Like others WaPo calls Paula White, picked by Trump for an inauguration prayer, controversial

White and new husband Jonathan Cain of Journey fame both on marriage #3 

In "Paula White, prosperity preacher once investigated by Senate, is a controversial pick for inauguration" :

When White’s role in the swearing-in ceremony was reported Wednesday, the Daily Beast said in a headline, “Shady Pastor to Pray With Trump at Inauguration.” Erick Erickson, an influential Christian writer who strongly opposed Trump during his campaign, fumed on his website: “An Actual Trinity-Denying Heretic Will Pray at Trump’s Inauguration.”

The tradition of the apostles supplanted the tradition of the elders and was both oral and written

On the other hand, our old ways were once new, weren't they?

Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.

-- Matthew 15:2

Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

-- 2 Thessalonians 2:15

A stupid delusion I heard over the holiday, attributed by the person to the movie Schindler's List

The delusion: While the Nazis attacked Jews on Kristallnacht the German Christians were in their churches singing Christmas carols, so they couldn't have been genuinely Christian. 

The fact: Kristallnacht occurred in the middle of the night on November 9-10, 1938 while most people were asleep in their beds, and weeks before the beginning of Advent that year. No one was in church singing anything, let alone Christmas carols. The enraged events of that night occurred just hours after the elaborate commemoration in Munich of the 15th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, and after the news of the death of a German diplomat shot in Paris had reached Hitler.  

The unpleasant truth: Christians in the United States, traditional or otherwise, continue to go about their own merry lives and have since 1973 while tens of millions of the American unborn have been slaughtered in the womb and continue to be until this very day right under their very own noses, but they do nothing about it.

Yet somehow it's the German Christians who are the hypocrites.

The Virgin Birth kerfuffle erupts among the Baptists, WaPo artfully avoids Roman Catholic Mariolatry and its Holy Quaternity

WaPo ends the story with this whopper, as if Roman Catholicism's thinking about Mary were less of a spectacle than that of the rubes in flyover country:

The Catholic Church teaches that the Virgin Mary was also conceived without sin to carry Jesus (the “Immaculate Conception” applies to hers, not his) and that she was “assumed” into heaven at the end of her life. Catholics name Mary as “blessed among women” and venerate her as a saint for her miraculous life.

Well not just "as a saint". She is the Queen of Heaven who reigns over the entire world and is to be worshipped, according to Pius XII in 1954:

From the earliest ages of the catholic church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven. And never has that hope wavered which they placed in the Mother of the Divine King, Jesus Christ; nor has that faith ever failed by which we are taught that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, reigns with a mother's solicitude over the entire world, just as she is crowned in heavenly blessedness with the glory of a Queen. ...

It is gratifying to recall that We ourselves, on the first day of November of the Holy Year 1950, before a huge multitude of Cardinals, Bishops, priests, and of the faithful who had assembled from every part of the world, defined the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven where she is present in soul and body reigning, together with her only Son, amid the heavenly choirs of angels and Saints. Moreover, since almost a century has passed since Our predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, proclaimed and defined the dogma that the great Mother of God had been conceived without any stain of original sin, We instituted the current Marian Year And now it is a great consolation to Us to see great multitudes here in Rome - and especially in the Liberian Basilica - giving testimony in a striking way to their faith and ardent love for their heavenly Mother. In all parts of the world We learn that devotion to the Virgin Mother of God is flourishing more and more, and that the principal shrines of Mary have been visited and are still being visited by many throngs of Catholic pilgrims gathered in prayer. ...

In order to understand better this sublime dignity of the Mother of God over all creatures let us recall that the holy Mother of God was, at the very moment of her Immaculate Conception, so filled with grace as to surpass the grace of all the Saints. Wherefore, as Our Predecessor of happy memory, Pius IX wrote, God "showered her with heavenly gifts and graces from the treasury of His divinity so far beyond what He gave to all the angels and saints that she was ever free from the least stain of sin; she is so beautiful and perfect, and possesses such fullness of innocence and holiness, that under God a greater could not be dreamed, and only God can comprehend the marvel." ...

