be good neighbors. Read more
It's certainly possible to make the journey toward justice in the other direction, but it seems rare. There seems to be a kind of ratchet effect. That's how the Apostle Paul described it, too. "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks," Paul says Jesus told him on the road to Damascus. Conversion isn't geared for injustice. Read more
"Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?" Read more
It's Tuesday. Here are some links. You can comment on them, if you like. Or, if you prefer, just comment about, you know, whatever. That's cool. Read more
Tim LaHaye's End Times scheme is entirely dependent on his replacement theology. In LaHaye's scheme, Jews are damned and deserve only damnation unless they say the magic prayer and convert to real, true Christianity. The character of Tsion Ben-Judah is the personification of this theology, but it's not just Tsion and it's not just the awkward plotting and incoherent world-building of Jenkins' border-crossing set piece. It's everywhere in these books. Read more
Peter Goodwin Heltzel and Mary McClintock Fulkerson reflect on Willie James Jennings' "The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race." Sarah Stillman on how the expanding for-profit justice system is becoming a poor tax. Bryce Covert on how opposition to day care helped to create the religious right. Read more
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." Read more
A little something from the artists presently known as the Presidential Orchestra of Belarus, plus Niebuhrian shopping, Bible churches, magic turbans, religious parrots, endless cheese sticks, cat-scratch fever, full moon fever and Jolly Rancher's from the Klan. Read more
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