Well, Rich Men North of Richmond now tops the charts. And before that Try that in a Small Town was all the rage. What is happening here? I have a theory. My theory is built on the notion that these two songs are country rap. Now before you get in a tizzy about that hear me out. Rap has been used to be the voice of the urban black. People who felt they had no voice could express their frustration through rap. And it was not always pretty.

So the #SBC23 will occur this week. I have a unique insider/outsider perspective. I was disciplined by the Southern Baptists as a young Christian. I left them. Then recently joined a Sothern Baptist Church. Now that church has left the SBC I have been to a couple of conventions. I was on the inside of the debate on CRT, and to a lesser degree on the debate on sexual abuse. But I do not have an insider position on the current debate about the role of women in ministry.

Well, this pride month is turning out to be different from any other pride month I have seen. I normally do not comment on sexuality issues. I find it difficult to have a rational dialog with such an issue. So this thread is not a comment about the rights of sexual minorities. Rather than focus on sexual minorities I am interested in the conservative boycotting of Bud Light and Target as well as the proposed boycotts against the Chosen and Chick-fil-A. I think that we are seeing a paradigm shift that we will not go back from.

Shiny Happy People as an expose of Gothard and IBLP is going around right now. I have not seen it and given how busy I am I am not likely to see it. I do not feel I need to see it to evaluate Gothhard. I became a Christian during the heyday of Gotthard but I knew something was wrong with his teaching and never bought into it. But Gothard impacted my life nonetheless. If you read Beyond Racial Division you will learn that my first major girlfriend was white

Unless your name is Karen, I will not be calling you Karen. I find the use of Karen as an insult to be dehumanizing and I will not participate in that type of dehumanization. I am amazed that so many people are willing to do that. Of course, the term Karen is characterized by white women. It is used to insult white women. Indeed about 10 years ago white women would be seen as an oppressed group. But more and more they are now seen by certain people as people to mock.

So, I am doing some research that requires me to look at issues of identity. Scholars who study this stuff know just how important our identity is and how we use it to make sense of ourselves and our reality. That is why we protect it so deeply. But our protection of it interferes with our ability to accurately interpret reality. IF an interrelation of reality challenges our social identity, then we are highly motivated to find ways to dispute that interpretation of reality.

This is a horrifying example of what can happen when antiracism programs go amuck. Fortunately, most of them are not this bad. But I fear this is a natural consequence of the philosophy of antiracism.
compactmag.com/article/a-blac… To understand why I say this let me identify some important components of what is happening. This article was written by a black progressive professor leading seminars in Critical black studies and anti-oppressive studies for selected high school students a Cornell

So I believe that there are three major reasons why Christian organizations do not incorporate diversity programs. First, they are afraid that by doing so they will incorporate what they see as an anti-Christian ideology. Usually, it is Marxism that is feared by also humanism, and intersectionality is feared. I think the fear is a little off but not totally off. I have read enough diversity literature to see some evidence of those themes in some, but not all, diversity work.