Blogaround

Two pandas. Image source.

1. the complicated misery of #metoo (posted February 5) [content note: description of sexual assault] "It was her job to stop it, and not his job to care."

2. How John Piper’s Church Handles Domestic Violence Will Make You Cringe (posted March 1) "Until evangelical churches like Bethlehem Baptist can rethinking their priorities and start valuing people over marriage, this cycle will repeat, and the hemming and hawing over whether an abuse victim can divorce, or (God forbid) remarry will continue."

3. From Original Sin to Flattering Mirror: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (posted January 14) "A movement that had challenged the very fabric of US politics and society was turned into one that demonstrated how great and expansive the country was—a story of individual bravery, natural evolution, and the long march to 'a more perfect union.'"

4. A frightened child in Chicago and an immigration policy unbecoming of America (posted February 28) "I don’t know what kind of country handcuffs a mother who fears for her life and hauls her young daughter more than 2,000 miles away."

5. Love-struck hero or creepy harasser? Suddenly we’re seeing our favorite rom-coms in a new light. (posted February 27) "This film is rated #MeToo, for a man making three sexual innuendos on a sales conference call, and for a woman laughing them off because she didn’t want to lose the account."

6. Fawkes' Original Owner | Harry Potter Theory (posted March 1)

7. Billy Graham is dead (posted February 22) "So did Billy Graham “reach” his own son? Is Franklin Graham a convert of his father’s gospel?"

And also: I will be your father figure, put your tiny hand in mine "But — and here’s where the paradox comes in — at the same time as all of these pieces rightly assert that Billy Graham personally defined and embodied the meaning and substance of evangelicalism, they also all take pains to explain that white evangelicalism in 21st-century America has very little in common with Billy Graham."

And: It's always the other way around "I’ve read and studied several dozen books by earnest Christian writers earnestly arguing that our political views must derive from our religious or “biblical” convictions, and not the other way around. That is what all of those authors and all of those books purport to do themselves (even as they all “arrive” at different political conclusions, all of which seem suspiciously like the political preferences of the authors)."

8. Concerned Women for America’s Bizarre “Esther Moment” Rhetoric (posted March 6) "If evangelicals are anyone in that story, they’re Haman." Oooooh burn.

9. Stalking for Love (posted February 28) [content note: stalking portrayed as romantic] "There's an undercurrent of coercion running through these scenes, because they set up situations where the woman in question will appear callous or heartless if she rejects the guy again after he's gone through all the trouble of pulling off his elaborate stunt."