Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Happily Never After: The Curious Case of Love and Respect (Deep Dive) (February 5, 1-hour-15-minute video) This is a deep dive into the book "Love and Respect," which is the best selling Christian marriage book. The overall thesis of the book is that women need love and men need respect. If your husband is not treating you right, you can solve all your marriage problems by respecting him more. By never disagreeing with him. By never bringing up any problems. As it turns out, this is extremely bad advice. (This is part 1 in a 3-part series.)

2. No ID, No Support, No Plan: Michigan's wrongfully convicted launch app to fill reentry gaps (March 5) "Unlike parolees, who often have months of notice before being released and access to reentry services, exonerees may be released with as little as a few hours' warning and no support at all."

3. New NHS England Review Excluded 97% Of All Trans Studies To Say Care Doesn't Work (March 11) "These 10 reviews are not science. They are the machinery of a government that has decided to eliminate transgender healthcare and is working backward from that conclusion."

4. Technical Debt Collectors: China’s Coders Count Cost of AI Errors (March 12) "When programmers point out an error, the AI will apologize and acknowledge the problem, Wei says. But the new code it produces often introduces new bugs somewhere else, and the process repeats."

5. What Do We Owe the Insufferable? (January 30, via) "Liberals and leftists, committed to deinstitutionalization and autonomy, respond by 'pretending that mental illness never results in antisocial behavior, much less violent crime.'"

6. Home Remedies (March 9) From xkcd.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Photos from Iran and across the Middle East as the war enters Week 2 (March 10)

2. Thousands in New York City must work to keep SNAP food benefits. ‘The pressure is on.’ (March 3, via) "But a measure pushed by Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration will require about 123,000 New Yorkers to prove that they are working, volunteering or in school beginning in March. This now includes veterans, homeless people, youth aging out of foster care, and parents with children older than 14. It also means that some seniors who had retired under the old rules will now have to go back to work to continue getting food benefits."

3. NYU Langone faces Wednesday deadline to resume gender-affirming care for minors (March 11) "But state officials said NYU Langone’s move violated New York’s sweeping human rights law, which bans discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity. Attorney General Letitia James’ office gave NYU Langone until March 11 to resume the procedures."

4. Statue depicting Trump, Epstein as Jack, Rose from 'Titanic' appears on National Mall (March 11)

5. The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It. (March 10)

6. Is the US Military Trying to Bring Back Jesus? (March 14) "I absolutely 100% believe that some military leaders are using Evangelical Christian end times prophesy to generate excitement for troops to go into battle. That’s been happening for years, and they need it now more than ever considering that the past few wars in the Middle East were actually popular, while this one is not."

7. House GOP leadership silent as more members post anti-Muslim statements (March 14)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Social justice and empiricism (June 27) "Social justice could be understood, derogatorily, as a series of rules.  You can’t use this word as a noun, only as an adjective.  You can’t use that word, unless you have a certain ethnic identity.  Here’s a long list of things that must be marked with trigger warnings.  You must include representation of minority groups within any work of fiction, but you’re also not allowed to do that without getting input from the represented group.  I think this must feel constraining to people, like they’re not allowed to think and form their own opinion, they’re only allowed to give in to an inconsistent set of demands."

2. Impossible for Men, Unremarkable for Women (2022) "The assumption that women generally don’t experience sexual attraction (and therefore ace women are unremarkable) coexists with the assumption that women should (selectively) provide sex (to men)."

3. Wingnuts Exactly As Calm As You'd Expect Over Mamdani's NYC Primary Win (June 28) I saw this a few days ago and didn't really pay much attention to it, it's just the typical unhinged hate we always see from extremely-online MAGAs. But then I realized, these people are saying that no Muslim should ever be in a leadership position ever, because that would be the same thing as 9/11. This is absolutely bonkers and inexcusable. If you ever see any of these people's names in the future, in some kind of context where they're being presented as serious people worth listening to, well, don't forget this.

4. Supreme Court's conservatives give "defund" Planned Parenthood efforts a win (June 27) "On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservatives blocked Medicaid recipients from suing South Carolina over its decision to reject Planned Parenthood as a covered Medicaid provider."

Now is a good time to donate to Planned Parenthood.

5. Hard to imagine a worse time to deport Afghan refugees, human rights advocates say (June 28) "But this year, Iran and Pakistan have stepped up the deportations."

6. 200,000 March In Budapest Pride, Refusing To Capitulate To Anti-LGBTQ+ Law (June 29) "In the face of mounting attacks, it’s easy for LGBTQ+ people in the United States to feel crushed beneath the weight of it all. But moments like Budapest remind us that even under the most repressive regimes, our communities still rise."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. SCOTUS conservatives end "universal injunctions" in birthright citizenship cases (June 28) "The majority, Jackson wrote authorized a 'zone of lawlessness' with its ruling. In one zone, she wrote, 'law reigns' through court rulings protecting 'named plaintiffs.' In the second zone, however, the executive can enforce unconstitutional actions against 'those who lack the wherewithal or ability to go to court' — a reality that 'will disproportionately impact the poor, the uneducated, and the unpopular.'"

The Supreme Court did not actually rule on the question of birthright citizenship. They just ruled that the president can issue a blatantly unconstitutional order, which causes very real problems in people's lives, and federal courts can't block it, they can only say it doesn't apply to whoever brings a case to court about it.

We'll have to see how this goes. It seems untenable.

Also: What is birthright citizenship and what happens after the Supreme Court ruling? (June 27) "The strategic shift required three court filings: one to add class allegations to the initial complaint; a second to move for class certification; and a third asking a district court in Maryland to issue 'a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction asking for relief for that putative class,' Powell said."

2. The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system (June 29) The claim is that this can help states check their voter rolls for any non-citizens trying to vote. On the one hand I'm like "yeah there *should* be a way to easily check if someone is a citizen, for voting" but on the other hand I don't trust these clowns.

Also, what happened to the subculture of conservative Christians who always come out in droves to protest any kind of centralized system like this, because it's "the mark of the beast" that the "antichrist" is forcing on everybody?

3. USAID cuts could lead to 14 million deaths over the next five years, researchers say (June 30, via) "'The numbers are striking, but we are not the only group that did this kind of analysis,' said Davide Rasella, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, who coordinated the study. Other research groups, he said, 'came up with similar magnitudes — millions and millions of deaths that will be caused by the defunding of USAID.'"

4. DOJ announces plans to prioritize cases to revoke citizenship (June 30) The example in this article is someone who was convicted of distributing child sexual abuse material. Okay, I agree there is a case to be made for revoking citizenship for someone who committed a serious crime. But I don't trust these MAGAs at all. This plan to "prioritize" revoking citizenship, it's not about law or justice. It comes across like they're trying to come up with any reason they can to deport large numbers of people.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared. (February 20, via) "The surge in this life-threatening condition, caused by infection, was most pronounced for patients whose fetus may still have had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital."

2. How China’s ‘Ne Zha 2’ Beat ‘Inside Out 2’ to Become the Highest-Grossing Animated Film in History (February 25) There's a new cartoon movie in theatres, "Ne Zha 2" (pronounced "neh ja 2") and it's HUGE. It's breaking records. Not sure if y'all outside of China have heard about this?

