Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Consistently wrong since 2002

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans do not pay their debts.

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

The willow is too close to the house.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

“woke” is the new caravan.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself. We’re allowed to grow past that.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Choosing My Religion

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Choosing My Religion

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It was daunting when the Rev. Brandon Thomas Crowley, at age 22, replaced a beloved pastor who had ministered to one of suburban Boston’s most famed Black churches for 24 years.

It was more daunting — at times agonizing — to reach the decision six years later, in 2015, that God wanted him to tell his congregation that he was gay.

To his relief, most of the worshippers at Myrtle Baptist Church in Newton, Massachusetts, embraced him. Crowley’s career has flourished, and he has now written a book — “Queering the Black Church” — that he hopes can serve as a guide for other congregations to be “open and affirming” to LGBTQ+ people rather than shunning them.

Crowley, 37, was born in Atlanta and raised in Rome, Georgia. He admired the preachers he heard as a child, especially at Lovejoy Baptist Church, his home congregation.

One Sunday, however, the pastor preached a fiery sermon against homosexuals…

Crowley said his great grandmother repeatedly assured him that he was made in the image of God. She also told him about getting pregnant at 14 — and breaking away from her own church after refusing its demand to apologize to the congregation.

“She would say, ‘God loves you,’” Crowley recalled. “She said, ‘They almost made me take my own life when I was pregnant, but I came to know a God beyond the church, and I’ve got beyond what these preachers say.’”

Nonetheless, throughout this period, Crowley felt he was called to be a Christian pastor — a preacher of the social justice gospel…

After graduating from Morehouse, Crowley was accepted by Harvard Divinity School. He considered abandoning his dream to be a preacher, and instead “write books about the Black church being dead.”

But one of his friends, convinced of his spiritual talents, encouraged Crowley to apply for the open pastorate at Myrtle Baptist — less than 10 miles from the divinity school…

 


 

Reader Interactions

132Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I’m not a huge fan of religion because so much of it is right wing, but the majority of people will choose it over nihilism 10 times out of 10.

  2. 2.

    SiubhanDuinne

    You continue to outdo yourself, Anne Laurie! This is a wonderful collection of links and stories. Thank you.

  5. 5.

    BellyCat

    The “grandma hates/loves her cat” video is priceless. Thanks for the smiles, AL.

  6. 6.

    Another Scott

    Relatedly, … TheBaltimoreBanner.com:

    The Archdiocese of Baltimore is set to finalize its plan to close churches next month. That includes some where Hispanic congregations worship.

    Her two years in Baltimore have been the most welcome Cynthia Mendoza has felt since immigrating to the United States from Mexico about a decade ago. She credits her Catholic church in Locust Point.

    Overhearing her speak to her young daughter in Spanish didn’t stop members of Our Lady of Good Counsel from inviting her to Mass, to their group of young mothers and to other ministries, she said. It helped her make friends and reinvigorate her faith after isolating years in Chicago during the coronavirus pandemic.

    “The minute I came to the community, they opened their doors to me right away,” Mendoza said.

    Now Our Lady of Good Counsel is recommended for closure, with parishioners shifting to nearby Holy Cross in Federal Hill.

    The Archdiocese of Baltimore is prepared to shutter roughly half of the city’s Catholic churches under a plan it is set to finalize next month. In a once overwhelmingly Catholic city, immigrants filled pews in Polish and Italian neighborhoods every Sunday. Now, churches are ever emptier, and the archdiocese says just 5,000 to 10,000 people attend Mass on any given Sunday across the 61 parishes considered in its consolidation plan, called Seek the City to Come.

    Yet immigrants — now mostly from Spanish-speaking countries — still drive growth among Catholic worshippers. About one in five Baltimore-area Catholics is Hispanic, according to data from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, reflective of a national trend.

    […]

    tl;dr – Baltimore has a growing Hispanic immigrant population as a result of sensible state policies. That growth is keeping Catholic churches afloat in many parishes, but not enough. Consolidation has many costs.

    Worth a click.

    HBBD satby!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  8. 8.

    RaflW

    Thanks for the link to Rev. Crowley & Myrtle baptist.

    I was just in Dallas for a human rights conference (blocks from the NRA annual convention, which was not a welcome pairing, though there was a gun sense rally Sat. morning outside City Hall to at least make it known that some people in or visiting TX aren’t sociopaths).

