history
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The Morality of Our Founding Fathers
Would your church receive George Washington or Thomas Jefferson into membership? The Fourth of July is here, and it is not a bad thing for a nation to remember its beginning. Nations, like men, forget easily. We forget the cost of things. We forget the blood beneath our comforts. We forget the contradictions buried under… Continue reading
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The Outrage They Are Selling
George Stinney Jr., manufactured grievance, and the moral poverty of confusing media attention with justice. This is what injustice looks like. This is what injustice looks like. Not “my cable-news network covered this crime while the mainstream ‘liberal fake news’ outlets ignored it.” Not “this case did not get enough airtime on the outlets I… Continue reading
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When Contempt Replaces Christian Witness
Fox News Christianity, MAGA zeal, and the neighbors left as collateral damage Mike McCready recently wrote a sharp reflection on the MAGA mindset — not merely as a set of political opinions, but as a story people have been taught to inhabit. His point, in essence, is that many die-hard MAGA supporters are not unreachable because they… Continue reading
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How Theology, Nation, and Identity Became Entwined in the American Imagination
I discussed Dispensationalism and its theology in the previous posts. But here is an important part of the story. There is also a reason why this framework has found particularly fertile ground in the American context. This instinct has deeper roots than we might first assume. From its earliest days, many of the first English… Continue reading
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Lack of empathy—symptom of cult-like thinking?
Short answer: yes, it can be. A noticeable erosion of empathy is one of the clearest by-products of cult-like, deeply polarized thinking. It is not merely the result of manipulation, but of sustained self-deception. People learn which facts to notice and which emotions to suppress. Outsiders stop being people. Cruelty becomes explainable. Indifference gets baptized.… Continue reading
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The (Biblical) Shame of American Slavery
To outsiders, the claim of some evangelicals that the U.S. Constitution is a Christian document raises immediate—and understandable—concerns. A brief examination shows that such a notion overlooks glaring historical realities, none more striking than the Constitution’s explicit provisions for slavery (the Three-Fifths Clause and the Fugitive Slave Clause). These provisions stand in direct contradiction to the biblical… Continue reading
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“You shall know them by their fruit.”
Fascist Past — Croatia’s Political and Cultural Schizophrenia A few of you have reached out to say you’ve been reading my posts (and comments) about Croatia’s fascist-sympathizing singer—and the government’s chronic unwillingness to sanction him in any meaningful way. This is a summary of my reflections in the wake of yet another public spectacle (his… Continue reading
Pared To Truth 