3. Rain, Ruin, Repeat: The Chinese Villages Caught in Climate Chaos (February 25) "At 1 a.m. on July 27, villages across the region awoke to a relentless barrage of phone alerts, broadcast warnings, and the deafening clang of gongs — a rural alarm meant to signal immediate danger."

4. A child has died in the Texas measles outbreak (February 26) This is really sad. Everyone, make sure your kids are vaccinated.

5. Over 7,000 from scam centers in Myanmar are awaiting repatriation after crackdown (February 27) "Amy Miller, who is Southeast Asia director of aid group Acts of Mercy International and is based in Thailand's Mae Sot on the Myanmar border, told the AP she has never seen such a large-scale release of potential victims of human trafficking."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Btw, I don't actually believe in "the" antichrist. I just call that felon "the antichrist" or "the orange antichrist" because it's BONKERS how the people who were always on the lookout for the antichrist (signaling the end of the world is coming), who speculated endlessly about every major world leader possibly being the antichrist (is the pope the antichrist? is Obama the antichrist???), on the lookout for a leader who is greedy and dishonest and immoral and yet the crowds love him and he's even deceived Christians - THOSE PEOPLE are the ones who are now bowing down and selling their souls to him. It's just so unbelievable to me.

Here's what I want to say to them: When Christians say, "Jesus is Lord," what we mean is "Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not." Get it right.

2. "See You In Court": Maine Gov Responds to Trump's Face Over Anti-Trans EO At Governor's Address (February 23) "In a statement, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey vowed to 'defend Maine’s laws and block efforts by the president to bully and threaten us.'"

Also from Erin in the Morning: Nazis Burned Trans Books To Usher In Fascism: Now Trump Does The Same (February 25) "Trump’s digital erasure of transgender people is more than policy—it is a declaration that the very existence of certain human beings is unwelcome in the official record. This is not a hallmark of a democratic leader respecting courts and laws; it is the move of someone intent on atrocity."

The evangelical position on this has always been that being trans is not a real thing. I'm not surprised that now that they have power, they want everyone to act like being trans is not a real thing. 

We have to resist. 

3. Data Rescue Project (via) A site summarizing the efforts to archive government data because it's being removed from government sites.

4. “We’ve Been Essentially Muzzled”: Department of Education Halts Thousands of Civil Rights Investigations Under Trump (February 13, via) "Since 1979, the department’s civil rights arm has worked to enforce the nation’s antidiscrimination laws in schools. It operates under a congressional mandate to uphold the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the federal laws that prohibit discriminating against students because of gender or disability."

5. Federal computers are hacked to show fake AI video of Trump kissing Elon Musk’s feet (February 25) "'Building staff couldn’t figure out how to turn it off so sent people to every floor to unplug TVs,' Kabas said, quoting an anonymous agency source."

6. Bad Bosses are not beloved (February 25) "This, again, is part of the definition of a Bad Boss — sneering contempt for whatever it is that you do resulting in interference with your ability to do it."

7. People Are Mass-Emailing Elon Musk In Response To His "What Did You Do Last Week?" Message To Federal Workers (February 25, via) Oh it turns out we can all email Elon at hr@opm.gov and tell him 5 things we did.

8. Jeff Bezos' revamp of 'Washington Post' opinions leads editor to quit (February 26) "'We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,' Bezos wrote in a memo to staffers announcing the changes." What on earth.

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" (book review)

Book cover for "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," 1995 edition.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, by Mark Noll, is a book that was published in 1995. (There's also a 2022 version which includes some updates about Trumpism.) I've seen this book mentioned by ex-evangelical blogs many times over the years, and I finally read it. Here is my review of it.

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The overall thesis of the book

I had heard that this book was about anti-intellectual pressures in evangelical Christian culture. I had heard the quote, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." 

And, growing up evangelical, I had experienced some of this anti-intellectualism. There are questions you're not allowed to ask in church. There is an attitude that "we know better than scientists and scholars because we have the bible." I was guessing that was the sort of thing this book would talk about.

But it mostly didn't. It was not about what it's like "on the ground" in evangelical culture. Noll is a historian, and the book traces the history of evangelical attitudes toward intellectual thought, over the past several hundred years, showing the movements that came and went, and how that led to where we are today. (Or rather, in 1995.) That's really useful to know about, but it wasn't what I was expecting, so at first I couldn't really understand what Noll's point was.

Here's his point: Evangelicals have not done the work of applying evangelical beliefs to high-level academic study. Catholics have universities which were founded out of the Catholic tradition and do good quality research in many many different fields, but evangelicals don't really have anything like that. Yes, there are evangelical seminaries and bible colleges, of course, but these aren't really known for their high-level research. We should be applying evangelical ideas to all fields of academic research- philosophy, art, politics, and so on, but evangelicals aren't doing that.

And, because of that, evangelicals are not obeying the command to "love God with your mind." They are not interested in learning about the world that God created. And because evangelical thinking is so shallow, they are not prepared to face new ideas or societal developments and respond to them in a way that's reasonable and consistent with evangelical Christian beliefs.

The first thing that came to mind for me was, well, what about creationism, that's an example of evangelicals applying their ideology to science and going really deep with it and inventing a whole field of """science""" that's completely different from "secular" science. But, then Noll mentioned creationism as an example of evangelical anti-intellectualism. So, no, that's not what he thinks evangelicals should be doing.

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I have to admit I don't really get it

I'm having a really hard time grasping what it would mean for evangelicals to deeply apply evangelical thinking to big academic questions or societal problems.

The book talks about how Catholics have historically valued tradition and study, and major universities were started because of a Catholic drive to learn about the world and do excellent academic work. It's very hard for me to imagine evangelicals doing something similar, because, to be honest, when I was evangelical, that was one of the reasons we viewed Catholics as "fake." Yes, we were highly suspicious that Catholics were "fake Christians" because being Christian is about having a "personal relationship with God" (this is how evangelicals define "Christian"), and Catholics were not so big on that. Catholics were more into tradition and church hierarchy. Evangelicalism is about reading the bible yourself, experiencing God yourself, having spiritual experiences that mean a lot to you personally but are hard to explain to other people. We felt that Catholics had kind of missed the point- they followed their traditions and their church leaders and the pope, rather than going directly to the bible or directly to God. They were all caught up in listening to what other people said about God, rather than having a "personal relationship" with God. So, they were highly likely to be "fake Christians."

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" talks a lot about this aspect of evangelicalism. Experiencing God and the bible in an "intuitive" and personal way, which is accessible to everyone- and how that causes evangelicals to not value advanced academic study.

Academia is all about building on the work that other people have done. Spending years learning about some very very niche problem and then advancing humanity's knowledge on it- and only people who have spent years studying in your same field can even understand what you're working on. To me, it feels very incompatible with the evangelical focus on how God is always right there with us and God knows everything, and we already have all the answers we need because we have the bible.

Yes, there are evangelicals in academia. Of course there are. I went to grad school, for engineering, and I was evangelical back then. What I'm saying is, I don't understand what it would even look like to meaningfully bring one's evangelical beliefs into one's academic work, unless you were studying theology or something very obviously religious like that. The evangelicals who study engineering, for example, keep their engineering work separate from their religious beliefs. Yes, sometimes there's an element of "I'm really stuck on this problem, I'm going to pray for God to help me figure it out" or "I can't take credit for figuring this out on my own- God gave me the ability to do it." But beyond that, I don't see how they can mix.

