Libertarian Julian Sanchez says he has "no sympathy whatever with the substantive moral views of Hobby Lobby’s owners." And that makes his insights even more trenchant. Sanchez first quotes Justice Alito (see decision, p.4): The effect of the HHS-created accommodation...
Culture
The Wrong Side of History?
I don't make a practice of reblogging stuff, especially if it's on a blog I'm guessing a lot of my readers already see. But the three quotes below, collected by Justin Taylor, were so excellent that I had to make certain to pass them on and add my two cents. The...
Buffoonish Ignoramuses on Verge of Cunningly Establishing American Theocracy
I just loved this! Depending on what day it is, the Religious Right is viewed as being full of unintelligent buffoons incapable of grasping simple facts of science or they are shrewd political geniuses secretly leading our nation to become a full-fledged theocracy....
Everybody Discriminates, Part 2
The New York Times is reporting that something of a tipping point may be in sight on a perennial national issue: evangelical student groups on secular college campuses. More and more universities, in part because of a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, are banning evangelical...
There’s No Such Thing as Academic Freedom, and It’s a Good Thing, Too
One of my favorite writers cites one of my other favorite writers in the service of undercutting the argument of one of my least favorite writers. Sadly, I think I can only fully agree with the words of the professed non-Christian among the three.
Everybody Discriminates
Doug Wilson is as sharp and prophetic as any Christian could be on the same-sex marriage debate: Never forget that discrimination is inescapable. Why are people going along with this ludicrous claim that same sex mirage is marriage? Well, it is because Americans have...
Information Filters
Today, says sociologist Christian Smith, Anyone can post for global consumption almost whatever content on the Internet, unregulated by traditional standards gatekeepers, without having to account for its relation to everything else on the Internet. Stated...
Race Is in the Eye of the Beholder
A few quotes and notes from The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2006): "Race ... is a construct, an interpretation of nature rather than an unambiguous marker of basic natural differences...
Sociological Insight into Broken Working-Class Families
I minister in a low-income community; I wish I could say I do more for my parishioners than I do. I preach, I love, I pray. And I think about them all the time. A while back I read Coming Apart: The State of White America , 1960–2010 in an effort to understand their...
Pop Music and Twinkies
May conservative Christians pause long enough in our denunciations of pop music to wonder out loud what our biggest problem with it is? Is pop music wrong with a capital WRONG, or is it just, well, dumb? And is it possible to be something other than a cultural...
Review: Is God Anti-Gay?: And Other Questions about Homosexuality, the Bible and Same-Sex Attraction
Is God Anti-Gay?: And Other Questions about Homosexuality, the Bible and Same-Sex Attraction by Sam Allberry My rating: 4 of 5 stars I fear that we have already descended into the sloganeering phase of the argument over homosexual acts, just as we did long ago with...
American Civil Religion
I wrote a little piece on deism for a new BJU Press Bible textbook recently, Deism believes there is a God, but that He hasn’t spoken to us. He is there, but He’s silent. We’re left discerning truth about him from nature. Deism, however, has no simple definition and...