Cracks in evangelical support for Trump

The fallout over the editorial in the evangelical magazine Christianity Today calling the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump continues with an editor from another publication The Christian Post resigning after the magazine decided that they would write an editorial in support of Trump.

Evangelical support for US President Donald Trump is back in the spotlight after the resignation of a leading journalist for Christian Post magazine.

Journalist Napp Nazworth’s departure follows an op-ed from another Christian outlet calling for Mr Trump’s removal.

On Monday, journalist Napp Nazworth announced he was “forced to make the difficult decision to leave The Christian Post”.

Mr Nazworth – a political editor and near 10-year veteran of the Christian magazine, whose Twitter biography includes the hashtag #NeverTrump – said the publication “decided to publish an editorial that positions them on Team Trump”.

He continued: “I can’t be an editor for a publication with that editorial voice.”

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How old will you be in heaven?

About a year ago, I wrote a post having fun with the idea of what religious people think about the age that they will look like in heaven, any answer to which creates all manner of contradictions and problems. It turned out that St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) had thought about this a lot and laid out his vision.

In this article, Margaret Morganroth Gullette looks at what the various religions that have an afterlife as part of their doctrine say about this question, and they all seem to think that you will look young, a fantasy that is nurtured by popular culture.
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Film review: The First Temptation of Christ (2019)

Some of you may remember my review of the hilarious short (45 minutes) film The Last Hangover by a Brazilian comedy troupe Porta dos Fundos that that has a reputation for skewering religion, politics, culture and other hot-button topics. That earlier film envisaged the Last Supper as a massive drunken blowout that resulted in the apostles waking up the next day to find Jesus missing and having only the vaguest notion of what had happened.

The troupe has returned with an even funnier short film (45 minutes) The First Temptation of Christ that is being streamed on Netflix. The central premise is a surprise 30th birthday party for Jesus thrown by his parents Mary and Joseph when he returns from spending forty days in the wilderness. But things start to go awry because Jesus (played here by the same actor who played Judas in the other film) has brought a friend Orlando with him whom he met during his desert sojourn. God (whom Jesus has known all his life as just his Uncle Vittorio) also turns up and he and Joseph and Mary have to tell the oblivious Jesus the truth about his real parentage, that he is the Son of God with miraculous powers, and what his mission in life is to be. We also have cameos by the Buddha, Shiva, and other gods who all get their share of barbs thrown at them.
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Christianity Today approves impeaching Trump

In an interesting development that has caused some consternation in Christian circles, the evangelical magazine Christianity Today founded in 1956by the late Billy Graham has come out with an editorial approving the impeachment of Donald Trump. It says that the fact that Democrats have been out to get him from the day he took office and that they support Trump’s pro-life and religious freedom positions is not enough to counterbalance the fact that he is unfit for the office he holds.
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The other Ilhan Omar and her politics of ‘radical love’

The right wing in the US have been on a campaign against first-term Minnesota Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, implying strongly that she is some sort of radical Muslim terrorist sympathizing anti-Semite while stopping short of actually saying so. In a profile of her in the December 2019/January 2020 issue of The Progressive magazine, John Nichols writes that the attacks based on this distorted one-dimensional portrait of her obscures the fact that Omar has a very wide range of issues that she is interested in.
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Why Scientists Should Be Atheists revisited

My Oxford University Press blog post on Why Scientists Should Be Atheists generated an interesting discussion in the comments of my blog post here that linked to it. One issue that was raised was my use of the word ‘should’ and why I was singling out scientists with that imperative. Why should scientists apply the same standards they use in science to everything in life? Of course, no one can be forced to do so and people can (and do) compartmentalize their thinking to enable them to be scientists by day and believers in all manner of supernatural entities by night (so to speak).
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Curious understanding of the word ‘divisive’

The Hallmark TV channel, that has become synonymous with bland programming and anodyne content, had shown an ad from a wedding planning company called Zola that features a lesbian couple briefly kissing at the altar on their wedding day. This of course caused anti-gay bigots to get the vapors and an obscure conservative group called One Million Moms, part of the American Family Association, contacted the Hallmark CEO to complain and the company pulled four Zola ads that featured same-sex couples but not two that did not.
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Knives are less dangerous than guns, duh!

There is a reason that there is a saying that one does not bring a knife to a gunfight and that is because while a knife in the hands of a killer is dangerous, it is nowhere near as lethal as someone armed with a variety of high-powered guns. But that has not stopped gun nuts in the US from pointing to the knife attacks in London as to why gun control does not work because, according to their ‘logic’, if people’s guns are taken away, they will use knives instead. People like Donald Trump paint a lurid picture of knife attacks that have no relation to reality, like in this speech last year.
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