Stephen

This is why Zionism, which interprets Jewish history through a tragic lens, is so instinctively appealing to Christians.

The essential difference between the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanach is that the former is a tragedy and the latter a comedy.

I stopped breathing for several seconds after reading this. Wow.

It's fascinating how they toggle between the two, at least subconsciously recognizing the contradiction. As with the barely hidden invocation of (white, Christian?) male dominance in society, while also claiming that Islam isn't good for women.

There needs to be a real public left-liberal campaign for One Billion US Americans, even if the guy who coined the idea has retreated into irrelevance.

"To find the climax of sin we must not linger over a man who swears, or sneers at religion, or denies the mystery of the trinity, but put our hands on social groups who have turned the patrimony of a nation into the private property of a small class, or have left the peasant laborers cowed..."

A lot of these sentiments seem so wrapped up in taking vengeance that there's very little consideration of how things would actually play out. The fact that someone is terrible simply doesn't = "throwing them in prison will lead to a better future."

"Men press their covetousness to the injury of society. They are willing to frustrate the cause of liberty and social justice in whole nations in order to hold their selfish social and economic privileges."

Whatever he's wearing seems neither righteous nor lawful.

You'd like to think that people will transfer their perceptions of economic problems into support for egalitarian policy, but many (most?) simply back into "too many people" mode and become reactionary about immigration or housing, or they support counterproductive policies like price controls.

I think the comparison to public perception of crime is helpful here. It can be tempting to do a left-populist "everything is worse/less affordable than it ever has been" shtick, but accepting that falsehood (when exactly were the better times if it is so bad now?) plays into reactionary sentiment.

"It is possible to hold the orthodox doctrine on the devil and not recognize him when we meet him in a real estate office or at the stock exchange."

It's almost (almost) funny the way she puts a garbled version of a classic *egalitarian* argument at the center of her essay, probably not even realizing what it was supposed to be.

You can be a fairly consistent "biblical" sexist or homophobe or enslaver, though. Maybe not the best interpreter, but you can at least make a case for those ones if you're playing the "biblical Christianity" game.

Like abortion, transgender identities are not addressed in any direct way by the Bible, and there is just as much material tangentially opposing the conservative position as there is supporting it.

Say what you will about social gospellers, but their theology did make things like Social Security happen. And they did pave the way for many Midwestern white Protestants to feel religiously obligated to support civil rights legislation, which was decisive in 1964 (see Compton's The End of Empathy).

This is happening much more quickly on the Protestant side of things, where there simply aren't deep institutional resources to fund the study of traditions and figures that don't have immediate practical payoff for ministry training. I don't necessarily think that's great, but here we are.

I think about Lonergan's "not numerous center" a lot... there is an old theology that is still remembered, but, if things keep going the way they are today, in 4 or 5 decades almost no one will be working on Schleiermacher or Tillich or Rahner or (gasp) Lonergan.

"If theology stops growing or is unable to adjust itself to its modern environment and to meet its present tasks, it will die. Many now regard it as dead."

Rauschenbusch's A Theology for the Social Gospel is so quotable:

"Theology is the esoteric thought of the Church. Some of its problems are unknown and unintelligible except where the Church keeps an interest in them alive."

Lance Wallnau refers to the Charlie Kirk memorial service as being like "a Nuremberg Rally with Billy Graham" (laudatory), then catches himself a minute later and says that he actually meant that's how "they" see it and that the media will take the comment out of context.

rumble.com/v72a7ha-how-...

I don't think their choices made sense (beginning with not suing in the first place), but it's important to remember that Northwestern is an extremely research-heavy institution with a relatively small undergrad population. It needs federal research funds and has no worries about admissions.

this is explicitly racist

For one thing, as helpful as neurodivergence/neurodiversity can be as a concept, it increasingly gets used (like this) to trivialize aspects of life that are difficult for many. When people joke about "neurodivergence" in playful ways, that disregards the often painful experiences of many people.

I think people who talk like this think they're just having a good time and they aren't intending to make fun of anybody, but it's definitely at least extremely insensitive.

It's hard to combat because you can't contest it without making the people spreading the fear/hatred feel like the gullible and overly-emotional fools that they are, which only makes them defensively lash out and find a new justification for their paranoia.

It's not a new problem, but it is getting bad right now. In the past, it would have been "criminal" or "seditious" Jews or Roma or Black men, now it could be any of the above and more groups. Same mechanism of dehumanization via anecdote.

Kant's moral philosophy

No, I don't like Derek whatever his name is, but we fundamentally do need a lot of dense housing, mass transit infrastructure, and nuclear/renewable energy if we are going to have a habitable planet, so we do actually need the equivalent of "abundance" fairly urgently, whatever word you want to use.

The only worse thing would be not building new housing in desirable areas, which would guarantee that only the wealthiest will buy up everything already there.