"With a heart that is truly a mother's," to quote again Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, "does she approach the problem of our salvation, and is solicitous for the whole human race; made Queen of heaven and earth by the Lord, exalted above all choirs of angels and saints, and standing at the right hand of her only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, she intercedes powerfully for us with a mother's prayers, obtains what she seeks, and cannot be refused." On this point another of Our Predecessors of happy memory, Leo XIII, has said that an "almost immeasurable" power has been given Mary in the distribution of graces; St. Pius X adds that she fills this office "as by the right of a mother."

Let all Christians, therefore, glory in being subjects of the Virgin Mother of God, who, while wielding royal power, is on fire with a mother's love. ...

[M]ay Christians gather, in small numbers and large, to sing her praises in churches, in homes, in hospitals, in prisons. May Mary's name be held in highest reverence, a name sweeter than honey and more precious than jewels; may none utter blasphemous words, the sign of a defiled soul, against that name graced with such dignity and revered for its motherly goodness; let no one be so bold as to speak a syllable which lacks the respect due to her name. ...

By this Encyclical Letter We are instituting a feast so that all may recognize more clearly and venerate more devoutly the merciful and maternal sway of the Mother of God. 

-- AD CAELI REGINAM

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII ON PROCLAIMING THE QUEENSHIP OF MARY TO THE VENERABLE BRETHREN, THE PATRIARCHS, PRIMATES, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHIOPS, AND OTHER LOCAL ORDINARIES IN PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE HOLY SEE

Megan McArdle discusses the failure of communism beyond the small scale . . .

. . . but misses that its origin is in the most intimate unit of small scale experience of all, the nuclear family. Once you extrapolate much beyond that level ("Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother." -- Mark 3:34f.) it's not going to last long.

Megan McArdle, here:

[C]ommunism has never successfully worked above the level of a small group; it’s trying to manage transactions with strangers on the logic of small-group reciprocal altruism. Those small groups have a lot of social mechanisms, from shaming to threat of exile, to prevent people from cheating. When you try to scale it up to millions of strangers, it collapses into destitution or bloody tyranny. 

And all that believed were together, and had all things common. ... And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. ... And one of them named Ag'abus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world; and this took place* in the days of Claudius. And the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brethren who lived in Judea; and they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. 

-- Acts 2:44; 4:32; 11:28ff.

*probably sometime between AD 44 and 48

How to shorten your lifespan in three easy steps

1. Smoke cigs. 7 years.

2. Drink too much. 10 years.

3. Love the love which dare not speak its name. 24 years.

As if "Cigarettes, Whiskey and Wild Wild Women" weren't enough.

N. T. Wrong strikes again, denies the Synoptic Jesus who teaches a revolution in the creation, not a reaffirmation of it

It makes you wonder if N. T. Wright, here, would consign the whole triple tradition to "incipient gnosticism", which would be quite the leap:

Second, John's prologue by its structure reaffirms the order of Creation at the point where it is being challenged today. John consciously echoes the first chapter of Genesis: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth; in the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). When the Word becomes flesh, heaven and earth are joined together at last, as God always intended.

But the Creation story, which begins with the duality of heaven and earth, reaches its climax in the duality of male and female. When heaven and earth are joined together in Jesus Christ, the glorious intention for the whole of Creation is unveiled, reaffirming the creation of male and female in God's image. There is something about the enfleshment of the Word in John 1 that stands parallel to Genesis 1 and speaks of Creation fulfilled. We see what's going on: Jesus Christ has come as the Bridegroom, the one for whom the Bride has been waiting.

Not for nothing is Jesus's first sign to transform a wedding from disaster to triumph. Not for nothing do we find a man and a woman at the foot of the Cross. The same incipient gnosticism which says that true religion is about "discovering who we really are" is all too ready to say that who we really are may have nothing to do with being physically created as male or female. But the Christmas message is about the redemption of God's good world, his wonderful Creation, so that it can be the glorious thing it was made to be. This word is strange, even incomprehensible, in today's culture. But if you have ears to hear, then hear it.

Au contraire:

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

-- Matthew 22:30

For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.

-- Mark 12:25

And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

-- Luke 20:34ff.

Pagan church, pagan people with their eyes upon the Lord

Pagan, from Latin paganus, a country boy.

I know, I know, that's completely politically incorrect.

Larry Norman, here.

