This spectacular, 30-foot-long, 10-foot-high specimen clearly doesn't belong in the Creation Museum. It clashes. The allosaur is actually awe-inspiring and wondrous. Set there amidst the rest of the Creation Museum, it can only highlight the shoddy papier-mâché propaganda of the rest of the place. It's undeniable reality can't help but serve as a foil to emphasize the unreality of everything else in the museum. Read more
A few things, including: Dillsboro, N.C., is a Southern Baptist version of Calvin's Geneva. Thylacine! #YesAllBiblicalWomen. The romance of intensive biblical Greek. A Louisiana congressman explains that he is, above all else, a member of the oil industry. The ghost of Woody Guthrie vs. "Christian" radio host Rick Wiles. Read more
"We are a better people than these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history." Read more
To hear the politicians, marketeers and fundraisers of the religious right talk, you’d think that Matthew Vines’ book God and the Gay Christian is full of of startling, unprecedented new ideas. It’s not. As Randy Potts reminds us at Box Turtle Bulletin: There have been books on gay apologetics for as long as there have been openly gay Christians, ever since 1972 when Troy Perry, who founded the first gay-affirming Christian church in Los Angeles in 1968, wrote The Lord... Read more
• Here’s a reminder of why religious instruction has no place in public education. If you support prayer in school, this is the kind of thing you’re supporting. • Matt Young on “The Pledge of Allegiance: Two Reasons Why Christians Should Not Say It.” Good Anabaptist reasoning there, and a killer proof-text for those who ascribe to proof-texts. (“Do not swear at all” pretty much categorically rules out any “pledge of allegiance” for Christians. Alas, though, this proof-text is from the... Read more
Memorial Day is one time during the year when American civil religion imitates one of my least favorite aspects of the white evangelical Christianity that I was raised in. It takes the kernel of an idea of something right and honorable and spins it into a defensive, sanctimonious, performative ritual -- one which makes sincerity and truth-telling almost impossible. Read more
The Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma on colonial homophobia; Natalie Burris on white evangelical gatekeepers; Heath Bradley on celibacy and "the church that changes;" plus Kurt Vonnegut, TBogg and Joyce Arthur. Read more
"And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well." Read more
Some videos for your Saturday morning: A surprisingly apropos old tune from Daniel Amos, trailers for a couple of documentaries on the good work being done by members of the National Religious Broadcasters, "Dark Dungeons" will be a feature film (if, sadly, not a musical), and three strangers meet, improvise a song, and then go on about their separate business. Read more
Owen Strachan is wrong to believe that God is intrinsically, actually and exclusively male. The Bible doesn't teach that and orthodox Christian theology doesn't teach that. But this doesn't mean that Owen Strachan is a heretic, just a sexist jerk. And that's much, much worse than heresy. Read more
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