Blogaround

1. Our Most Emotional Video (March 29) A sudoku inspired by a Tracy Chapman song. Who knew that sudoku could teach us about the history of systemic racism? This is very well done. (1-hour-6-minute sudoku solve video)

2. The Problem With Vulgar Racism Is Not The Vulgarity (March 28) "One is a cartoon character who embodies the essence and ethos of white evangelicalism in America. The other one is Ned Flanders."

Also from the Slacktivist: Holy Saturday (March 30) "We can believe in Easter Sunday, but we can’t be sure. We can’t know for sure."

3. Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores (April 2, via) "Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts."

4. Google to delete search data of millions who used 'incognito' mode (April 1, via) "The suit revealed that Google saved the standard and incognito browsing history of users in the same profile."

5. Banality and bigotry (April 6) This is so bizarre. Richard Dawkins says, "I'm a cultural Christian." ????? What is going on?

Blogaround

1. Study that found husbands prone to leave sick wives was flawed, researchers say (2015) and Authors’ Explanation of the Retraction (2015) There was a study, which I'd heard about many times on twitter and various places, that found that it's MUCH more likely that married couples divorce if the wife has major health problems, than if the husband has major health problems. Popular wisdom on the internet took this to mean that men abandon their wife if the wife gets sick, society doesn't expect men to keep their marriage vows, patriarchy is the worst, etc.

Well I'm just finding out now (even though it happened in 2015) that the study had an error in analyzing their data, and actually those results weren't correct. I'm not sure if there have been other studies since then with better data, or what the current academic consensus on this is. But it's important to not keep repeating this claim, now that we know the study was flawed.

2. Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon (March 13, via) "The test of Samsung’s phones conducted by Reddit user u/ibreakphotos was ingenious in its simplicity. They created an intentionally blurry photo of the Moon, displayed it on a computer screen, and then photographed this image using a Samsung S23 Ultra. As you can see below, the first image on the screen showed no detail at all, but the resulting picture showed a crisp and clear 'photograph' of the Moon. The S23 Ultra added details that simply weren’t present before. There was no upscaling of blurry pixels and no retrieval of seemingly lost data. There was just a new Moon — a fake one."

3. Infinite Fractal Mazes (October 21) "Fractal mazes contain infinite paths, but the only solutions permitted are finite. Some people find that disappointing. What’s the point of all that extra maze if we don’t get to traverse it?" Oh this is so cool.

4. The Infamous 1981 Lee Atwater Interview School for Government at Liberty University (October 20) "By choosing to name their school for government after Helms, Liberty University is endorsing all of that — admitting, and even flat-out bragging, that everything they’re packaging as 'today’s conservative movement' and 'traditional values' is just a euphemism for saying 'N—-r, n—-r, n—-r.' They may as well have simply named it The Infamous 1981 Lee Atwater Interview School for Government and carved that entire quote in granite on the side of a campus building."

Also from the Slacktivist: Get sick, get fired (October 24) "And she reminded my wife, repeatedly, that the salon was 'a privately owned business,' which she said exempted her from the kind of labor laws governing large, publicly traded companies. And which also, apparently, exempted her from common decency and basic humanity."

5. A Missionary Died at 26 on a Doomed Quest. A New Documentary Confronts What Led Him There (October 5) There's a new documentary called "The Mission," which is about John Chau, the missionary who was killed in 2018 when he tried to bring the "gospel" to the Sentinelese, one of the few uncontacted people groups on earth. 

I'm interested in watching this... I've written about Chau a bunch of times here on the blog, because of how his story so completely matches the "ideal" actions that American evangelicals believe missionaries (and, really, all Christians) should take. And also I relate to him a lot... believing in something so much that it becomes so big and overtakes your whole life- well, that's kind of why I moved to China.

My posts about Chau:
This Is Exactly the Martyr Fairy Tale We Aspired To (2018)
Evangelicals Agree With What Chau Did (And It Makes Me Angry): Here Are The Receipts (2018)
Because of an Idea (2019)

6. Did Legalizing Abortion Reduce Crime 20 Years Later? (October 24) "So there are a lot of issues with the abortion-crime hypothesis, but one I rarely see brought up is the fact that there’s a very good chance that Levitt based this entire idea on an initial premise that is simply not true: that legalizing abortion drastically alters the number of abortions women get. Levitt calls this 'true virtually by definition.' It is not."

7. Feel free to not click on this one- I'm sharing it specifically because it's bad: Andy Stanley’s ‘Unconditional’ Contradiction (October 4) It's an article from Christianity Today, about the "Unconditional" conference, hosted by pastor Andy Stanley. The good Christians at Christianity Today are unhappy that Andy Stanley's conference wasn't as anti-gay as it could have been. Stanley's position seems to be, [and I'm paraphrasing this, it's not a quote from anywhere] "marriage must be 1 man and 1 woman, but still there are things we can learn from gay Christians- even gay Christians in same-sex relationships- so we should listen to them." Well, Christianity Today is here to tell you that's not good enough. I'm posting this link here so y'all can see what Christianity Today is all about. 

But hey, here's one cool tidbit from CT's article: "The most controversial conference speakers were Justin Lee and Brian Nietzel, whom Stanley described as 'two married gay men' who are also 'Christ-followers today.'" Wow, I hadn't heard Justin Lee got married- good for him! I read his book, "Torn," way back in 2012, and it definitely had a major influence on my journey along the "hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner" to "ally" to "queer" pipeline. Anyway, very cool to hear he's married now, very happy for him. (I don't know who Brian Nietzel is, but I suppose I'm happy for him too.)

Are our friends at Christianity Today happy for Justin Lee? LOL. Of course not! They know no details about his marriage, besides gender, and that's enough for them to conclude it's BAD and WRONG and nobody should invite him to speak at any conferences. This is what Christianity Today is about. Like, why can't you just be happy for people? Why do you have to make sure you're judging them enough? 

Why do you follow a god who requires you to judge people in order to maintain your Christian cred?

And this is why, in my opinion, it's pointless to even try to "pass" as a good evangelical in order to work for change from the inside. Any little deviation from "God's design for gender"/ "God created everyone to occupy the exact same place on the Kinsey scale" [uh this is also my paraphrase] and the good evangelicals are ready to cancel you. Andy Stanley isn't even saying it's okay to be in a same-sex relationship- he's just saying that his church welcomes people who are, and believes they have things to say which are worth listening to. If he wants to keep his status as a real Christian in evangelicals' eyes, he needs to backtrack on that and throw queer people under the bus. It wouldn't be the first time that a straight cis Christian made a statement about accepting queer people, and then got such nasty pushback that they immediately reversed their position, like "oh no, no of course I didn't mean that, of course I believe what the bible says, marriage is 1 man and 1 woman."

The cool thing about not being evangelical is you can stop playing those games. You can just simply accept your queer friends, just be a normal person with them, rather than constantly trying to judge them in a "loving" way, constantly walking that fine line between "hate the sin" and "love the sinner." You don't have to do any of that. Come into the big queer world. Love people like Jesus did. Be free. 

Blogaround

1. The kingdom of heaven is like: “We Keep People Alive”: As Summers Get Deadlier, a Tiny Church Is Fighting Back (September 21, via) "On June 1, they set up a 'Cooling Center' sandwich board sign out front on Southern Avenue, and soon, 15 to 25 unsheltered, exhausted, and often addicted visitors were showing up each day, frequently with dogs."

