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Politics and Religion

2026-08-20T13:42:27-04:00

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.

The End of Suspension of Disbelief

Last updated on: August 20, 2026 at 1:42 pm By Stuart Delony

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Somewhere in the last stretch of months, my suspension of disbelief quietly died. No shattering breakdown. No dark night of the soul. It didn’t even leave a note. One day it was propping up the future with hopeful scaffolding, and the next — nothing. Just a clean, cold absence. And strangely? It didn’t feel like a crisis. It felt like waking up without the fog. There’s a moment in deconstruction where you stop wrestling with the old stories and simply... Read more

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2026-08-20T13:43:15-04:00

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.

When Ego Becomes Policy

Last updated on: August 20, 2026 at 1:43 pm By Stuart Delony

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We’ve seen this before. Not the details — those always change. Different headlines, different enemies, different explanations. But the pattern doesn’t change. And once you recognize it, the current Iran conflict stops looking like a new crisis and starts looking like a familiar catastrophe playing out on a larger stage. COVID wasn’t an exception. It was the first proof of concept. The Mechanism Nobody Names Before the pattern, you need the driver. Ego-driven decision making has specific, predictable failure modes.... Read more

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2026-08-20T13:43:56-04:00

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.

You Can’t Shame People Back Into Reality

Last updated on: August 20, 2026 at 1:43 pm By Stuart Delony

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I’ve called MAGA a cult. Not as a metaphor. I meant it. I’ve watched people I once knew — normal, decent humans — turn into walking comment sections. Same talking points. Same rotating villains. Same low-grade paranoia dressed up as patriotism. I’ve removed people from my life because every conversation became either smug cruelty toward some imagined enemy or an unspoken test of whether I was still one of the good ones. And I’m not going to pretend I handled... Read more

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2026-08-20T13:44:35-04:00

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.

Poe’s Law, but Make It Biblical

Last updated on: August 20, 2026 at 1:44 pm By Stuart Delony

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There’s an old internet rule called Poe’s Law: without a clear wink, parody and sincerity are indistinguishable. In other words, a joke can look so much like the real thing that you can’t tell if it’s satire or someone being dead serious. That’s why people fall for The Onion, why satire headlines get reposted as gospel, and why your uncle still thinks Jon Stewart was delivering the news instead of jokes. Now drop Poe’s Law into the world of American... Read more

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2026-08-20T13:16:35-04:00

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.

The Heated Rivalry of David and Jonathan

Last updated on: August 20, 2026 at 1:16 pm By Stuart Delony

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Christians insist the Bible is crystal clear about everything. Especially sex. Gender. Marriage. Morality. Apparently the Almighty took special care to spell out every cultural panic point Americans might someday invent. But every now and then you run into a passage that makes those same readers suddenly… cautious. Careful. Interpretively flexible. Which brings us to one of the strangest “rivalries” in the entire Bible. And why it reads suspiciously like the ancient version of The Ambiguously Gay Duo—just with fewer... Read more

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2026-08-20T13:15:03-04:00

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.

Megatron Is a Gun (And That’s the First Clue)

Last updated on: August 20, 2026 at 1:15 pm By Stuart Delony

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In the original Transformers cartoon, Megatron transforms into a gun. Not a tank. Not a jet. A gun. A literal handheld weapon that requires someone else to pick him up and pull the trigger. Once you notice it, you can’t unsee it. Megatron—the tyrannical, power-hungry leader of the Decepticons—temporarily turns himself into an object. He gives up agency. He becomes dependent. He becomes a tool. Inside the logic of the Transformers universe, that should be a problem. Why Megatron Being... Read more

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2026-08-20T13:10:57-04:00

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.

Quoting Scripture Isn’t Authority—It’s Insecurity

Last updated on: August 20, 2026 at 1:10 pm By Stuart Delony

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There was a time when quoting scripture functioned as authority. Not because it was magic, but because it operated inside a shared cultural agreement. The Bible mattered because people—rightly or wrongly—granted it weight. That era is over. And the fact that so many Christians haven’t noticed explains why their online arguments now feel less like conviction and more like panic. When someone drops a verse in a comment thread today, it isn’t persuasion. It’s not evidence. It’s an attempted power... Read more

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2026-03-11T11:26:50-04:00

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.

The Women Who Keep the Church Patriarchal

Last updated on: March 11, 2026 at 11:26 am By Stuart Delony

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The church often talks about patriarchy as something men do to women. That’s partly true — and it’s where the conversation usually stops. But it’s incomplete. Patriarchy survives not only because men hold authority, but because women are trained to enforce it — often on other women, often quietly, often “in love.” Naming a survival strategy is not blaming the people forced to use it. When women are locked out of formal power, the system offers a bargain instead: enforce... Read more

General Christian

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2026-03-11T11:27:32-04:00

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.

What Evangelical Churches Were Really Teaching About Love

Last updated on: March 11, 2026 at 11:27 am By Stuart Delony

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Before you could get married in many evangelical churches, you had to complete a small stack of paperwork. There was usually a personality inventory, a spiritual gifts questionnaire, maybe a budgeting worksheet, and — inevitably — Gary Chapman. Couples filled out the quiz together in a church office while a pastor explained that lasting marriages came from meeting each other’s needs properly. Then came the question: “So… what’s your love language?” People answered immediately. And not tentatively. Adults would identify... Read more

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2026-03-11T11:28:08-04:00

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.

Why Christian Nationalism Runs on Grievance, Not Faith

Last updated on: March 11, 2026 at 11:28 am By Stuart Delony

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Christian Nationalism is exhausting to argue with because it doesn’t behave like a belief system. It behaves like a grievance machine—loud, defensive, obsessed with enemies, and convinced it is persecuted despite holding enormous cultural and political power. You can see it in the tone. Not just disagreement, but in moral panic. Every election is framed as an apocalypse. Every social change is described as persecution. Every loss of influence is narrated as an attack on God himself. The language is... Read more

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