Ben Shapiro chose to go after Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde. Unfortunately, he chose to do so by making up facts about history and Christian theology in a nasty, dishonest, bitter tirade, claiming she spoke absolute nonsense wokeness
when she asked for mercy for the weak, and made a series of claims about what is and isn’t in the Bible.
Unfortunately for Ben Shapiro, that is, because a scholar of the Bible, Dan McClellan, responded with a savage multiple skewering. It’s good to see.
It’s enlightening to see how little Ben “facts not feelings” Shapiro cares about facts.
Christianity was the born out of a ascetic doomsday cult. It’s founders probably didn’t care about sex or gender at all since all that was going to become moot when their Gawd destroyed the world.
EDIT” Its founders…
Mark 10:21, Luke 12:32-33, Luke 14:33, Luke 18:23, Matthew 19:20-21, Matthew 6:24-25
Sell all you have and give to the poor. Jesus commands. You obey! These commands are the punch line of Jesus, who starts out by commanding following the ten commandments. The commands these Christians pretend don’t apply to them.
It is time to start holding these supposed Christian’s feet to the fire. Every time they bray at us, demand they follow the Bible and the commands of Jesus to the letter.
Matthew 6:5-6. No praying in public. Matthew 5, no religious oaths. Like the Pledge Of Allegiance with it’s “under God”. Imagine if every time one of these yappers sounds of swarms of atheists demand these braying fools follow the commands of Jesus to the letter. This would take all the fun out of this nonsense.
John 14:15
“If you love me, keep my commandments”.
Yes, put those christianists feet to the fire, to live up to their (claimed) beliefs.
It’ll need to be an “act of faith”, or IOW, an Auto da Fe.
Light ’em up.
I also like Acts 4:31-5. God commands Christians live as religious communists. See Acts 2:43-44.
All these Christian right wingers fulminating about socialism.
“All these Christian right wingers fulminating about socialism.”
That’s because Karl Marx said some nasty things about religion.
Ben Shapiro discussing the New Testament?
@ 8
Yeah, I noticed that too, I just didn’t want to be the one to bring it up.
If Jesus made an appearance today, the Maga crowd would be first in line to crucify him all over again.
@ 10
They’d love his position on divorce and how non-Christians are going to hell, though.
Akira, well, nobody can be wrong all the time (though Trump sure does his damndest).
Which underscores one of the (many, many) problems with trying to use the Bible to make social policy: It is so wide open to interpretation, you can literally find Biblical support for pretty much any position you want to take. You can quote it both for and against capitalism, both for and against the death penalty, both for and against abortion rights, both for and against gay rights. Tell me what position you want me to take on which issue and I’ll find you a Bible passage to back it up.
Abraham Lincoln made exactly that point in his Second Inaugural address. Talking about both North and South, he said:
“Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully.”
Woke seems to be the label the mentally unsound far-right applies to anything that scares them.
Disregarding the religious language, this basically says “talk is cheap” and nobody needs to hear that message more than the conveniently religious.
Sounds like he’s trolling to “expose” some leftist antisemitism from the responses he’ll get.
Ben Shapiro is a bigoted swine who has the most apropos initials ever recorded.
Having said that: Ben, or the preacher in question, whether or not what either of them say here complies with the canon of the bible is no more relevant than whether it is consistent with the canon of the Michael Keaton Batman reboot. Who cares?
What is going unchallenged so very often IMO, is the idea of this preacher being on the side of children. Trans or otherwise. She is not. Obviously, cartoon villainly, and tragically not so. As I have said elsewhere, this preacher has either abused kids, and/or covered for those she knows to have abused kids, and/or failed to meaningfully act on reports of child abuse, and (no or here) has and still is actively raising money for an organization that has and still is actively abusing children. The notion that this preacher deserves any sort of plaudit for defending trans kids, even against BS in this case, is sickeningly wrong.
Racks brains for an analogy. ,,,Ding!
Stalin: Genocides his people
Pol Pot: Genocides his people and demeans scientists
Stalin: Hey Pol, stop being mean to scientists!
Many people: Ya know, that Stalin has got a point you know, maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all.
Pol Pot & Stalin: Continue genociding millions of people.
Something like that.
Jesus was kind to many sorts of sinners, but there was one group He absolutely loathed: the scribes and pharisees. Yet many who claim to follow Jesus choose to act like a pharisee.
Majority Report w Sam Seder discusses and analyses this here – Ben Shapiro Struggles Defending Elon From Nazi Criticism 36 minutes long.
“Let the grownups talk” — ah, the skewering is tasty! Shapiro is 41 years old, if you can believe it. (Birthday was a few days ago, checked on wiki.) Still comes across as star of the junior high school debate club.
indianajones@18,
Stalin was very mean to scientists!
That discussion about what, if anything, the Bible says about crossing borders: They’re both fuddled. My guess: 2,000 years ago, or today, you could be killed for crossing a border.
@22 KG I mean sure, I’ll take yr word for it. I thought he couldn’t have been too bad cos he needed someone to start work on making nukes and heading to space. But I’m happy to be corrected and admit my analogy needs work. Just so long as the point gets across, I’m cool with it.
KG@22:
indianajones@24:
Stalin really liked nuclear scientists and rocket scientists. His meanness was directed toward geneticists and other biologists that did not kowtow to Trofim Lysenko (just read the first three paragraphs for a summary).
Ty Owlmirror
My father was an Episcopal priest during the years of the war in Southeast Asia. When the politics of the nation eventually came around to citizens demanding that there be a moratorium on bombing on the part of the US in the hopes of pushing peace talks, all over the country there were demonstrations and marches in support of this idea. My father went to the local peace march and blessed it. Then holy hell broke out. Many members of his congregation demanded an accounting so my father called a parish meeting to hear their grievances. One after another they stood up to declare his actions anti-patriotic and embarrassing to the church. He listened patiently until all had spoken then he stood up and said, “Here’s the facts. I work for the Prince of Peace, the Jesus we all worship together on Sundays. If I don’t go bless those who are calling for peace, who will?”
I call this his “Atticus Finch moment.” I am not a practicing Episcopalian, but I give props to Bishop Budde for speaking truth to power, and I believe my father would, too.
indianajones @24:
If the point is that you’re a blinkered ideologue, yeah, that came across quite clearly.
Yes, the Episcopal Church is among those organizations which have had many cases of child abuse, which were horribly handled if not covered up. But to portray everyone in the organization as evil, cackling cartoon villains is as ignorant as the nonsense spouted by climate deniers, flat-earthers or anti-vaxxers. It’s a bit disappointing, but not surprising, that this crap is largely tolerated here.
Just for you Rob @28, 1:18-23. Just 5 seconds worth.
https://youtu.be/-WDNXOzKm2A?t=78
Despite the title, the song does apply to other people too…