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Lent (and spring training) start today

Lent (and spring training) start today

Last updated on: February 14, 2024 at 5:04 pm by Fred Clark

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Lent (and spring training) start today 2024-02-14T17:04:48-05:00 Fred Clark

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• “This Is Just Some Really Good Evangelical Advice On How Not To Get Astral Projected On”

Wonkette’s Robyn Pennacchia watches Charisma News so we don’t have to.

It’s not quite the case that everyone associated with Steve Strang’s massive Charisma media empire is either barking mad or brazenly dishonest. But everyone there who isn’t either a lunatic or a liar is extremely comfortable working with and promoting people who are.

Pennacchia walks us through a Charisma News program warning against the dangers of astral projection, which both the host and his “expert” guest affirm as a real thing that people really do.

Charisma teaches polytheism. Steve Strang’s magazines and broadcasts and websites all presume and proclaim that there are many, many powerful Gods whose magicks are real and can be studied and harnessed by humans. Witchcraft works. Spell-casting is effective. And every paranormal or occult claim made by anyone, anywhere is presumed to be true and accurate.

Strang and his fellow grifters and/or maniacs always maintain, of course, that these occult powers are things we should avoid because they call on the powers of the wrong Gods, rather than on the power of the one preferred God of Charisma Inc. Christianity. Why is this one God preferred above all the others? Because Strang & Co. are betting that this God is more powerful than the other ones, and they want to be on the winning side.

The more you read and listen to these people, the more you realize this is the only reason they prefer this one God out of all the many Gods they believe are real.

See earlier:

• The environmentalist site green matters is pro-goat — as all right-thinking people ought to be. So green matters’ Eva Hagan writes about “Why Does the Devil Look like a Goat? How the Symbolism Miscasts Goats as Evil.”

Hagan includes some discussion of how biblical passages like Matthew 25 have contributed to the bum rap that actual goats have gotten. I’d add there that anybody reading the parable of the Sheep and the Goats and using it to conclude that actual goats are bad is someone who is just desperately trying to convince themselves that they’re fine even though they don’t feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or care for those sick or imprisoned.

• A (Southern Baptist) LifeWay survey found that 62% of evangelical pastors believe that gambling is morally wrong.

The 2016 and 2020 elections showed that this doesn’t stop 80% of them from voting for a failed casino magnate.

• “The Tragic Injustice of the British Post Office Scandal, Explained”

This is a clear, succinct explanation of this story written for those of us here in America where it hasn’t been big news (or news at all, really). Madeleine Davies of the Church Times includes the church angle, which is why this was posted by Christianity Today.

This scandal involved the arrest and prosecution of hundreds of people later found to be innocent due to the fact that the crimes they were accused of never happened. The pounds and powdered wigs may seem foreign to us Americans, but we’re all too familiar with having prisons filled with people convicted of imaginary crimes.

• The Smithsonian continues its impressive run of historical subtweeting: “Abraham Lincoln’s Oft-Overlooked Campaign to Promote Immigration to the U.S.”

• Martin Longman on remembering the City of Merv.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this before. Nor would I have quickly guessed that Turkmenistan is home to the ruins of what was once perhaps the biggest city in the world.

It’s a fascinating story, a thriving city renowned for its libraries then turned into the plaything of competing empires. Its eventual Khwarazmian leaders brought an end to the place by deliberately picking a fight with Genghis Khan. You may not have ever heard of the Khwarazmians before, but you’ve definitely heard of him, so you can guess how that turned out.

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