    The first evening, we had dinner hosted at First Unitarian of Dallas. I’d been there a few times in the 90s for LGBTQ-affirming church organizing work & Dallas Pride parades. They’re so far beyond that now. The congregation is basically running a women’s reproductive care program right out of their offices. Before the 6-week ban went into place the church already dispensed Plan-B to anyone in the community who wanted it, and had referral services to abortion providers.

    Since the 6 week ban became law, the church fundraises and organizes flights to New Mexico for abortion care (not just for congregants, but for the community), and 3 weeks ago opened the Truth Pregnancy Resource Center (TPRC).

    The TPRC is established on the foundation of the First Unitarian Church of Dallas’s long-standing commitment to reproductive rights and freedoms. Its mission is to provide fact-based care and counseling to pregnant persons in need of accessible prenatal care, safe and legal abortion, or inclusive and equitable adoption services.

    After months of preparation and supported by generous community donations and grants, the Truth Pregnancy Resource Center is poised to open its doors this spring as a direct response to the growing need for accurate and non-coercive pregnancy-related services.

    The necessity of such a center in the community has been underscored by public concerns regarding crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), which have been criticized for providing misleading information. The TPRC aims to distinguish itself by serving as a reliable source of information and support, countering misinformation, and providing care that respects the dignity and autonomy of every person.

    They intentionally modeled this after Xtian crisis pregnancy centers, but as the name says, they offer truth-based counseling, not high-pressure tactics to guilt women into staying pregnant and coercing them to join whatever church is sponsoring the place. TPRC has evaluated adoption agencies (many in TX discriminate, but some do not and only those get referred), as I mentioned above they can help with travel to New Mexico, and their counseling supports whatever choice the pregnant person makes.

  9. 9.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: To me, the type of white Protestant evangelicalism that has managed to seize the mantle of “Christianity” in the US is nihilistic. Their central belief is that doing good is completely irrelevant to salvation–in that, they agree with atheists, I suppose. But they also think that salvation is the only thing that matters. So doing good doesn’t matter; only having certain implausible beliefs and praying to Jesus the right way matters.

  10. 10.

    Another Scott

    The never-ending Assange extradition drama in the UK may end on Monday. Or maybe not.

    APNews.com.

    Assange faces a hearing in London’s High Court that could end with him being sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges, or provide him another chance to appeal his extradition.

    The outcome will depend on how much weight judges give to reassurances U.S. officials have provided that Assange’s rights won’t be trampled if he goes on trial.

    Something something exceedingly fine.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  12. 12.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    There will probably be protests – there’s a fairly large pro Palestinian group at Morehouse which Biden is aware of:

    The White House last week sent a senior official to meet students and faculty members at Morehouse to discuss the objections to Biden’s speech, according to US broadcaster NBC News.

     

    There have not been encampments at historically black colleges but they all have pro Palestinian groups and students at two historically black colleges have joined with other college groups at encampments.

  13. 13.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Matt McIrvin: Martin Luther’s “faith alone”. Good works not required. Went on to support the war against the peasants who actually had faith in his Reformation. Religion can often pose more questions than it answers.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @Sure Lurkalot:

    The problem comes when some religious big shot has control over what works are good enough. It can be a tool of oppression.

    ETA: Not that faith alone is a real answer to this problem.

  16. 16.

    Geminid

    Laura Rozen is posting reports that a helicopter carrying Iranian President Raisi has crashed in northern Iran, in foggy conditions. A developing story, as they say.

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    One for sab – it can always be worse? NotebookCheck.net:

    Google Cloud has deleted in error the $135 billion account and data for UniSuper, a retirement fund company that holds the superannuation savings for 647,000 members working at 37 Australian universities. Member funds and accounts were inaccessible for two weeks from May 2 to 15 while Google worked to recover and restore everything.

    Cloud providers are a modern alternative to company servers for applications and data. The major providers, including Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, tout lower IT costs as one of the driving reasons to migrate from corporate servers to cloud servers. Whether cloud or local, servers are controlled by humans, so configuration and update errors result in problems.

