Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
We can never know the hands we’re in until we feel them grip

We can never know the hands we’re in until we feel them grip

Last updated on: February 26, 2019 at 2:59 pm by Fred Clark

We can never know the hands we’re in until we feel them grip 2019-02-26T14:59:09-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

• Pat Robertson isn’t as quick as he once was and these days he’s having a hard time keeping up with the lunatic theocratic agenda he helped get rolling. Poor Uncle Marion is still railing against the “gay agenda” that’s “willing to destroy the whole fabric of society” because Philadelphia opposes tax-dollars supporting a Catholic adoption agency’s no-gays-allowed policy.

Meanwhile, his followers have raced ahead of him — seeing his culture-war solidarity with Catholic Christians as an archaic relic of the Obama era. Their new fight is making sure that tax-dollars can be used to support Real, True Christian ministries that insist Papists shouldn’t be allowed to adopt children either.

• Small government costs us money. And time. And hassle. Endless, enduring hassle.

It means living like this: “Don’t Use a Debit Card at the Gas Pump.” Why? Because scammers can use card skimmers to steal your info, clone your card, and clean out your bank account. And because the 1 percent is terrified of an actual Consumer Finance Protection Bureau with the funding and the clout to protect you and your accounts from people like this.

Alicia Adamczyk’s article at that link is full of prudent advice for those of us forced to live in the small-government world preferred by our 1-percent overlords and the scammers they invite and empower to prey on us too. Such advice is homework — uncompensated labor. It ranges from the mildly inconvenient to the massively, exhaustingly burdensome: Avoid using debit cards at all. Constantly monitor your accounts. Set up fraud alerts. Vigilantly keep track of your credit score (because unelected, unaccountable credit-rating agencies are not “government,” and therefore their unchecked power doesn’t diminish your freedom). Choose different passwords and PIN numbers for everything and make sure they’re so complex you can’t remember them. Oh, and change them every month.

Our overlords can afford to hire people to do all of that work for them. The rest of us have to do that work for free on top of the job(s) we’re already working.

Life doesn’t have to be like this.

• It occurred to me last night that this old Wittenburg Door cover illustration would’ve been the perfect accompaniment to yesterday’s post:

That was from the evangelical satire magazine’s 1985 issue on the “heresy trial” of popular evangelical preacher Tony Campolo, which was a real thing that happened (the trial) even if it made The Door’s attempts at parody and hyperbole seem tame by comparison. The crisis was prompted by Tony taking that same passage from Matthew 25 too seriously. He had argued that the parable teaches that Jesus confronts us in the presence of the poor and the hungry — a long-standing Christian teaching that dates back more than a thousand years before the invention of not-really-literalist-but-we-call-it-that anti-hermeneutics employed by the white evangelical notables who reached for their smelling salts and cobbled together their absurd “heresy trial.”

Savor the fact that these evangelical gatekeepers were not going after, say, Oral Roberts, or Kenneth Copeland, or Pat Robertson, or Jerry Falwell. Those people were all on TV and were all known to always vote Republican, but those things weren’t true of Campolo. And, unforgivably, he was talking about some kind of Christian responsibility to care for the poor and the needy. The punishment for that crime, as always, was to be officially branded with the warning-label “controversial.”

The sad little episode ended as the gatekeepers dimly began to realize the power of the Streisand Effect and the “trial” whimpered to a conclusion — neither formally “punishing” nor exonerating Tony, but just mumblingly petering out lest any further attention might risk young evangelicals reading Matthew 25 for themselves and maybe even literally taking it literally.

• And since we’ve mentioned both The Door and Tony Campolo here, it’s as good a place as any to point out Ian Paul’s post on “Is the gospel funny?” Paul says yes, but not in the way you’re expecting. (Paul is a comedy writer, albeit a British one, but still someone who hears a line like “You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel” with professional admiration.)

• Related to all that Matthew-25-type stuff and to the ongoing struggle to redefine “religious liberty” as tax-funded discrimination in the first item, here’s the happy ending to a story we first wrote about months ago: “Months-Long Dutch Church Service To Protect Migrants Ends After Policy Shift.”

Every day, for more than three months, a church service at a small Dutch chapel went on around-the-clock. Pastors worked in shifts. Volunteers worshiped.

The Bethel Church in The Hague started its nonstop service on Oct. 26 to protect an Armenian immigrant family from deportation, under a Dutch law that forbids police from disrupting a church service to make an arrest.

The church(es) not only won protection for the Tamrazyan family being granted sanctuary during the service, but got the policy changed to protect other families as well. Bravo!

And now, at last, Bethel’s overworked custodian will have a chance to get in there and vacuum the carpets in the sanctuary.

• The title for today’s post comes from U.S. Girls’ “Mad as Hell,” which has a lot going on under it’s campy retro-Spector/Blondie vibe:

Previous Post

February 25, 2019

Sometimes you feel like a nut

Next Post

February 28, 2019 Without getting killed or caught

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was the name of the garden where Jesus prayed before His arrest?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Gethsemane Golgotha Bethany Eden