On Clinging to Guns and Religion
My business as a pastor is to point people to Jesus, not to put forth strong opinions on the specifics of our nation’s gun laws, though I may have strong opinions on that issue. But sometimes these two things intersect.
I was in a conversation with a Christian friend right after the Sutherland Springs shooting, and we started chatting about firearms. Living in Michigan and growing up in Texas I have been constantly surrounded by a strong pro-gun culture. My observation has been that pro-gun conservatives in these areas generally have made their commitment to own and carry guns functionally sacred. To infringe upon these rights would be the worst possible thing to happen to them, and the question of gun control legislation is a question of attacking their personal identity. I was worried that this was also the case for this friend…
On Saying ‘Merry Christmas’
How pathetic is it that the battleground for the future of Christian civilization is perceived to be retail-store interactions? Christians have a millennia-long heritage of civilization building, and it has come to this: The farthest our imaginations can take us…
On The Unraveling of Cultural Logic
The debate over religious liberty and abortion, as it relates to Satanism, is an indication of the weakness of a cultural attempting to legislate and rule on the basis of secular, that is, neutral, principles. Sociologist James Davison Hunter, who coined the term ‘culture wars’, has this to say in a lengthy, but valuable, article…
On Religious Liberty and Satanism
The Missouri Supreme Court will be hearing a case on whether the state’s abortion laws violate the religious rights of a woman who is a member of the Satanic Temple. The Satanic Temple is an activist and religious organization started in 2012 that employs Satanic imagery to bring attention to its actions. Similar to the Church of Satan, the Satanic Temple is atheistic and rejects any notion of the supernatural, including the idea of a devil. Its beliefs are very similar to that of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism…
On the Civil Religion and Kneeling
If you think that when Neo-Nazis and the KKK protested in Charlottesville, with a white supremacist murdering and injuring counter-protestors, that there were “some very fine people on both sides,” that this represents an insignificant fringe of American culture, and that media blew it out of proportion,
But also believe that black men kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism directed at their community is hugely disrespectful, and that they should be fired, you are probably racist.
If you think efforts to remove flags and monuments to the Confederate rebellion to preserve slavery, most of which were erected during the Civil Rights era, is a liberal assault upon American heritage, and that they should be left up…
