Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon — a self-proclaimed Messiah, conservative political donor, and owner of a media and real-estate empire — has died at the age of 92. Daniel Burke of Religion News Service sketches Moon’s odd rise, his views and his legacy. Steve Hassan describes how life once looked to him from inside Moon’s Unification Church. Emma Brown has a long obituary in The Washington Post: His stated ambition was to rule the world and replace Christianity with... Read more
“He tells me that he ‘absolutely loved’ Johnny Cash, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ being a new favorite.” “The people most likely to misreport high levels of giving were those who said faith was very important to them and those who attend services more than weekly.” “In 2012, some have difficulty remembering when all Americans knew that our future rides on the backs of organized labor.” “Why not cut out the middle man and just borrow the money from the Fed ourselves?”... Read more
Evangelism is hospitality. And Addie Zierman explains why inflatable Sumo Suits and marketing hype are not the best form of hospitality. Zierman’s post is titled “Outreach Events and the Old Bait-and-Switch.” That tactic — “bait-and-switch” — is from the world of sales. Evangelism should never be about sales or selling or marketing. In the context of sales, even free pizza becomes inhospitable. Free pizza offered as bait, or as a sales premium, isn’t really free. It’s given in the hope,... Read more
BioLogos has listed what it calls “Core Tenets or Assumptions of Theistic Evolution.” I mostly agree with them, but I am not a theistic evolutionist and I do not “believe in” evolution. Well, actually, let me qualify that a bit: I do not accept the label of “theistic evolutionist.” I cannot really say, with certainty, that I am not one because I cannot be certain what that phrase means. I understand each of those words, separately, but squish them together... Read more
Ecclesiastes 1:2-11 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits... Read more
“I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” “Jesus is anything but the defender of traditional values.” “The problem is that it’s a pledge of allegiance. If it were a pledge of respect, love, or gratitude there wouldn’t be a problem.” “Here is a very important thing to keep in mind when attempting to make sense of the bursts of ugliness that occur throughout [political] conventions: A lot of the people you are watching are drunk. Really,... Read more
Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist, pp. 48-51 Buck Williams knows what is happening. He knows what’s coming. Thanks to more than a year of study with Bruce Barnes, Buck is thoroughly familiar with the details of the End Times check list. He has a schedule for the Great Tribulation and it sets a clear itinerary for the few remaining months of life on earth. Some of the events prophesied are cryptic, but those come later. The first several items on... Read more
After doing “street” songs last week, this seemed like the logical next step. Oddly, I had exactly 31 songs with “street” in the title, and the same number with “road.” Some kind of volatile helplessness reigns … “At the End of the Road,” Julie Miller “Bright Side of the Road,” Van Morrison “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” Lucinda Williams “Chicken Crosses the Road,” Terry Taylor “Country Road,” James Taylor “Crossroad Blues,” Robert Johnson “Farther up the Road,” Vigilantes of... Read more
Via Whedonesque, I learn that Jenny Calendar is now an evangelical Christian minister. Robia LaMorte’s theology seems to be quite different from mine, but I can’t help but love a website with tabs for “Buffy,” “Prince” and “God.” So while I don’t think it’s helpful (or biblical) to refer to the Bible as “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth,” I’ll try to avoid picking a fight with someone whose résumé reads: Prince, Joss, Jesus. Sadly, when you see the word “pastor”... Read more
I’ve written a lot here about trailer parks. That’s the common, somewhat derogatory, term for manufactured housing communities in which residents own their houses, but not the land beneath them. The problem with mobile homes is that they’re not really mobile. They’re anchored to a particular site, and detaching them to transport them elsewhere is extremely expensive and, in many cases, impossible. That means the regular rules of the market do not apply — there can be no competition to... Read more
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