Queerdom is coming for Christendom's cash: Felix Salmon wants some evangelists to be more equal than others

Felix Salmon, here, who seems more interested in retribution against the church than in the money:

'[N]ow that the US government formally recognizes marriage equality as a fundamental right, it really shouldn’t skew the tax code so as to give millions of dollars in tax breaks to groups which remain steadfastly bigoted on the subject. ... [T]he US government subsidizes churches to the tune of many billions of dollars per year by giving them tax-exempt status. One conservative estimate put the sum at $71 billion, but the fact is that no one really knows what the number is. ... We’ll let you practice your bigotry, at least within the confines of your own church. But we’re not about to reward you for doing so.'

Funny he says nothing about de-privileging other nonprofits, of which religious organizations are just a subset. He appears not to like religion very much: His source for the $71 billion figure is secularhumanism.org, run by the Center for Inquiry, a nonprofit dedicated to a secular society and abolishing the tax privileges of religion.

In Felix Salmon's ideal world, some evangelists are to be more equal than others.

Same sex marriage is no marriage, and is no law

"A law which is not just does not seem to me to be a law" (lex mihi esse non videtur, quae iusta non fuerit).

St. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, Book 1, 5, 1 1

Come out from among them: Separation is the very definition of holiness, not unity

Robert Browne, the first seceder

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."

-- 2 Corinthians 6:14ff.

Joel Osteen and the irony of a typo

Joel Osteen, quoted here:

“I think in general the scripture talks abut how there’s earthquakes and famines and wars and you know you’re close to the end times. Well, we see a lot of that happening today. Does that mean a hundred years, a thousand years, or ten thousand years? Well, I don’t know. My thing is let’s make the most of this day. God’s given us this day and it’s a gift and we may not have tomorrow, but let’s be our best today and be a blessing to someone else and live it in vain.”

"Live it in vain"? Surely that must be a typo, leaving out the "not" before the "live" (the reporter also left out the "o" in "about").

Ah, but the irony of that omission.

The $56 million preacher who reportedly says Mormons also are Christians can't be accused of looking into things too deeply. The kindest way to say it is he isn't overly familiar with how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, nor with how he flirts with the "wisdom" of a hedonism which was warned against by both Paul and Isaiah:

"Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die"(1 Cor.15:32/Isaiah 22:13).

Well before the career of Christ, who preached the end of the age, the prosaic idea of the priority of now was reported for ubiquitous wisdom among non-Jews.

So Strabo (Geographica, 14.5.9f.):

'Then to Zephyrium, which bears the same name as the place near Calycadnus. Then, a little above the sea, to Anchiale, which, according to Aristobulus, was founded by Sardanapallus. Here, he says, is the tomb of Sardanapallus, and a stone figure which represents the fingers of the right hand as snapping together, and the following inscription in Assyrian letters: 

"Sardanapallus, the son of Anacyndaraxes, built Anchiale and Tarsus in one day. Eat, drink, be merry, because all things else are not worth this,"

meaning the snapping of the fingers. Choerilus also mentions this inscription; and indeed the following verses are everywhere known:

"[Well aware that thou art by nature mortal, magnify the desires of they heart, delighting thyself in merriments; there is no enjoyment for thee after death. For I too am dust, though I have reigned over great Ninus.] Mine are all [the food] that I have eaten, [and my loose indulgences,] and the delights of love that I have enjoyed; but those numerous blessings have been left behind. [This to mortal men is wise advice on how to live.]"'

Osteen's megachurch is the largest in the country. 43,500 attend weekly to hear the spermologos.

Muslim superstition: They blame their failed states and economies on a failure to practice pure Islam

Starting with the dog: NO DOGS!

Noted here:

Another benefit of Kelly’s collection is to remind us of other books that have shrewdly analyzed the Middle East and Islamic culture. V.S. Naipaul’s Among the Believers (1981) is one such classic. As Kelly notes in his review, Naipaul’s important insights include the overwhelming influence the Islamic faith has over politics and government in Muslim nations. If the state or the economy fails, the fault lies not in its flawed structure or the corruption of its leaders, but in the failure of the people to practice a pure Islam.

CNN features a pretty good story on "The Sunday Morning Stickup"

mite box of the Lutheran Women's Missionary League

Worth reading, here, except the Lutheran pastor featured in the story trims the force of the vignette about the poor widow in Mark 12:

"The message is clear right? Even if you can't pay your electric bill, God says give all you have. But Albertson, the Lutheran pastor, says that pastors often miss the story's meaning. Jesus wasn't telling people to give all they have to the church: He was condemning the financial corruption of the religious system of his day for exploiting the poor widow's generosity."

That is totally wrong. The conditions of discipleship are the same for everyone.

The poor widow demonstrates what is the quintessential Jesus follower, who doesn't worry about what she shall eat, or what she shall drink; nor yet for her body, what she shall put on. She is a contemporary who believes what Jesus believes: that she will be taken care of by God, not by mammon. And no doubt she was! Her offering was one of gratitude . . . and continued confidence! There is no suggestion in the pericope of the critique contained in the pericope before it. There is a connection in Mark's mind, the gospel author, but not in the story per se, not even in the way he presents it.