2. Genetically Modified Pig’s Heart Is Transplanted Into a Second Patient (September 22) "The heart transplanted into Mr. Faucette came from a pig that had received 10 genetic modifications. Scientists removed three pig genes that cause rapid rejection of pig organs by the human immune system, while inserting six human genes that allow the immune system to accept the organ."

3. Penguins, Postcards & Preservation: Antarctica's Hidden Postal Gem! (September 25, via) The southernmost post office in the world, surrounded by penguins.

4. An Attempt At One Of The All Time Greats (September 27) 1-hour-22-minute meidjuluk/fillomino solve video. If you don't know what that is, don't worry, Simon will explain it.

5. Texas’ ban on certain drag shows is unconstitutional, federal judge says (September 26, via) "'The Court sees no way to read the provisions of SB 12 without concluding that a large amount of constitutionally-protected conduct can and will be wrapped up in the enforcement of SB 12,' the ruling reads. 'It is not unreasonable to read SB 12 and conclude that activities such as cheerleading, dancing, live theater, and other common public occurrences could possibly become a civil or criminal violation.'"

6. MEGAMIND and Nice Guy™ Syndrome (2022) 34-minute video from Cinema Therapy. I love the movie "Megamind" so much.

And also this one: Villain Therapy: LOKI (2021)

7. The Hollywood Writers Strike Proved That Collective Action Works (September 27, via) "They thought the general public wouldn’t support the writers. They were wrong. They thought they could starve the writers out. Once again, they were wrong."

8. What’s the worst job? (September 22) "Human beings are not adapted to microgravity and high radiation. We’ve got enough data now on the consequences of long-term living in space (where long-term is a matter of months — no one is going to be able to live their lives in space)."

9. I hate this article from "Christianity Today": Shannon Harris Wasn’t Content with Being a Purity Culture Stagehand (September 28) It's a review of Shannon Harris (ex-wife of Joshua Harris)'s new book, "The Woman They Wanted," which is about how she was required to give up her own dreams in order to fit the church's idea of what a good pastor's wife is supposed to be. The review starts out well, talking about how it was wrong that the church forced Harris to fit this role. 

But then it starts getting into how Harris has now come to an incorrect view of Christianity. When I say "incorrect," I mean incorrect by Christianity Today's standards. Like, oh now Shannon Harris is advising people to connect "to our own wisdom, to nature and our bodies, to our own fulfillment in work and pleasure, and to our own ways of being and doing." This is, apparently, according to Christianity Today, wrong.

So... basically, what Christianity Today wants to say is, it was wrong that the church forced Harris into a very narrow view of how she was supposed to live. It was wrong not because it was narrow, but because it wasn't the right narrow view. Instead, she is supposed to believe whatever narrow view Christianity Today has about what "the gospel" means.

Ugh, why can't you just let people live their lives? Why can't you just let people tell their own stories, and find meaning in the things that feel meaningful to them? 

Why is it that good Christians can only support survivors up to a certain point- yes, we can listen to them talk about the bad things that happened to them, yes we can agree that those things were wrong, but then when the survivor starts to talk about how their beliefs have changed as a result, oh no, stop, we have to write articles to warn people away from listening to this heresy! Come on.

It's like I said in my post When Christians Say "We're Sorry":

If Christians really are sorry, they know that people need to heal on their own terms.

But of course, like I said earlier, believing in hell screws this all up. Because how sorry can you really be, and how much freedom can you really allow a victim to have, when you believe in a God who won't care about that on judgment day? When you believe in a God who doesn't care that church people hurt this person, and for their own mental and emotional health, they never went to church again... when you believe in a God who says you're out if you don't believe these specific doctrines about Jesus- no excuses.

How sorry can you really be when you worship a God who puts "the gospel" above caring for victims?

How sorry can you really be if you still believe you have all the right answers and everybody better listen to you?

Anyway, I'm definitely interested in reading Shannon Harris's book.

How to Pretend to Welcome Trans People

Image text: "The image of God is trans." Image source.

"... [Abraham] is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed-- the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not." 

- Romans 4:17

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This article from Christianity Today caught my eye: Transgender Teens, Pronouns, and Preferred Names: Youth Pastors Grapple with New Questions [article is paywalled], by Ericka Andersen. It starts out like this:

With transgender identity continuing to rise in the US, evangelical pastors are challenged to think through how they might welcome a trans person attending their church.

I read that, and I thought, wow, maybe Christianity Today will surprise me! Maybe they'll actually have something helpful to say! Maybe now that more people are aware of trans people's existence, evangelicals have changed their tune and are actually taking steps to be more accepting.

LOL. Oh, lol.

Well, I guess this means I'm not longer fluent in evangelicalese. I've been spending so much time not going to church, and hanging out with queer friends instead. Alas, this Christianity Today article is actually not anything new. It's not about how to actually welcome trans people. It's the same old evangelical talking points about how of course being trans isn't a real thing.

Let me show you the article's advice about how to welcome trans people to church:

Even churches that believe people are created by God as male and female have varying approaches and policies around transgender youth. In a private Facebook group with over 11,000 youth leaders from a variety of backgrounds, a post on the subject of gender pronouns drew a slew of comments.

Using a child’s preferred pronouns can be an “essential piece of their mental health,” said one person. Another wrote that using nonbiological pronouns is against “the Truth of God’s word,” putting “souls at stake.”

“They need truth, and not a continuation of the twisted agenda trying to shove its way into the church,” wrote another pastor. One group member said her church addresses everyone as “friend” to avoid pronoun miscommunication.

On the 9Marks site last year, pastor Zach Carter wrote that his previous church offered a written policy that included what to do if a transgender student attended youth group activities. The policy required that participating students “live and present according to their biologically assigned sex.” This included biologically correct pronouns, dress, appropriate bathrooms, locker rooms, assigned sleeping arrangements, groups, and classes.

Umm, what on earth? All of these are presented in the article like they are reasonable policies that Christians could have in regards to trans issues. These are presented as valid answers to the question of how to welcome trans people.

Umm.

Zach Carter is over here explicitly saying his church doesn't let trans people use the bathroom they want to use, and makes sure to call them by the wrong pronouns, and polices their clothes. And this article is like, yeah sure, that's a valid answer to the question "How should our church welcome trans people?"

I can't believe I have to point this out, but that is THE OPPOSITE of welcoming trans people. Like if I had to make a list of "how NOT to welcome trans people" those are the exact things I would put on it.

And then there's this:

Among Christians, pronouns are one of the most discussed and controversial elements of hospitality toward transgender people.

“We should respect the conscience of the believer who cannot bring themselves to use someone’s preferred pronouns and the convictions of the believer who feels like using those pronouns is lying and unloving,” said David Sanchez, who works through gender and sexuality issues as the director of ethics and justice for the Christian Life Commission of Texas Baptists.

“We can also admire the efforts of believers who use someone’s preferred pronouns with the intention of wanting to build a lasting relationship where they can show Christ’s love."

So, the article says, both of these approaches are fine for Christians to take! Either you refuse to use a trans person's preferred pronouns, because you believe that's "lying and unloving", or you use their preferred pronouns just to humor them, even though obviously you believe that being trans isn't a real thing. 

WHAT? This is the article about how to welcome trans people??????

I'm here to tell you that yes, when someone tells you "this is my name and pronouns", then you absolutely should call them by that name and those pronouns. This is like, BARE-MINIMUM stuff. If you refuse, that's just mean. Yeah, maybe you make mistakes sometimes, that's fine, but do your best. This is BARE-MINIMUM stuff. 

But, just... ugh. This article on how to welcome trans people, saying that if you use the right pronouns or the wrong pronouns, both of those are just fine. Ugh.

