between this and the Melito homily idk man these ancient fathers are just unmatched in any era

THIS. The moralistic therapeutic deism critique applies even when the morals are progressive and the deity is inclusive. I’d go so far as to say that if your faith is indistinguishable from 21st-century liberalism, you’re better off discarding the entire religious apparatus.

I personally would like other cis people to stop talking like there has to be some scientific explanation for why a given person is trans. How about this: there’s nothing wrong with it so anyone can reach that conclusion for themselves for any reason and they don’t have to justify it to you

Worth pointing out on this Good Friday that the glory of Jesus at Golgotha has nothing in common with the imagined glory of patriarchal authoritarians because the Triune God has nothing in common with fascism. Y’all take it easy out there today ✝️

everybody wants to decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth and denounce Sodom's prosperous ease but nobody wants to see the Lord sitting on his throne in the year King Uzziah died or view the heavens opening among the exiles at the River Chebar

We also need a new term for specifically this genre of religion that is more specific than “evangelical”, “fundamentalist”, etc. This weird SBC adjacent nationalist theobro+lifestyle mom combo is its own distinct thing from the Moral Majority KJV-onlyist fundies of the previous generation.

FGC, LGBT rights, and Christianity: the venn diagram of my passions

I was planning on running a grassroots fundraiser for a local org in my red state that provides transitional housing to LGBT youth; this thread has got me reconsidering. I would love to hear from more folks’ perspectives

I actually think about this fairly often, and I believe it is because the hipster/instagram/VSCO aesthetic hit white midwest+southern young people so hard, who then became the core of the current christian nationalist insurgence represented by this type of visual language.

WBC games have been pretty fire this year I will say

Used to feel like “freedom” was a corny patriotic buzzword but lately I can’t stop thinking about Barth’s sentence “The being of God as the one who loves in freedom” Starting to feel like freedom is an essential quality of the theological project and the fulfilled human experience

Going to church on Sunday morning is inscrutable to capitalist logic. It tries to appropriate it but only to dismal effect. The kingdom of God is like a dishonest manager.

MISSOURI RESIDENTS: Submit testimony online TODAY to the state house on anti-trans bills: HB 1893 - Hausman HB 2075 - Phelps HB 2536 - Laubinger This takes two minutes and makes a real difference: witness.house.mo.gov/Default.aspx...

HELP TRANS SPORTS: Today, USA Rugby caved to Trump and kicked a close friend of mine off her amateur team for being trans. usa.rugby/news/usa-rug... You can contact their office to express your opinion: usa.rugby/national-off... SPREAD THE WORD

HELP TRANS SPORTS: Today, USA Rugby caved to Trump and kicked a close friend of mine off her amateur team for being trans. usa.rugby/news/usa-rug... You can contact their office to express your opinion: usa.rugby/national-off... SPREAD THE WORD

I just became a recurring contributor to eqks.org I especially urge my fellow cisgender men to step up and support your neighbors. Now is the time.

I was raised in some of the worst fundamentalist Christian nationalism and adopted it for myself during my college years. I'm talking Doug Wilson, James Dobson, Ken Ham, all the names you can think of. Here's a thread on the real, concrete things that led me to reject it; maybe it will help someone:

Today I saw an anti-ICE protest on the main street of my ultraconservative small Kansas exurb hometown. I’m typically a “nothing ever happens” sort of guy but if the Rs have lost this crowd, it is over.

maybe we can talk about this once it’s the common dem position to affirm the humanity and rights of trans people at least as directly as he has

If you do not believe in a gender transition of the physical body, how can you claim to believe in spiritual regeneration? He who took the heart of stone and gave a heart of flesh, can He not do the same for the rest of the body? For it is the Spirit who gives life.

“you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” — Isa 58:12b Third Isaiah is undefeated; this small passage alone is worth years of meditation.

Whenever I mention I wear contacts in a conversation with someone, they ALWAYS say “oh I could never touch my eye” Do non-contact wearers understand that you don’t touch your eye when inserting and removing contacts?

“As amongst those who are regenerate there are different degrees of holiness and righteousness, one, it may be, far exceeding another, yet there is between them no difference of state and condition, they are all equally regenerate.” John Owen on the Holy Spirit, III.1

damn neither of us Spartacus

Need this so bad

H. Richard Niebuhr this is about you

this is one of the most spiritually true things i have ever read

The classic playbook 1) Soothes the father who is the actual sexual threat but cannot admit it 2) Justifies higher control 3) Does not achieve its ostensible purpose in the first place, ensuring both 1 and 2 can escalate. Fascism is this same violence-generation machine plugged into politics.

There’s a theological anti-fascist connection here but I can’t describe it yet

Disappointed by the 2XKO console launch. Major performance issues and screen tearing during matches. IMO this is not a state fit to show at a major like Frosty. Game is fun though, just hope they get it fixed before the next big offline tournament. #2XKO

BREAKING: we have a statement from someone alleged to be one of the protesters who interrupted the SBC church service:

Bears Hawks Sox Bulls

I am decreasingly interested in theology that reduces Christianity to aesthetic preference in service of some generic inner experience of divine love, oneness, etc. Christianity has an aesthetic dimension, but if it’s only that then I still need a fundamental value system to interpret my experience.

You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. — Matt 12:34-35

Why was I not dismayed? Because I do not fear any of the terrors that can happen in this life. What are those terrors? Death? It is not a terror, for by it we are speedily ushered into the undisturbed harbor of Heaven.

Went and saw Brahms’ 4th symphony today. @poetinbabylon.bsky.social I think I feel about Brahms the same way you feel about Mahler; never quite been able to pick up what this guy is putting down.

Its priests have done violence to my teaching and have profaned my holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. Ez 22:26

Also, Isaiah 6:1 has got to be one of the most beautiful opening sentences of any chapter in literature.

Within Proto-Isaiah, chapter 21 has always felt to me uniquely nightmarish, compared to the objectively more violent but more straightforward oracles such as chapter 13. I find myself returning to it often in my reading.

Yes it does, because fascist voters are shrieking, shrill men who seek to dominate the people in their own lives. I am begging people to understand that the reason people vote for evil is because they are evil. Now, being evil doesn’t mean you’re subhuman, but it does mean you need to repent.

This one is really sticking with me. My belief in religious freedom is deep, but the truth is that these deranged nationalist and non-affirming churches need to be eliminated, like it or not. I honestly think the courage that Jenna describes here will be the defining trait of 21st century theology.

type of take that would genuinely have a 5th century alexandrian bishop writing a treatise whose title starts with “Contra”

“What managerial expertise requires for its vindication is a justified conception of social science as providing a stock of law-like generalizations with strong predictive power...the salient fact about those sciences is the absence of the discovery of any law-like generalizations whatsoever.”

Homemade burger buns 2026 edition

The last essay of 2025 was a post clarifying that liberation and tolerance might be at odds sometimes. We must have the courage to name that we have no interest in preserving nonaffirming churches/orgs beyond helping them become affirming or close well. invisiblecakesociety.com/2025/11/27/t...

Real Calvinism Has Never Been Tried

The fundamentalists’ takes on public morality have always been so funny to me because they turn around and define Christian moral standards as like “don’t have gay sex” and not as, y’know, “love your neighbor and bless those who persecute you”

The Gospel is more relevant to our modernist-worshipping society than it has been in many generations. All of our self worship, our intellectualism, our economic and military prowess, has led us to a path of destruction. All of our preaching needs an eschatological bent