    According to Google Cloud, there was “an inadvertent misconfiguration during provisioning of UniSuper’s Private Cloud services ultimately resulted in the deletion of UniSuper’s Private Cloud subscription” across the two geographies where its Private Cloud was duplicated on. Hundreds of UniSuper applications, databases, and virtual machines in Google Cloud were wiped, forcing UniSuper to fall back on an additional backup held at another service provider. All data, accounts, and money were unavailable for two weeks until the full restoration was confirmed by UniSuper on the 15th. A joint UniSuper and Google Cloud statement noted that “Google Cloud has identified the events that led to this disruption and taken measures to ensure this does not happen again.”, however, exactly what caused the deletion remains a conjecture.

    Readers should be alarmed that it took two weeks and UniSuper’s own backup copy for Google Cloud to fully restore the account and data. Cloud administrators wary about the ability of Google Cloud to handle serious disasters should start reading books on Microsoft Azure administration or Amazon AWS administration. Those itching to back up their Apple iCloud or Google Cloud files should look into a nice, local NAS server.

    Of course, all these other big options have their own horror stories, also too.

    Something something there is no “Cloud”, there is only somebody’s else’s computer.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    Torrey

    @Baud: ​ 

    I’m not a huge fan of religion because so much of it is right wing, but the majority of people will choose it over nihilism 10 times out of 10.

    @Baud: ​ 

    believing only one thing matters is different than believing nothing matters

    .
    I’m not sure what definition of “nihilism” you’re using, but it doesn’t mean lack of belief in a god. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as a belief that the world has no real existence, i.e., the lack of belief in reality, or the total rejection of both religion and morality. There are avowed atheists who believe these things, but that is certainly not true of all atheists. And in fact, in my experience, atheists often have a pretty strong sense of morality because they’ve had to actually think about it.

    (Note: the Oxford English Dictionary, which comes to us from England, of all places, is not nearly as hilarious as Tony Jay’s posts here had led me to expect from the inhabitants of that sceptred isle.)​

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @Torrey:

    I wasn’t conflating nihilism with atheism.  I’m saying most people what to believe in some purpose to reality, and that helps makes religions “sticky.”

  29. 29.

    NotMax

    Music, anyone?

    Thumbing the proverbial nose at the calendar, never say never.

    Bold as brass orchestration transposed in an unusual ear-catching time signature.
    ;)

  30. 30.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Sure Lurkalot: Luther posited that good works can’t buy salvation and that faith is a gift from God to a person who has been saved.  He also suggested that a person who has been given faith necessarily will do good works as a way to please God.  Works, therefore, in his view were evidence of salvation.   As far as opposing the peasants during the Peasants War, he was a shitty authoritarian with wildly antisemitic views.  IOW, he was very much like a lot of 16th Century leaders.

  34. 34.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Sure Lurkalot: But in mainstream Protestantism, it’s tempered with the idea that at least this world does have some significance: good works as what saved people do. In white US evangelicalism, it all becomes so otherworldly that that almost shrinks to a dot–all outreach is for is saving more souls, growing your spiritual downline. I think Fred Clark is right that that was an adaptation to reconciling Christianity with an economy based on slavery (and a particularly brutal form of slavery at that).

  36. 36.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: I’m actually terrified at the idea of some transcendent purpose of existence beyond us, because that could be anything. It could be something utterly abhorrent to us! If there is no God-given morality then it’s safe for me to just be nice and helpful to people.

  39. 39.

    Bill Arnold

    @Baud:
    Israel engages in regular extraterritorial assassinations, with particular focus on Iran. So suspicions will be natural.
    And helicopters are dangerous.
    I’m reminded of something a mechanically-inclined onetime activist said (subthread about non-violence) in another forum:

    You want helicopter parts distributed over a wide area, I can adjust the helicopter to do that and likely can also get access to the helicopter if you can point out where it is. That sort of stuff is simple to me, even if it’s not simple to you.

  42. 42.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Baud:

    I’m not a huge fan of religion because so much of it is right wing, but the majority of people will choose it over nihilism 10 times out of 10.

    Many will choose it over science, as well. We humans seem to be programmed for it.

  43. 43.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Sure Lurkalot: Thanks, but podcasts aren’t my thing.  It seems to me that Luther was the guy in his monastery who everyone wished would just tone it down a bit.  The kid who reminds the teacher that they had forgotten to give out a homework assigned before a long weekend.

  44. 44.

