I watched and/or listened to the video.
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I called the most politically active church I know in New York City but there was no sermon for Gaza.
That politically active church is less than 7 blocks from Columbia University.
Candidates that do not support Gaza will be pushed into churches.
Oh, my sermon would use The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, Matthew 18:21-35.
** you do not have permission to see this link **..candidates
As the article points out, the IRS never much enforced this anyway. How could they? And as the article also points out, a lot of the opposition to the political church comes from inside the church. Only MAGA fundamentalists will see this as some kind of victory. As the video I posted pointed out this just drives people out the door faster. Nothing makes people hate Bible Thumpers more than when they’re put in charge of anything.
Oh, my sermon would use The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, Matthew 18:21-35.
Mine would be from Mark 10:17-31, the Rich Young Ruler. It strikes me how similar the disciples’ attitude towards wealth is to that of modern Americans.
I tell you what. You write your sermon and I’ll write mine and we’ll post them on this forum for the edification and amusement of others. Deal? I’m serious.
Hi Steevan.
IRS says churches can now endorse political candidates was shared to say what was mentioned in your video is now worse.
It is not a victory.
Israel has my senator Ted Cruz.
Now Israel can sow discord as mentioned in your video: candidates that do not support Gaza will be pushed into churches and churches will be rewarded.
The king forgave a servant who owed the king a debt. That servant was not so forgiving to someone who owed him a debt.
The king stopped the genocide in WWII. That same people was committed their own pogrom on the Palestinians.
I think Senator Ted Cruz should consider that.
You say you want to apply Mark 10:17-31.
Now that I told you what I was thinking, especially after calling Riverside Church thinking a minister there had given a sermon on the pogrom, maybe you can tell us the topic of your current events sermon.
I won’t be able to write much more than this reply because I have to stay productive with my current To-Do list.
As you can tell from the thread
Early Christians Didn’t Want Jesus’ God to Be the God of the TANAK: The Notion of the Unchanging, Good, Christian, Heavenly Father Is PLATONIC.
I have another revision to make to Historical Accuracy.
The M David Litwa and Gnostic Informant video and Plato Timaeus 29e if not also The Republic Book II 379-380 have to be weaved into my manuscript.
I remember trying to understand how Yahweh usurped El and seeing if Jesus’ Heavenly Father was El. It turns out, no.
In the range of verses you mentioned for your sermon: Jesus says only God is good. That is Platonic from The Republic Book II, etc.
Stephen
Are you really leaving us? I will miss your contribution whether you believe it or not. But I am doubtful. What other forum is going to provide you with such a platform to start threads and post thousands of comments over the length of time you have done here?
Do you want to know why I enjoy your content, Steefen? You provide me with a point of view that is sure and certain which I consider completely divorced from reality. But I don’t condemn you because you disagree with me! Far from it. I ask myself, “What cherished opinions do I possess that are similarly divorced”? You remind me that the senses both accept signals and screen them out. Your point of view is different from mine and therefore useful. (To always be surrounded by others who agree is to be blind.)
Don’t go. But if you must, for god’s sake will you take Colin with you?
Steefen
After more than a decade and more than 7,000 comments, I will miss the forum.
My older brother is born in the Chinese Year Earth Dog (Yang).
I’m born in the Chinese year of the Water Tiger.
The Tiger with Cat/Rabbit are in the House of Growth & Development.
The Dog with the Pig/Boar are in the House of Domesticity.
Guess who has the better house/apartment?
Answer: the Dog.
I want to work on what doesn’t come naturally to me: Domesticity.
House of Passion & Sexuality: Horse & Sheep
House of Magic & Spirituality: Dragon & Snake
House of Career & Commerce: Monkey and Rooster.
So, there are 5 houses and an individual can only be in one house. The other 4 houses take a lot of work (since they are not one’s plot of land).
One could think I’m with the Year of the Snake but my spirituality probably comes from Western Astrology, Pisces influence ruled by Neptune.
So, as my criticism of the Bible and the New Testament has grown & developed over 17 years writing historical accuracy and 7,000 posts here (and not just that, reading Bart’s posts) and the bibliography of historical accuracy–and the scholarly youTube videos, I’m sure readers of a very polished second edition of historical accuracy will grow and develop as well.
Age 63 isn’t the new 43, so fitness and athleticism requires me to do work.
And since I haven’t been living in the house of career & commerce, that requires much work from me as well.
Why have I stayed so long here? I liked the religious growth & development at the cost of advancing in the other 4 horses.
I was part of the Ehrman club but I lost being part of the club of homeowners woth home entertainment. The relatives in my life probably aren’t even aware of the House of Growth & Development in Chinese Astrology.
