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FEBRUARY 17, 2021 BY ADAM LEE I have to admit, it’s satisfying to see titans of the religious right exposed as corrupt frauds and hypocrites. In the past, I’ve taken particular pleasure at the downfall of Jerry Falwell Jr. and Roy Moore, to name two. But the latest clay-footed preacher may even top these. Way back in 2008, I […]
JANUARY 8, 2021 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! After Donald Trump supporters attacked the nation’s Capitol Building on Wednesday, I noticed some evangelical leaders saying there’d be some big ‘reckoning’ due for American evangelicals. It made me laugh. Evangelicals don’t do reckonings. There’ll be no reckoning for them, not even now, not even after all the stunts […]
NOVEMBER 6, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! As the election counting continues, our hopes rise ever so slightly that our next four years won’t feature an incompetent lunatic in the White House after all. But waiting to find out either way sure ain’t doing anybody favors. Today, many of us ask: Can this election please […]
OCTOBER 28, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, we began our discussion about QAnon, that series of overwrought conspiracy theories that many evangelicals have embraced. After a couple of years of ignoring the whole thing, evangelical leaders have finally noticed just how many of their flocks have begun chasing after QAnon. And of course […]
OCTOBER 17, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! I just saw this essay on Baptist News and had a good chuckle over it. See, Richard T. Hughes thinks he has finally nailed exactly what went wrong with white evangelicals. Yes! He knows exactly how they became the control-lusting tribe of racists and tyrants they are today. And […]
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 […]
SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! Over the years, I’ve played and administered a whole bunch of games — both in real life and online. In that time, as you might expect, I’ve encountered my fair share of absolutely awful gamers. But there’s one kind of gamer who just takes the cake […]
SEPTEMBER 22, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! The decline of Christian dominance has been one of my interests for many years. Accordingly, I’ve always kept an eye on the way that Christians engage with that decline. And today’s story might well represent one of their newest attempts to stem the tide of customer […]
SEPTEMBER 12, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! Earlier, we talked about Joe Battaglia’s book Make America Good Again. As we discovered, it’s chock-full of culture-war talking points disguised in a thick slathering of Christianese. So we spent a few days talking about Christianese. For today’s entry, I’d already planned to discuss this phrase. But then, a Christian leader came […]
SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! For a long time now, I’ve studied Christianese. That’s the jargon that Christians use among themselves — particularly the really fervent and toxic ones, like fundagelicals and Catholic hardliners. Thanks to Christianese, they can be utterly unintelligible to outsiders — or, conversely, can hold an entire conversation […]
SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! I know nobody’s surprised when we talk about evangelical hypocrisy. They’re soaking in it! However, today’s story might represent one of the more egregious recent examples of that trope. Jen Hatmaker, a popular Christian speaker/author, recently announced her impending divorce. As expected, most people responded with compassion. But […]
SEPTEMBER 6, 2020 BY JAMES F. MCGRATH Evangelicalism’s representatives tend to be characterized by two major characteristics: loud denunciation of the sins of others combined with the revelation sooner or later that those individuals were themselves living lives that are sinful by their own standards. Sometimes they are the very same sins they denounced, but not always. […]
AUGUST 31, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! As many people do now, I feel disquiet and dread when I check out what Christians are doing lately. And I’m not just talking about the obvious ones shooting protesters and screeching about their worship of Donald Trump. To me, the range of behavior we see […]
JULY 10, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! A couple of days ago, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) helped Christianity decline just a little bit faster. They made a pair of decisions that will hopefully jar quite a few Christians into wondering exactly why their imaginary friend doesn’t actually make their […]