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November 2023

November 13, 2023

Just showing up

Before we talk about Jonathan Edwards again, we need to talk about Woody Allen.

February 2023

February 03, 2023

The other way around (More on slavery and ‘how to interpret the Bible’)

White Christians in antebellum America did not come to accept slavery because of their biblicism....

January 2023

January 31, 2023

Slavery and ‘how to interpret the Bible’ (cont’d.)

The claim that one is arguing based on "the Bible alone -- on nothing more...

January 30, 2023

Slavery and ‘the question of how to interpret the Bible’

Sola scriptura biblicism was supposed to provide an authoritative final arbiter for all disputes. That...

December 2022

December 20, 2022

What did Jonathan Edwards know and when did he know it?

The mass hysteria of the New York Panic of 1741 is evidence that slave-keepers knew...

October 2022

October 10, 2022

Have a yabba-dabba-doo time

Bob Jones University's inaccurate, pernicious, and deliriously strange Christian school textbooks have become a factor...

June 2022

June 23, 2022

A-moldering in the grave

"It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them....

April 2022

April 02, 2022

Concordance-ism means the Golden Rule is never sufficient

How white evangelicals taught themselves not to listen to their own arguments against gambling.

March 2022

March 15, 2022

‘Onesimus’

When white Christians enslaved people and stole their labor, we liked to display our piety...

November 2021

November 13, 2021

Father Abraham had many sons

This is about my family history, and about the parts of it I still don't...

August 2021

August 31, 2021

Bethlehem Baptist coddles white supremacy

Ignore the sideshow. This is a story about church leaders refusing to condemn white supremacy...

August 03, 2021

Discovering a (toxic) evangelical heritage

"You build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and...

July 2021

July 14, 2021

‘For you were [redacted] in Egypt’ (part 3)

This is not how translation is supposed to work because this is not how reading...

July 13, 2021

‘For you were [redacted] in Egypt’ (part 2)

It would be one thing if the "bondservant" Bible had been produced in 1830, but...

July 12, 2021

‘For you were [redacted] in Egypt’: Concordance-ism and the ESV (part 1)

Clobber-texting concordance-ists resort to "Bible modification" because they still don't know how to read.

May 2021

May 17, 2021

When moral revulsion turns to moral evasion

Moral evasion is sometimes not due to malice, but to cowardice -- to a lack...

April 2021

April 22, 2021

Backwards and forwards

White evangelical theology is not why white evangelicals support racial injustice and inequality. Support for...

March 2021

March 31, 2021

Catching up on reading The Friendly Atheist

Creationist pop songs, school board exegesis, grade-school apostasy, the separation of church and state, and...

March 24, 2021

A cow eating grass

The travails of two branches of American white evangelicalism bring us back to the Hole...

March 20, 2021

Born at the same time

Literalistic biblicism was -- and is -- an essential, influential political tool for preventing any...

December 2020

December 03, 2020

The 1611 Project

White American Christianity took shape thanks to two things that had suddenly become available in...

October 2020

October 27, 2020

‘Originalism’ = Garrison’s Constitution, a Covenant with Death

The most important thing about William Lloyd Garrison's burning of the Constitution is this: He...

October 16, 2020

Ira Einhorn and the politics of Jesus

The good news is that I didn't find anything insightful, inspirational, or influential in Ira...

October 15, 2020

The Gary M. Heidnik Student Life Center

Gary Heidnik was arrested after one of his captives escaped in 1987, exactly 100 years...

May 2019

May 19, 2019

Smart people saying smart things (5.19.19)

Wisdom and truth from Dahlia Lithwick, Amy MacKinnon, Natalie Wynn, Julie Zauzmer, and Rachel Held...

February 2019

February 13, 2019

Never been partial to shackles or chains

We tend to be more willing to forgive people like Edwards and Whitefield for being...

February 10, 2019

If ‘we’ didn’t know, now ‘we’ know

It's not that "we" didn't know any better before this new era of awareness. It's...

February 08, 2019

‘It was a kind of secret which we all knew and were too clever to tell’

Over at the Anxious Bench, Philip Jenkins* continues his thoughtful series on slavery, history, and...

February 06, 2019

An alternate history and an alternate future

Here my imagination fails me. I have never seen such a thing. The real world...

February 04, 2019

Bad Reputation: The right subject, the wrong question

Who gives a withered fig about reputation? Whitefield’s reputation doesn’t matter. Our “stance” regarding Whitefield’s...