So, it makes sense that I try to do a little more in the house of career & commerce for my career as an author and my career in financial services–and do a little more in the house of domesticity.
File this one under, “Do I laugh, or do I cry?”
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In Trump’s world* if you can’t put a price on a commodity it simply has no worth. Something that can’t be bought or sold is simply beyond comprehension.
If the humanities are not “monetizable” it’s not because they are worthless but because they are priceless.
*Don’t misunderstand me friends. Trump is not the disease but a symptom of the disease.
First off, that article on the Old Believers was great. I might just look to see what else I can find. I’ve always had an affinity for the ** you do not have permission to see this link **
If the humanities are not “monetizable” it’s not because they are worthless but because they are priceless.
Amen.
The linguistics program that I was part of was done away with at the Christian College I attended as part of a restructuring. My minors (philosophy and French) no longer have majors.
But let’s look on the bright side of things – there’s a new school of business!
It’s all about the money.
I’ve always had an affinity for the ** you do not have permission to see this link **
Having been raised in a bit of a cultural time warp myself and then watching it evanesce as though it had never been, I have always been fascinated with survivals, lost in time. I am absorbed by the idea of the last temple to the Egyptian gods, the Temple of Isis on Philae Island in Aswan. It survived until forcibly shut by Emperor Justinian I in 535 CE, its priests expelled or arrested. Who was the last one who could read hieroglyphics, for whom worship of Isis was not a historical curiosity but a living faith?
Can we imagine a scene, perhaps in dim futurity, when the last Christian church closes, not from persecution, but from neglect? The last believer passes away. And although everyone can probably still read the words, there is no one left for whom it is a living faith. After millennia of domination, Jesus finds his fate with Isis and Osiris as a name in a history book.
Since this here thread is devoted to current events, I hope everyone who lives east of the Mississippi has a warm and dry place to safely endure the big winter storm of 2026. Having lived in the DC area for 25 years long stretches of temperatures in the teens and twenties are not unfamiliar.
In Georgia such conditions are somewhat more discombobulating. Seeing the grocery shelves empty of milk and bread might remind someone of the pandemic. I’m not sure any consideration was given to what will happen to all that milk if the power goes out.
But I don’t mock. It’s what you’re used to. My friend Geeta told me of her experience when she first came to the US after her husband had been transfered by his company to Iowa. They spent a night in their basement cowering in terror during their first heavy sleet. Born and raised in subtropical India, who the hell knew that ice could fall out of the sky?
Born and raised in subtropical India, who the hell knew that ice could fall out of the sky?
Indeed.
It brings to mind my first year of Bible School when two classmates from Florida witnessed their first snow in Minnesota – it was just a flurry but they were nearly dancing outside to its magic. To them it was a wonder to behold.
Yes, may all be safe.
Love that story.
In the first house I remember, we had a swamp in our backyard that would freeze over in winter, and we’d skate on it. Although I never was very good, I always enjoyed it. My ankles not so much.
The last time I skated was nearly two decades back when we spent a Christmas in Vienna and found a large rink. Such fun whishing about.
The YouTube is a veritable haven for earnest Christian influencers helpfully advising their audience on the Christian life. One of my favorites is Molly Ann Luna.
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Hollywood, as usual, is out to get you!
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The worst thing about Hell is arguing about it!
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It’s not the stretching!
I have a sense of humor but it is not mean-spirited. I don’t watch this stuff to mock. Believe it or not I enjoy such a different perspective. Millions of Americans think the way Molly does. It seems important to keep in touch. And I don’t waste my time watching people who already agree with me. I can’t learn from them.
What do I learn from Molly? That the Christian Faith in modern America occupies a delicate and fragile space which must ever be tended and protected. Everybody is out to get you. Feeling Jesus is more important than Thinking Jesus.
I grew up in a community that used its religion to shield itself from the world. But it was easy back then. I grew up in a cotton mill village in rural Georgia which was exactly what it says. A small community where everybody worked at the cotton mill. Everybody knew each other. Those you saw at the job you saw away from the job. And that was mostly at church. Everybody went to church. If you didn’t it would be noticed. You would be asked about it . But then people cared about each other. They took care of each other.
And they believed. Faith was support and strength. It insulated us and kept the rest of the world at arm’s length. And if my description sounds 19th century, looking back it seems that way to me too.
Why am I telling you this? Molly is a lot more savvy and media drenched than anybody I grew up with but the underlying psychology is exactly the same.
We must learn to build tightly knit communities not based on believing silly and destructive ideas. Modern culture atomizes. All centrifugal force. I have no fix. But we evolved as a social species. I miss that belonging. But I saw too much to ever be able to settle for some gimcrack substitute for what I lost. Humans need community. And we’ve shown in the past that we’ll go for just about anything that will provide us that belonging even if it is held together with a rancid glue.
