"All afternoon of July 10, Abd el-Kader plunged into the chaos of the Christian quarter with his two sons shouting: 'Christians, come with me! I am Abd el-Kader, son of Muhi al-Din, the Algerian. …Trust me. I will protect you.' For several hours his Algerians led hesitant Christians to his fortresslike home in the Nekib Allée, whose two-story interior and large courtyards would become a refuge for the desperate victims." Read more
David Swartz has posted a nice tribute to John Perkins. The post is an excerpt from Swartz's "Moral Minority," a history of the "evangelical left" that focuses on the 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. Here's my story about the 1993 Chicago Declaration II, a story that also involves John Perkins (kind of). Read more
"This mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden who lived in a poor village in his kingdom. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist-no one dared resist him. But would she love him?" Read more
Ephesians 2:19-22: "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God." Read more
The idea that God might be bigger than we think — bigger than we can know or imagine or explain — can be terrifying. What if God should arise from the beach, shrugging off our tiny chains? Then we would no longer be in control. Read more
Living history at Mount Vernon. Susan Russell adds her voice to the NALT Christians Project. The Pledge of Allegiance is exactly like Patrick Bergin in "Sleeping With the Enemy." Legal protections may become permissible (but still optional) for working-class Californians. When awful mothers go viral. Evangelical minister mistakes Mothman for a guardian angel. Read more
$38.5 billion. I keep repeating that figure because I can't quite manage to grasp it. The public, obviously, can't grasp it either. Open your window and inhale — smell any torches or smoke from the barricades? Turn on CNBC, Are bankers using fake names and requiring their faces to be distorted? No? Then the public still doesn't yet appreciate the meaning of this figure. Read more
But this is how God communicates with Buck in this chapter because this is how the authors imagine God communicates with all Christians. This is what they imagine it means to "walk in the spirit." It requires us to break the code and to solve the puzzle based on nothing more than strong feelings and random snippets of Bible verses that can be taken to have applications they never had in context. Read more
To supplement our ongoing tour through the World’s Worst Books, I’m taking some time on Fridays to remember what the book of Revelation, and other apocalyptic literature in the Bible, is really all about. This week’s reminder comes from J. Nelson Kraybill, from the introduction to his book, Apocalypse and Allegiance: Worship, Politics, and Devotion in the Book of Revelation. Read more
Does David Barton know our schoolchildren are being forced to use Arabic numerals? A reminder of how Reagan and Rumsfeld reacted to the use of chemical weapons by a dictator in the Middle East. I can't think of any reason for a pastor to want to build an 11-story cross that isn't either tribalistic or Freudian. BBC looks back at a case of Satanic panic. A fascinating profile of Mother Angelica -- she's not actually a muppet. Kansas kicks unemployed people off of food stamps because if you're not allowed to work then you're not allowed to work for food. Read more
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