What's COMPLETELY WILD is that the article mentions that studies have found that trans people have a high risk of depression and suicide, but does not mention that studies have found this risk goes WAY DOWN if trans people are accepted and called by their correct name and pronouns. [correct = the name and pronouns that they tell you they use.] It's like, the article just mentioned it in order to pretend to care, but didn't care enough to actually do the things that would make a difference.

And check out the bait-and-switch in this part:

Mike McGarry, founder and pastor at Youth Pastor Theologian, said his view on pronouns has changed over time.

“For the sake of evangelism, I simply use the gender and name that visitors ask me to use,” McGarry told CT. “But for students who grew up in the church or whom I already know … I share with them that using their preferred pronoun is really hard for me.”

McGarry said he tries to use their preferred names most of the time, which can allow him to take a more gracious posture toward a nonbelieving student.

When guiding youth leaders in ministry, McGarry recommends sticking with coed groupings to help avoid difficulties for those who struggle with gender identity. Asking them not to join a group with their preferred gender would feel “disingenuous,” he said.

Wow! So in other words, Mike McGarry pretends to accept trans people, to get them in the door, but for trans kids that are long-time members, he tells them he doesn't accept that. (What does he mean by "using their preferred pronoun is really hard for me"? Does it mean "I've known you for a long time, so it'll be hard to change my habits about the name/pronouns you used before you transitioned"? That is fine, just do your best. Or does it mean "whenever I think about calling you by your preferred pronoun, it just feels so wrong, like God is telling me it's wrong, and I just can't bring myself to do it"? Dude... find a different God.)

(I will say, though, McGarry's advice to avoid splitting up the kids into groups of boys and girls is the best piece of advice in this whole article.)

The whole article is like that. It's an article about cis Christians' opinions on what to do about trans people. 

Hey, you know what would have been useful? If they had asked a trans Christian the question, "what should churches do to welcome trans people?" Wow, that's the kind of thing you do if you actually want an answer to the question! The article could have said "here's a Christian trans woman, let's hear what she has to say about this" but NOPE. Nope. LOL! Of course Christianity Today didn't do that! Of course not! Why would I have even thought that?

Of course this article is written with the assumption that trans Christians don't exist. Of course. It's a Christianity Today article, what did I expect?

You know what this article is actually about? It's not about how to welcome trans people. It's about what Christians can do to reassure themselves that they're good people, even though they don't accept that being trans is a real thing. Throughout the article, cis Christians talk about wanting to be welcoming, wanting to show people God's love, wanting to uphold God's design for gender, wanting to not "lie" by using someone's preferred pronouns- and the article is about how a Christian can convince themself that they've struck the right balance between all those things.

In other words, Christianity Today says Christians can identify as being welcoming to trans people, without doing any of the things that trans people actually define as being welcoming. That's what this is about.

I think it's really telling that this quote is in the article: "We should respect the conscience of the believer who cannot bring themselves to use someone’s preferred pronouns and the convictions of the believer who feels like using those pronouns is lying and unloving," instead of "We should respect trans people's gender identity. They know their own gender better than anyone else." That's Christianity Today's primary concern- making sure Christians feel like they're following God's rules correctly. NOT making sure Christians are truly being welcoming to trans people.

This article is a bunch of cis Christians talking about what to do to feel like they're welcoming trans people. Apparently they don't care about whether trans people actually feel welcomed or not.

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And one more thing. Let me tell you about the God I believe in.

I believe in a God who spoke to Abram, an old man with 1 child (Ishmael, who was treated like he didn't really even "count" as Abram's child), and said, "Your name is Abraham, which means 'father of many.'" Do you ever see evangelicals reading that story and saying, "God shouldn't have said that, because it wasn't biological reality"?

Jesus, who said to Simon, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it," while Peter was still immature and impulsive, not like a "rock" at all.

This God calls trans people by their correct name and pronouns, even if nobody else does. Even if nobody else believes what they say about their gender.

God who made the night and the day and everything in between. God who made the sea and the land and everything in between. God who made male and female and everything in between. 

All people are made in God's image. All people, of every gender- that is the image of God. God is all genders. They are female and male and nonbinary. They are genderqueer.

Why do evangelicals want to believe in a God who forces everyone into the black-and-white boxes of the gender binary? God can't be contained to those boxes, just like trans and nonbinary people can't be contained to those boxes.

And I'm thankful to trans and nonbinary people, for showing us how vast and beautiful the concept of gender can be. Come live in the glorious rainbow world, in the freedom of being who God made you to be! 

I used to believe in a God who wanted to force everyone to conform to the rules about "God's design for gender" and such things. Any deviation was a sin that needed to be repressed. Constantly feeling like we aren't good enough because we can't repress all our feelings- that's what Christianity was to me back then.

But now, I see people, and I see how amazing they are. Why would we want to limit and repress this? Human creativity, ambition, passion, love- all of that is the image of God. How could you tell people to repress it? How could you tell people to change and limit themselves so they conform to "God's rules"? 

The Christianity Today article has a line that says, "Now I’m more often getting questions about how ‘How do I reach people who identify as LGBTQIA with the gospel?’" Reach LGBTQIA people with the gospel? What? I experience the gospel in the queer community all the time. Love each other. Accept each other. Love God by valuing the diversity of human experience. Evangelicals are the ones who need to learn the gospel from queer people.

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Also, for anyone interested in an ACTUAL ANSWER to the question of how churches can welcome trans people, here are some links:

How to Tell if Your Church is Welcoming for Transgender People 

Transgender Renaming Service

Being a pastor for trans people

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Related:

The Bible, Trans People, and Names

Dear Christians: Here's how to ACTUALLY love transgender people (this is a list of links I gathered in 2015- some links are broken now)

The Church is a Safe Place for Awful Beliefs 

How Not To Love

So I Watched Josh Harris's Documentary

Blogaround

1. Police detain 50 after Pride march in Istanbul (June 26)

2. Zhongkao, Not Gaokao, Now the Make-or-Break Exam, Parents Say (June 26) "Part of the reason for parents’ anxiety is the zhongkao’s 50% pass rate as dictated by the Ministry of Education. Roughly half of middle school students go on to regular high schools, with the chance to take the gaokao three years later and be admitted to regular undergraduate universities, while the lower-scoring half either study in a vocational secondary school or drop out completely"

3. Will evangelicals be fooled by the ‘He Gets Us’ campaign? (June 27) Captain Cassidy found a "Christianity Today" article which turned out to be just an ad for the "He Gets Us" campaign.

4. Teach your kids about propaganda, or someone else will (June 26) "Teaching them critical thinking early on is essential. It’s like an intellectual vaccination, giving them a defense against all the toxic memes in the wilderness of the world."

5. When Did Jesus Mention Transgender, Intersex, and Asexual Folks? (June 19) and The Ethiopian Eunuch and Transgender, Intersex, & Asexual Folks (June 22) Very cool to see these posts about the biblical passages talking about God's acceptance of "eunuchs", and how there are similarities between "eunuchs" and modern-day transgender/intersex/asexual people. Obviously there are important differences too- but the point is, in the bible, there was more than just the gender binary and compulsory heterosexual marriage.

6. God Made them Male and Female…and Eunuch: Why the Biblical Case for Binary Gender Isn’t So…Biblical (2020) "Matthew’s Jesus does, however, recognize nonbinary gender in the grand finale of his teaching on divorce in a verse that conservatives routinely omit."

