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OCTOBER 9, 2020 BY SCOTT R. STAHLECKER During the two decades I was a Christian the flood story really perplexed me. There were portions that just could not be plausible. To begin with, the punishment didn’t fit the crime, and the crime itself reads like a well-rigged sting operation. Nor could I reconcile why God thought […]
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 […]
MAY 22, 2018 BY MATTHEW DISTEFANO Although I no longer engage in theological discussions on Facebook all that often, I still get into it with folks from time to time. What I find fascinating is the level of certainty with which many Christians approach whatever topics are being discussed. Especially confounding is how many of these […]
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 […]
OCTOBER 2, 2020 BY FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION Yes, we’ve been recently busy with Amy Coney Barrett here at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but, no, we haven’t let her monopolize our attention. We correctly guessed that Barrett would be President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee and our Strategic Response Team had an incisive dissection of her […]
APRIL 16, 2019 BY GENE VEITH In Great Britain, the LGBT+ ideology has free rein. When a special curriculum promoting that ideology was implemented in Birmingham’s public schools, conservative Christians didn’t like it, but that carried no weight. Because of its teachings on transgenderism–that men must be accepted as women if they so choose–British feminists of […]
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 19, 2020 BY CAPTAIN CASSIDY Hi and welcome back! On the heels of yesterday’s discussion about two fundagelical bullies, I ran into another post about how to identify and deal with a church-based bully! What are the odds? It’s an interesting post, though. I mean sure, it applies to a lot more than just Christian churches. But […]
SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 BY THE CONVERSATION By Hebah H. Farrag of University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Ann Gleig of University of Central Florida Black Lives Matters (BLM) has been portrayed by its detractors as many things: Marxist, radical, anti-American. Added to this growing list of charges is that it is either irreligious or doing religion wrong. In late […]
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 GENE VEITH Historically, religions have sometimes used force to compel people to accept their teachings and to punish those who did not. This has been an issue with Catholicism, with its heretic-burnings and inquisitions, and has sometimes happened in Protestant communities. Luther, though, opposed coercion and punishment in matters of faith. Today, […]
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 9, 2020 BY FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION By James A. Haught Some jokes reveal truths. Remember the quip that “no Christian wants to go to heaven right now”? Obviously, the hidden truth is that most Christians secretly doubt church promises of paradise. Well, I think secret disbelief goes deeper, saturating most of this “Christian nation.” […]
SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 BY CHRISTY THOMAS I continue to ponder the long-term aftereffects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the health, and even survival, of churches. Will it survive the Covid-19 damage? As an avid reader of business news, I am aware that, while some businesses are thriving because of the crisis, myriads of others are going […]