Okay, maybe because I'm thinking about my experience in STEM, that's why it doesn't make sense to bring religious beliefs into it. Maybe for fields about philosophy and morality, and art and meaning, and how we should live and how we should structure society, maybe in those areas it makes sense that evangelicals should bring their evangelical beliefs into their academic work. And Noll says there are evangelicals who do a good job of this, but mostly they work for secular or Catholic universities. There aren't evangelical institutions where people do this kind of work.

But I'm still having trouble understanding what Noll wants evangelicals to do, exactly. The examples in the book, of evangelicals doing this well, come across as not evangelical, to me.

I'm not sure how to explain how exactly this feels "not evangelical." It's something about... for evangelicals, being a Christian is about having an active, dynamic, emotional "personal relationship with God." It's a little wild, a little risky, full of big dramatic gestures about "laying down your life", and God suddenly "calling" you to go do some ridiculous thing. This is the polar opposite of good academic work, which is about spending years studying the minute details about what other researchers have done in your field, very careful, getting the citations right, making sure every claim you make is backed up by something that your readers could look up. Just years of normal and boring human work- no "you have to believe me because God randomly told me this."

And it feels really "not evangelical" to me, when considering the question "what does our Christian faith have to say about this or that issue?", to answer by citing sources built on years of human effort doing the necessary academic work. No, that's exactly what we're NOT supposed to do, right? We should address the question "what does our Christian faith have to say about this or that issue?" by praying about it and considering whether any thoughts which subsequently pop into your head may or may not be from God. And reading the bible and simplistically applying 1 bible verse to whatever the issue is.

The bible says "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." And "leaning on your own understanding" sounds a lot like valuing a legacy of work done by academics over many years, right? "Trusting in the Lord with all your heart" would be believing whatever random thing "God told you" just now, right?

So, I mean, I understand that evangelicals can be in academia and do good work there, but the work itself does not read as "evangelical" to me. It's a separate thing from their religion. So I couldn't really understand what Noll would want this to look like, in an ideal world. 

Keep in mind, this book was written in 1995, so things may be much different between then and when I was "on fire for God" sometime around 2010-ish. Also, my experience is as an average church member, who also read a lot of bible-study books because I'm a nerd. Whereas, Noll is a historian who studies evangelical culture in the US. He is an evangelical with much more of an academic background than I have. I've heard (mostly from the Slacktivist) that there is a disconnect between what pastors learn in seminary and what the average churchgoer believes. For example, scholars who have actually studied the story of the Exodus know that it didn't really happen. But even if the pastor knows this, no way they can say it out loud in church- to the average evangelical, it's very much NOT acceptable to believe the Exodus didn't really happen- that's an attack on the bible! So there's a disconnect between the anti-intellectualism of the average churchgoer, and the higher-level leaders who have more awareness that these commonly-required evangelical beliefs just aren't true.

So my point is, it's very likely there's a difference between my opinion and Noll's on what "feels evangelical."

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Creationism and pre-millennial dispensationalism

The two main examples of anti-intellectualism that this book gives are young-earth creationism and pre-millennial dispensationalism [PMD]. Here, let me define them: Young-earth creationism is the belief that God created the whole universe in 6 days, like Genesis 1 says, and therefore the earth is only about 6000 years old. Pre-millennial dispensationalism is the belief that the world is going to end "soon", and Jesus will come and "rapture" all the Christians away, and then the anti-christ will come, etc, and therefore we should obsess over news stories about things happening in the Middle East, to look for clues that match up with the prophecies in the bible.

I used to believe in young-earth creationism. And as for pre-millennial dispensationalism, and the other popular Christian ideas about how the world will end "soon", I never got into that at all. I guess I believed it was true that the bible gave prophecies about when the world would end, and that Christians who paid attention would be able to pick up on the "signs" when it happened, as the PMDs claimed. But I felt there was a very low probability that any of it would happen in my lifetime, so I didn't see any point to doing that kind of obsessed analysis and "being ready" for when Jesus comes. I thought, we've had 2000 years of Christians believing Jesus would come back "soon", and all of them were wrong. Probably it won't happen in my lifetime either! So I very much refused to be part of any of the "Jesus is coming back SOON, we have to be READY" hype.

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" points out that creationism is about refusing to learn about this amazing world that God made, if that knowledge might contradict your view of what "the bible says." And PMD ideology responds to news events in the Middle East (and/or the question of whether bar codes are "the mark of the beast") in an extremely shallow way- simply trying to match them up with bible verses, making claims about "here's what the bible says about this." Rather than actually learning about the history of the real-life groups involved, what they actually want, the reasons for conflict, etc.

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Inerrancy

The book talks about the evangelical belief in biblical inerrancy. Noll describes this modern approach as taking a "scientific" view of the bible; in other words, viewing the bible as a list of ironclad true statements, and building on top of that. Developing ideas about biology/geology, as in young-earth creationism, or piecing bible verses together like a challenging puzzle, to find connections to modern news events, as in pre-millennial dispensationalism. Simply taking each verse as a true statement which can be 100% believed, and making logical deductions accordingly. 

This is a very new view of the bible. (Noll says that Christians who argue for this reading of the bible aren't "defending the bible"; they're defending an interpretation that's less than 100 years old.) In contrast, one could read the bible with an awareness of ancient literary genres and the reasons that writers would have spun the stories in certain ways. The things they wrote to make sense of the world, not because they actually happened.

This is also a bit confusing to me- is Noll saying biblical inerrancy is an example of evangelical anti-intellectual sentiment, and therefore evangelicals should abandon it? This makes no sense to me. How can you BE evangelical and not believe in biblical inerrancy? Like, yes, I agree that evangelicals should abandon their belief in inerrancy, but by doing so, they would cease to be evangelical- yes, I believe they should abandon evangelicalism, actually. But obviously that's not what Noll is trying to say.

I don't recall if the book says inerrancy is a problem, or if it says this approach of "reading the bible scientifically" is a problem. From my point of view, those are the same thing. As I define it, inerrancy is this insistence that every single thing in the bible is true, actually true. Does Noll define inerrancy differently? Does Noll think you can believe "the bible is inerrant" and also believe that the creation story in Genesis 1 didn't actually happen at all, under any interpretation of the word "happen", but was just something they wrote back then to illustrate how they viewed the relationship between God, people, and the earth? That's not inerrancy- or at least, I would not call it inerrancy.

Again, this book was published in 1995. Surely things have changed since then. And Noll is coming from an academic background, whereas I just went to church A LOT. So... that's why I'm not quite understanding some of his points.

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Some examples of my experiences of anti-intellectualism in church

In my experience in church, yes there were comments about how we already know the answers because we have the bible, and scientists don't know what they're talking about. I remember hearing a story that went something like this:

My 6-year old son was at school, and his teacher was telling the students that the Exodus didn't really happen the way the bible said. Moses didn't really part the Red Sea. The Israelites just walked across on a sand bridge where the water wasn't as deep. Just a few inches of water. Then my son raised his hand and said, "Wow, it's so amazing that the whole Egyptian army drowned in just a few inches of water!"

