Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;? therefore, we are saved by faith.? Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.— Reinhold Niebuhr This is my favorite day in Holy Week, this Saturday, this unrestful Sabbath, my favorite day in the whole of the liturgical calendar. Well, actually, "favorite" is the... Read more

Frank Schaeffer has a long item at the Huffington Post — reworked from an excerpt from his new book — on "The Evangelical 'Mainstream' Insanity Behind the Michigan 'End Times' Mania." Or, in other words, how the World's Worst Books helped to shape the crazy/stupid of the anti-American Hutari militia. Frank Schaeffer is growing increasingly blunt in his critique of American evangelicalism. This criticism is, correctly, not just direct at the nuttier prophecy freaks like Tim LaHaye, but at the... Read more

This is utterly beside the point, but part of my reaction to the story yesterday of an anti-American domestic terrorist militia outfit calling itself Hutaree had to do with what struck me as the inappropriateness of that made-up name itself. The initial reports I heard all pronounced the word HUTT-ah-REE — which is what seems called for based on that double e ending. And that just seemed off. There aren't a whole lot of words in the English language that... Read more

Teresa Nielsen Hayden goes comprehensive, with everything you might possibly want to know about the Hutaree militia bust. There's not much left to add to that, but let me weigh in on one aspect of this story that falls in my bailiwick: the Hutarifarianites' apocalyptic, End-Times-prophecy obsession with the Antichrist. Chip Berlet discussed this aspect of the group last night on Rachel Maddow, noting that what these folks believe is "the plot of the Left Behind novels." But that's only... Read more

I think part of the reason Glenn Beck's 912 Project opts for the term "values" rather than "virtues" is because virtues take work. They require practice to acquire as habits. This is not what the 912 Project is for. It is not a group or "movement" of people who have chosen to practice these 12 virtues in order to acquire them as habits. It is not a group that seeks to learn or to embody those virtues at all. Look... Read more

So I've been asked to comment on the "Principles and Values" of television host Glenn Beck's "912 Project." OK. Beck's "principles" are horrifically unprincipled, which is to say that they were created backwards. These are not the principles from which his political agenda emerges, these are post-facto rationalizations used to bolster a predetermined (but variable) political agenda. That accounts, I think, for the confusion and incoherence of these so-called principles. The vastness of that confusion also means that addressing those... Read more