Salon magazine these days tends to major on Shrill. But that major caveat aside, their recent “The right’s Ayn Rand hypocrisy: Why their ‘religious’ posture is a total sham” carries real weight. Despite the Shrill. Earlier this week, CNN reported that American Atheists, an advocacy group for atheists and atheism, would have a booth at the 2014 Conservative Political Action […]

This is a story about a girl who loved a boy. The girl’s name was Michal. The boy’s name – we all know him – was David. David began as a shepherd boy, then a musician in Saul’s home there to soothe the King with his harp playing. Maybe the girl noticed him even then, we can’t be sure. But […]

Jeannie Greene first came to my attention one day when, as is always a musical education at Jesus People, I walked down the hall past various open rooms on a hot summer day. A gravelly yet magnificent voice sounding suspiciously like Janis Joplin came belting out of John and Tina’s room. But that was no Joplin song. Hey all you […]

Here’s some help for white folk not understanding why black folk in America might feel like the issue of race isn’t “fixed”… 1619 – 1865 – Legalized slavery says “black” people are property, beasts of burden. Women may be raped with impunity and at any age. Men may be raped, or beaten, or killed without any loss other than the […]

What does “friendship” consist of? Who is, in the real sense, a “friend”? We use the term “friend” casually on face book and in other social relationships. We don’t want to hurt our “friends” yet are very willing to hurt God — Christ as the poor, the dispossessed, the hungry, the homeless. We are willing, for the sake of “friendship,” […]

When my mother died and was cremated, we six took her ashes and in the back yard of the house we’d grown up in formed a circle. We took my father’s ashes, which had been saved for just this moment, and carefully opened both of the thick plastic bags. And then we took turns removing from each bag a portion […]

Hatred is high-definition certainty. Hatred requires a very simple plot. Hatred’s purest dress comes only in extra-small; or to put it in astronomical terms, it is the big bang in reverse. Hatred as narrative requires victims and victimizers, the first playing the role of the second. Hatred’s first victim is the self-reflective intellect. Hatred and race are intimate for one […]

Forgiveness? How far? Corrie Ten Boom, imprisoned in the concentration camps for hiding Jews from the Nazis, lost both her father and sister there and survived herself due to clerical error which allowed her release. After the war, when she had begun telling her stories of faith and suffering, she spoke also on forgiveness. And one day God took her […]

So… when lethal injection doesn’t work due to the drugs being “unavailable” (due to companies not wanting their product linked with state-sanctioned murder)… Tennessee has now made using the Electric Chair mandatory. You know, that vicious obscenity that is a proven torture device? Seven other states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Virginia, still authorize use of […]

“Do not question others’ faith just because you disagree with them. It adds nothing to the discussion and only causes strife.” – Charisma News comments guidelines “President Obama…. Would you allow me to share with you that I and scores of others have serious doubts about your conversion and the authenticity of your Christianity?” – Charisma News editorial (emphasis in […]