The point of this story is: Oh those public schools, trying to tell our kids that the bible isn't true! It's horrible, it's an attack on Christianity! This teacher talking about the Israelites walking through a shallow section of the Red Sea- lololololol! So ridiculous! Taking the big dramatic story about Moses parting the Red Sea, and turning it into this silly thing about simply wading through the water- that's so funny! Lolololol! And it doesn't even make any sense, because then how would the Egyptian army drown in that water? Even a child can see right through it! LOLOLOLOL! [whole congregation laughs]

(And don't even get me started on the uninformed jokes people at church make about evolution!)

I remember one of my history teachers in high school, saying something like "Religious people believe [some bible story]. And historians believe [some modified version of the bible story which doesn't have miracles]." I really didn't like the way she said it, like saying "people who are more realistic know that the things in the bible didn't really happen." I wondered if there were any historical scholars who were "on our side", ie, who believed a very simplistic, naive, "the bible is inerrant" ideology.

Another thing: I sometimes read articles talking about "People say Christians don't value science, but that's not true! There are scientists who are Christians! For example, Francis Collins." I don't know why, but it seemed that Francis Collins was always the one they pointed to. I heard about him many times, but I don't actually know what his scientific contributions were. I think something about medical research? [Oh okay I just googled him- he worked on the Human Genome Project.] Wow, that's very interesting, isn't it- evangelicals mention Francis Collins just to score points in a debate against an atheist who says "Christians are anti-intellectual", but do we know or care about what scientific things Collins actually worked on? Lol, no. We mentioned him not because we actually cared about science, but because we wanted our debate opponents to stop saying we didn't care about science.

And another thing I remember from when I was evangelical was this: Sometimes I would read about scientists who were Christians, and it was presented like "hooray, our beliefs aren't illogical, see, here are some smart people who believe in this." But sometimes I would dig deeper, and find more information about these role models, and I would find out that they didn't actually believe all the things that "real Christians" should believe. Their faith was much more nuanced than that. For example, they weren't creationists. They didn't believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Etc. So... they didn't meet the evangelical criteria to be "real Christians" actually. And so they couldn't really be used as evidence for "see, smart people believe these things." I remember being kinda concerned about that, back then.

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Other writing which used "scandal" in the title

Because this is an important book related to the history of American evangelicalism, the title has inspired some other similar titles:

The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart, a 2013 post by Rachel Held Evans. It's about how she grew up always knowing all the apologetics answers- but the reason she began to question what she had been taught was because of her heart. This is very similar to my own reasons for leaving evangelicalism. 

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, a 2005 book by Ron Sider. I have not read this, but I know that Ron Sider was an evangelical who advocated for evangelicals to seriously follow the bible's teachings regarding helping poor people and other social-justice causes.

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Conclusion

If you're always talking about evangelicalism, like I am, then you should read this book. Yes, definitely required reading if you are this specific type of person.

But, as I said, I feel like I didn't really *get* it. I don't even know what it would look like for evangelicals to seriously apply their beliefs in an academic sense. That would mean valuing tradition and history and the work that other people have done, long before us, and that comes across to me as not evangelical. Evangelicals are more about "I read this bible verse and here's how I felt about it" or "I was praying and a random thought popped into my head, maybe it's from God"- and treating these personal, emotional experiences as more real and truthful than whatever those stuffy arrogant scholars have to say. From that perspective, building on the academic work that people have been doing for hundreds of years is NOT a good thing- it means there have been hundreds of years during which that line of study could have gotten off-track, as sinful humans continue to develop it. Better to go directly to the source- directly to God, who is the Truth- ie, whatever random thoughts passed through your head while praying and/or reading the bible.

I honestly don't see any way you can be evangelical and believe that the way we advance our evangelical thinking is through work done by researchers rather than claims about "God told me this."

Well, I mean, I'm oversimplifying it a bit... In my experience, yes, evangelicals are interested in learning the meanings of ancient Greek and Hebrew words, to understand the bible better. Yes, evangelicals do believe that whatever the original Greek or Hebrew said is a better interpretation than whatever naive thought popped into your head when you read an English translation. Yes, we did believe we could get more insight into what the bible was saying if we learned about the culture it came from. And no, we didn't just believe that any thought that flittered across your mind while praying must be a message from God.

But... it wasn't like we were going to learn anything new from that kind of study. It was like, we already knew the answers, generally, and we looked up the meanings of ancient Greek words to kinda fill in some details.

And yes, we very much did believe that it was common for God to tell you something by just giving you some random thought out of the blue. A big source of evangelical anxiety is trying to figure out which random thoughts are from God and which aren't. (And some random thoughts might actually be from the devil! Watch out!)

I never realized how the "personal relationship with God" is so bound up with anti-intellectualism, so I'm glad I read this book. 

(When I think of anti-intellectualism in Christian spaces, I think of someone saying "I'm having doubts about the existence of God" and then people shaming them for even saying that out loud. People telling them the point is to "have faith" with no evidence. And yeah that kind of thinking definitely exists in evangelical spaces, but there are also a lot of evangelicals pushing back against it, saying, "God really is real, therefore our beliefs are strong enough to handle any questions you have. Ask any questions you want. It's normal to doubt." I was one of the evangelicals advocating for the right to question and doubt back then. But still, there was always a limit to it- you could ask any question you wanted, but at the end of the day you had to come back to what we already know are the "correct" beliefs.)

In the book, Noll doesn't really come right out and say "the concept of a 'personal relationship with God' is inherently anti-intellectual." He talks about historical movements which have placed emphasis on each person being able to easily understand the bible and having an "intuitive" experience of God, and how that came along with de-prioritizing advanced academic work based on evangelical beliefs. I'm having a hard time understanding what he would want evangelicals to do instead, because to me this is sounding like "the concept of a 'personal relationship with God' is inherently anti-intellectual" but I don't think it's possible to be evangelical and not believe that the most critical aspect of Christian faith is having a personal relationship with God.

So, in summary: This is an important book if you're interested in the history of American evangelicalism. Evangelicals have emphasized having an individual, "intuitive" experience of God, and have not applied their beliefs in more advanced, academic ways. The result is a shallow ideology which isn't able to meaningfully address new societal issues. But, I don't understand what the book wants evangelicals to do instead. Respect for history, tradition, and the work that scholars have done feels not evangelical to me.

---

Related:

I used to be a young-earth creationist 

A Bit Suspicious That "Heavenly Tourism" Confirms Everything We Already Believe

Blogaround

1. ICC issues arrest warrants for Israel's Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas leader (November 22)

2. How Trump’s “Mass Deportation” Plan Would Ruin America (Sep/Oct issue, via) This article has statistics about how a huge percentage of farm workers (and workers in other essential industries) are undocumented, and if they were all deported, it would devastate the US economy.

So... the thing I'm confused about is, if the country needs them, then why is it illegal? The US immigration policies don't make sense, then- the economy is dependent on people breaking immigration law. ????? What's going on here? We need to change the immigration law to reflect the fact that we really need immigrants. Right?

3. Star Power: China’s Businesses Count Cost of Fake Reviews (November 27) "Allegations from former Chagee employees also surfaced online, claiming the chain imposed strict limits on negative reviews, allowing just three per 10,000 orders — any more and the employees’ salaries would be docked."

