Somebody help me with this: politico.com/news/magazine/… I’m particularly interested in understanding this conclusion about the cross & whether I’m reading it correctly

I rarely QT for purposes of correction but this is a good example of what I was trying to identify in threads earlier this week: B/c Vance inaccurately defines the problems families face, he offers solutions that make no sense

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1831500812897677597

1. Most people would naturally pick family to care for their kids if they can. Needing to use non-familial childcare means that they've most likely already tried that option. Grandma & grandpa may not live nearby or have the ability or desire to care for grandkids.

Look, you can turn a blind eye to the predation of women, rally behind a man know for sexual debauchery, & then act shocked at women who don’t marry men & have kids. If you promote a sexual economy where men are free to do whatever they want w/ little to no accountability, the only way women can have even a measure of safety is by not partnering w/ them in things that require deep trust & commitment

The weekend’s events reminded me of this graf from @WestLondonMan. When we disagree w/ or dislike someone, we have 4 options:

1) kill them
2) create structures to control them
3) make life difficult so they leave
4) engage in politics



More to the point, if you’re not doing the work of politics as a means of actively seeking reconciliation w/ your neighbor, you’re doing one of the other three. Our options are good faith engagement thru shared process or coercion & violence.

This is about 40 minutes from where I live & the reason it’s in the middle of nowhere VA is devastating

https://twitter.com/AppalachiaAesth/status/1798756390888231330

Bedford (pop. 3200) was home to a National Guard unit serving in Company A in 1st Battalion in 116th Infantry Regiment of 29th Infantry Division. Of the 35 soldiers from Bedford, 19 were killed on Omaha Beach. Another 4 “Bedford Boys” would die before the end of the campaign

This is beautiful & reminds me that I've had an essay brewing for a couple years about link btwn male loneliness/depression & cultures that prioritize male comfort & privilege.

https://twitter.com/CBSSunday/status/1754160478413086968

TL;DR: Excusing men of their responsibilities to women & children robs them of purpose & the very ties that bind them to community.

On this fine Saturday morning, a few thoughts re: Alistair Begg...

*cracks knuckles* (For unaware, Begg is a conservative evangelical pastor who holds traditional views of gender & sexuality but who recently advised a congregant to attend her grandson's marriage his trans fiancé. Despite conservative backlash, Begg is standing his ground.)

In response to this article, someone asked me why mid-tier leaders prop up abusive rulers. Are they being blackmailed? Do these leaders have dirt on them?

I cannot reiterate this enough: The mediocrity is the point.

thedispatch.com/article/the-pa… So much political & ecclesiastical corruption can be explained by simple fact that people are lazy & consumptive. They want to live like little kings over little kingdoms & have no higher ambition for life than indulgence. Sloth, greed, gluttony are deadly sins for a reason.

A 🧵about the appeal of rule-based parenting:

Don't underestimate how much of authoritarian parenting is a survival mechanism against personal internal chaos. Folks who experience internal disorder will often try to order their environments & the people in them instead. Sure, authoritarianism is a power grab but to what end? Simply to have power? More likely to use that power as a way to protect/stabilize self--including stabilizing self in the new, unpredictable role of parenting. It's a survival technique.

Repressing emotions is like taking the batteries out of the smoke detector when it goes off. The warning might signal a fire & the need to flee or it might simply be burnt toast. But only the foolish think the alarm is the problem. Teaching children to ignore & repress their emotions is especially dangerous b/c they need these responses to keep them safe in the world. Rather, we teach our children how to recognize, define, & articulate their emotions while helping them engaging with reality around them.

Good morning, all! Looks like some folks are still upset about my article on SNAP participants. And while, I know I don't have to do this, just for kicks, I'm going follow-up on one particular response that I'm seeing. New Thesis: The line about welfare in #RichMenNorthOfRichmond isn't about abuse of welfare so much as about loss of purchasing power & the effect SNAP has on food market by keeping prices artificially high & thus out of reach for working poor not on SNAP.

