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Tribalism is a term used to describe social groups that are very uniform in how they think and behave and that tend to value group loyalty and cohesion over individual members’ needs or any laws/rules/etiquette. Tribal group members value that one membership above that of other groups to which they may belong. And the members of a tribal group tend to act very decisively to protect the group’s cohesion against challenges and threats, even imagined ones.

Wow, do Christians tend to hate the idea of naturalism. One apologetics site even calls it, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, “a belief-system opposed to our god.” Notice their flowchart, by the way. It’s actually not too bad. “The natural world is all that exists, so if something falls outside the natural world, it is excluded from reality.” One almost wants to say in response “Yes, and…?”

Kim Davis is all but the Republican Jesus right now, but one of her recent claims left me confused–the one about how she was totally Democrat once but “the party left me” so now she’s re-registered as a Republican. Today we’ll talk about that claim, because the news of her attempted (and Read more

Kim Davis is from a family of super-duper-fervent Christians in a super-duper-religious town, but she claims that her new birth only happened a few years ago for the very first time. As a result of her new birth, she is totally changed and a whole different person, and all her transgressions are forgotten. Indeed, it bothers her that people think she’s a total hypocrite. She’s indignant about it–and hates that while “God” has forgotten her past, people keep bringing it up. And I wonder who is fooled by this blatantly self-serving assertion of hers. Fundagelical Christians like her like to say that the second they are converted, anything that happened previously is off-limits. They are “born again,” in a very real sense: new creations, totally different people. Today I want to talk about how wrong this idea is, and why it only serves to further fundagelical interests and promote abuse. I’ll start by discussing Fireproof, that awful Christian movie I reviewed recently.

Well! The end of the world is coming (again) this week. Do you know where your Christians are? Yes indeed, because you see, the very last deadline for the very last bit of the Blood Moon Rapture Scare (sometimes called “Four Moons”) is upon us. Orchestrated largely by professional false prophet and bloviating loudmouth John Hagee, the Blood Moon Rapture Scare posits that because lunar eclipses are occurring around the dates of four important Jewish holidays between 2014 and 2015, the Rapture is going to happen before they’re all done. A bunch of people who actually understand anything about astronomy in general and lunar eclipses in particular are now head-desking repeatedly, but it only gets worse from here–sorry, gang. Today we’ll be talking about why these Rapture scares are, increasingly, bad ideas for Christianity.

Last year, I wrote about mission trips in evangelical Christianity–and did not exactly describe the idea in glowing terms. I think even less of it today, and I’ll be talking about why now.

I was just thinking today about the extremely bad luck that the Religious Right’s been having with finding decent mascots for its simple, universal message of hatred, exclusion, xenophobia, willful ignorance, misogyny, racism, and class warfare. The roll call is looking more and more dismal by the day.

In the ongoing saga of sanctimonious bigot Kim Davis, apparently she is not content to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and has decided to sneak around trying to circumvent the judge’s order that she either do her job or get out of the way of the deputy clerks who are willing to do her job for her.

In this post, David J. Murphy specifically addresses one of the several “clobber verses” Christians use to hammer at the idea of marriage equality for same-sex couples. The verses in question are called “clobber verses” because they’re thought to be totally definitive and utterly unquestionable, with no wiggle room at all for alternative interpretations. To right-wing Christians, these verses mean 100% that the Bible condemns equal marriage. But what if these Christians are wrong? What if these verses aren’t talking about same-sex marriage or homosexuality at all?

Last month, a Professor of Communications at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary took his own life. A few days ago, his family revealed the shocking news that in his suicide note, John Gibson had noted that his name was on the Ashley Madison client list that had been released by “hacktivists” only six days earlier. Depressed and wracked with fear and remorse, he took his life rather than face his “loving” tribe once the news got out. John Gibson paid the ultimate price for his culture’s impossible demands and misplaced priorities.