This is from Alice K. Turner’s fascinating The History of Hell, from Turner’s chapter on mystery plays. Biblical parables like the stories of Dives and Lazarus or the wise and foolish virgins were not commonly staged, partly because they were not “history,” and partly because of an intrinsic dramatic pitfall illustrated by the story of Frederick the Undaunted, margrave of Thuringia. In 1321, he attended a performance of a wise and foolish virgins play put on by a boys’ school... Read more
Richard John Neuhaus, the neoconservative intellectual and editor of the journal First Things, thought that adherents of “dominion theology” were nutty, but he did not think they were inconsequential. In his May 1990 article “Why Wait for the Kingdom? The Theonomist Temptation,” Neuhaus introduced the prominent players and prominent ideas in play among the “theonomists” or “reconstructionists” or “theonomic reconstructionists” — the gothic Presbyterian wing of dominion theology or dominionism. Dominion theology also has a creepy Pentecostal wing, the so-called... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 404-406 The invisible, off-stage record-breaking crime wave sweeping the United States in our story, the authors say, provided the pretext for Nicolae Carpathia’s voiding of the American Constitution: The only positive factor about Buck’s new position was that he now had the means to isolate himself somewhat against the terrible crime wave that had broken all records in North America. Carpathia had used it to sway public opinion and get the populace behind the idea that the... Read more
Caught Terry Gross’ interview Thursday with author Tom Perrotta on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” Perrotta’s new novel, Gross says: … starts with this premise: What if suddenly millions of people instantaneously vanished around the world in a scenario similar to but definitely different from the Rapture? The novel is about those people left on Earth or, as the title puts it, The Leftovers. Perrotta writes about how they cope with grief and loss and why some see this as an act... Read more
. Job seekers: Let us know where you are and what you’re looking for. Everybody: Skim through and see if you know something, or know someone, or know someone who knows someone, who might help out one of our job seekers. Read more
The good news for any filmmaker planning to do a Civil War movie is that you can tap into a pre-existing fan-base of enthusiastic Civil War buffs who are sure to generate plenty of buzz for the project. The bad news is that this same fan-base might just kill your movie if you don’t get the details right. Like all fandoms, Civil War buffs are proprietary and prickly about outsiders on their turf. Get the tiniest details wrong — the... Read more
Douglas Groothius clutches his pearls, flutters his handkerchief and collapses on his fainting couch over Ryan Lizza’s scandalous suggestion in The New Yorker that Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., has ties to advocates of “dominionist” theology. That fainting couch is quite crowded with evangelical critics of Lizza’s piece, all adamantly insisting that Bachmann is far, far removed from anything at all that has anything to do with dominionism. Groothuis provides a fine example of their exuberant protestations, usually mingled with accusations... Read more
Zechariah 7:8-12 Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgements, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. But they refused to listen, and turned a stubborn shoulder, and stopped their ears in order not to hear. They made their hearts adamant in order not to hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts... Read more
. This is a gem from the overlooked Kinks album Think Visual. It’s about Hurricane Gloria, the last big one headed for New York City. Those old enough to remember still think of that storm whenever they hear Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” which seemed to get played at least once an hour — along with U2 and Van Morrison — on every radio station in the city as we waited for that storm to pass. For those not old enough to... Read more
The conspiracy promoting the lies of “climate-change” theory, as we have seen, is not just the work of a handful of dishonest scientists or of just a few bad actors promoting their fraudulent data to promote global socialism. It is a vast network that encompasses the globe and infiltrates nearly every aspect of our lives. Nearly every scientist is in on it. Nearly every scientific discipline is in on it. Governments, the military, churches and businesses are all in on... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In