"Christians are sick of being punished for their views in America."
"Christians are sick of being punished for their views in America."
Jan 12, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This is awful. For at least three reasons.
knau.org/post/journalis…1. First there's the overwhelming potato/po-tah-to shrugging off of this dude's Q-Anazi fantasies as mere political disagreement, like it's just a dispute over marginal tax rates or regulatory-vs.-market-based approaches or some such. Yeah, no, he's an antisemite.
Jan 12, 2021 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
No, they're not this stupid. This is bad faith, not ignorance, not innocent deception. These people are lying & they know they're lying. Believing outrageous impossibilities is not a failure of intelligence or media literacy. It's a moral failure. What Bonhoeffer called "folly."
"Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it makes people, at the least, uncomfortable. Against folly we have no defense."
"Woe to you, evangelicals and Republicans, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the just, and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ ..."
Aug 13, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Worked "conferences" on campus as a summer job after my freshman year of college. Eastern rented out the dorms & facilities on its lovely campus every summer & I worked as the contact person assisting the various groups coming through. ...
My first big assignment was a sorority gathering. I was psyched. (Eastern didn't have sororities.) Turned out to be a sorority *reunion* and 19-year-old me was less psyched when I realized I'd be on-call to attend to a bunch of middle-aged women. ...
Aug 2, 2020 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
People taught at church to believe that millions of their neighbors are Satanic baby-killers are susceptible to conspiracy theories that claim that millions of their neighbors are Satanic baby-killers.
People whose central, non-negotiable tenet is that we and we alone stand up against Satanic baby-killing are ripe for a conspiracy theory that tells them the exact same flattering lie.
Jul 21, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
The transparently disingenuous attempt to weaponize ADA/HIPAA seems clever to anti-maskers because they’ve convinced themselves that ADA somehow means disabled folks are getting cool perks & freebies & other great stuff they enjoy pretending to resent being denied. ...
It’s the welfare-queen lie, except with disability. It’s a LARP, not a “real” belief. They enjoy pretending to envy those lucky-ducky poors or disabled people and enjoy pretending to resent & envy SNAP or LIHEAP or the ADA, but part of them knows that’s a crock. ...
May 10, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
If we make police response the metric, then the religious left is officially regarded -- by law enforcement and TPTB -- as vastly, disproportionately more powerful than anything the religious right represents.
Look at Ferguson, or the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, both of which drew MILITARY responses from law enforcement. They were officially regarded as EXISTENTIAL threats to The Powers That Be. ...
Aug 15, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Just plowed thru a bunch of Charismanews-type pieces & most of them were not monotheistic. Monolatrous, maybe, but not monotheistic. They were about Satan or “the Jezebel spirit” and these entities were clearly treated as rival gods. Lesser rivals, yes, but very much *gods.*
Google “Jezebel spirit” and the supposed entity you’ll find discussed is surely a god, not a mere idol of wood or stone. She, like their idea of Satan, is powerful, and multi-present (if not quite omnipresent) and close enough to omniscient. ...
Jun 25, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Just read an essay arguing that orthopraxy can only be the fruit of orthodoxy. This is, among other things, an assertion about the real world. Supporting examples should be abundant. Counter-examples should be all but non-existent. And yet.
This is a widespread theological claim, but those making it are weirdly incurious about whether such a thing exists in the wild. It's couched as an abstraction, but it deals with outcomes -- with measurable, documentable, falsifiable/confirmable outcomes.
Jun 9, 2019 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
"Jesus Christ himself and his disciples also faced persecution, he said."
Let's talk about the Beatitude Bamboozle.
mexiconewsdaily.com/news/followers…
There are nine "blesseds" in the Beatitudes as recorded in Matthew's Gospel. White evangelical "persecuted" hegemons have boiled that list down to just one -- the last one: "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you."
May 22, 2019 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
What she describes here as "hyperbole & misinformation" involves quoting, verbatim and in context, from anti-abortion literature and spokespeople, and quoting directly from anti-abortion legislation.
Anti-abortion spokespeople have not been shy, or quiet, or cryptic, or possible to ignore. Their goals have been stated clearly and loudly for decades. As has their very public reasoning in defense of those goals.
Also, many thousands of us used to BE active, vocal pro-lifers.
Apr 26, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Hell is folklore, not Bible.
Chapter and verse, buddy. It ain't there. ...
The English word is there a tiny handful of times in English translation, but the meaning ascribed to it is pure folklore. ...
"Christians are sick of being punished for their views in America." 