7. Woman Sues Anti-Abortion 'Pregnancy Center' After Her Ectopic Pregnancy Ruptured (June 26) "'Our client was forced to undergo a traumatic, dangerous, and completely avoidable emergency surgery to save her life because she was deceived into going to an anti-abortion clinic instead of an appropriate healthcare provider,' Liss-Riordan said. 'At every step of the way, she was led to believe she was receiving appropriate medical care when in fact she was subject to a campaign of misinformation and unfair and deceptive practices.'"

8. Fall Out Boy - Ghostbusters (I'm Not Afraid) (Audio) ft. Missy Elliott. Okay I'm sure I've shared this before, but here it is again. I love this cover of the Ghostbusters song SO MUCH.

The Logistics of a Revival

A whiteboard at the Asbury revival showing the times when the chapel is open on February 16. Image source.

My posts on the Asbury revival:

February 13 Blogaround
"There is no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred": What people do with "revival"
Does God Use Miracles To Take Sides? 
The Logistics of a Revival
Why I Don't Want to be at a "Revival"

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Really great post from Christianity Today: ‘No Celebrities Except Jesus’: How Asbury Protected the Revival (February 23). It's about the very practical decisions that leaders at Asbury University made to keep the "revival" focused on the things they believed it should be focused on. (The article is paywalled, but go ahead and click it because I think they give a few free views per month... Honestly for me it *is* worth paying the $49 yearly subscription fee for Christianity Today, just to read this article. I think that says something about what specific type of nerd I am...)

I love this post SO MUCH, because I think people have this idea that things like revival "just happen" and there's no conscious human decision-making. As if God just does this thing and then everyone is emotionally caught up in it and responds automatically. No, that's not how it works at all. The reality is there's A LOT of behind-the-scenes stuff going on to keep things running smoothly. The initial trigger may have been caused by God, but the things that happened afterward, to direct the event and shape it to be a certain way, was very much a product of human decision-making. (And yes, I'm sure that people prayed about these decisions a lot, and believed that it was God telling them to do those things- still, this is humans taking action, not something that God causes to happen automatically.)

Here, let's take a look:

The school had not planned an outpouring of the Spirit. But when something started to happen in the middle of the first week of February—the middle of the semester, a few days before the Super Bowl—an impromptu mix of administrators, staff, faculty, friends, and university neighbors quickly mobilized. They gathered in a storage closet off the side of Hughes Auditorium and then repurposed a classroom to facilitate and support whatever it was that God was doing.

As word spread, the crowds came, and debates raged online about whether this was a “real” revival, these men and women worked untold hours to make sure that everyone who sought God had food and water and restrooms and everyone was safe. Part of the story behind the story of the revival is the almost invisible work that went into protecting it.

“There were 100 people volunteering at any one time, just to make these services work on the fly,” Asbury University president Kevin Brown told CT. “There was a classroom that got redeployed into almost a command center. If you walked in, there were flow charts on the wall and the whiteboards were covered with information. There was a volunteer check-in station. … It was one of the most impressive technical feats I’ve ever seen.”

Yes! Love this! This is great. A team of volunteers came together to decide how to manage the "revival." And that NEEDED to happen, otherwise it would have become a disorganized mess. But the team of volunteers is doing that work, it's not "God." Like I said in another post on the revival, there's what God does, and then there's how people respond to it.

It wasn't just "God did this"- it was "God did a thing, and then we organized around it to make it into something." (I say this because personally I think there *is* something to this that's really from God- but I definitely understand if you don't believe that, and I am SO not on board with the evangelicals who are like "hooray let's pray that this happens in other universities too!" as if it's self-evidently a good thing.) It could have gone a completely different direction if the humans there had made different decisions.

Then they started thinking slightly longer term: “Will students stay all night? What does that look like? Should we leave the sound system on? Should we let students keep bringing guitars into chapel?”

The group decided to have ministers stay in Hughes and have security watch the building but keep it open. They would let the students stay and pray and sing as long as they wanted.

Other decisions they made in the next few days seem, as the ad hoc committee reflects on them now, almost like they happened by instinct. There was no time for drawn-out discussions. They would meet in the storage closet and make decisions minute by minute. Did they want to put up screens for the lyrics of the worship songs? No. Should ministers who spoke on stage stop to introduce themselves? No. Should they put up signs asking people not to livestream? Yes.

YES! I love this SO MUCH! So practical! These are very real decisions that needed to be made, and it all happened behind the scenes- and people might get the mistaken impression that these things just happened automatically because "God did it" or whatever. 

By evening the crowd had grown to about 3,000, and the university had to set up overflow rooms. At the same time, an uncoordinated infrastructure of support began to appear. An Asbury student set up a table and started handing out tea and coffee. She said Jesus told her to. A woman in Indianapolis baked chocolate chip cookies for a full day and then drove down to give them away. A professor went and got cases of bottled water.

Pizza appeared, unbidden, along with homemade potato soup, cake, a table of protein bars, and what one volunteer called “all the Chick-fil-A.” Someone volunteered to start organizing housing and put up signs with QR codes that people could scan to start the process of finding a place to sleep.

Yessssssssssssssss. Thousands of people descend on this little Kentucky town, creating PROBLEMS like where are they gonna sleep? And people needed to step in and do that organizing work. It's not an emotionally moving spiritual experience, but it's important and necessary.

As news of the singing, praying students ripped across social media and “takes” ricocheted around Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook, the team planned and organized, working out the details of how to deal with that tension. So when someone started blowing on a shofar—the curly ram’s horn trumpet that some charismatic Christians have turned into a symbol of MAGA politics and spiritual warfare—the chapel staff didn’t have a protocol for that exact situation, but they knew what to do. They asked the person to recognize the way God had showed up in the chapel and be faithful to the sweet, humble, peaceful spirit of the outpouring.

They did the same thing, Asbury staff told CT, when someone started praying loudly and aggressively. And again when someone started attempting an exorcism—not arguing about demonology or citing university rules, but invoking the authority of the outpouring itself.

“We want to be true to how the Holy Spirit showed up with our students,” said Baldwin, the vice president of student life. “We experienced joy. We experienced love. We experienced peace. There was lots of singing and testimonies. Those became our signposts. This is how, in front of our eyes, we are seeing the Holy Spirit come upon our students, and we want to honor that.”

Most people complied, though a few had to be asked to leave. One street preacher came wearing a T-shirt condemning gay sex and a plan, according to staff, to shout at students about perversion. He was escorted off the property. Another person wouldn’t stop praying aggressively and was told he had to go outside.

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH.

So, because this became a huge thing that attracted thousands of people, inevitably they got people who wanted to come and make big political/controversial/wacky overtures. And this volunteer team at Asbury did not allow that. Good for them! I love how practical this is- they don't just naively assume that since this is "from God" then nothing bad will happen.

It's interesting that the reason they give isn't "that's offensive" or "we don't agree with those beliefs"- instead, they said it was because they wanted to stay true to what the revival had been about from the beginning- about people having the experience of feeling God's presence. About singing and testimonies. By using this as the reason, they don't get into debates about which beliefs are right and which are wrong. Very interesting.

But you can see here that these sorts of practical decisions can potentially cause the "revival" to veer away from what God intended it to be. What if that weirdo trying to perform an exorcism was called by God to do that, and the Asbury volunteers were wrong to put a stop to it? Isn't this the kind of spiritual experience where you should be open to whatever God is doing, even if it's something really weird like having somebody loudly perform an exorcism?