The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them . . . but I am among you as he that serveth

And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.

-- Luke 22:24ff.

To Jesus the prophet, God is the Great King and Jerusalem is his city

But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

-- Matthew 5:34f.

Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. God is known in her palaces for a refuge.

-- Psalm 48:2f.

Kingship in Israel represented the decay of the post-Mosaic order

Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

-- 1 Samuel 8:4ff.

You just have to take your little life, and walk it out

“I’m doing all I can for now, with what I have. Sometimes that’s all you can do. You just have to take your little life, and walk it out.”

-- Janet Foy, from the dead zone here

Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following . . .

-- Luke 13:33

Shall the dead arise and praise thee?

Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? Selah.

-- Psalm 88:10

Some say it's better to smoke here than hereafter . . .

. . . and some believe he's smoking more than ever.

This Lutheran and his Jewish wife and daughter could not escape, and gassed themselves in late 1942

Renate Stein, Jochen Klepper and wife Johanna Stein

Sometime in November 1942 the well known poet Jochen Klepper had received orders to report once again for military service, from which he had previously been dismissed because of his mixed marriage. Then on December 10, 1942 Adolf Eichmann personally denied Renate, aged 20, an exit visa from Germany, exposing her to the requirement to obey a previous deportation order to the camps. The next day they were all found dead on the floor in the kitchen.

Rod Dreher isn't orthodox about prayer anymore than anyone else is

Instead of praying in secret according to the teaching of Jesus, Rod Dreher broadcasts the news about his praying, makes a show of his praying even before it happens, and uses his praying almost like a weapon, a cudgel, with which to threaten, nay promise, confrontation with the enemy, solidarity with the like-minded, and "witness" generally against the godless West, as if there were no godless East. But if the witness is contrary to the basic soul of the faith, what good is it?

Dreher fancies himself a refugee from the religious right, but what follows below just proves once again that you can take the man out of the politicized religion, but you can't take the politicizing out of the religious man. The reason, of course, is that man is a political animal by nature, as Aristotle taught us long ago, and Paul accepted and taught in his peculiarly Christian way.

If the true faith of Jesus were practised anywhere, however, you would be hard-pressed to know much about it, by definition. What is "the widespread practice of the faith" when we are to pray in secret, give in secret, fast in secret? The public face of the church is not known by these things. The true orthodox are invisible in these matters or they are not orthodox. When they pray, you do not know it. They pray like David to be hidden, not revealed:

Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings, From the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who compass me about.

 

-- Psalm 17:8f.

Here is Dreher, featured this day at Real Clear Religion:

As most readers know, I am an Orthodox Christian. My deep concern over the relationship between Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church is not that the ROC will exercise undue influence over the Russian state, but that the ROC will become Russian nationalism at prayer. I am extremely sympathetic to the ROC critique of the West, and see things like the opening of the new Russian Orthodox cathedral in Paris to be a blessing. On my next trip to Paris, after I make my pilgrimage to pray before the relics of St. Genevieve, the city’s patron, I will make a visit to this Russian cathedral, pray there, and give thanks to God for its witness in that magnificent Christian (or once-Christian) city. It is my prayer — really, it is — that the Russian cathedral will in some real sense bring believing Eastern and Western Christians closer together, and strengthen our common witness against the post-Christian West — such that one day, Europe may return to the widespread practice of the faith. 

Sometimes I wonder if Rod Dreher thinks more highly of himself than he ought to think.

Rod Dreher imagining he's Karl Barth

Karl Barth imagining what's for dinner

Peter Leithart provides a helpful exegesis of Shakespeare's 3rd Sonnet, apposite our exceptionally narcissistic age

Here, in which he meditates upon the immortality afforded us by human reproduction, the urgency of it when young, and our obligation not to defraud the world of it, nor especially a mother like our own, and in the end, ourselves:

"Battle mutability, battle age. Reproduce."

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another;

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity? 

Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

   But if thou live, remembered not to be,

   Die single and thine image dies with thee.

Candida Moss pretends that eyewitness reports can't possibly be morality tales ...

. . . and has a curious list of historical sources she likes and dislikes to say the least.

She doesn't trust The Acts of the Apostles, The Da Vinci Code, The Gospel of John, The Da Vinci Code, Tacitus, and The Da Vinci Code.

