Fundamentalist Christianity is a package deal — an inseparable, all-or-nothing bundle of teachings and ideology that says every piece depends on every other piece. If any one piece of it isn’t true, fundamentalism insists, then it all falls apart and none of it is true. Read more
"We support biblical families," Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy says of his fast-food corporation. So let's take a look at some of those biblical families. Today's entry: Don't look back. Read more
This is my Ouija board story. Or, more specifically, this is the story about the thing I do when people ask me about Ouija boards and about the one time when this didn't quite work as usual. Read more
Jonah is the Bad Guy. He's always wrong. He is the butt of every joke because he deserves to be. Jonah is an object of ridicule and withering scorn. His story comes to a miserable end because he did everything he could do to earn such an ending. Read more
Hosea 8:7: "For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, foreigners would devour it." Read more
Leftovers from the week, including: Mark Evanier on Larry Hagman; DJ Focus is awesome; David Barton's revisionist current events; Oxford comma theology; more on evangelicals and Fox News; and How to tell if a toy is for boys or for girls. Read more
In order to get through this logjam of absurdities here in Chapter 4, I’ll need to just buck up, as it were, swallow hard, and make “just let it go” my mantra for turning pages. Otherwise I’ll never be able to plow through this so that we can discover the glorious absurdities awaiting in Chapter 5. Read more
Religious history scholar Sarah Hammond died last Thanksgiving, too soon. Tributes marking the anniversary of her death this week highlighted her perceptive, generous and clear-eyed assessment of the Left Behind series, which Hammond saw as an important window into the culture and theology of American evangelicalism. Read more
Welcome to the future of "small government." America's infrastructure was once the best in the world. But we didn't want to pay to maintain it. Read more
It's the Friday music game -- I'll show you mine if you show me yours. This week it's songs about trains (which, in American music, seems to mean songs about death, hope and redemption). Read more
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