Also from Sixth Tone: Copy Right: The Painstaking Method and Magic of Mastering a Replica (November 29) "Across China, a growing number of national museums are embracing 'craft restoration' — a method that emphasizes recreating artifacts not just for their appearance, but as faithful embodiments of the techniques that originally shaped them."

4. Big Pharma Is the Only Reason Anyone Still Dies From HIV (November 29) "The second problem is that the pharma industry spends millions a year lobbying Congress to keep its R&D costs a secret. It’s one thing to tell Congress you need to charge high prices to recover your costs, but it’s a little disingenuous if you spend $379 million a year to make sure nobody knows what those costs are."

5. Hal Lindsey is gone (the Late, Great Planet Earth is not) (November 30) "They taught their followers that the only thing that mattered was being 'Rapture ready,' but away from the microphones they had all made sure they were ready for life — long life — without a Rapture. I wish we’d all been ready."

Also from the Slacktivist: Take back the web (what’s in your RSS feed?) (December 2) "But if making more money for Google — and Meta, and X — is not the primary goal of your time on the internet, then you may find that using an RSS is a wonderful, glorious, liberating thing."

Blogaround

1. I feel like I should say something about what's going on in Palestine? I don't know what to say though, it's just horrifying, and posting on the internet "I stand with Palestine" doesn't actually help anything... I just wish people would stop bombing people.

2. Idaho hospital closes its maternity ward, citing the state’s ‘political climate’ (March 22)

3. The Trouble With Circular Reasoning Is.... (!) (October 15) 1-hour-21-minute sudoku solve video.

4. China joins Apostille Convention - no legalization for public documents (March 14) Well this will (hopefully) decrease the amount of bureaucracy that immigrants in China (like me) have to deal with. See, the way it is now, if you're applying for a visa or something in China, you have to bring a bunch of documents, and if the documents were issued in other countries, they need to be "legalized" by some Chinese authority to prove they are real. I'm not sure exactly what documents this change will apply to- off the top of my head, I'm thinking about things like diplomas and marriage licenses. (But also, don't get too excited- I would be 0% surprised if China invents some new bureaucracy steps to replace the old ones.) The change goes into effect on November 7, 2023. 

5. Sex and the end of the world (October 16) "The future they’re being told they’re never going to have was already a life of futility and meaninglessness. So when they’re told that future won’t be there for them, they’re not going to think about all the things they’re never going to get to learn or to teach, to create, to build, to share, to discover, or to enjoy. They’re not going to think about how they’ll never get to break every chain, or to let justice roll down like waters. The main thing they’ll think about missing out on will be the main thing they’ve heard about in youth group from day one: sex."

Damn. Preach.

6. Ending Junk Fees, the Most Annoying Thing in American Commerce (October 15, via) "We’ve all experienced these in one form or another. You go to a hotel, and instead of being given the price quoted to you online, they add a $25 'amenity' fee, or 'resort' fee, or something like that." Wow, reading this article, I'm like... astonished at the idea that the government could really stop businesses from charging hidden fees. Like, I always thought that's just the way it is, and as a consumer you need to know that the price it says isn't really the price it is, and be prepared for that. But, man, no, it DOESN'T have to be that way.

I remember the first time I came to China, buying things at a mall or restaurant, and the price that it said on the price tag was the price it ACTUALLY WAS, and that BLEW MY MIND. No extra is charged for tax or tip- that's all already included in the price on the price tag. And now that I think about it, even for bigger things in China (hotel rooms, etc), the price that it says is, quite often, LITERALLY the price that IT IS, even though I've always been prepared to pay more because that's what I expect as an American.

7. Solving Fractal Mazes (October 18) "With all that explanation, I hope you’re half as excited about fractal mazes as I am." Yesssss.

8. Making It So: A Memoir [affiliate link] I just found out that Patrick Stewart has published a memoir. Oh I am so excited about this!

9. Trump Gets the Corporate Death Penalty (And It's Getting Worse) (October 7) 22-minute video from Legal Eagle, explaining what's going on with the orange antichrist's businesses in the state of New York. Basically the court ruled that he loses all of his business licenses in New York. Wow. As one of the comments says, "You know it's bad when the lawyers stop saying allegedly."

10. Biden urges striking auto workers to ‘stick with it’ in picket line visit unparalleled in history (September 27) "The fact of the matter is that you guys, the UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 ... you made a lot of sacrifices. You gave up a lot. And the companies were in trouble. Now they’re doing incredibly well and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well."

11. Once Upon a Studio | Official Trailer | Disney+ (September 22) There's a new short film to celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary, and it's SO GOOD. It's cartoon characters from almost all of their movies, coming together to take a photo. The link I'm posting here is just a short trailer- I didn't find the entire video available on youtube. (I watched it on bilibili, a Chinese video site.)

I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back." But, be ready.

Portal scene at the battle in "Avengers: Endgame." Image source.

[content note: spoilers for "Avengers: Infinity War", "Avengers: Endgame", and "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier"]

So I decided to get back to my blog series blogging through the gospel of Matthew. Let's take a look at Matthew 25:1-13, "The Parable of the Ten Virgins." 

Go click the link and read it :)

Okay, so, my first reaction to this is that I don't really know what to do with it, because it's about Jesus coming back ("the bridegroom" arriving in the parable). And, even when I was evangelical, I could never understand why we were supposed to care about Jesus coming back. I reasoned that the church has been around for 2000 years, and all throughout that time, anyone who said Jesus was coming back "soon" turned out to be wrong. Odds are, it's not going to happen in my lifetime, little-Perfect-Number said to herself, so the most logical response is to just not care about it at all.

I read in the bible "be ready" and I was like, no, don't think I will.

Or, sometimes I thought, okay, if Christians say I'm supposed to "be ready" because Jesus could come back at any moment, what does that actually mean? What specifically do I need to do? And people gave me answers like "get saved" and "obey God" and "don't get caught in the middle of a sin." And I thought, aren't these things we should all be doing anyway? So I still don't see any reason to be interested in whether or not Jesus is coming back "soon."

Back then I believed in something sort of along the lines of "the rapture." (I believed in the general idea, though my mom always said that it was not cool how Christians think a "Left Behind"-style rapture is from the bible- all the "real Christians" disappear at the same time and leave piles of clothes behind- yeah, indeed, not cool how people think that's from the bible. It's not.) But now, as an ex-evangelical reading this, I ask myself what I believe about Jesus coming back. Sometimes on this blog I mention that I believe the kingdom of heaven will come to the earth, and that I believe there will be resurrection. But is it going to be Jesus suddenly appearing and righting all the wrongs of the world at the same time, magically? No, that doesn't make sense.

See, here's the thing about the rapture, as portrayed in the "Left Behind" books: The suddenness of it, on such a huge global scale, causes all kinds of disasters. Car accidents because drivers suddenly disappeared. Plane crashes because pilots suddenly disappeared. Imagine the effects on the economy/ supply chain, when a significant proportion of the population suddenly disappears. It would be a disaster.

And, well, maybe "Left Behind" isn't a good example, because perhaps the point was that it should be a disaster for those non-Christians who are left behind, but we don't need to care about them because we'll be raptured.

(Though I will say, it's common for evangelical teenagers to worry that Jesus is going to return before they get a chance to have sex. So, there's an example of how, even though being "raptured" is a positive thing, the timing of it will inevitably be bad for some Christians. Just because of the massive scale of it, it's statistically inevitable that Jesus is going to interrupt some good pure virgin couple's wedding night.)

