It’s not the years, it’s the mileage. Alisa Harris may seem a bit young to be publishing a memoir, but while she can’t look back on a long life, she can reflect on a long journey. Harris proves a lively and insightful guide to that journey, which begins with her childhood in the activist infantry of the religious right during which she was picketing abortion providers as a home-schooled soldier in the army of the Lord. Harris’ memoir, Raised Right,... Read more
Jim Burroway: “Christian Dominionism Is Not a Myth“ These are not the people within the broad spectrum of Christianity, nor are they even those within the outer 10 percent of its fringes. We’re not talking about the Pat Robertsons, the Joel Osteens, the Albert Mohlers or the Rick Warrens. No, we’re talking about people who are far, far more fringe than anyone whose name immediately comes to mind whenever most people think of Christian evangelicalism. … When [Michelle] Goldberg says,... Read more
Here are a couple of documentaries to add to my Want To See list. “Gospel Without Borders“ EthicsDaily.com announces the availability of its newest documentary – “Gospel Without Borders” – on the heels of draconian anti-immigration laws passed in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana and South Carolina, heated disagreement over the federal direction of comprehensive reform, and punitive bills expected next year in Florida, Tennessee and other states. Shot in five different states, the documentary separates myth from fact, examines the biblical... Read more
I linked yesterday to Dennis G.’s mordant, but wincingly apt joke that Fox News has come to be something like “Nickolodeon for people with dementia.” That’s a bitter joke on a couple of levels but still, I think, a funny one. Dementia is a heartbreaking thing and thus, in a sense, no laughing matter. Yet the sadness and heartbreak of it can also come wrapped up and mixed together with levity amidst the gravity. At least that’s how it was... Read more
Via ABL on Balloon Juice, this quote from loathesome con-man “historian” David Barton in a Sept. 2009 Texas textbook review (.pdf link): Multiple locations in the TEKS even suggest that it is people from “racial, ethnic, and religious groups” who “expand political rights in American society.” This is an absolutely false premise. Only majorities can expand political rights in America’s constitutional society. In fact, in every case where a constitutional protection has been established for a minority, whether of race,... Read more
I want to mention one more problem that arises from biblicism, or biblical literalism: It fosters conflict. It fosters really nasty conflict — the kind that starts with the belief that The Other Side must be evil and then goes downhill from there with little hope of resolution. Biblicism invites this kind of conflict because it creates a framework in which bad intent becomes the only possible explanation for differences of opinion. This isn’t a failure of charity or generosity... Read more
Books & Culture just posted a review of the latest from Christian Smith, a sociologist who has produced some of the most insightful and useful studies of American evangelical Christianity. Smith’s new book tackles a subject essentially important to evangelical culture and faith: biblicism, or biblical literalism. He’s against it, as is clear from his title: The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. The B&C review is largely negative. It declares right off... Read more
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
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