Corporate Church, Consumer Membership, and other links

The posting of links does not constitute an endorsement of the sites linked, and not necessarily even agreement with the specific posts linked.

• Authority and Its Abuse -- "Abusive authority is the improper use of authority. Like all sin, it’s a distortion."
• Barr laid it on the line with the simple question the Russia Hoaxers can’t answer -- "Attorney General William Barr scares the wits out of the Democrats who bet their party’s political future on removing President Trump from office."
• Corporate Church, Consumer Membership -- "From what can be observed by the statisticians and researchers, it is attracting a lot of marginal members out of existing churches into the larger ones, because a larger gathering produces a large enough offering to pay for the smorgasbord of services provided to keep the people who have been attracted to the church."
• Democrat lawmaker verbally assaults elderly woman praying outside Planned Parenthood -- "A homosexual pro-abortion member of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives [verbally assaulted] an elderly Catholic woman praying in peaceful protest outside a Planned Parenthood abortion mill in his district, calling her an “old white lady” who was doing something “disgusting”."
• Georgia Gov Brian Kemp Signs Bill Banning Abortions When Baby’s Heartbeat Begins -- "The Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act...recognizes that science tells us that children in the womb are living, distinct human beings that are worthy of full legal protection."
• Gushee faults evangelicals for using ‘selective literalism’ to harm gays -- "Gushee...in his 2014 book Changing Our Mind chronicled how after decades of defending the traditional evangelical position he came to believe that someone can be both Christian and gay..."
• Gravestone Cleaning 101 -- "While some of this damage cannot be reversed, in other cases, preservation and prevention can make all the difference."
• Hundreds of California parents protest after LGBT curriculum passes school board -- "Parents opposed to the curriculum urged the district to try another program, saying the K–5 students were too young to learn that historical figures identified as LGBT."
• Instant Archives -- "The free Portal to Texas History website contains nearly 12 million digitized historical documents for research."
• Once Abused by the Church, Now I Love the Church -- "We were only allowed to read the pastor’s writings...He was dictatorial, manipulative, and spiritually abusive."
• Pete Buttigieg doesn’t get to make up his own Christianity -- "There is no place in His entire biblical narrative where He defines us by our desires. All of us, however, are known by our choices."
• Russian Interference -- "Tumbleweeds—stray pests from Siberia and icons of loneliness—sometimes gang up on civilization."
• The Christian Heart of Modern Medicine -- "The French Atheist philosopher Michael Onfray in his book ‘In Defence of Atheism’ argues that the whole of Western medicine is shot through with a Christian worldview and that this needs to be eradicated."
• The Injustice of Social Justice -- "The besetting sin of pragmatic, style-conscious evangelicals has always been that they shamelessly borrow fads and talking points from the unbelieving world."
• The Liturgical Nature of Cultus -- "The term “cultus” grew from this original Latin source alongside “culture,” and referred to the public acts of worship performed by a religious community."
• Time Magazine and the Buttigiegs: masterful Rockwellian deception -- "The cover photo is a carefully posed illusion. The story on the pages inside the magazine is nothing more than a fawning 4,000-word footnote to the TIME cover."
• ‘Why is my teenage girl picked on for NOT being gay or trans?’ A disturbing look at how teachers and pupils have turned tolerance on its head -- "By trying to stop the small number of transgender pupils being bullied, are the rest of the class suffering?"
• Why New Testament Polity Is Prescriptive -- "Today many evangelicals assume that the Bible does not prescribe a normative pattern of church polity. This is a natural—and convenient—assumption..."