Yes, the critique of the rapacious expectations of the religious authorities is constitutive of the message of Jesus, but that does not absolve the disciple of Jesus from his duty:

"No one can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that he owns." -- Luke 14:33

That poor widow was a Jesus follower, unlike the rest of them, unlike the rest of us.

Wingnut Princeton professor blames 'tens of millions' of deaths on Protestants during 30 Years' War, compares them to ISIS

The best estimates put total losses on all sides from all causes in all venues at 8 million. 

Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, knows a thing or two about sloppy, exaggerated, scholarship, and politically correct slurs, quoted here:

'If there are any lessons about ISIS that can be drawn from what happened during the Protestant Reformation, Bernard Haykel said, those lessons are "terrifying."

'"If we're embarking or are actually already in something like the Reformation in the Muslim world, then, you know, hold on because we're in for a really wild ride with lots of violence," he added. ...

'"Christianity was a violent religion at times, extremely violent, in fact, much more violent than what we're seeing with the Islamists today. If you think of the 30 Years War, something like 30 percent of Germany's population was killed, tens of millions of people," he said.

'Haykel also noted that ISIS is similar to the Protestant Reformation in its emphasis on individualism.

'"The individual is at the core of this [ISIS] movement, the autonomy of the individual, the decision of the individual to make decisions despite, and even against one's own family, which flies in the face of Arab and Muslim tradition," he said. ...

'"Calvin was a really nasty guy. Okay? I mean, read up about him — and there's a huge, a big statue of him in Geneva today — but people forget actually what the city he led was like under him."'

Haykel is the son of a Lebanese Christian and a Polish Jew.

N. T. Wright misses that Paul took recourse to conceptions of a heavenly dwelling in order to advance beyond the older failed apocalyptic

Here is N. T. Wright, wrong again, fittingly in Slate:

Jesus, Paul, and all other first-century Christians known to us embraced the older Israelite view, in which the created physical order was of primary importance. God’s promises concerned the present world, seen as the combination of “heaven” and “earth.” The Jerusalem temple symbolized the coming together of those two spheres, pointing ahead to a time when the divine glory would fill the whole creation. Israel’s scriptures offered only cryptic hints about resurrection and the divine purpose extending beyond the grave. But this belief came to the fore, not least through times of persecution, in the last centuries before Jesus. God would, at the last, raise from the dead all his faithful people to share in his new creation. This belief remained at the heart of early Christian hope. ...

They still believed in an interim between death and resurrection, though they did not speak of this in terms of immortality, a word they applied rather to the new resurrection body itself. When Paul speaks of the “interim,” he talks about “departing and being with the Messiah, which is much better.” Perhaps that is the best way of putting it: Jesus, the prototype of new creation, will look after those who belong to him until the moment of new creation. The Book of Revelation speaks of “souls under the altar;” the martyrs pray for God’s ultimate justice to triumph. Like all our speech about life beyond death, this is picture language. The first Christians were not hugely concerned with the immediate post-mortem future, but rather with the ultimate resurrection and new creation, the bodily immortality launched with Jesus’ own resurrection.

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The narrative of 2 Corinthians 5 argues that Paul had moved forward in his thinking to reconcile the failure of the predicted kingdom to appear by recasting the old ideas in terms of heavenly, eternal, non-corporeal living realities with which we are clothed quite apart from the resurrection:

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we sigh with anxiety; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body.

Similarly Romans 14:

None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

And 1 Thessalonians 5:

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we wake or sleep we might live with him.

And Philippians 1:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

It's Monday in the kingdom of God: The ground is still cursed for thy sake

'And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;'

-- Genesis 3:17

The better ordered our life, the less our need for vacation

So observes John Cuddeback, here:

"During this time I have found myself wondering about our need for vacation. It seems to me that the better ordered our life, the less our need for vacation. By vacation I don’t mean just any down-time, but rather a length of time where we travel to some destination for the sake of ‘getting away’ and relaxing. The normal routine of our lives ideally should include wholesome work, quality leisure time, and significant opportunity to be-together with, or live in communion with family and friends."

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"On the sabbath they rested (ceased from labor and were quiet at home) according to the commandment."

-- Luke 23:56

"Make it your ambition to live quietly at home (rest), to mind your own business, to work with your own hands, just as we commanded you."

-- 1 Thessalonians 4:11

Bought some cheap shades at the Amoco station, they make me feel like I'm on vacation, on my own island, motor city paradise.

Orthodox pastor completely misunderstands the Great Commission

Here:

"When the Lord gave the Great Commission, He gave four commands: 1) Go into all the world and 2) preach the Gospel to every creature, 3) baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and 4) teaching them to do all that He had commanded.

These are not all the same thing. Preaching the Gospel is not the same as baptizing, nor is it the same as teaching all the Lord’s commandments."