So, my point is, this is a decision. If the would-be exorcist was sent by God, and you stop them, then you cause everyone to miss out on whatever amazing spiritual things God was planning to do involving the exorcism. But if you err in the other direction- if they're not from God, but you let them go ahead and do whatever they want, then they are doing something weird/offensive that messes up other people's spiritual experiences. And maybe more weirdos will show up and do other things like that, and turn the whole event into some kind of circus.

They had to make a decision- and it's a human decision, it's not something that happens automatically because "God." (Though yes, I'm sure the Asbury people were praying a lot to ask God what decisions they should make about all these practical things. Probably exorcist-person was also praying though!) Because of my own personal beliefs regarding exorcism, I think this exorcist-person was, uh, wrong, and the Asbury team made the right decision. But you see, my ideas of what's reasonable and what's not are very much rooted in my own beliefs about exorcism. It's not God making that decision- it's humans, with all their existing biases.

It makes me wonder what decisions they would have made on other "controversial" "issues", like existing as a queer person. But, again, these kinds of practical decisions are unavoidable. 

When the chapel staff opened up the microphone again for testimonies, they started vetting them first. As an added precaution, the Asbury team held on to the microphones while people talked.

YES! Vet the testimonies! I LOVE IT! OH MY GOODNESS I LOVE THIS ARTICLE SO MUCH!

I grew up evangelical, so I have been to many testimony services, where any random person from the audience can come up to the microphone and tell their story of how God has been working in their life recently or whatever. Before the testimony time starts, I've often heard the speaker remind everyone of "The ABC's of testimonies: audible, brief, Christ-centered. And D: don't preach." 

I have even been at some testimony services where some adult role model came up and offered a bit of vague pushback on some of the ideas from the students' testimonies. For example, in one testimony service I attended, a few students mentioned God telling them something in a dream. Later, one of the adults went up to the microphone and said, you know, just because something's in a dream doesn't mean it's from God- it could be caused by indigestion. It was very nice, gentle, didn't name names, but just wanted to correct an idea that was mentioned, so people in the audience didn't think that teaching was endorsed by the church in general.

And at Asbury, where thousands of people were coming from all over the country, man, you have no idea who is gonna come up to the microphone during testimony time and what they're gonna say. Vet the testimonies beforehand. Yes. I love it.

(Again, though, this is a point where this very practical, very necessary human decision-making may end up doing something contrary to God's opinion. I wonder what would happen if somebody's testimony was "God is telling me it's okay to be gay. God loves me just the way I am." Or "God is telling me that I need to trust him, and he'll give me the strength to overcome my same-sex attraction." I assume that since Asbury is a Christian university, their policies are not queer-accepting.)

There were also announcements that if people were moved by the Spirit to jump up and down, they shouldn’t do that in the nearly 100-year-old balcony.

YESSSS I love this SO MUCH. Like, there's this idea that in worship, you're supposed to be just totally carried away by your feelings towards God, and you just can't help it if you respond by raising your hands/ dancing/ jumping/ shouting. That's not true at all. You can control yourself. Asbury announced that jumping is okay but not if you're in the balcony.

Seminary students also got involved, sometimes formally, sometimes informally. Hermann Finch, a Methodist youth minister from Zimbabwe who is studying at the seminary, told CT he was asked directions to the toilet. So that’s how he decided to volunteer, pointing people to the port-a-potties for an evening.

This is so real. I was going to just say "he's doing the Lord's work" but people would think I was making a joke, and I'm not- that really is the Lord's work, helping people find the bathroom.

Going into the second weekend, however, the revival committee decided they would need to announce a limit to their hospitality. The town of Wilmore was overwhelmed, traffic was impossible, and news of the revival was only spreading more rapidly. Tucker Carlson, host of the most-watched TV news show, did a glowing segment on Asbury and told viewers the next day he was “still thinking about it.” Carlson said he “didn’t understand it … but whatever is going on seemed wonderful.” On Friday, former vice president Mike Pence tweeted he was “deeply moved to see the revival taking place at @AsburyUniv!” and noted his own religious awaking at a music festival there in 1978.

Early Saturday morning the school set up two large screens in the grassy semicircle outside the chapel to try to accommodate everyone. An estimated 7,000 people showed up that day—more than doubling the number of people in Wilmore. Most had to stay outside the chapel, even though the temperature reached only the 40s. Some reports placed the total number of weekend visitors around 20,000.

At some point, the team decided they had to bring the revival to an end, because the town was overwhelmed with people, and the volunteers were overwhelmed by working there all day long. Okay, this is great, I love this. Very real human concerns, like exhaustion, traffic, not wanting to be a burden on all the residents of this tiny town.

And, also- this is my view, not what the article says- God is everywhere. We don't need to keep this specific instance of "revival" going, because it's just feelings. What actually matters is what you do with it- and we already know what God wants us to do. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly before God.

Another thing not mentioned in the article was that the Asbury team decided to prioritize people under 25 years old ("Gen Z"). For people under 25, there was a separate line which moved much faster, to get into the chapel. (Source- I've heard/read this in a lot of places, here is one example.) This is a very human decision, and I find it very interesting because it is blatant discrimination. Now, I don't think this "blatant discrimination" is necessarily a bad thing- this is a college, of course their priority should be their own students rather than whatever random people drive in from who-knows-where. (They decided to expand it beyond their own students, to everyone in that age group.) I don't think there's anything wrong with that. My point is, this is quite obviously a decision made by humans, not something that God did. (And setting up 2 separate lines and directing people toward which line they should be in- also very much done by humans.)

They believed that the meaning of this revival is closely tied to college students/ Gen Z experiencing God, so that's why they prioritized people in that age group. That was their belief about God's purpose in the revival. I'm not saying it's right or wrong- I mean, I'm fine with it, they're a college, it makes sense that they focus on that age group- but I'm saying this is a human belief about what God is doing and what the revival is supposed to be. Humans decided that, not God. And, again, it's fine, I'm not saying it's wrong- I'm just pointing out that this revival wasn't something that "just happened" because "God did it"- it was very much shaped by fallible human decisions.

Okay, now here's a question: What if someone made the argument, "Yes, it was human decisions shaping the revival- but, since it was started by God, we can be confident that those human decisions were the right ones. Because, God knows the future, and God wouldn't have even started it if God knew that people wouldn't handle it right"?

No, I don't buy that.

I'm just really uncomfortable with the idea that, if you're fated to screw it up, then God's not even going to give you a chance. God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. I think people should have a shot at experiencing revival, even if they're people who aren't going to respond in the most perfect ways.

And, therefore, when God starts something, we absolutely can judge and critique how people respond to it. There's no "well God chose them to experience this, therefore whatever they do is automatically right." (Let's also judge and critique God!)

In summary: Wow, I love that Christianity Today article so much, because it's about the practical, behind-the-scenes work that shaped the Asbury revival. I love it because it's something that most Christians don't seem to be aware of at all. Like there's this myth that God just does these things, and then the rest just plays out automatically- but that's so not true. It was people making these decisions. And things could have been very different if they had made different decisions.

---

More posts about the revival:

The New York Times (paywalled): ‘Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town (February 23)

Relevant: Why Asbury University Decided to End Revival Services This Week (February 21)

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Related:

Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk 

The things I've never let myself say about worship

I Would Love to Know If God Intervened to Stop Covid From Spreading in Churches

People wearing masks at a church service. Image source.

So I saw this article from Christianity Today, The Curious Case of Coronavirus Contagion in Church, about a research study on whether or not people in the US who attended church during "lockdowns" were more likely to get covid. As an ex-evangelical math nerd, I was ALL OVER IT. Like, you guys, this is THE EXACT THING I am interested in. 

