Billy Sunday warned us that this would happen

Last updated on: October 30, 2011 at 7:55 pm By Fred Clark

I’m reading W. Scott Poole’s Satan in America: The Devil We Know and have just finished his discussion of Billy Sunday, the celebrity evangelist of the early 20th century. Poole sends us to George M. Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture, in which he shares a warning attributed to Sunday in 1925: Our country is filled with a Socialistic, I.W.W., Communistic, radical, lawless, anti-American, anti-church, anti-God, anti-marriage gang, and they are laying the eggs of rebellions and unrest in labor and... Read more

Sunday favorites

Last updated on: October 24, 2011 at 12:56 pm By Fred Clark

Micah 3 And I said: Listen, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Should you not know justice?— you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin off my people, and the flesh off their bones; who eat the flesh of my people, flay their skin off them, break their bones in pieces, and chop them up like meat in a kettle, like flesh in a cauldron. Then they will cry to... Read more

Smart people saying smart things

Last updated on: December 17, 2011 at 6:58 pm By Fred Clark

John Quiggin: “Keeping the state out of your bedroom” If you really want personal freedom, you can achieve it only by constraining property rights. Dahlia Lithwick: “Occupy the No-Spin Zone” I spent time this weekend at Occupy Wall Street and my husband spent much of last week adding his voice to the protesters there. I saw an incredible array of people that defy any simple demographic characterization and a broad range of signs that made — imagine! — more than... Read more

There’s absurd, then obscene, then Paul Ryan

Last updated on: October 28, 2011 at 2:58 pm By Fred Clark

“Chutzpah” is classically exemplified by the man who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy on account of being an orphan. A step beyond such chutzpah is laughable absurdity. A step beyond that is self-contradiction and hypocrisy so astonishing it becomes obscene. And a step beyond that is this Republican Party fundraiser, casting the Apostle of Austerity himself, Ayn-Rand disciple Rep. Paul Ryan, as the defender of “the safety net for the poor.” That’s from Matt Yglesias, who... Read more

‘And the second is like unto it’

Last updated on: October 28, 2011 at 12:44 pm By Fred Clark

Jason at blip reads Peter Rollins’ Insurrection, and mostly likes it. His praise is qualified by this criticism, which I find thoughtful and thought-provoking: As much as I like Rollins’ insistence on loving the other as the way in which we love God, this is also where I disagree as well. For in his insistence on finding God in the other comes a rejection of “thin spaces” (124) where God is also experienced. Yes we see, hear, and love God... Read more

Siding with the scientific consensus of secular knowledge

Last updated on: October 27, 2011 at 12:40 pm By Fred Clark

So after going through a couple of bottles of Anbesol and walking around for a week looking like Caesar Rodney, I finally gave in and made an appointment with a dentist. I’d been putting that off partly due to the financial aspect and mainly due to six very unpleasant years of orthodonture and oral surgery when I was a teenager. (Among other things, I had to have my fourth molars removed. Yes, I had fourth molars. It was bad.) But... Read more

Another way the rich are different

Last updated on: October 26, 2011 at 2:59 pm By Fred Clark

Here is another big difference between the 1 percenters and everyone else. They get paid to co-sign loans. Ever co-sign a loan? Maybe your kid is in college and you needed to co-sign for the student loans from Sallie Mae. Or maybe a friend or a relative’s car broke down and the only way they could get a new one in order to be able to get to work was for you to co-sign the loan. Now, here’s the question:... Read more

‘I want to follow a leader … I want to follow …’

Last updated on: October 26, 2011 at 2:15 pm By Fred Clark

I apologize for showing you this, but I do not have the words to describe it, to capture the experience of seeing and hearing it for yourself, or to convey the many levels and layers and meaning going on here. Again, I apologize for showing you that. I wanted to say something more about that song’s insistence on religious tests for public office and its expression of an earnest desire for an authoritarian power to tell us what to... Read more

No real than you are

Last updated on: October 25, 2011 at 11:22 pm By Fred Clark

Business Insider gives us yet another hideous chart documenting not just inequality, but the growing chasm between the 1 percenters and the rest of us. Yep, from 1979 through 2007, the 1-percenters were the only ones who saw their income grow. The rest of us have been headed the other way for more than 30 years. The Reformed Broker brings us “Alex P. Keaton: An Alternative History.” Jesus Needs New PR brings us news of “A Handmaid’s Documentary.” “Michele Bachmann’s... Read more

The kingdom of God is bigger than that

Last updated on: October 25, 2011 at 7:50 pm By Fred Clark

The tale of the Fisher King, as told by screenwriter Richard LaGravanese and Scot McKnight: It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king. Now while he is spending the night alone he’s visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the holy grail, symbol of God’s divine grace. And a voice said to the boy, “You shall be keeper of... Read more

How many chapters are in the Book of Isaiah?