But she rather likes The Acts of Peter, The Hebrew Bible, The Letters of Paul, The Hebrew Bible, John Chrysostom, and The Hebrew Bible.

Here.

"The irony here, as I argued in my book Myth of Persecution, is that Christian myths about the martyrdom of the apostles don’t even pretend to use the earliest historical sources. Which is just fine, as long as you recognize that they are morality tales, not eyewitness reports." 

The whole idea of Jesus' resurrection is a morality tale, in which the tragedy which befell a good but crazy man consumed with ideas of justice is rationalized to preserve those ideas and those who believe in them.

"We mistake the gratuitous blessings of heaven for the fruits of our own industry"

Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704)

What hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?

-- 1 Corinthians 4:7

Evangelicals pray to Little Lord We Just

The Babylon Bee. Wickedly funny. Here.

If you're severely introverted, just hire someone to go to church FOR YOU instead of going yourself

There's precedent for it, sort of, in American history. In times of war long ago one could hire a proxy to volunteer on your behalf instead of going yourself.

And if you really reflect on it for a little while, you'll realize Christians who believe in infant baptism practice this already in a way, having the sponsors, aka the godparents, answer for the child in renouncing the devil and all his works and all his ways, etc. in the baptismal liturgy.

So the satirical scenario here in the style of The Onion is not only humorous but plausible, but I think it made the mistake of having the hired rep accompany the introverted Ms. Ivory to her church. 

It would have been funnier if the rep were simply paid more and "Ms. Ivory" remained safe at home. The truly liberated introverted Christian, after all, can probably get away with that in these times.

She could probably read the newsletter online, listen to the sermon by podcast, and tender her offering through PayPal, without ever having to suffer the trauma of human contact or the long recovery period required afterwards.

And just think. For the Christmas and Easter Christian, she saves a lot of dough because she only has to hire the proxy for two days, and the proxy gets the added bonus of breakfast on Easter included!

WaPo's Jennifer Rubin, a so-called conservative, decides to play Pope and excommunicate Evangelicals as hypocrites for defending Trump

Her Holiness Pope Jennifer

Because the original excommunication in the 16th Century just wasn't enough, you see. For excommunication to really mean something post-Holocaust, it has to come from the Jews.

Jennifer Rubin, WaPo's elitist "however" girl and answer to another so-called conservative, David Brooks at The New York Times, failed to shame Evangelicals into not voting for Trump, so now she presumes to shame them as the hypocrites they really are, here:

For now, however, these Trump supporters are mute at best, and some even stoop to defend Trump and Bannon. That suggests a permanent abrogation of their role as guardians of Judeo-Christian values. ... If, however, Christian conservatives are now making amoral, political calculations, they cannot very well set themselves up as arbiters of values or tell their congregants how faith should influence their votes. ... However, in embracing a candidate who painted an entire religion as the enemy, for a time wanted to ban all its adherents and favored a “Muslim registry” (!) these evangelicals have been revealed to be egregious hypocrites and, yes, even religious bigots. At least we know with whom we are dealing.

So there!

As if the political question just answered were the choice between Satan and Ste. Joan of Arc.

This example of liberal preening will keep Jennifer hopping in the party rotation right through the holidays, don't ya think?

61.6 million Trump voters just extinguished Western civilization, according to Stephen Prothero of Boston University

Wow, was that easy or WHAT?!

You can push the apocalyptic extremism out of a religion, and Oops!, it pops up somewhere else, as here in America's crummiest newspaper from the mind of a latter day Puritan:

"Americans like myself who hold dear such values as free speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion — values already under attack in Russia, Turkey, France and India — must turn to citizens in Europe, Asia and elsewhere to keep the beacon burning that American voters extinguished Nov. 8. At least for now, the United States is no longer the foremost defender of Western civilization. It is its greatest threat."

Muslim Democrat Congressman says Donald Trump is deplorable

Wow, talk about fresh insight. Simply amazing!

What will he call Trump when Trump starts sinking the Iranian navy in the Straits of Hormuz? An extremist, perhaps?

Story here.

Trump miracle election: Someone, somewhere, lets a dim pall fall upon 7.6 million former Obama voters who fail to vote for Hillary

Who's laughing now?

