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SEPTEMBER 29, 2020 BY MICHAEL STONE “They’re All Hustlers”: Trump mocks Christians for being superstitious and ignorant, but admires the Christian leaders who con the gullible rubes. According to a new report from The Atlantic, Trump often demonstrates contempt for Christians behind closed doors, mocking their rituals and silly superstition, while admiring the Christian leaders who […]
SEPTEMBER 27, 2020 BY M. L. CLARK Let’s begin with a story. Recently, I’ve been struggling to articulate some of the problems with left-leaning North American rhetoric — a side of the political equation I favour, but with deep caveats about some of its historiography and targets. This week, on my Patreon, I posted a nine-month follow-up to […]
SEPTEMBER 27, 2020 BY BOB SEIDENSTICKER What does it mean that Jesus had the chance to end slavery (or at least make clear that it was wrong) but said nothing against it? The last four posts have responded to a defense of Jesus’s stance on slavery written by Tom Gilson, senior editor with the Christian ministry The […]
SEPTEMBER 27, 2020 BY J. H. MCKENNA, PH.D. Fifty years ago Becky pondered a preacher’s boasts about the ‘mercy’ of God. The following week Becky sat under a gnarled and unwedgeable oak and thought about ‘mercy’ some more. After bit of cogitation, she stood up an atheist. Her reasons? To say that God has ‘mercy’ on humanity can […]
BY BETH STONEBURNER SEPTEMBER 26, 2020 Christian-turned-atheist Patheos blogger Libby Anne wrote an eye-opening blog post this week on why evangelicals don’t do opposite-sex friendships. The inspiration came from the following tweet: Says Libby Anne: In evangelical churches, any cross-gender relationship is always, always, always portrayed as dangerous. The moment a teenage girl and boy get friendly, adults in the congregation start […]
BY VAL WILDE SEPTEMBER 26, 2020 An advertisement encouraging children to attend Sunday school classes hosted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland has stirred up controversy following its social media release earlier this month. The ad, brightly colored and cheerful, depicts a smiling cartoon Christ leaping amid the greenery outside a church populated by grinning multiracial […]
SEPTEMBER 27, 2020 BY OPHELIA BENSON TRUMP chose to nominate a fanatical Catholic – Amy Coney Barrett, above – to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the US Supreme Court. Of course he did, despite being perhaps the least religious president we’d ever had. Before you get excited about Donald Trump the freethinker, remember that he thinks of himself as […]
SEPTEMBER 26, 2020 BY BEN WITHERINGTON Good things sometimes do come in small packages, and this book is one of them. I may only be 128 pages long, but it is packed with close reasoning and reflections that we have come to expect of a scholar of Richard Bauckham’s caliber, and on top of all that, […]
MARCH 9, 2020 BY JOSH DAFFERN Recently I delivered a funeral message for a dear brother that unexpectedly passed away. He was a firm believer in Jesus Christ, and his funeral was a celebration of the life he lived for Jesus. In my sermon, I tried to spell out why Christians can hope in the resurrection […]
OCTOBER 28, 2019 BY JAMES A. HAUGHT By James A. Haught The supernatural spectrum is immense: Gods, goddesses, devils, demons, angels, heavens, hells, purgatories, limbos, miracles, prophecies, visions, auras, saviors, saints, virgin births, immaculate conceptions, resurrections, bodily ascensions, faith-healings, salvation, redemption, messages from the dead, voices from Atlantis, omens, clairvoyance, spirit-signals, spirit-possession, exorcisms, divine visitations, incarnations, […]
OCTOBER 14, 2019 BY FELLOW DYING INMATE Unhealthy Christology!—Our imagined Jesus and Mary are a far cry from the historical truth of starving Galilean peasants. Is your imagined Jesus unhealthy? How do you picture the historical Jesus, physically speaking? Imagine Jesus walking about in first century Galilee. How does he appear? Did being God’s only begotten […]
SEPTEMBER 26, 2020 BY MICHAEL STONE American Taliban: Fox News contributor Pastor Robert Jeffress uses the Bible to justify the claim that police “are ministers of God sent to punish evildoers.” Jeffress, appearing on Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs Tonight, used the Bible to defend the police, at one point declaring: Law enforcement officers are ministers of […]
OCTOBER 22, 2019 BY PHILIP JENKINS The Pew Foundation has just released a significant report concerning the state of American religion. As with anything done by Pew, both the research and the analysis are exemplary, and the findings are convincing. I will challenge one small but important thing in the report, namely its title – but […]
OCTOBER 14, 2019 BY JENNIFER FITZ As I write, the usual suspects are circulating conjecture about a newly-canonized saint: Maybe this person was gay! Well, maybe so, maybe not — as we could safely say about every single person in the universe. What does that have to do with us? #1 Get Your Mind Out of the […]
BY BETH STONEBURNER SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 Attorney General William Barr spoke at the (virtual) National Catholic Prayer Breakfast yesterday and was awarded the “Christifideles Laici Award” for — and I’m not making this up — his Christ-like behavior. He used his acceptance speech, naturally, to further trash the concept of church/state separation. That crucial link between religion […]
SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, we talked about authoritarian Christians in terms of roleplaying games. And now, I want to show you where the metaphor leads: suspension of disbelief. Authoritarians require complete participation in their Happy Pretendy Fun Time Games. Otherwise, they lose suspension of disbelief and everything goes higgledy-piggledy. Today, let me show you why […]
BY HEMANT MEHTA SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 Christian preacher Andrew Wommack has said repeatedly in the past that anyone with faith can raise people from the dead. It even happened to his son and his wife and two babies. On Tuesday, he criticized everyone who thinks he’s making it up, saying they’re just not faithful enough. … If you got born again, your faith […]
SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 BY SCOTT R. STAHLECKER Here’s a phrase you never want to see on the news ticker: “TRUMP WON’T COMMIT TO PEACEFUL TRANSFER OF POWER: GET RID OF THE BALLOTS … THERE WON’T BE A TRANSFER.” MSNBC Unless, of course, we are watching an authoritarian broadcasting his intentions of a hostile takeover of a […]
BY HEMANT MEHTA SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 On Saturday, in North Carolina, preacher Jesse Hursey spoke (in his personal capacity) during an Alamance County Trump rally. Speaking like any politician would, he told the crowd he was a Christian first and Republican second, to rousing applause, before encouraging the “silent majority” to vote for Donald Trump. Later that day, […]
SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 BY GENE VEITH Book burning is the iconic manifestation of totalitarianism, thought control, and the suppression of freedom. And now cancel culture has come to point of burning books. Trans Rights Activists have called for the burning of books by J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. Newsweek reports that “J.K. Rowling Book Burning Videos Are […]