Captain Cassidy

Fred’s written an excellent piece at Slacktivist about how Lifeway has discovered that a third of evangelicals are pro-choice, meaning they think abortion should be legal. As you can imagine, evangelical leaders are freaking out about this finding and trying to think up ways to rationalize the results of the survey, with many of them deciding that pro-choice evangelicals aren’t TRUE EVANGELICALS™. They’ve been on a kick lately to define who is in the tribe and who’s out, so their new line in the sand isn’t a big surprise to see. But they’re wrong about their tribe’s monolithic opposition to abortion–just like they’re wrong about all the other ways they’re trying to police the use of Christian terms–like “Christian” itself.

There is a “reason for the season.” It’s just not the one that Christians imagine.

There is a “reason for the season.” It’s just not the one that Christians imagine.

Someone needs to remind Republican voters and Christians alike that their leaders are trying to appeal to women, young people, LGBTQ people, and non-white folks, not insult and drive them away.

My even broke earlier today. I can’t even. Be sure you brace yours before you read this, because this is just bizarre. The Religious Right has made yet another misstep in its self-created, self-maintained war on gay people–but in a weird kind of way, though, this story makes the perfect Sunday Happy Thought.

In the same exact way, when Christians treat non-believers like children, they are showing us where their “money” is kept–what the rewards are that they actually seek and treasure so much that they’d rather have that than whatever their stated goal is. Today we’re going to examine whether or not their behavior actually results in the “money” they say they want.

Someone asked if I’d please post this part by itself and the idea seemed to be attractive to other readers, so here you go. I don’t pretend that the following speaks for every non-Christian in the world, but I know it speaks for a lot of us. I hope it’s of use to someone.

Last time we met up, I was talking about how weary I am about being treated as a child by Christians who have gotten the very erroneous idea somehow that they are the parent figures to everybody around themselves who isn’t Christian. I showed why they think that way and how they come by this error in thinking. Today I want to talk about one of the metaphors they use to excuse mistreating people that way: the idea that people who disagree with them are like children who eat candy for dinner.

I’m getting way, way, way over this trend of Christians treating non-believers like we’re their toddlers and they’re our parents. Today I’m going to show you why they do it.

We’ve been talking lately about system design in Christianity. Today I’ll show you Step 1 of how a bad idea can get enshrined in a system.