Here's a better example: "Avengers: Endgame." Or, rather, we'll get to "Endgame" in a minute, but first I'll mention the Snap in "Avengers: Infinity War", because it's basically the same as the rapture in "Left Behind"- half the population of the universe suddenly disappears, and there's chaos because those disappeared people were in the middle of doing things which become dangerous if suddenly left unattended. And then in the aftermath of it, the world has to learn how to cope with such a huge change.

But anyway, the Snap in "Infinity War" was performed by Thanos, the villain, so it's not a good comparison to Jesus coming back. Let's talk about how the heroes set things right in "Endgame." In "Endgame", 5 years have passed since all those people disappeared in the Snap. The Avengers are on a mission to collect the infinity stones so they can undo the Snap- but there is a discussion to be had about how exactly to undo it. Do they just erase the past 5 years, go back in time to right before the Snap, and then live in a universe where none of it ever happened? Tony Stark can't accept this idea, because he has a daughter who was born in those 5 years. He insists that they can't change anything about those 5 years. So, in the end, once they gather the infinity stones, they fix the universe by bringing back all the people who had disappeared, but not changing anything else. (I'll point out that this means that people who died in all the car accidents/ other chaos caused by the Snap don't come back.)

So, hooray it's a happy ending, but there are A LOT of problems caused by all these people suddenly appearing. I like the Marvel movies and shows that explore these problems, rather than acting like the Blip (that's what they call the Snap + everyone reappearing 5 years later) is just an isolated thing that doesn't matter anymore after the "Endgame" credits roll. 

The Marvel tv series "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" is all about this. In this series, we learn that people who had been poor and/or refugees (before the Snap happened) benefitted from the Snap because countries opened their borders and it became easier to find jobs, due to half the population disappearing. But when all the disappeared people suddenly reappeared, countries started to kick out those people who had come in during those 5 years. A group called "the Flag Smashers" formed to fight back; the Flag Smashers are the main villains that Sam (the Falcon) and Bucky (the Winter Soldier) are fighting. At the end of the show, when they defeat the Flag Smashers, Sam gives a whole speech about how he actually agrees with their cause, and everyone should stop calling them "terrorists."

In other words, all around the world, there is tension between people who just popped back into existence after 5 years, and need help integrating into society, and people whose lives improved during those 5 years, and now are seeing those lifelines taken away. What happens if someone reappears in the house they owned 5 years ago, but now a different family is living in it?

I say all of this to make the point that it's not possible for Jesus to come back and just suddenly fix all the problems. Bruce Banner couldn't do it with all 6 infinity stones. Anything you do at that kind of scale is going to cause a whole bunch of other problems. 

I mean, the only way it could work is if you magically mind-control everyone to agree "ah, when you look at the big picture and weigh everyone's needs in a fair way, XYZ is the best course of action." But I don't think Jesus does that mind-control stuff.

During the Shanghai lockdown, we saw the same idea at work. All the normal supply chains were cut off, and the government had to scramble to come up with systems to deliver food to people. And because it was thrown together with little time to plan, and on the scale of 25 million people, we saw a lot of things go wrong. There were videos on WeChat about meat that was supposed to be delivered to residents in lockdown, but the meat sat outside in the heat for too long and went bad. Or trucks full of donated food, arriving from other provinces, but delays on the roads entering Shanghai meant that the vegetables rotted, and lots and lots had to be thrown away. We all received free bags of a random assortment of vegetables- inevitably some of these vegetables ended up being wasted if people didn't know how to cook them, or didn't have enough space in their fridge, or just didn't want to eat so much cabbage all the time.

I think that happens in every kind of disaster-relief situation (and yes, I do think we should view the Shanghai lockdown as a disaster-relief situation... I would say the initial disaster was covid, but then the lockdown itself was a bigger disaster). Some of the efforts that are sent in to help actually don't help.

My point is, if you're like "oh no, 25 million people need help" and then you try to help them, well, you can't just solve all their problems all at once. 

I'm not saying you shouldn't help- certainly there are society-wide policies that can be implemented to address society-wide problems, and there will be a benefit in the long-term. I'm not saying "well don't even try to make the world better, because you'll cause other problems no matter what you do." I'm saying it's complicated and there is no way to magically make the world perfect all at once, without destroying people's capacity to have an emotional reaction to change- which is an essential part of human nature, I would say.

All this is to say, I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back." I don't believe that at some specific day and hour, Jesus is going to appear in the sky all over the world and right all the wrongs at the same time, Endgame-style. It just doesn't make sense.

The world can't be fixed so fast. It has to be gradual.

As I think about this "sudden change vs gradual change" idea, I'm reminded of what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote:

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

He was pushing back against the idea that black people should "wait" and accept that changes will be gradual. 

Just a moment ago, I said change had to be "gradual" because it's not *literally* possible to fix every single problem in the world at the same time. But King is talking about "wait" and "justice too long delayed" in a different sense- prioritizing the comfort of those already in power, rather than taking the steps that will truly make society more equal and just.

In other words, King was fighting to bring justice and the kingdom of heaven to this earth, and "white moderates" told him they didn't agree with his methods because they weren't ready.

They weren't ready.

And now we've come back around to the parable of the ten virgins- 5 were ready, 5 were not ready. What if we read it like this: It's not about a specific day and a specific hour when a literal Jesus will literally appear and literally make the whole literal world literally perfect- it's about being ready when you see the kingdom of heaven coming to earth in whatever little ways it comes in your local area in your time in history.

What if "keep watch" isn't about a "newspaper clippings thumbtacked to the wall and criss-crossed with red thread"-style of obsessive theorizing about when "the rapture" will be, but about looking for Jesus in your own life when you see people in need, and looking for the kingdom of heaven in your own society when you see large-scale trends or policy changes?

For example: Student loan forgiveness. This was in the news recently. People who have student loan debt can get $10,000 of that debt cancelled (or $20,000 in some cases). So many people are struggling with huge student loans with predatory interest rates, and now the kingdom of heaven is coming, in a small way. This can't solve everything (I think it's much more important to do something about the cost of college tuition, and teenagers being pressured to take out loans when they have no understanding of how money works in reality) but it's a start.

But some people are mad about it. At its worst, this anger is an ugly us-vs-them "these people are inferior to me because [reasons] but now the government is giving them $10,000 and not giving me anything!" But some of that anger may come from a more legitimate place, perhaps from someone struggling financially for reasons unrelated to student loans, and they want to know why they didn't get money for their financial needs. And yes, like I said, it's not possible to fix all the problems on such a massive scale, in just 1 move. So we should keep going, listen to people's concerns, and figure out what other policies should be put in place to help more people.

I'm also thinking of the immigrants who were sent on buses or planes from Florida and Texas and dropped off in blue states without any communication beforehand. Residents of Martha's Vineyard (and other places where immigrants were randomly dropped off) came together to help. When Jesus comes, will you be ready? When Jesus comes, will you help him find a place to sleep, give him food, give him new clothes?

