Thing is, Christians don't get their theology from Popes or even Bibles. They get theology from communities. This includes evangelicals who claim to get everything from reading the Bible.

So when the Pope or the Bible tells us something our community disagrees with, too bad for the Pope or Bible.

It's actually very funny that one of the guys responsible for shaping super specific evangelical conspiracy theories about the end times thinks AI is fine.

As a Hoosier, this is awesome to see.

It doesn't matter what Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Candace Owens has to say as long as Republican members of Congress are fully behind Trump on Iran.

I have *zero* respect for my coreligionists who are pretending to be anti-Israel now because of "tax dollars" and finding out about the existence of Catholics in Gaza

We don’t know the names or locations of the gospels’ authors

shockingly people are capable of simultaneously,

1. Hating their government

2. Hating the people who bomb and sanction their country, making regular life impossible and murdering members of their family, even more

If you want to understand why rich guys are turning back to eugenics and recreating the rhetoric and theology of slavery, it’s because they know on some level this level of wealth inequality is unjustifiable bsky.app/profile/marl...

The Authoritarian Stack How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next

Wow. authoritarian-stack.info

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

Lincoln’s original proclamation of Thanksgiving Day from 1863 doesn’t really go into colonist-native relations, but it does recommend “humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience.” www.battlefields.org/learn/primar...

HE DID THE MEME

Man, fuck McAfee and fuck his stupid show. What a disgrace to punters

If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, that’s not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress comes from healing the wound that the blow made. They haven’t begun to pull the knife out. They won’t even admit the knife is there. — Malcolm X

If rich people have to be "incentivized" to contribute to the common good they probably just shouldn't be allowed to have all that money if you ask me.

That’s so cool that you were interviewed! Congrats! This will have a big audience.

Yikes. That is a disappointment about Hedges.

I am not a Social Security recipient but even if I was: Why am I getting an email from SSA celebrating this legislation? How is this an appropriate use of that ostensibly massive database?

Zen at War is a phenomenal book and a great reminder that it doesn’t matter what explicit doctrines your religion proposes, political systems like fascism can redirect religious powers to their service quite readily. There is no religious or ethical system that cannot be redirected toward violence!

Excerpt from this NYT essay that says: What is happening now is not normal politics. We're seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican. It's time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It's time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he's going to be stopped is if he's confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

Longtime conservative writer David Brooks wrote an opinion essay for the New York Times yesterday in which he calls for a bipartisan “national civic uprising” with enough power to stop Donald Trump.

This whole thing is worth reading, but this section is especially stunning…

Poverty is the least complicated social problem because everyone hates it and you can solve it by giving poor people money. But everyone also hates giving people money. So the solution we have come up with is dividing the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor and only giving the former money.

I am fully stuck in this loop. 🫠

Claiming that America is a “Christian nation“ while actively creating legislation that directly harms the very people Jesus called us to serve—namely the poor, the sick, the hungry, the immigrant, and the marginalized—is the height of both religious and political hypocrisy.

I know people like to think tariffs are good for unions, and maybe that was true at one point, but right now a big tariffs just cause disruptions that are likely to lead to plant closures and a lot of short-term pain

Listen. I believe ardently in criticizing our leaders for their failures and inaction but if you refuse to acknowledge their efforts when they do make them and if you refuse to recognize a step in the right direction, you don’t really want change. You just want to complain.

Finally finished Disco Elysium. It’s not for everyone, but its story is so relevant now. I’ll be thinking about the unexpectedly hopeful question the game posed, “In dark times, should the stars also go out?”

I’d recommend giving it a try. It is a beautiful story.

This is the broken-brained white American mythologizing that made a TV show called “Happy Days” that took place during Jim Crow.

Photo of a page from a book that reads: The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Reading poetry during Lent and thought I'd share a poem a day, starting with a favorite by English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins. God created a beautiful world that we have nevertheless "seared with trade." And still "the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings."

And little ever changes their mind. SMH

#USDemocracy

Cover of Rowan Williams' new book Discovering Christianity A guide for the curious. Marilynne Robinson says it's a 'A wise and gentle introduction.' The cover is artistic blue and gol.d

I love pre-ordering books because—without fail—I forget about the order and then when the book arrives in the mail, it feels like Christmas!

I'm glad we're supposed to have a snow day tomorrow, because this baby arrived in the mail today.