Obama received 69.5 million popular votes in 2008, but as of tonight 7.6 million of them failed to show up for Hillary for some reason.

Hm.

Transmigration of souls, according to Dilbert

Hysterical.

Here:

Dilbert: I couldn't find any evidence that I have a soul, so I built an artificial one and put it in a drone. When my physical body dies, the drone will upload my memories and personality to the cloud to live forever. Woman: Your soul will be trapped in a server? Dilbert: No, I wrapped it in a virus so I can travel.

-- Tuesday, November 8, 2016 "The Virus Afterlife"

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month

1918.

Armistice Day.

My grandfather died two months later, a natural born American citizen and pastor of German descent who tried to introduce English-speaking services into his churches, but not without a lot of resistance, which helped kill him in the end of a massive heart attack, aged 52.

It was front page news. The whole town mourned. My dad, not yet 4 years old, was plunged into poverty after the depression of 1920 and spent the Roaring Twenties that way until something worse happened, the Great Depression. At that point his mother sent him to Iowa to live with his older brother, also a pastor, where he went to high school. He remembered his brother was paid in bushels of potatoes and corn and the like instead of in cash because no one had any.

He graduated in 1933, came back home and eventually married in 1937. He went off to fight in another American war against his ancestors, in 1943. Even that late in the history of German Americans, that raised some eyebrows in the family. He served in the artillery in France and Belgium, survived, and sailed home on the Queen Mary with a Purple Heart.

My mother once said her most vivid memory of his return was the smell of his cigarette smoke in the bathroom in the morning. Years later the bottle of Shalimar he brought home for her from France crashed to the wood floor in the bedroom, leaving a more permanent scent of a different kind. They lived in that house until 2000.

They are gone now.

But I remember, at the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month that "war is the father of everything" (Heraclitus, Diels-Kranz 22B53).

The victims of the Edmund Fitzgerald, may they rest in peace

The ever superior Rod Dreher dismisses the hopes of Christians who support and pray for the new president in faith

Here:

Some people are already asking me what this means for the Benedict Option. Answer: nothing different. I’ve said all along that politics can’t fix what ails us. I believe that the erosion of our religious liberties will probably cease for the time being under Trump (and for that, thanks be to God), but the deep currents in society and culture are towards atomization and the abandonment of religious belief and tradition. There are a lot of conservative Christians who have faith that Trump can turn this around. They hope in vain. They forget that we are not to put our trust in princes. This would be true even if the princes were good, which is not the case here.

So sorry, Trumpocalypse delayed, at least for now . . .

. . . but there's always tomorrow!

Welcome to the apocalypse: Trump wins, stock futures tank

Useful to you in themselves, extras can be traded like cash in the apocalypse

about $.06 per round

about $.65 per roll

silver/copper content worth $3.3149 per coin on 11/8/16

Join an intentional community for the apocalypse

Food and water in case of the apocalypse on Tuesday

a food supply

water to make it

and a place to heat the water

Stockpiling for the apocalypse, on a budget

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I have a daydream: Pope Francis travels to Lutheran Sweden to apologize on the eve of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation

The reality from the joint declaration:

"While we are profoundly thankful for the spiritual and theological gifts received through the Reformation, we also confess and lament before Christ that Lutherans and Catholics have wounded the visible unity of the church. Theological differences were accompanied by prejudice and conflicts, and religion was instrumentalised for political ends.”

The two leaders prayed for wounds to be healed, saying: “We emphatically reject all hatred and violence, past and present, especially that expressed in the name of religion.” ...

Recent moves towards closer coexistence have been resisted by hardliners on both sides, and few people have suggested that the Christian church could reunite even though Francis has made ecumenicalism a hallmark of his papacy.

For all the saints who from their labors rest . . . all 100.8 billion of them, or so

The Scarlet Pimpernel

That's the total number of the dead.

Whether they be in heaven or in hell and in what proportion, sink me, I do not know.

And neither does Mona Chalabi. 