Not that we literally have to be ready- ie, you don't have to literally have an emergency shelter set up and waiting at all times, as if you actually expect to use it immediately. That's just silly. (You can see in the parable that all 10 of the "virgins" [honestly we should read this as "young women" but I won't get into that] fell asleep while waiting, which was fine- it's not saying you have to literally be about to spring into action at any little sign of anything. It's more about the overall attitude.) But you should have a mindset where you can see that something is an overall good for society, even if it inconveniences you in the short-term, and accept it. Keep watch and be ready for the kingdom of heaven, not just focused on your own little life and what benefits you.

So in summary, I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back" because we can see how that worked in "Endgame" and in any situation where there's a sudden massive policy change- even though it's a good change, it causes other problems that society has to deal with. But keep watch, and when you see the kingdom of heaven coming in some small way in your life, be there to support it.

---

One more thing I want to say about this parable: It has always bothered me how the 5 "foolish" women asked the 5 "wise" women to give them some oil, and they said no. Weren't we taught to share in Sunday School class? I asked this question as a child in church, and the answer was "It's a parable- that means it's a metaphor, and in a metaphor, it's not like every single part means something- there are places where the metaphor breaks down. For the purposes of this parable, it's not possible for the wise virgins to give oil to the foolish ones- just leave it at that. In reality we are supposed to share, but that wasn't what this parable is about."

I basically agree with this answer, but I feel like it's important to point that out, whenever we talk about this parable. There's a "don't share with those in need" message here, glaring at us as we read this parable, and I feel I have to point it out and address it.

---

Related:

"On earth as it is in heaven" 

Why Does the Kingdom of Heaven Belong to Children? 

Ending Slavery Didn't Address the Real Problem

If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No

-------------------

This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.

Previous post: "For Pregnant Women and Nursing Mothers" (Matthew 24)

Next post: The Parable of the Talents: Risk and Return in Building the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 25:14-30)

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.

Blogaround

1. The kingdom of heaven is like: Legal quirk allows gay couples in China to get married online in conservative Utah (October 6). I love this!

2. You CANNOT and MUST NOT Solve This Sudoku (October 3) 1-hour-35-minute sudoku solve video, with a very advanced ruleset. (This puzzle illustrates the concept of a "deadly pattern" very well.) I love this. Here are my favorite quotes:

• 55 minutes, with not one single digit in the grid yet: "And if this doesn't work, I'm turning the camera off, because my brain, my brain is already shot to pieces."
• 1 hr 03 min: "Have we been doing sudoku? That is a philosophical question."
• 1 hr 19 min: "What an extraordinary puzzle this is. Imagine if I don't manage to solve it now. I will probably cry, actually. I will probably cry, because this is, it's amazing. It's amazing."

3. Biblical Womanhood T-Shirt. I love this!

T-shirt that has a drawing of a tent peg through a skull, and says "Biblical Womanhood, Judges 4-5"

4. Sign o’ the times, mess with your mind, hurry before it’s 2 late (October 4) "We were 16 years old and our pastor, youth pastor, and the Bible teacher at our Christian school were all assuring us that we’d never be 26."

5. Forced Birth is Torture. (September 22) [content note: medical/pregnancy trauma. Mother and baby survive, fortunately] "What happened next was several hours of careful cutting and suction and burning and stitching while I lay with my arms strapped down and the baby wailed."

6. If the Media Are Reluctant To Properly Label the GOP’s Racist, Christian Nationalist Ideologies, We’ll Have Trouble Hanging on to Democracy (May 20) "Every time a Republican who has voiced “Great Replacement” views in the past is interviewed, he or she needs to be explicitly asked about it—and if they don’t actively disavow their past claims, it needs to be stated that they subscribe to white nationalist ideology—an ideology that has killed hundreds in the US in the last years alone, and millions in the last century worldwide."

7. The New York Times Has Badly Lost Its Bearings (May 13) 

8. I Opposed Abortion Until I Fought To Defeat Personhood In Mississippi. Here’s Why. (May 25) "'We’re just trying to get the amendment on the ballot. That’ll all get figured out later.' The brush-off chilled me. I had an ectopic pregnancy in 2004 and, unfortunately, that is not a pregnancy that will survive. It must be terminated, or the mother will die."

9. What Jesus Said to the Homeless Man (October 2) "In my experience, one hundred percent of people experiencing homelessness battle demons every day."

10. ‘Graduation Day’ for Guide Dogs Highlights Their Rarity in China (October 10) "However, the number of guide dogs in the country is grossly inadequate — a 2019 report by the China Association of the Blind said there were fewer than 200 guide dogs for a country with about 17 million people with visual impairments."

11. Rochester to pay $12M to settle lawsuit filed by Daniel Prude family, largest civil rights settlement in city's history (October 6) [content note: police brutality] "The settlement is not an admission of liability, the court documents show."

12. Angela Lansbury, 'Murder, She Wrote' and 'Beauty and the Beast' star, dies at 96 (October 12) 

13. How SEO Is Gentrifying the Internet (2020) "'Can Cats Eat Blueberries?' was a masterpiece by SEO writing standards and an absolute turd by regular writing standards. A reader might spend five minutes reading the article and still have no idea if it’s OK to roll one (1) blueberry across the floor for their floofy pouncemonster to chase. However, as long as the reader spends those five minutes looking at the page—and more importantly, the ads that are placed on it—then mission accomplished. This is where the SEOification of the internet has brought us, and it [****]ing sucks."

14. Sex Work and the Power of Choice (2011) "When you think about this for ten seconds, you should realize that it makes no sense. People in any other service profession can, and do, turn down customers they don’t want to work with."

15. Sex-Positivity, Compulsory Sexuality and Intersecting Identities (2012) "There are too many issues of power and privilege at play which are not adequately challenged and criticised. The institution of compulsory sexuality still underpins sex-positivism."

16. that female athlete doesn’t look feminine enough (August 18) "Girls looking insufficiently feminine is now a complaint that the government takes 'seriously', and that the government then investigates."

17. The City of Philadelphia Apologizes for Decades of Medical Experiments Performed on Black Inmates (October 11) "From 1951 through 1974, Dr. Albert Kligman, a dermatologist from the University of Pennsylvania, conducted 'the dermatological, biochemical and pharmaceutical experiments that intentionally exposed about 300 inmates to viruses, fungus, asbestos and chemical agents including dioxin—a component of Agent Orange.'" And the article goes on to describe experiments even more disturbing than that. WTF????

18. Epidural-Induced Births ‘Far Behind’ in China, Says Top Expert (October 12) "Mi Weidong, an anesthesiologist at the country’s top health authority leading the taskforce in promoting epidural anesthesia, said that only 30% of female respondents in a nationwide survey were offered anesthetic services during childbirth, despite a large majority of them opting for a more painfree delivery method."

19. (Chill) Ex-Ace Narrative 1: Validation (August 14) "Amidst this chorus of voices, ace communities were the only ones to consistently say 'The subjective experiences you're having are real and okay-- even if they're non-normative and statistically uncommon. You can articulate your own relationship to sex and sexuality on your own terms. You don't need to change your behaviors/desires/attitudes to more normative ones for the sake of fitting a relationship or an ideological ideal. You don't have to organize your life around the expectation that you're someday have a more normative relationship to sexuality.'"

