Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome to our new series on authoritarians! Last time we met up, we explored the fear that drives people into authoritarian personalities and groups. This time, we examine the main tool authoritarians use to soothe that fear: obedience. We’ll dive into a new breed of mobile apps that take advantage of authoritarians’ need for rules and routines, too!
Prosperity Theology (Prosperity Gospel)
Posted inUncategorized
Prosperity Gospel and (the Decline of) Modern Christianity
Reading Time: 8 minutes A whole bunch of Christian leaders love the whole idea of prosperity gospel. Today, let me show you how far and how deep this teaching has burrowed into the religion, and what’s happened as a result.
Posted inReligion
That Time Biff Tried to Become a Radio Show Host (Just Like Bob Larson)
Reading Time: 11 minutes At the height of the Satanic Panic, my ultra-Christian first husband, Biff, concocted a plan. He felt certain that it was foolproof. See, he had figured out how to achieve his dream of being a professional Christian! He’d become a radio show host just like Bob Larson. Today, I’ll show you what happened, how it shook out, and the hand it ultimately played in bringing us all together.
Posted inGeneral
Lord Snow Presides… Over More MLM Deception in Christianity. (#25)
Reading Time: 9 minutes We look at a very, very curious list of traits that should sound very, very familiar to you!
Posted inReligion
Evangelical Churn: The Real Goal vs. the Stated Goal
Reading Time: 9 minutes In Christianity, we’re seeing this situation come into clearer and clearer focus regarding their stated goals. I’ll show you what I mean today–and how to evaluate a group’s behavior to see how it matches up with their stated goals.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
A Celestial Extortionist and His Sycophants
Reading Time: 13 minutes Even I couldn’t have predicted the extent of that opportunism, however–though I could easily have told the opportunists involved here just how badly these ploys will backfire. Meet the Disaster Opportunists of Christianity, and see how their attempts to grab power for themselves through extortion fail epically.
Posted inReligion
The Root of All Evil in the Broken System.
Reading Time: 10 minutes One verse most fundagelicals know well is 1 Timothy 6:10: the line about how money is the root of all evil. But I don’t think that’s true. I think, rather, that love of power is their religion’s big problem.
Posted inReligion
News from the World of Gozer. (Update Time!)
Reading Time: 7 minutes I’ve been reading a lot lately about the strange shift in right-wing Christians’ morality over the last ten years. As I read, I found myself wondering how that shift has applied in realtime to the various Christian leaders who’ve been caught misbehaving. I began to look for information about what they’ve been doing since their various downfalls, and began noticing a trend. See if you can see it too.
Posted inReligion
A Christianity Without Coercion Isn’t Much of a Christianity At All.
Reading Time: 7 minutes What would happen if Christians suddenly understood that the entire mythology of their religion is just that–a series of myths and metaphors?
Posted inReligion
Why Christians Are Cruel to Non-Believers
Reading Time: 10 minutes People have always left Christianity and to some degree have spoken out against it, but they didn’t pull out all the stops then–because they didn’t feel like they needed to. Now they feel like they do, but it’s too late.