Reading Time: 12 minutes The response of Christians to this news isn’t surprising, but it is very telling. In an age when Christians simply can’t bury negative news stories like this one, they’re finding new response tactics that absolve their broken system of any responsibility at all for their hypocrisy.
marriage equality
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
Eugene Peterson: the Christian Right’s Newest Messy Object Lesson.
Reading Time: 12 minutes The bizarre spectacle of their vicious, over-the-top response to his statement demonstrates two things. First, it shows us that they know that the greatest threat to their longed-for return to power comes not from outside their sheepfold, but from within. Second, it shows the rest of us that they are quite right to fear the dissent coming from inside those sheepfolds.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
The False Promise of Safety in the Broken System
Reading Time: 10 minutes The criticism I have about religion really deals with the broken system that undergirds it: that marrow-deep dysfunction that pushes people to create a broken system, to join it, to celebrate it, to perpetuate it, and ultimately to protect it from all potential criticism or dismantling. Though Christianity is one of the best examples of a broken system that we could possibly encounter in our society, there are certainly others. Today I’ll show you what I mean by illuminating one of the biggest miseries to come out of broken systems: the false illusion of safety that they offer to both adherents and those who encounter their adherents.
Posted inReligion
Preston Sprinkle still doesn’t get it
Reading Time: 10 minutes So Preston Sprinkle went into the overflowing hopper of Christians Who Think They’re Saying Something New and Exciting But Aren’t, and we all moved on. Then around Easter I caught wind of him proudly announcing that he’d written some more stuff on the subject and done a podcast or something, and I found myself groaning inwardly.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
NOM: When Bad Guys Don’t Want to Be Bad Guys.
Reading Time: 10 minutes There’s this charming little moment in the 1983 animated masterpiece-of-nuttery Rock & Rule that really brings home just how far a villain will go to see him- or herself as anything but the bad guy. I found myself thinking of that moment this week when I heard about a recent news story that gave the world yet another reason to distrust and distance ourselves from Christians.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
Evangelicals are Rearranging Their Ship’s Deck Chairs Again.
Reading Time: 10 minutes Some readers tipped me off to the latest tempest-in-a-teapot going on in the fundagelical world lately. It didn’t take long for me to notice that as usual, Christians are arguing about the wrong thing. To them, of course, the argument is of the utmost importance–and like everything they do, there’s a reason behind this controversy. It’s not a great reason, but we can’t have everything.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
A Match Made in Hell for People to Be “Loved.”
Reading Time: 9 minutes Preston Sprinkle, in his book People to Be Loved, expresses some truly atrocious ideas. Arguably the most offensive of the lot is his suggestion that gay people should marry straight people. Today I’ll show you why he thinks that’d be a great idea, and why he’s wrong.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
The Reframing Game in “People to Be Loved.”
Reading Time: 9 minutes Using very positive language to describe a very negative situation or feeling is a tactic at least as old as Christianity itself. People who have power use this sort of language to make the powerless folks they (want to) control more comfortable with being controlled–and to sell a product that nobody in their right mind would ever want to buy if its nature were accurately described. It is at its heart a very, very Christian form of dishonesty.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
Why Right-Wing Christians Are Shocked About Losing.
Reading Time: 10 minutes When we look at the balance of news coming out about Christianity, one fact seems absolutely inescapable: the religion in general is starting to lose its privileged position in American culture. But for some reason, many Christians still act like they’re totally astonished and blindsided when they are confronted with this fact. Today I want to examine this tendency–because it shows us something important about what’s going on in right-wing Christian culture.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
The National Day of Grandstanding and How It Fails
Reading Time: 9 minutes Last time, I uncovered some interesting links between the National Day of Prayer (NDP) and the Red Scare manufactured by the Religious Right in the 1950s. Today I want to touch on how the “holiday” is practiced in the modern day. This manufactured holiday–such as it is–is nothing less than a perfect symptom of the coming downfall of the religion that its biggest proponents seek to protect and enshrine into power.