Christians always say "prayer works"- which I take to mean "prayer [if done correctly, feel free to add all kinds of criteria here about how to do it correctly] will cause God to take actual real actions in the world [not just psychological stuff in the pray-er's own mind, but affecting reality in ways external to the pray-er] to cause things to happen- or at least to change the probabilities that things will happen", for example, if you get a bunch of people to pray that a sick person will get better, then there is a higher probability that they will get better, compared to if people weren't praying for them. I am very interested in the question "what kinds of statistics and overall trends in the world would we be likely to see, if it is indeed true that 'prayer works'?"

Back in 2016, I wrote Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk, where I said that, if it's really true that "prayer works", then we need to harness that power by figuring out what the biggest dangers are in people's lives, and specifically praying against those things. As a first step, I looked up the stats on causes of death and found that heart disease is the biggest killer, with 23.53% of deaths- so, let's spend 23.53% of our prayer time praying against heart disease. And so on, building a model from there for how to pray most effectively. But Christians don't actually pray about the things that truly pose the biggest danger; we pray about things that we happen to be worried about. It's about our feelings, not about which things are truly harmful in reality (and we can know which things are truly harmful in reality by looking at statistics). 

Inexplicably, my post did not go viral and cause Christians all over the world to say "this blogger is absolutely right! I need to make sure in my church, we pray that people don't get into car accidents driving home from the grocery store 100 times more often than we pray for people to have a safe flight!" Or, alternatively, to say "wow if we follow this 'prayer works' logic then it leads to the conclusion that we are safest when we are constantly imagining what kind of horrible tragedies might happen to our families and praying against them, and I can't believe in a God who would want to destroy people's emotional health in that way, therefore I refuse to believe 'prayer works.'" (Which is the conclusion that I myself hold. I don't believe "prayer works" because I can't follow a God who decides whether to heal you based on whether you prayed "correctly.")

And in 2020 I wrote An Invisible Virus and an Omniscient God, where I said that, if it's really true that some Christians can have a "personal relationship with God" so strong that they become good at "discernment" and listening to God, then we should see extremely devout Christians getting infected with covid at lower rates than the general population, because God will warn them to avoid places where covid outbreaks are taking place, invisible to everyone except God. I very much doubt that this is the case, but I would love to see some statistics on it, and I thought perhaps this study in the Christianity Today article would be those very statistics.

And also, I have linked to this paper before: Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials (2009). The "Discussion" section at the end is EXTREMELY GOOD. It asks a lot of questions that people definitely should be asking if it's really true that "prayer works."

All this is to say, oh man, I am SUPER INTERESTED in the idea that perhaps God protected Their most devoted followers from getting covid, to an extent that's statistically significant. I don't believe it, but on some level, I still want to find statistical evidence of it. When I was evangelical I always wanted that, and bizarrely, no one else seemed to care. If they really believe it, then they should care, and that's why I'm still looking.

So let's take a look at Christianity Today's article. It's paywalled, but actually all the information is in the "article preview" and the only thing behind the paywall is one infographic, so don't worry if you don't have a CT subscription. And anyway, the study itself, which the article links to, is what we're really interested in.

CT titled their article "The Curious Case of Coronavirus Contagion in Church", and the subhead is "Pandemic impact was not as predictable as expected, sociological study finds." My first thought, upon reading this title and subhead, was that perhaps a study had found that, even though people who went to church in person during the pandemic were more likely to get covid than people who didn't go anywhere, they were less likely to get covid than people who went to non-churchy places in person. For example, imagine 2 hypothetical indoor gatherings of 50 people who are mostly wearing masks- one gathering is a church service, one gathering is something else- perhaps by some miracle, the people at the church service were less likely to get covid there than the people at the non-religious event. 

That was my first thought, on reading the title. Could it be that God intervened at church services to make it less likely for covid to spread there, compared to other in-person events with similar levels of social distancing, mask-wearing, etc? I am SUPER-INTERESTED to hear about any data on that.

(This probably says something about my own brain and where my thinking is, in terms of being evangelical vs ex-evangelical...)

Okay, so, no, that's not what the study said. Here's Christianity Today's summary:

People who went to church during the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns were generally more likely to catch COVID-19. This is fairly straightforward. Yet look a little closer, and the facts get a bit more perplexing.

The “association between attending in-person worship during lockdown and later testing positive for COVID-19 was limited primarily to those who were not previously frequent worship attendees,” according to a study published in the American Sociological Association journal Socius.

[The study specifically looked at May to August 2020. In the US.]

Oooh, fascinating! So if you were already regularly attending church, and you continued to regularly attend church throughout the "lockdowns" (I put "lockdowns" in scare-quotes because I lived through the Shanghai lockdown) (some of you have never set your alarm for 6:55 so you can button-mash on a grocery app at exactly 7:00 am for the slim chance to buy vegetables, and it shows), the church attendance didn't really increase your chance of getting covid. But if you didn't attend church much before, and then you just started attending during the "lockdowns", then there is an increased chance of you getting covid.

Wow! I am so interested in this data! On reading CT's article, my mind comes up with all kinds of explanations for this. Maybe people who just started attending church are not as strong Christians as those who were already regular attenders, and so God miraculously protected the strong Christians better than the weak Christians. Maybe for those Christians who defied government orders and kept having church, standing up against "persecution" [note: those of us who live in reality recognize that it was a public health emergency, not "persecution"], God supernaturally protected them from covid, just like Daniel in the lions' den. Maybe long-time church members have the experience and familiarity with how their church runs and are already connected to the church's social groups and communication channels, and therefore it's easier for them to adapt to whatever new policies get put in place to stop covid from spreading, but new people don't know what's going on at all so they can't follow the new anti-covid rules well. Maybe there's something about the sort of people who would suddenly start attending in-person church in a pandemic... who would do that?

(To be clear: All of that is my own speculation. CT's article doesn't say anything about that. I don't want to misrepresent what the CT article said. It simply said "here are the results of the study; how interesting that the increased chance of getting covid was only for the new attenders" but didn't give any speculation about the reasons why.)

And honestly, I really wanted it to be "God miraculously protected the strong Christians better than the new Christians." I went and read the whole paper (full text is here). The researchers who wrote the paper give this as a possible explanation:

However, interactions indicate that this increase was limited primarily to those who were not regular attenders previously. The results suggest that worship attendance during lockdown substantially increased COVID-19 infections for the minority who attended possibly as a form of protest.

And:

How do we interpret this latter finding? Contrary to what we might expect from the 2021 BRS or 2020 CES data showing an association between general worship attendance and COVID-19 infection, it does not seem to be the case that deeply devout Americans disregarded stay-at-home orders, attended worship gatherings frequently during lockdown, and then got infected and tested positive for COVID-19. Rather, our data suggest that some Americans who were relatively disconnected from faith communities (they rarely or never attended) reported attending in-person worship gatherings more frequently during late April or early May 2020, and it was these Americans who later tested positive for COVID-19. This suggests that their reported in-person worship attendance at the height of lockdown restrictions did not reflect their stronger commitment to religious community but that their very attendance may have been an act of defiance or protest against the restrictions. Persons who would have otherwise stayed at home (as they usually did in 2019) suddenly felt compelled to attend in-person worship when they were advised or demanded not to and then were more likely to test positive for coronavirus. Another possibility is that in-person worship would have been among the limited opportunities for even irreligious Americans to actually interact socially at the height of lockdown, though the strength of this explanation is mitigated somewhat by controlling for other kinds of gathering frequency.