Regular PSA: The "Success Sequence" helps you win the game of American life b/c it unlocks how the game is played. It is not inherently moral, healthy, or holistic. If you don't follow it, however, you will find life more difficult--not b/c you did something "wrong" but b/c you're working against the infrastructure of society. Every society rewards certain choices & punishes others & the Success Sequence tells us what our society values.

Okay, this is something I've thought a good bit about as a 44yo woman who recently returned to grad school after marrying young & having children in my twenties. A 🧵

https://twitter.com/sometimesalight/status/1690316812120969216

The idea of "middle age" & all its accompanying associations is very contextually bound. It's one of few ways modern people have to signal momento mori. I.e. "Middle age" = your life is half over & w/ it your ability to accomplish what you want in life. So take stock & get busy.

Also, irt D. Wilson: I'm old enough to remember the Auburn Avenue controversy the first time around. It happened in early 00s & I became aware of it b/c a bunch of my 20-something friends were moving from IFB fundamentalism to whatever fundamentalism Wilson is This was days of print Credenda Agenda & the first offerings of Canon press on family, gender roles, & home life. It was like cocaine for kids coming from baptist fundamentalism. The prescriptiveness was comfortingly familiar but you can drink & swear!

Having a convo w/ my daughter this morning about the difference btwn authentic weird & performative weird & nbd but I think we may have just unlocked the underlying paradox of expressive individualism Thesis: Weirdness as a quality is both defined by boundaries of establishment culture & sits outside it. To be authentically weird, one must be rejected by establishment. Performative weird, otoh, can be chosen & projected in order to intentionally set oneself against culture.

A word for theologically-minded complementarians:

Piper's understanding of m/f dynamics is pervasively modern in that it assume atomized gender identity that doesn't adequately account for 1 Timothy's focus on household. In a word, it lacks a category of covenant. This question is larger than how you understand 1 Timothy 2. It's about the categories one carries into it. And the entire book assumes a communal, covenanted life w/ varying responsibilities & relationships based in household. In a word, gender in not hermetically-sealed.

The irony of #SBC vote to uphold complementarian position of pastorate is not that it defines office as exclusive to men. It's that the pastoral office itself is not defined consistently across the convention. The rhetorical result is that maleness becomes first qualification for pastorate in SBC. This creates vastly different ministry culture than might exist in a comp denom that has strict definition of pastoral office & process of ordination (of which one qualification is maleness).

Last night I finished a 1000 piece puzzle of the Sistine Chapel & it made me curious about how Michelangelo fits into contemporary modesty debates. I'm familiar with recent kerfuffle at FL school irt the David, but most folks are framing it as a question of what's acceptable in "art" & somehow that seems to miss the point. I think it's about bodies & how we relate to them.

Don't take this the wrong way b/c I'm not fully back on Twitter & I have strong objections to how the platform has changed & I have a lot going on offline, but... a thread: Why We Keep Getting Sex Wrong 1. Insofar as evangelical Protestantism is a feature of modern era, it lacks several categories that are necessary to understanding sex, including robust understanding of embodiment & communal identity. Until we recover these, we don't have a chance.

This thread puts words to my Twitter philosophy: You don't have to agree, but you'd better be respectful.

https://twitter.com/jposhaughnessy/status/1601997868516388864

And to be clear, this isn't about tone, being "winsome," or language choice-- although these serve their own purposes. It's not a Q of free speech.

It's the low-hanging fruit of basic, human decency, of honoring the humanity of the person on the other side of the screen.

And to be clear, I have no beef w/ Berry's ability to return to his roots & way of life. His writing wouldn't exist otherwise & we'd be lesser for it. But if we miss it, we'll miss one of key realities that his vision is predicated on & Port William will remain a fiction. I've lived majority of my life in places that *could* or *should* have been Port William so I've spent a lot of time trying to understand what separates reality from the dream.