Category: Religion
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The Stupidest Picture of the Universe
Every now and then, this picture of the universe shows up in my Facebook feed. The universe is a beautiful place, and I like the universe—it’s where I keep my stuff. Even so, I don’t like this particular picture of the universe. Why? Because someone has written stupid stuff on it. The picture warns me…
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Most Popular Posts of 2015
I didn’t have my most prolific year of writing, but I figured I’d end 2015 with a retrospective blog post anyway. This way I can finish up my year without having to think of something new to say. Here is a list of my most popular blog posts from 2015. 1. “Talking Sensibly about Hitler.…
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Talking Sensibly about Hitler. Thanks, Planned Parenthood!
Thanks to Planned Parenthood, we have finally turned a corner in our political discourse. After more than half a century, politicians and media personalities have learned enough nuance to talk sensibly about Hitler. For decades we’ve heard nothing but stories of Holocausts and invasions of Poland. But is this all that Hitler was? Is that…
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Planned Parenthood’s Self-Acknowledged War on the Unborn
A new Planned Parenthood video came out today. These doctors know exactly what they’re doing. They know they’re selling a product. The doctor featured in this video explains how her legal team works hard to make what they’re doing sound like something else. But in a closed meeting, these people admits that they’re selling a product. They also…
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Two Lessons From The Latest Planned Parenthood Video
Another week, another video exposing the horrors of abortion. This video features an interview with a medical technician who used to collect the babies’ organs for StemExpress. StemExpress is one of Planned Parenthood’s partners in the sale of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood performs the abortion, and the StemExpress technician digs through the remains for intact…
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The Avengers’ “I AM”: a Vision of Jesus?
[This post contains mild spoilers.] I suppose when you’re dealing with apocalyptic themes, it’s hard to get away from the Bible, but I was surprised by the amount of biblical language that showed up in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Joss Whedon sprinkled biblical allusions throughout the movie, and he put most of those allusions in…
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Windowless Worship: The Demise of Stained Glass and the Church’s Dark Age
When I was young we attended a fairly typical Southern Baptist church with fairly typical Baptist-church architecture. That architecture included stained glass windows. We were a small congregation, and our stained glass wasn’t fancy. Even so, the beauty of the windows charged my inchoate theological imagination in a way that I think was beneficial. When I…
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Subpoenaed Sermons: The Case for Handing Them Over
The sky is falling here in Houston. The mayor’s office has subpoenaed sermons from a handful of pastors. The request seems to be a bullying tactic aimed at pastors who have opposed the city council’s “Houston Equal Rights Ordinance,” which protects gender identity along with categories such as race, sex, and creed. The biggest point…
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Augustinian Morpheus
Well, it’s time to have our minds blown by the most mind-blowing of all theologians, Augustine of Hippo. In City of God 4.4, Augustine does a little political theorizing. He doesn’t care much for empire. He thinks Rome lost its justice long before. Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large…
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When Is a Boat More Than a Boat?: Noah’s Ark
Peter Leithart calls Noah’s ark a floating ziggurat. Nice. He notes these points of comparison found in the book The Tabernacle Pre-Figured by L. M. Morales. Morales summarizes the evidence that the ark is to be understood as functioning like a temple, even if we can’t say that it is a temple: It is like the cosmic…
COLLIN GARBARINO 