They were mortified, indignant, offended and stricken with the vapors. You know how that goes — they're evangelicals and it was a day ending in "-y." These are people who regard umbrage as one of the fruits of the spirit and here was an excuse for it. Read more
It seems I won't get today's installment up today. I want to step back from the pages of Nicolae this week to look at Steve Fouse's helpful, if somewhat confused, profile "Tim LaHaye, the Bible Belt, and the Sun Belt: More Complex Than Kansas." Unpacking Fouse's valuable research and his misplaced conclusions is taking a bit longer than I'd planned, so we'll get to that tomorrow. Read more
Friday morning links, including: Advice from Thomas Merton and Wendell Berry; projecting our apathy onto God; the two reasons people leave the church; Facebook's user-friendly data mining; dinosaur myths; a long list of stale phrases; and a brief note on the ingratitude of semi-rehabilitated traitors. Read more
It's the Friday music game -- I'll show you mine and you show me yours. This week, more songs with names in the title. We're still on the letter J, including -- Jean, Jeannie, Jen, Jenifa, Jenni, Jenny, Jezebel, Jimmy, Jody, Joe and Joey. Read more
It’s tempting to chalk up that poll response to innumeracy and ignorance, but that would be blaming the victim. Most Americans believe that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting represents a meaningful, significant chunk of the federal budget because they have been told that it does by their representatives in Congress. Which is to say they have been misinformed. Deliberately. Lied to. Read more
God grant me the complacency to accept the things that I should change ... Read more
In a sense, "bystander intervention" is an oxymoron. Once you intervene, you are no longer a bystander. The truth of the matter is that there is no such thing as a "bystander" -- that's just a euphemism for a neighbor pretending they're not a neighbor. As the scripture says, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Read more
It should be impossible to read the story of Noah's ark without very clearly understanding that this story is saying that: 1) humans are uniquely capable of destroying all of creation; and 2) humans are uniquely responsible to care for all of creation. But you can avoid that lesson if you decide to treat it as some other kind of story. Read more
This is the inevitable conclusion of the brittle faith she has been taught. It is impossible, she has been told, to believe in God without also accepting this unworkably literal reading of every phrase in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Thus, if the moon simply reflects the light of the sun and does not itself project light, she believes, then there is no God. And that means, she has been taught, that life is random, meaningless, nasty, brutish and short. Read more
Sandra M. Schneiders on why God is not a patriarch; Hillary Clinton on why empowering women is more than just a "nice thing to do;" Benjamin Franklin on the duty to pay taxes; David Badash on the libertarian mindset; and Russell Brand on the death of a little old lady. Read more
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