Reading Time: 13 minutes A recent Medium piece about Christianity’s decline has been making the rounds on social media. In it, a Christian makes three assertions about his religion’s decline. Two are partially correct. But the last reflects a beloved but completely untrue myth that Christians almost universally embrace. Let’s examine each of these assertions to find an answer […]
Christian Right
Posted inPolitics
Ali Alexander and the alt-right feud that finally exploded
Reading Time: 8 minutes Colorado police revealed that they are actively investigating an alt-right agitator named Ali Alexander. He’s part of the general alt-right, white-nationalist Zoomer movement alongside Nick Fuentes (America First) and Milo Yiannopoulos (ex-Breitbart provocateur). For years I’ve been hearing rumors about all of them that should concern anybody in the movement—if not everyone outside of it […]
Posted inViolence
Guns and religion: The nexus of the AR-15’s obscene popularity
Reading Time: 5 minutes Turns out Barack Obama was right about guns and religion. During his successful 2008 presidential campaign, he alluded to white, blue-collar manufacturing workers in America who were terribly incensed that their well-paying jobs and comfortable lives had vaporized in globalization during the previous quarter century: “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling […]
Posted inFree Expression
Why Christian extremists are menacing an Idaho library
Reading Time: 10 minutes It’s not enough that Christian extremists in Idaho control what their own children read. They don’t want control of just their own children’s reading choices. They already have that. Instead, they want control over the reading choices of everyone, most especially the children of heathens.
Posted inPolitics
Ammon Bundy: Lying for Jesus, yet again
Reading Time: 9 minutes Ammon Bundy needs attention again, I suppose. After a frenetic summer of grandstanding outside of a hospital, he continues to campaign for public office in Idaho. To help him win the upcoming governor’s race, he planned a September 10th rally at a park in Boise. However, his election committee lied to the park’s governing board […]
Posted inReligion, Science
The Increasing Numbers of COVID Denialists Dying of COVID
Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome back! My mind was blown by this opinion piece in Religion News recently. In it, a Duke University ethics professor tells us she wants us to stop talking about COVID deniers getting COVID and dying. Instead, she wants us to focus on happy things and bringing about systemic change. To her, the […]
Posted inPolitics, Religion
Exactly Why Evangelicals Keep Arguing About Women Pastors
Reading Time: 7 minutes There’s an extremely good reason why evangelicals are so stuck on this one question. It’s not a reason that flatters them or does anything good for their plummeting credibility, alas. But it at least explains why their opposing sides can’t ever find any common ground here. So today, I’ll show you exactly why evangelicals keep arguing about women pastors.
Posted inGeneral
Gospelbound Embraces the False Myth of Persecution
Reading Time: 9 minutes Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been talking about a podcast called Gospelbound. It’s a production of The Gospel Coalition, a hard-right Calvinist evangelical group online. In this particular episode of Gospelbound, two guys talk about all the awful persecution that their tribe totally faces. Except this persecution is largely a complete myth. In reality, they’re usually […]
Posted inThe Secular
Think creationism in U.S. science classes is a dead horse? If only.
Reading Time: 4 minutes The U.S. Supreme Court has long rejected teaching creationism within science courses but has gained three new Christian true believers. Evangelicals notice.
Posted inReligion
Sovereign Citizens Ideology Has Infested New Zealand (LSP #179)
Reading Time: 6 minutes Hi and welcome back! Well, I suppose it was inevitable that wackadoodles in New Zealand would eventually happen upon the sovereign citizens movement. Indeed, this story might just be yet another so-called gift we can thank COVID-19 for. Today, Lord Snow Presides over yet another woo conspiracy theory that just won’t go away — and how it […]