Oooh! I had not thought of this explanation: that people who suddenly started attending church during "lockdown" did so as a political statement against the idea of government policies to stop covid, and in particular, restrictions on religious gatherings. I guess if that's their motivation, they're not going to be like "let's try to keep having church but with reasonable precautions to stop covid" like existing members would probably say. Instead, it's more of a "look at us, not following the rules! You can't stop us!"

And, continuing along those lines: Initially I was imagining that in any given church, you have some long-time members and some new people, and the new people are more likely to get covid than the long-time members, perhaps because God miraculously protects the long-time members because they are very good faithful Christians. [No, I don't actually believe that- I am just considering it as a statistical model.] But wait, what if it's not about specific individuals in a church, but about the overall congregation? What sorts of churches would have the most new members during "lockdowns"? Probably churches that were making big public statements about how they're not going to follow the anti-covid rules. Whereas, on the other side, I've heard of churches that required people to sign up beforehand if they wanted to attend the in-person services. Churches that had online services for a long time, and were very very careful about starting up in-person services again. That kind of caution and hoops to jump through will deter newcomers from casually dropping by to check out your church. Those reasonable and careful churches probably had very very few new people.

So- and this is just me hypothesizing; the actual data says nothing about this- maybe the question to ask is "what kind of church is most likely to have a covid outbreak?" And a church that takes the pandemic seriously and sets up a bunch of new policies- and is therefore more difficult for new people to attend- will be much less likely to have a covid outbreak than a church that proudly breaks the rules and attracts new people who attend just to make a political statement.

To be clear: the researchers' explanation (that new church attenders were more likely to get covid because they were just attending church to make a political statement) is just their attempt to explain their findings; it's not something that's supported by the data itself. It seems intuitively true to me, but do remember that it's just an idea and not something we have the actual stats to support. Same thing with my idea about churches that openly break the rules (and therefore have covid outbreaks) being more attractive to people who suddenly want to start going to church in a pandemic. It seems to make sense, but we don't have data on it, so don't believe it just yet.

But anyway, so, yeah, turns out this study doesn't show that God miraculously protects devout Christians from getting covid. The explanation offered by the researchers makes much more sense. At least I'm glad to see that long-time church members who continued to go to in-person church did not have an increased risk of getting covid (probably because most of them took it seriously and set up precautions to stop the spread, rather than treating it like an us-vs-them political issue). That's good news. But if we want statistical evidence that "God answers prayer" and/or supernaturally protects Their most devoted followers, we'll have to keep looking.

---

Related:

Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk

An Invisible Virus and an Omniscient God 

I'm SO HAPPY I Won't Be Praying During Childbirth

Blogaround

1. China grows rice in space using new zero-gravity laboratory (September 1) Cool!

2. Marvel reveals Emil Blonsky's She-Hulk haikus – and they're weirdly emotional (August 30) "To the world I am / an abomination but / to me I'm Emil."

3. Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part I: Spartan School (2019) A very long blog series about how Sparta was nothing like the modern pop-culture idea of what Sparta was. The actual Sparta was, uh, not a good place to live.

4. Mary Peltola set to make history as the first Alaska Native in Congress (August 31) 

5. Matt Chandler Steps Aside After Inappropriate Online Relationship (August 28) This baffles me because I can't figure out what he did wrong. He says he sent "inappropriate" Instagram messages to a woman, but the messages were not sexual or romantic, but they were overly "familiar"... so... what...?

I see several possibilities:

A. Maybe this church just really really really believes "men and women can never be friends" (which is a logical conclusion of evangelicals' teaching about sex and lust and temptation and the differences between genders) so any time a man and woman are sending friendly direct messages online, it's automatically seen as sinful. I don't think this is the right explanation though, because it doesn't seem realistic to me that a church would literally hold a leader to such a high standard, going so far as to hire a law firm, over something that everyone outside the church sees as no big deal. So there has to be more to it than this.

B. Maybe Chandler is telling us it wasn't "sexual or romantic", but that's a lie. Maybe in a few months we're going to hear a very very different version of this story, which this church is currently covering up.

C. Maybe there is some other very big issue here, something that's not sexual or romantic, but is still very bad (possibly abusive or illegal?). Chandler says the sin was that he was too "familiar" and there was "coarse and foolish joking" but perhaps that's a very misleading and inaccurate description of the actual situation. Perhaps there is some huge other problem that is not being mentioned.

So in other words, I'm not buying it.

6. 9/1 Flashback: A little creepy (September 1) The Slacktivist looks back on some blog posts he wrote in 2015 about how Christianity Today's articles on sex were "a little creepy" - now that we've found out about the culture of sexual harassment that existed at Christianity Today.

7. Yes, Texas is investigating parents of trans kids. We are two of them. (March 8) "We hired a lawyer. That night, we had a family meeting to prepare for the scheduled home interrogation by the CPS agent. We told the children that they have the right to not answer questions. We told them that the government is trying to spy on us even though we have done nothing wrong. We could see the pain, confusion, and hurt in their eyes. How do we square this situation with the civics lessons they are learning in school about our national ideals?"

8. The Cruellest Email Of All (August 31) 1-hour-35-minute sudoku solve video. Simon actually was given this puzzle incorrectly- 1 clue is missing- so you could say he is solving it on hard mode. Wow.

9. I don't want to date anyone. My twin is there to fill the void a romantic partner would. (August 26) "Since I'm asexual, this is the kind of relationship I'd want with my significant other anyway, so I think it plays a part in my apathetic attitude toward dating."

Blogaround

Image text: "For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Luke 8:17" Image source.

1. This Is the Southern Baptist Apocalypse (posted May 22) "For years, leaders in the Executive Committee said a database—to prevent sexual predators from quietly moving from one church to another, to a new set of victims—had been thoroughly investigated and found to be legally impossible, given Baptist church autonomy. My mouth fell open when I read documented proof in the report that these very people not only knew how to have a database, they already had one."

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to believe in hell.

Also, when church leaders say that you shouldn't speak up about abuse because the abusers are doing great things for God / spreading the gospel / etc, and you wouldn't want to make them look bad and screw up God's mission, that's called taking the Lord's name in vain.

2. An Anonymous TV Writer Offers An Inside Look At Why Special Effects Seem So Bad Right Now (posted May 18) 

3. Is Studying Overseas Losing Its Allure for Chinese Students? (posted May 19) "Some Chinese students have spent years preparing to apply for international universities. Two years into a global pandemic, they’re asking if it’s still worth it."

4. Christianity Today’s Sexual Misconduct Problem and the Complications with Forgiving Institutions (posted May 10) 

5. Student Loan Forgiveness vs the Parable of the Vineyard (posted May 12) 

6. Phistomefel's Wall (posted January) A 1-hour-and-21-minute sudoku video. I like this one because in the middle, Simon is genuinely scared he's not going to be able to solve it- I hadn't seen that in his videos before. He gets it in the end. (spoilers?)

7. How identical twins can cause serious problems for ensoulment (posted May 18) "Most identical twins come about when the fertilized egg splits at the two-cell stage. Mirror twins (one will be right-handed, the other left, and so on) are formed when the split happens around day 5 or so. If the split happens after day 10, conjoined twins will form. This can even happen at day 13 or 14."

8. This tweet:

Purity culture led me to believe it would be a lot easier to seduce men than it actually is. 😭😂

— Carissa Has Hope? (@exfundiediary) May 19, 2022

Also this reply

Tbh was really offended when I realized Devlin isn’t constantly struggling with how hot I am.