    TBone

    I don’t really care what religion anyone believes, as long as they don’t try to force it on me, sell it to me, use it to discriminate against me, or pretend it makes me inferior to them. And get the fuck out of my government with that bullshit.  Have at it, otherwise!

  45. 45.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    As long as I can masterbate without damning my soul, I’m good.

    You’re spelling it wrong.

    You might be doing it wrong, too. ;)

  46. 46.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” I forget who said it but it works for me.

    My half-assed internet research tells me it was Robert Byrne, though I can’t figure out if it’s Robert Byrne the chess grandmaster or Robert Byrne the pool player or some other one. I want it to be the pool player because I always sucked at chess.

    The quote actually sounds like something Thomas Merton would say.

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    Biden’s commencement address at Moorehouse College is at 1030 ET today.

    The press seems to be hoping that there will be riots or something. :-/

    They will probably interview graduates later, looking for black Trump supporters.

  50. 50.

    Barbara

    I’m sure it’s more complicated, but the book Fatal Discord makes it seem that Luther’s construct of salvation by faith alone was the epiphany he had after feeling so much anguish that he could never do enough be worthy of salvation. That is, he came to the conclusion that he wasn’t required to do anything.  There are a lot of problematic doctrines in Christian theology, but this all or nothing concept of salvation by faith is one of the most problematic.

  51. 51.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Sure Lurkalot:

    Can’t disagree with Luther’s beef with selling indulgences…but like Ziggy, maybe he took it all too far.

    So, like Nate Silver, he got famous because of something he was right about, but then decided he was right about everything and he became a bitter whenever anyone questioned him.

  52. 52.

    cmorenc

    Challenge anyone who claims “Christians are being persecuted in the US” to go for a 20-mile car ride along any road (except perhaps an interstate highway) in any direction, and count the number of churches they pass along the way.  The problem that should leap out at them about the churches they pass along the way is how any of them can viably survive when there are so many of them competing for members.  Also notice that there are no barricades keeping people away from any of them – maybe there’s something lacking in the message of the ones that are struggling to attract enough members?

  53. 53.

    Barbara

    @Omnes Omnibus: Per my above comment, I assume that most people had adapted their lives such that they were satisfied that doing the best they could is all that was really required or expected — the widow’s mite being more pleasing to God than the wealthy man’s golden hoard and all that.

  54. 54.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @cmorenc: “Persecution” means “We’re not allowed to dictate to everyone how they behave, particularly in the bedroom.”

  56. 56.

    Salty Sam

    @Matt McIrvin:  I’m actually terrified at the idea of some transcendent purpose of existence beyond us, because that could be anything.

    Kurt  Vonnegut Jr. had a lovely little passage about yeast cells, busily going about their work, digesting sugar and passing CO2 gas, never realizing they were creating a lovely bottle of fine champagne.

    Works for me.

  57. 57.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: Made me look…

    Katharina von Bora:

    When Martin Luther died in 1546, Katharina was left in difficult financial straits without Luther’s salary as professor and pastor, even though she owned land, properties, and the Black Cloister. She was counselled by Martin Luther to move out of the old abbey and sell it after his death, and move into much more modest quarters with the children who remained at home, but she refused.[25] Luther had named her his sole heir in his last will. His will could not be executed because it did not conform with Saxon law.[26]

    Probate strikes, and changes history, yet again.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  58. 58.

    TBone

    New outdoor furniture: assembly required.  Let the Sunday expletives flow 😆

    Humans should come with instructions too: some assembly required.  I think Ann LaMott said it first.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    Morehouse College valedictorian DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher had a Palestinian flag affixed to his graduation cap. Fletcher on Sunday called for “an immediate and permanent ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip.

    Bravo to Morehouse for allowing dissenting political speech. Some other colleges could learn from them.

  63. 63.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    A helicopter flying in foggy conditions? I am going with horses until someone shows me evidence of zebras.

    Well sure, if conditions were foggy and I had to choose from traveling by horse or by helicopter, I’d go with the horse too, even though it’s been >50 years since I’ve ridden one.

    Haven’t seen evidence that zebras can be ridden by enough people to matter.

  65. 65.

    lowtechcyclist

    @rikyrah:

    I love the part where the narrator says, “since you don’t like him, let me take him to somebody who does,” and she responds, “you and whose army?”

    Yeah, she absolutely hates that cat. ;-)

  66. 66.