The Benedict Option in one picture

Evangelical women swallow the communist bait, will help elect an open borders, partial birth abortion fanatic president of the US

Gleefully showcased here in The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Trump’s support among white evangelical women stood at 58% in mid-October, down from the nearly 77% who voted for Mitt Romney four years ago, according to a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit organization, conducted after the video. More than 70% of white evangelical men still support Mr. Trump. ... After voting Republican for her entire life, Ms. Dingle, [a Christian blogger] 34, declared her intention to vote for Mrs. Clinton. Being pro-life, she said, was about more than abortion—it also meant sticking up for immigrants, refugees and other groups.

Russell Moore embraces the immanentized eschatology of Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Jaffa and Abraham Lincoln

Quoted here:

[I]magine a 1960s civil rights movement led not by Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, but by Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright. King did not simply speak to the passions of his followers but to the consciences of his detractors and to the consciences of those on the sidelines, overhearing it all. Behind that was a coherent set of ideas, grounded in the Bible and the Declaration of Independence.

Clinton v Trump: Who is worse morally?

Donald Trump is notorious for his sexual promiscuity.

Hillary Clinton is widely distrusted as an inveterate liar, including about even such small matters as the provenance of her own name.

Which is worse?

The answer from Dante's Inferno puts The Donald in the second circle of hell with all the lustful, just beneath Limbo, and Hillary in the eighth circle with all the fraudulent, just above Lucifer the father of lies, who is trapped in the ice at the very pit of hell.

To the Calvinist Doug Wilson, Donald Trump is a boorish pig whose dog poo he will not have on his shoe

Here, and so he will have Hillary's cow pie instead.

And you thought the Pharisees were ancient history.

Give that man the Duranty Award: Rod "Benedict Option" Dreher is so insular he can't find his own ass with both hands let alone the unfree world in 2016

Guess he never heard of China, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela for starters, then there's all the Muslim tyrannies, and then the tens of millions of aborted in Europe and the United States who never made the light of day because we think we're so free.

What's the unfree world in 2016? One in five people in the world still live under communism . . . at a minimum.

Apparently Rod Dreher is enjoying too much grilled octopus in Manhattan these days to be awake to the rest of the world.

Too bad Trump did not touch or kiss a man, then he would be celebrated for his courage in coming out of the closet

Seen here in the comments to "Donald Trump Denounced by Liberty University Students".

Once again the communists succeed by getting the true believers to live up to their own book of rules while they break all of them.

Calvinism kills as surely as apocalyptic, or Mao.

America has long since become Richard Mitchell's civilization of the ignorant who think that they are educated

"It is possible, of course, to keep educated people unfree in a state of civilization, but it’s much easier to keep ignorant people unfree in a state of civilization. And it is easiest of all if you can convince the ignorant that they are educated, for you can thus make them collaborators in your disposition of their liberty and property. That is the institutionally assigned task, for all that it may be invisible to those who perform it, of American public education." 

-- Richard Mitchell, underground grammarian and author of The Graves of Academe

Since when, you ask? Oh, since about 1913 or thereabouts.

Let him who is without sin among you be the first to vote

h/t Nita

What's more servile, prostrating yourself five times a day in submission to Allah, or calling yourself another man's slave?

From Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. -- Romans 1:1

The dead in Christ shall perk up: Renato Bialetti, son of Alfonso Bialetti, cremated and buried in a moka pot

Story here and here.

Looks much larger than the largest available pot, a 12-cupper retailing for $65, but autenico nonetheless. Though I'm guessing they didn't add water, or use the filter basket. 

My Enneagram number: 1,224,720

heh heh

Missionary hubris: Between 1 AD and 1776 over 40 billion people have come and gone in the world, most of whom never heard the gospel even once

That's the inescapable conclusion one reaches from the (admittedly speculative) data assembled by Carl Haub, senior visiting scholar at the Population Reference Bureau, in "How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?"

The answer he gives to that question is about 108 billion, in response to the familiar assertion made "some time back in the 1970s . . . that 75 percent of the people who had ever been born were alive at that moment." He calculates, however, that only 6.5% of those ever born were alive in 2011.

This means that just since the American Revolutionary Era, the worldwide gospel mission has been a phenomenon reaching, or intending to reach, only the roughly 18 billion who have come and gone since then. If billions who have never heard and/or do not believe now are "lost", literally tens of billions were already lost before.

Hell must be teeming, and heaven a lonely place.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. -- Luke 14:28ff.