Ted Cruz's dad wants Christians to become conquering kings, like in Deuteronomy. Huh? Everybody knows the Satanic baby-killers are poisoning Halloween candy again. New Jersey is an excellent place to get married. The sister who went to prison. Another example of competing and incompatible "inerrancies." Pro-cancer legislators vow to fight on. Jerry Falwell's legacy. Read more
"When we were shooting this film, we knew we had something special," Eastwood said. "A classic Western in the grand tradition. But we didn't realize then that something else was happening, something magical. We had no way of knowing that our film would enter the lexicon as a last resort for deadline-desperate columnists, clamoring for an overused pop-culture reference on which to hang their otherwise disjointed observations." Read more
"Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." Read more
It's possible to treat someone justly without also treating them kindly, but if one is to be kind, one must also be just. There's no such thing, after all, as a kindly injustice. Nor is it possible to accept or allow injustice while still being, in any meaningful way, kind. (Stonewall Jackson, the eighth-grader's history book says, was "kind" to his slaves. No. No he wasn't. If he had been kind to them, then they would not have remained his slaves.) Read more
I've been cautiously monitoring the court battle over marriage equality in New Jersey, the place of my birth. As John Gorka says, "I'm from New Jersey, I don't expect too much," and so I've been skeptical of the positive signs and reluctant to celebrate until it seemed clear that such celebration wasn't just some cruel illusion. That's the Jersey way of looking at things. But I think maybe we can celebrate now. Read more
This is the literary mash-up I'd like to see: "Left Behind" and "The Plague." Give me Tim LaHaye's "Bible prophecy" scheme, but instead of Rayford Steele, Buck Williams and the rest, give me a "Tribulation Force" of Dr. Rieux, Jean Tarrou, Rambert, Grand, Cottard, Fr. Paneloux and all the others. Read more
Were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine "evangelicals who intended America to be a Christian nation"? Giberson and Stephens would say no, in fact, they were not evangelicals and they did not intend America to be a Christian nation. Joe Carter [of First Things] says "think for yourself" -- what do you want to be true? Go with that and don't let any sophomoric, bias-confirming facts sway you one way or the other. Read more
This redrawing of the map of the Middle East creates a bit of a problem for readers in these chapters. Buck is going to have to smuggle Tsion across the border, but we have no idea where the border actually is. "He must leave the country," Michael says of Tsion Ben-Judah. In our world, this would be mission accomplished, since Tsion is already three miles past the border. But in the world of these novels, I'm not sure what that means. Read more
David Frum sums up the shutdown -- way back in 2010. Freemasons? That's old school. S.C. mayor confuses anti-gay rant with "the Bible and stuff like that." Young-Earth creationists won't like archaeologists' dispute in Brazil. Estimated cost of shutdown: $24 billion, for nothing. Read more
The repressed and tortured psyches of Ted Haggard and David Vitter also don't explain why so many have been willing to follow these leaders in their‚ "warring against" their inner demons. They can't all be self-loathing closet cases. Read more
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