    RaflW

    @cmorenc: Declining attendance at many churches is because of liberal oppression, not preferences, competing interests, or people turned off by “you’re damaged and need saving” theologies.

    It’s 100% blamshifting bullshit, and the fact that the damnable Prayer Breakfast in D.C. is still a mf-ing huge deal and impacts legislation makes it clear that Christian nationalists are mobilizing fake victimhood to gain sympathies and adherents. F-em.

  68. 68.

    Barbara

    @Another Scott: The Al Jazeera article makes it seem like not everyone is willing to use the word crash — but it does seem like that is what they mean by “rough landing.”  They just aren’t able to confirm the level of destruction or whether there were any fatalities.

  69. 69.

    Barbara

    @zhena gogolia: I don’t read Ross Douthat, in fact I hardly read anyone on the NYT Op-ed pages, but especially not Douthat.  And I come to the question I always have — how does any one person know whether Trump is being hurt or helped?  His opinion is no more worthwhile than mine or yours.  Douthat is so clearly the epitome of white mediocrity rising to higher levels precisely because he is mediocre and white.

  70. 70.

    hueyplong

    Strangely, pundits who think a criminal trial helps Trump don’t seem to be rooting for the other ones to go forward and help him even more.

  71. 71.

    Brachiator

    @Barbara:

    I don’t read Ross Douthat, in fact I hardly read anyone on the NYT Op-ed pages, but especially not Douthat.  … He is so clearly the epitome of white mediocrity rising to higher levels precisely because he is mediocre and white.

    He had mentors. And he knows how to write in the official, and exceedingly mediocre, NYT op-ed style.

  72. 72.

    schrodingers_cat

    The Indian election will have the fourth phase voting tomorrow. It is turning out to be a real contest, and the opposition alliance, which calls itself the INDIA alliance has the BJP on the ropes. Tomorrow there will be polls in Mumbai and western Maharashtra.  I am watching closely.

  76. 76.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RaflW: “Liberals are oppressively convincing your kid that our social agenda is regressive and our theology sucks!”

  77. 77.

    JoyceH

    I went to a funeral on Friday, first time I’d been inside a church in several decades. It reminded me that mainstream Protestants are by and large harmless well-meaning people. It’s the evangelicals who have gone toxic and given all of Christianity a bad name. My own father was a mainstream Protestant minister and I’ve found myself often recently asking when and why Christianity turned so cruel and violent. It’s the evangelicals, it’s not all of them.

  78. 78.

    JoyceH

    Adding – I know there’s a lot of violence in the history of Christianity, I’m just talking about the mainstream American Christianity of the 20th century, what it was like when I was growing up.

  81. 81.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @OzarkHillbilly: nice statement and works for me too. I am an atheist and believe in doing good / helping where and when I can because it seems like the best way to go through life. My motto being Try not to be a dick to people…I often fail to live up to my own standards but I’m trying

  83. 83.

    Eyeroller

    @JoyceH:It’s always been this way in the South. Yet another legacy of slavery. (That probably wasn’t the only factor, but it was a big one.)

  84. 84.

    cmorenc

    @RaflW: The only barrier to entry to any church or religious academy i have come across in years was at the fence an evangelical christian academy in a small nc town they had erected between their grounds and the adjacent LDS church.

  85. 85.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JoyceH: An American variant of Christianity intended to provide moral justification for a slave society became a variant of Christianity intended to provide moral justification for segregation, then shifted to primarily supporting a regressive sex/gender agenda to gain allies and retain political power, and it just developed from there.

  86. 86.

    Citizen Alan

    @JoyceH: One of the best lines in Friday’s new Doctor Who episode:

    Ruby (upon being accosted by “an Ordained Anglican Marine” pointing a rifle at her: “Since when is the Church an army?”

    The Doctor: “For most of its history. You just happened to be living in a blip.”

  87. 87.

    Kelly

    @Bill Arnold: Many years ago a friend of mine joined the local mountain rescue organization. His first helicopter trip was in a classic UH1 (Huey). Before national guard pilot started the engine he told my friend “This is a Bell UH1. It is 10,000 carefully machined parts flying in very close formation”

  89. 89.