Blogaround

1. The Christmas Story. My son got this book for Christmas- it's a board book with buttons that make sounds, it tells the story of Jesus' birth, and, GET THIS, NONE OF THE CHARACTERS ARE WHITE PEOPLE. They are all like, brown Middle-Eastern people. That's the way it should be, but WOWWWW I have never seen any nativity book where ALL the people were brown Middle-Eastern people. Usually they're all white, except for 1 black wiseman that gets thrown in for "diversity" or whatever.

Very happy with this book.

2. Teaching Hal Lindsey to teenagers in the ’80s was child abuse (posted January 1) "None of this talk about the future — college, careers, children, grandchildren — was presented to us as contingent. It wasn’t a matter of 'But just in case the Bible prophecy scholars are wrong and the Lord tarries, then you’ll need a Plan B.' It was, instead, a constant yet constantly unacknowledged contradiction. And what that contradiction taught us was that the things we believed or claimed to believe didn’t matter — that the substance of our 'beliefs' did not need to correspond to reality or to affect the reality of our lives in any meaningful way."

Blogaround

1. Well I'm late to the party on this, but The Gospel Coalition posted an article about how PMS is ... *checks notes* ... sinful? Here it is: PMS: The Monthly Fight with the Flesh

This is beyond ridiculous but I don't have time to write a whole post about it. I'll just say this: Your body has needs. Listen to your body. If your body's physical needs aren't being met, it's easier to get stressed/angry/etc, so that's why it's important to pay attention to your body's needs. Take care of those needs because they're real and they matter.

Of course TGC went a totally different direction with it, like if you get stressed/angry because of hormones, well that means you are BAD and SINFUL so just STOP.

2. When gray hair is not a crown of glory: Old age proves Rapture preachers wrong (posted January 21) "Jack Van Impe started his ministry 68 years ago, assuring his followers that the Rapture, Argmageddon, and the End of Time were poised to occur at any moment. At no moment in any of those 68 years did the Rapture occur."

---------------

And a few things about the pandemic:

1. Congratulations to Greg Locke for having the worst Christian take on COVID-19:

#CoronaVirusUpdates #COVIDー19 pic.twitter.com/ru0GYm8v9B

— Pastor Greg Locke (@pastorlocke) March 14, 2020

2. Some good news from China: China reports no domestic cases of coronavirus for first time since outbreak began (this is specifically referring to Wednesday, March 18).

Meanwhile, SOME PEOPLE (*cough* the orange antichrist *cough*) are insisting on calling this "the Chinese virus"- being nakedly racist and blaming China, during a global pandemic where we DESPERATELY NEED TO LEARN FROM CHINA.

3. I love you all. Stay safe. Cancel your plans, cancel your travel, and stay home. I repeat: Cancel your plans, cancel your travel, and stay home. Help bring groceries to your elderly neighbors. Take care of your mental health by not reading the news constantly.

Also, CANCEL YOUR PLANS, CANCEL YOUR TRAVEL, AND STAY HOME. Social distancing saves lives. Do it for my grandma.

Blogaround

Two cats hugging. Image source.

1. Why stay in college? Why go to night school? (posted May 1) "Rapture-Christianity taught us, from a young age, that we had no future. That’s a horrible thing to teach a child."

2. for Thanos so loved the world (posted May 22) [content note: spoilers for "Avengers: Infinity War"] "He’s even more merciful than the American evangelical god if you think about it—he’s going to save half of everyone in the universe."

3. Found myself singing "Because Of You" to the Jesus I used to worship. I have so many feelings about this. I don't think I can ever have a "personal relationship" with a god ever again. Because of what He did.


4. Related: I still can't get over how much I see the Incarnation in this scene from "Spiderman: Homecoming," and how that's the Jesus I love. Peter thinks Tony is controlling the Ironman suit remotely- somewhere far away, just sending rules and condemnation, no skin in the game. "If you even cared you'd actually be here" and then the Ironman suit opens and there he is.


5. And if you haven't taken my 2018 Reader Survey yet, go over and do it~ Survey closes on June 9.

Blogaround

A goat. Image source.

1. Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis (posted April 11) [content note: racism, death of babies] 

2. Disabled People (Might) Finally Get Emojis That Represent Us (posted April 9) "Look at an emoji keyboard, however, and you’d never know [disabled people] exist at all. But if you’re a vampire or a merperson, you’re covered; there are currently seven emojis representing fantasy characters like fairies and elves."

3. The anti-abortion hypocrisy of proposed pro-Down syndrome legislation (posted April 10) "But Republican legislators, at every turn, have sought to dismantle the safety nets that would keep these families from tumbling into an abyss from which no one can return on their own."

4. A Thief in the Night: Traumatizing Children for Fun and Prophet (posted March 30) "Instead of protecting children and contextualizing their sometimes out-of-control fears, fundagelicals try their best to hijack those responses to brainwash their kids."

5. Andy Savage and the Problem of Evil (posted April 4) [content note: sexual assault and coverup] "Thousands of Christians located their car keys after praying for them and found divinely-ordained love." Yep, this is why I don't pray.

6. China's Weibo site backtracks on gay censorship after outcry (posted April 17) "'The response shows that we LGBT people in China are slowly realizing our rights,' Hua said. 'Gay people who would not have spoken out years ago are now letting their voices be heard.'"

Blogaround

Four kittens laying around. Image source.

1. Roy Moore: Last Time America Was 'Great' Was During 'Slavery' (posted December 7) HOLY SHIT.

2. For many evangelicals, Jerusalem is about prophecy, not politics (posted December 8) "As I watched Donald Trump announce that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move our embassy to that city, I could only think of one thing: my high school youth group Bible study."

3. Official Toll in Puerto Rico: 62. Actual Deaths May Be 1,052. (posted December 8) "The analysis compared the number of deaths for each day in 2017 with the average of the number of deaths for the same days in 2015 and 2016."

4. Pilots stop 222 asylum seekers being deported from Germany by refusing to fly (posted December 5)

5. 'Grieving in a Fishbowl' (posted November 13) [content note: gun violence] "Survivors of mass shootings recount their experiences coping with trauma in the public eye."

6. Robots are being used to deter homeless people from setting up camp in San Francisco (posted December 12)

7. Why I Believe 'To Siri With Love' By Judith Newman Is A Book That Does Incredible Damage To The Autistic Community (posted December 8)

8. How Coco Fits Into The Pixar Theory (posted December 12) [content note: spoilers for "Coco"] "Basically, as long as a single memory orb of you exists in any living person's mind, anywhere, you get to continue on living as a skeleton."

And also that video contains THE MOST ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF BIBLICAL APOLOGETICS I HAVE EVER HEARD: "Because how everything fits into the Pixar Theory is endlessly entertaining and we love talking about it here. But to continue calling it a 'theory' at this point almost feels like the wrong word. It seems more like a game or a challenge. People are constantly telling me that they have 'broken' or 'disproved' the Pixar Theory, and my response to every single one of those people is: You don't get it. Because the goal is to make it work. If you've 'broken' it or 'disproven' it, you haven't done that at all, you've just uncovered a plot hole that the theory needs to be adjusted to explain so we can better understand this universe that Pixar has built."

9. Evangelical Blogger: Christian Leaders Need Extra Protection against Allegations of Sin (posted December 11) [content note: silencing victims] Libby Anne's response to a post by Tim Challies, and WOWWW Challies's post is BAD.

10. Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Larry Boy And the Fib From Outer Space" (posted December 14)