Stephen said: “Humans need community.”
Church affords community in ways that belonging to a sorority (Yes, there are women’s sororities or “sisterhoods”!), bridge and garden clubs cannot, no matter how many years a member. That’s because attending church is only the beginning. There is the gathering before Sunday school and church for coffee and pastries, occasional church dinners after the services and everything from wine/cheese get-togethers (Episcopalians) to oyster roasts throughout the year. And that’s only the beginning! Serving in any capacity (altar guild, Sunday morning greeter, stewardship drive, annual bazaar, the choir, teaching Sunday school or Bible school in the summer, the women’s church organizations) makes it impossible not to become a part of the church community.
I no longer attend church and haven’t for years. I miss that sense of community only church has given me.
Robert: “…What have you done to compensate for this loss of community?”
I know of nothing that can fulfill that loss of community. Then, finding myself on the “wrong side” of the political situation with my family and most of my friends is not good either! Some of us see things differently.
We have kept this forum free of political partisanship, mostly, and quite rightly. But in this thread devoted to Current Events I think discussing the intersection between religion and politics in the US is appropriate and grist for the mill. Thusly, I present ** you do not have permission to see this link ** for your consideration.
The NPB is nothing new. It is an annual event (actually a series of events) usually taking place on the first Thursday in February. It began as an informal series of gatherings in Seattle in the 1930s. The NPB first became a national event in 1953 when Dwight Eisenhower was invited by evangelist Billy Graham to speak at a meeting of civic and business leaders. The context here is illuminating, being as it was the height of the Cold War and the American, uh, concern for the influence of Godless Communism. (It was the same context that produced the second national “motto” of the US**, “In God We Trust”, subsequently printed on our money to demonstrate just how serious we were about it.)
The NPB has been a bipartisan affair. Every President since Ike has had occasion to attend. Speakers have included Mother Teresa and Bono. However since the Reagan administration and the advent of the so-called Religious Right it has taken a decidedly evangelistic/fundamentalist flavor. (Who practices Identity Politics and Virtue Signaling, and plays the “victim card” with greater skill than the Religious Right?)
I’m not sure at this point how many people even notice this performance. It presently serves mainly to buck up certain demographics and assure their members that they have access to the corridors of power. I only noticed it because I had breakfast in a favorite local diner and they had the TV on. I saw many familiar faces and it did set me to thinking.
As I said public piety is nothing new. As a nation we seem to need it. Perhaps because of our troubled history we require assurance that we are part of some Master Plan that ultimately sanctions us. Even our Founders, surely the most secular group of leaders our nation has ever produced, never let the name of the Almighty stray far from their public discourse.
Of course in all things one must have a sense of humor, however rueful. Who can remain unmoved by the spectacle of our Chief Executive claiming that immigrants are targeting churchgoers, characterizing a Republican House member who opposed his policies as a “moron” and sharing regret at his inability to sleep well on airplanes?
Behold the grandiloquence of our sitting Secretary of Defense discoursing on the “warrior” Christ and drawing an equivalence between the “Arsenal of Faith” and the “Arsenal of Liberty”! (I suppose this illustrates well how over time any system of thought can become its own parody and opposite.)
The capper for me though was the senator who read his doubtless heartfelt prayer off a teleprompter.
Now I don’t expect the Pious to care a whit what a committed unbeliever like myself thinks. I’m not their intended audience. I would simply offer that the message they think they’re sending out might be other than the message they’re actually sending. They might wish to consider that part of their problem retaining members in their communities might be just this confusion. (But then the lemming who cautions his fellows against haste in rushing towards the cliff is always accused of being a troublemaker. The sensible advice among lemmings is always to run faster.)
The Jesus of the gospels was censorious of unrighteousness, but there are hints and in some places more than hints that what he really-really-really despised was hypocrisy. Matthew 7:21 is surely one of the most terrifying verses in the scripture. If my unbelief lands me in Hell – so be it. My faithlessness was at least arrived at honestly.
C S Lewis has written interestingly on the possibility of suffering in Heaven. (Apparently sanctification is a process that continues after physical death and the experience of Heaven retains a purgatorial aspect.) But what’s not so well known are the pleasures in Hell. The “virtue” of the sincere unbeliever is rewarded by contemplation of the punishment of people who presume to use the trappings of Christianity to satisfy their own private hungers and thirsts. The only folks worse off in Hell than these hypocrites are the gullible pious who blindly supported them in their activities. It seems both Heaven and Hell share a contempt for stupidity.
**The original motto, E Pluribus Unum, “Out of Many, One”, celebrating unity in diversity, seems rather quaint now doesn’t it?
Here’s the most depressing news of the day. The release of a report few will read.
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