    Eyeroller

    @Gin & Tonic: I still get the paper version of the Washington Post on Sundays and today’s edition had a front-page headline “Buying Slows as Gloom Spreads: Rising Prices Busting Budgets.”  We had months of unsustainable spending and an overheated economy; why would we not expect some pulling back? But it’s often been pointed out that journalists don’t understand economics, often including even the “financial” journalists, and that the one consistent bias in the press is to overemphasize anything bad about the economy. Though I do think that is worse during Democratic administrations.

  90. 90.

    Matt McIrvin

    …The thing is, all this happened at a time when most of the other variants of Christianity were noticeably losing followers, funding and general vigor, and for a time, it seemed like this noxious type of evangelicalism was the one Christian brand that was thriving. But it’s run into trouble as well, and it’s successfully appropriated the “Christianity” brand to a degree that it’s driving people away from the religion entirely.

  91. 91.

    cmorenc

    @Matt McIrvin: You snark, but that is literally the complaint evangelicals have about social influences pulling their youth away from their churches.  Youth deciding the version of christianity those churches is pushing sucks and they don’t want to live that way.

  92. 92.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Citizen Alan: The priest-soldiers were a callback as well–Moffat introduced them several seasons ago in one of the stories about the Weeping Angels, where they had actual monsters to fight.

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    @Citizen Alan:

    Ruby (upon being accosted by “an Ordained Anglican Marine” pointing a rifle at her: “Since when is the Church an army?”

    I could tell that Steven Moffat wrote this episode because the religious army is a frequent theme in his take on the Doctor.

  94. 94.

    Another Scott

    @Barbara:

    RFERL.org has a story with video. Pea soup weather.

    Rescue crews are searching for a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian that Iranian official news agency IRNA said was involved in a “hard landing” in foggy weather in a remote mountainous and forested area of northwestern Iran.

    The Iranian government said earlier on May 19 that the helicopter was one of three helicopters flying in a convoy that was traveling near the border with Azerbaijan.

    State television and the Interior Ministry said rescuers were trying to reach the site but offered few other details.

    […]

    State television and the Interior Ministry said rescuers were trying to reach the site but offered few other details.

    […]

    Lots of helpful information in the story.

    The crash site is in the NW part of the country, near the border.

    Here’s hoping that it was an accident and not Israel playing cowboy again. :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  95. 95.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cmorenc: Their line for a long time was that the future belonged to them because they were outbreeding us–in their typical fashion they attributed this entirely to abortion; liberals were aborting away their own future. And I’ve seen those bumper stickers about how someone is raising their children Republican. But it’s a shock when they realize it’s not up to them after all.

  96. 96.

    Spanky

    @JoyceH:

    I’ve found myself often recently asking when and why Christianity turned so cruel and violent.

    Around the time of the crusades,  followed by various inquisitions, witch trials, and pogroms, topped by a smattering of buggery.

  97. 97.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    All this talk of religion and I’m so thankful that the religion troll who shall not be named is under the banhammer.

  98. 98.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin: A few years ago on another forum we were having a discussion about religion with a woman who said she was a Christian.

    “What denomination?”

    “Christian”

    ??!!

    Turns out she was in a DOC church which has appropriated the name.

    Man, imagine all the time they spend wasting arguing about whether other churches are “Christian” or not…

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  99. 99.

    cmorenc

    @Matt McIrvin: christianity has a persecution complex built into the core of its theology – and current evangelicals are focusing too much on that and too little on the sermon on the mount.

  100. 100.

    Another Scott

    @Another Scott:

    Excerpt fail.

    After the […] was supposed to be:

    IRNA reported that a rescue helicopter deployed to the crash site was forced to return after it was unable to land because of fog.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  101. 101.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    It is turning out to be a real contest, and the opposition alliance, which calls itself the INDIA alliance has the BJP on the ropes.

    This is a surprising, but perhaps hopeful development.

  105. 105.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Another Scott: I recall some woman writing to the local dead tree news source complaining about discrimination of “Catholics and Christians.”  Oy vey!

  108. 108.

    Tony Jay

    @JoyceH:

    Officially, around the time of the Emperor Theodosius. Roughly around the end of the 4th century, when Constantine’s legalisation of Christianity as the Imperial faith had morphed into the brutal repression of non-Christian sects and their cultural infrastructure.

    Theodosius was a right fucker. A reborn King Josiah with Stalin’s taste for diverse opinion.