— Kelso Is Existing (@KelseyRyan77) May 19, 2022

And this reply

Its almost like the "seduction" language is being used to excuse predation, but that can't be it. 🤔

— Jordon von helf (@Jordonvonhelf) May 20, 2022

These tweets are prompting me to wonder if the purity teaching about "if you dress immodest, boys will all be breaking their necks looking at you, falling all over themselves trying to have sex with you"... they were teaching that not because it was true (it's NOT true- now that I'm an adult, I know that men are better than that), but because they wanted to provide cover for men who rape and abuse women and girls. They wanted to allow those men to blame it on the girl and get away with it.

Yeah... I can't believe it's taken me this long to think of this, but, here's an idea: What if all those things they warned us about in purity culture had nothing to do with "respecting yourself" and "protecting women" and "loving your husband", and actually were just about controlling women and girls?

I saw the SBC report and I'm mad. All this time that I've blogged about the problems of purity culture, I really thought it was well-intentioned, though it's based on a foundation of beliefs that will ALWAYS be harmful. Many other bloggers have said "it's because they hate women" but I never did.

But what if... what if the mistreatment of women and girls isn't because "well this is the system we were given, and we are trying to work within that system- we haven't considered the possibility of questioning it" (which was where I was, when I followed the purity rules)... but... someone really designed the system that way, on purpose, to benefit men.

Can't believe it's taken me this long to think of this. I've been blogging about the evils of purity culture for 10 years. I guess I always saw it as "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Never thought to ask questions like, who actually created these rules, and what was their motivation, and what if it actually had nothing to do with helping Christians have good marriages? What actual flesh-and-blood men created these rules, and what does it say about their own personal issues, and sinful refusal to view women as human, and weird sexual hangups?

Instead, I've always engaged with the ideas themselves, and written about "here's why this is incorrect, here is why it's harmful, here is my own personal experience with why this is a bad thing to believe."

But now... I saw the SBC report, and I'm mad.

9. My 2022 Reader Survey is still open (until June 30, 2022). If you haven't taken it yet, go ahead and take it. Thanks!

Blogaround

1. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Long Pause Explained Racism and Sexism in America (posted March 24) "Everybody knew that Ted Cruz got to stand up there and call Ketanji Brown Jackson whatever he wanted to, and nobody would stop him. Everybody knew that Jackson could not respond in kind if she wanted the job. And everybody knew that, in the same situation, Kavanaugh could and did sneer at his questioners, threaten the Senate with political retribution, and declare his undying love for beer, without hurting his chances at unaccountable lifetime power."

2. Harm Reduction: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (posted March 28) "But advocates say that much, much more is needed, including making sure that people who use drugs have a seat at the table during policy discussions, and that funding gets to community-based organizations providing the services for them."

3. ‘I Found It!’ (posted March 22) "Those memories of billboards, buttons, and bumper stickers came flooding back when I read this Christianity Today piece by Maria Baer last week: '$100M Ad Campaign Aims to Make Jesus the ‘Biggest Brand in Your City’.'"

4. As the Emmett Till Antilynching Act becomes law, we owe a debt to the mother who never let us forget (posted March 9)

5. 7 Things White Christians Can Do to Address White Supremacy at Church (posted March 20) "Pull together a group to write a more honest church history that begins with this simple question: Why is our church physically located where it is? Why is it in this part of our community and not another one? In nearly all cases this question will quickly lead to issues of racially segregated neighborhoods, white flight from cities to suburbs and land grabs from Native Americans, to name just a few. And other questions will flow from this beginning: Has the church ever had a policy or practice of prohibiting non-white members? Where was the voice of the church during past and present movements for civil rights? How different would a history of your church be if it were written by non-white members of your community?"

6. The Redemption of Redeeming Love: A Movie Review and Marketplace History (posted March 24) "But without fail, every time a new film adaptation is released, reviewers are once again shocked with the popularity of Christian fiction romance."

7. Madison Cawthorn Allegedly Overwhelmed By Washington Cocaine And Orgy Invites (posted March 28) Uh okay.

8. Twitter suspends Babylon Bee for naming Rachel Levine ‘Man of the Year’ (posted March 21) The Babylon Bee is trash.

Jesus: “Show me your funniest joke.”

Babylon Bee: "I have no funniest joke."

Jesus: "You are right in saying, ‘I have no funniest joke,' for you only have one joke, and the one you have is not funny."

— J.R.R. Jokin (@joshcarlosjosh) March 23, 2022

9. Another negative positive (posted March 30) "The previous time my wife tested positive I was sent home from the Big Box, told to get tested, and not permitted to return until 24 hours after a negative test result. This time they’re just, like, 'But you didn’t test positive right? So why aren’t you coming in? And why are you still wearing a mask like some weirdo?'"

(Meanwhile in Shanghai, I have been in lockdown for about 3 weeks because of the covid outbreak...)

10. Autistic Sensory Pain and the Medical Consequences (posted 2021) "If autistic people are constantly told that their sensory pain 'isn’t a big deal,' why would we assume you would take our physical pain seriously?" I am autistic, and all of this rings very true.

Blogaround

Movie poster for "Turning Red." Image source.

1. Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton Are Engaged (posted March 17)

2. Former Christianity Today editor Mark Galli accused of sexual harassment (posted March 15) and Sexual Harassment Went Unchecked at Christianity Today (posted March 15)

3. Why don't Jigsaw Puzzles have the correct number of pieces? (posted March 4) YES, THANK YOU, "Stand-up Maths" is asking the REAL QUESTIONS. This guy wrote a python script to predict the actual number of pieces, based on the claimed number of pieces, the dimensions of the puzzle, factors, ratios, and some subjective opinion stuff about quantifying how wrong it would be to have weird long pieces and/or a number way off from the claimed amount. I LOVE IT.

(Yeah I remember I was SO MAD when I was a teenager and liked to do 1000-piece puzzles and I discovered that actually it's not *EXACTLY* a thousand pieces! Probably about as mad as when I found out about "unabridged dictionaries"- WHAT, you mean all the words aren't in the REGULAR DICTIONARY???!!!)

4. We saw the new Pixar movie, "Turning Red," and I loved it. It's about a Chinese-Canadian 13-year-old girl, and I am happy to tell you that it has my Chinese husband's stamp of approval.

5. No Digits. No Clues. No Hope?! (posted 2021) A 1-hour sudoku video. I love it so much.

6. At the Bottom of an Icy Sea, One of History’s Great Wrecks Is Found (posted March 9) "The wreck of Endurance has been found in the Antarctic, 106 years after the historic ship was crushed in pack ice and sank during an expedition by the explorer Ernest Shackleton." This is INCREDIBLE.

7. Star Wars is Really a Cautionary Tale About Devoting All Technological Advancements to Death (posted 2018) "This means that these trash disposers, which have entrance points to permit living beings in and out of them, have no software for the purpose of detecting certain types of life and powering down on detecting that presence. It would seem the most obvious type of software to have in area so casually dangerous…and yet there’s nothing whatsoever."

8. Deconstructing Jealousy (posted 2016) "I don’t think that 'jealousy' is a useful concept. It’s used as an umbrella term for a variety of negative interpersonally-triggered feelings that are actually quite different from each other. Unfortunately, people don’t always realize this and may communicate about 'jealousy' without noticing that they’re talking about different things. ... I’ve identified six different feelings that are often called 'jealousy.'"

9. China's zero-Covid policy is showing signs of strain. But ditching it now could be a disaster (posted March 21) "'The problem is that if you continue to highlight the danger of the disease and demonize the pandemic response efforts of other countries, it means that the fear in the public won't fade away, and that makes moving away from a zero-Covid strategy difficult,' said CFR's Huang."