Terrific catch of the week. The Pierce County Council gives more support to missionaries than many local churches. Merry Kitschmas. Preparing for the holidays, when families gather to argue politics with people they love. No one alive remembers a hotter November than the one we just had. Stuart Varney says wages should be allocated by intrinsic worthiness, not based on actual work performed (and he thinks you're intrinsically unworthy). Read more
My own church youth group never laid siege to a gay bar, but I still wince when I recall some of our forays into “radical” evangelism. We did “boardwalk evangelism” down the shore. I personally handed a gospel tract to Madame Marie herself. Unlike the many mission trips our youth group also did, that wasn’t something I enjoyed at the time or felt proud about afterward. Read more
Time and chance -- good or bad "luck" -- happeneth to us all. But we don't have to live in a world governed only by time and chance. We can choose to make our safety, health and wellbeing something that's not just subject to random misfortune. Civilization doesn't have to be a casino. Read more
In the December case, a cast member from the show sat down with a reporter and compared being gay to bestiality. And he also said black people were happier before the Civil Rights Movement, but have since become unhappy welfare-moochers with a sense of entitlement. In the November case, cast members from the show reached a business deal with a Napa Valley winery. White evangelicals seem confused about which of those is more offensive. Read more
"Christian" school repeats horrible pattern. Pat Robertson says he's still leg-pressing super-human weights. Awaiting the Final Four on Alex Pareene's Hack List. Be thankful we have Obamacare and not the Heritage Foundation plan it borrows from. Daughters of Eve. "I know of no churches that actually do this work." Read more
We are imperfect and limited, and our best approximation of and understanding of justice will never be perfect or complete. But those who want to argue that our fallen nature makes us incapable of the knowledge of good and evil really need to re-read that story in Genesis. Read more
Many of the people using the terms "slacktivism" and "slacktivist" probably shouldn't be. I'm not just being proprietary here -- this unironic pejorative use of those words doesn't work. It's self-defeating, because it repositions the speaker as a scold. And as a particular kind of scold -- the ineffective, grumpy old person whining about how kids these days are no damn good. Read more
A third of pregnant virgins took a chastity pledge and other benefits of "abstinence-only" sex education. Plus: Dinah, rape insurance in Michigan, rooms without women, men owning women's bodies, and fixing it all with Photoshop and shampoo. Read more
Mandatory birth control in China is of no moral concern for Hobby Lobby, but access to voluntary birth control for American women is something it will fight all the way to the Supreme Court. The company has no conscientious objection to forced abortion in China if such objection would interfere with its ability to get kitschy rooster ornaments for pennies for the dollar. But preventive health insurance for female employees violates it's deepest purported religious convictions. Read more
Christianist climate denialists don't understand science OR the Bible. Iowa search for voter fraud comes up empty. Ken Ham underestimates how successful he's been at creating new atheists. We need the pitching. Abstinence Skittles -- don't taste the rainbow until you're married. Ari Kohen on the "persecution" of American Christianists. Read more
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