  109. 109.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Another Scott: I note that the church my family attended and the one where most of my classmates who were Catholic are both scheduled to be consolidated into a church already merged with another that only opened when I was in HS. Lot of memories going with them, most of them sad – too many funerals. (My only interaction with a nun happened there during practice for First Holy Communion, when I missed a cue & the, uhh, sister snuck up behind me & slammed her callused hand into the back of my head as if she were swinging for the fences at Memorial Stadium. I guess I should thank the stars swirling around my head right then that it was only physical abuse.)

  110. 110.

    RevRick

    @Sure Lurkalot: Luther never said good works don’t matter. He said that they aren’t salvific. He believed good works flowed from one’s faith.
    As a Calvinist myself, I find much to criticize in Luther. His bloodthirsty response to the Peasant’s Revolt ( who, by the way, were pretty nihilistic themselves) is just one instance. His two kingdoms theology certainly made the church the handmaiden of the state. And then there’s his appalling antiJewish screed. On the other hand, I really liked how he interpreted the Ten Commandments in his small catechism.

  111. 111.

    RevRick

    @Another Scott: All the Disciples I know don’t waste their breath on that argument, but would argue that all other churches should call themselves Christian. The United Church of Christ has partnered with the Disciples and has several shared ministries with them.
    If you asked us, we’d say, “Yes, we possess the truth, but we aren’t the only ones.” And we’d say that in an interfaith context as well.

     

    Oh, and I appreciate that I’m tolerated here.

  112. 112.

    Geminid

    @RevRick: Speaking of Calvinism, I’ve noticed a doctrinal fight over Calvinism among Southern Baptists. I even heard a radio preacher flogging his book Calvinism: None Dare Call it Heresy. That seemed a little over the top, but I don’t know much about the dispute. Do you have any thoughts about this matter that you’d care to share?

  113. 113.

    RaflW

    @RevRick: I got my BBA from Texas Christian University, despite my being a UU since age nine. Particularly outside Texas (also Kansas City & Chicago, as they are big enrollment draws for TCU, or were in the 80s), people seemed very surprised that I’d go to what they assumed was such a theologically conservative and God-y school.

    But the Disciples are pretty chill. My one required religion credit was met via World Religions, taught by a white hippy-adjacent buddhist. It was a great class! (I felt slightly bad for some of my dorm-mates who just sort of sighed and passively signed up for a Bible class to meet the credit requirement. School is partly learning to make better choices :) )

    The just-past President of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s husband is a Disciples minister and recently became Director for Justice and Advocacy Ministries in his tradition.

  115. 115.

    RevRick

    @Geminid: The Southern Baptists are what happens when Calvinists make a bargain with the devil (in the embodiment of the institution of slavery). Initially, when Northern Baptists moved south along the ridge and valley route, they condemned slavery. But the planter aristocracy was not about to allow that and threatened to call out the militia.

    So, an accommodation was reached. In exchange for shutting up about slavery, the planters gave the baptists free range to police personal behavior as well as practice their worship. But this is what might be analogous in physics to an excited electron state, which will emit a photon and return to its lowest available energy level. Calvinism does not allow for an inbetween belief. It has to go all-in one way or the other. And that’s what happened with the Southern Baptists. In order to maintain a coherent position on slavery, they had to adopt a frozen interpretation of scripture… one that reified hierarchies as divinely mandated. Northern Calvinists were heading in the opposite direction.

  116. 116.

    Geminid

    @RevRick: Thanks. But are there particular doctrinal grounds that the Baptists are fighting over? They seem to take the matter of Calvinism seriously, in a Baptist kind of way.

  118. 118.

    Another Scott

    @RevRick: I think that you are much more than “tolerated” here.  😃. Sorry if I ruffled your feathers.

    I learn a lot from your comments.  I hope that they will continue for many years to come.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  119. 119.

    Kent

    @Baud:I’m not a huge fan of religion because so much of it is right wing, but the majority of people will choose it over nihilism 10 times out of 10.

    I would suggest that for the vast majority of people, the choice isn’t between religion and nihilism.  It is between organized religion and rationalism.

  121. 121.

    Kent

    @Spanky:Around the time of the crusades,  followed by various inquisitions, witch trials, and pogroms, topped by a smattering of buggery.

    Christianity turned cruel LONG before the crusades.

  122. 122.