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This is a wonderful example of an exegesis not at all supported by the text:

πορευθέντες οὖν μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη βαπτίζοντες αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος διδάσκοντες αὐτοὺς τηρεῖν πάντα ὅσα ἐνετειλάμην ὑμῖν καὶ ἰδού, ἐγὼ μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν εἰμι πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας ἕως τῆς συντελείας τοῦ αἰῶνος Ἀμήν

There are not four commands. There is only the one command, the aorist active imperative to "make disciples" of all nations. It is defined precisely by the two present tense participles "baptizing" and "teaching" which follow it, but also presupposes a third, "when you have gone", which is first in the sentence because you can't get to "the nations" without it. Without going there is no disciple making in the first place, but neither is there any disciple-making without baptizing and teaching out there among the Gentiles. When all is said and done and the dependent clauses are stripped away all you have is this: "Make disciples of every nation".

If you want to know how to make disciples, the participles tell you how it is to be done, at least according to these closing lines of Matthew (28:19f.), where however the words "gospel" and "preach" never occur. For that you'll have to rely on the (supplied) ending to Mark (15:16). Obviously Matthew didn't know of this, and if he did, he didn't follow it for a reason.

The early church's point of view in Matthew is different from Mark's, and Paul's, as it is from the pastor's at St. Paul Orthodox Church, Emmaus, Pennsylvania. In Matthew we are confronted with people who were more keepers of a tradition in Jerusalem than they were preachers of a message in the Mediterranean Basin. But in Paul we have evidence of the opposite tendency: a passion for preaching a message divinely mediated to him quite apart from that apostolic tradition, and sometimes hostile to it.

The latter won the day, but they aren't the same thing.

So Aaron stretched out his hand and the frogs covered the land of Egypt

A plague of toads erupts in China’s Liaoning Province 

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, 'Thus says the LORD, "Let my people go, that they may serve me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs; the Nile shall swarm with frogs which shall come up into your house, and into your bedchamber and on your bed, and into the houses of your servants and of your people, and into your ovens and your kneading bowls; the frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your servants."'"And the LORD said to Moses, "Say to Aaron, 'Stretch out your hand with your rod over the rivers, over the canals, and over the pools, and cause frogs to come upon the land of Egypt!'" So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.

-- Exodus 8:1ff.

Story here.

No Christian should agree with the Witherspoon Institute's "there is no fundamental right to marry"

The story, "There Is No Fundamental Right to Marry", appears here, from which this bit of nonsense:

"We possess fundamental rights to things such as life, liberty, and property because these things are intimately connected with our self-ownership. As Locke helpfully explains, we own property in external objects because we own our free actions of appropriating them, and we own our free actions because we own ourselves. For Locke—as well as for the American founders and Lincoln—this was as far as our fundamental rights went."

Evidently Catholics still don't read Paul much. Those who do will recoil at the idea that "we own ourselves". This is the sort of Enlightenment revolution in thinking which was characteristic of the transition from the Age of Faith to the Age of Reason, and is still the sticking point between the so-called conservatives of modernity and the real pre-modern variety. Christians recognize no such idea as owning the self because they believe that they "are not their own":

"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." -- 1 Corinthians 6:19f.

The truth is that there are no fundamental rights such that we can distinguish between those rights which inhere in us and those which don't. Life? It comes to an end. One cannot stop the Grim Reaper. Liberty? There is no such thing. Even the freest man must eat, drink, eliminate and breathe. Property? In death you cede it to another. You cannot take it with you, not even the coin in your mouth. It goes to the Ferryman.
   

The right to marry is an alien idea to those who know it simply as what must be done. If there is no marriage, who will exist such that there is a country a hundred years hence which still can reasonably be called the one you grew up in?

America, for example.

Personal narrative and testimony, formerly the stuff of religion, now insulate secular speech from critical examination

Seen here, but the author has no clue that this is the Christian religion's peculiar "gift" to America:

Herein lies the folly of oversimplified identity politics: while identity concerns obviously warrant analysis, focusing on them too exclusively draws our attention so far inward that none of our analyses can lead to action.  Rebecca Reilly Cooper, a political philosopher at the University of Warwick, worries about the effectiveness of a politics in which "particular experiences can never legitimately speak for any one other than ourselves, and personal narrative and testimony are elevated to such a degree that there can be no objective standpoint from which to examine their veracity." Personal experience and feelings aren't just a salient touchstone of contemporary identity politics; they are the entirety of these politics. In such an environment, it's no wonder that students are so prone to elevate minor slights to protestable offenses.

Memory allows us to be more like God, who uses his to cut off but also to forgive

"Memory is actually the human way of approximating God’s mode of existence. In other words through memory, we can be more like God. It allows us to have many things present, in a sense, all at once. God is eternal; to be precise He does not need to ‘remember,’ for all things are fully present to Him at once."

-- John Cuddeback, here

Tommy never badmouthed his old bandmates. ... "In my dealings with them I tried to harness as much of the brilliance, but a lot of times I got burnt. ... I think about them all the time. They are all always present in my consciousness -- in my daily life, they're always with me.”

-- Tommy Ramone, here

The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

-- Psalm 34:16

And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

-- Jeremiah 31:34

Cretans are always lazy bellies

A certain one of them, a prophet of their own, said -- 'Cretans! always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies!'

-- Titus 1:12