    Ishiyama

    Religious practices taste sweet, even to a lot of atheists. Social mediation, mutual aid, emotional validation, and lots of other desirable social functions are wrapped up in religion. But no one creed or model of religion is necessary to fill those functions; faith in gods wax and wane, new forms arise seemingly spontaneously, and there is no end in sight. Make of that what you will.

  123. 123.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @RevRick: can you help me understand this more? Is there a good article or YouTube w a simple but slightly more in depth explanation?  Mostly I just understood from your comment that the variations on baptist were  about politics, and economic non-interference. So, power and control, but specific flavors of it.

    Background for my question:
    my grandma was a bitter judgemental white Swedish American Baptist evangelical. My dad didn’t subscribe to any of it.
    But now I have this black Baptist friend, very loving and kind, no nonsense but also seems to repeat some church /pastor party lines about anti gay and anti abortion stuff. Smart lady but can’t hear me on this.

    im really sore about people using their Christianity cult to interfere in the private lives of women, families, and LGBTQIA, and in some cases, to back up pretty severe racism. It all seems quite opposed to the teachings of Jesus and the beliefs I grew up with in the episcopal church.
    how does one talk to these people? What gets across? I know I’m going way past your doctrine explanation.

    These questions are for anyone here.

    blessings,

    spiritual but not “religious”

  124. 124.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @RaflW: I don’t get it. What are you saying about liberal oppression and how it connects to declining attendance at churches?

  125. 125.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @RaflW: I don’t get it. What are you saying about liberal oppression and how it connects to declining attendance at churches?

     

    @schrodingers_cat: god I love a map.
    So, the phases are elections by regions? That’s quite a time spread for an election. I’m sure there are good and  interesting reasons for it, pros and cons.  I just didn’t know India does it this way.

  126. 126.

    Quaker in a Basement

    The video of grandma and the cat reminds me of my own departed mother. After she built her dream house on a lake, a ginger tom showed up and wouldn’t go away. She went from ignoring him to feeding him Cheerios on the deck to letting him in the screen porch (but not in the house!) to letting him in the house (but not on the sofa!) to letting him on the sofa (but not on her!) to holding him her lap (but not on the bed!) to letting him in bed.

    She bought the cat a rotisserie chicken at Walmart once a week and fed him off of that.

  127. 127.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Ishiyama: Religious practices taste sweet, even to a lot of atheists. Social mediation, mutual aid, emotional validation, and lots of other desirable social functions are wrapped up in religion. But no one creed or model of religion is necessary to fill those functions; faith in gods wax and wane, new forms arise seemingly spontaneously, and there is no end in sight. Make of that what you will.

    I so agree with you. Some of religion seems to be about power and control, politics and oppression, historically. (Thus the aforementioned cruelty, and pressures for conformity)

    on the other hand, religion has provided spiritual guidance and succor to many, or at least a clue that there is something spiritual one might call upon.

    the question: is there a higher being/ consciousness, or did “man” create god because “he” needed there to be something to turn to/call upon/ aspire to? I think it’s both. We created Her, we noticed Her, we made up stories to imagine her/ him/it.

    like wave or particle, in physics. It’s both.
    electrons, photons, particles of all kinds. I haven’t read up on particle physics in a long time

    Tangent:

    I did like Rev Rick’s reference to the electron dropping back to its lower state. Making a parallel in my mind about religious people, or anyone, dropping to their default vibration, their lowest mental emotional levels. Watching all this primitive tribal hate, us vs them, othering, that’s in the news, underpinning so much.

    Oh, on a slight tangent, the game of “mine”, being played out among classrooms, and in wars over territory and rights, autonomy and sovereignty. It’s hard to understand, so I simplify it to myself: in the early childhood classrooms I hang out in, the tug of war over the fire truck defers to a higher authority. The adult puts hand on the object and offers to take it away entirely if they can’t find a way to share.
    I wish someone could step in in these wars, and do something, make it stick.

    also from  ECE POV: Whashisface would never have graduated from preschool without some serious ongoing social emotional intervention.

  128. 128.

    dnfree

    @Barbara: John Wesley, founder of the Methodist church, had a similar experience.  The name of the church reflects Wesley’s dedication to doing good works, but the religion really caught fire after his experience in a church at Aldersgate, England, wherein he heard a sermon on faith based on Paul and his heart was “strangely warmed”.  His combination of faith and works in an England sorely in need brought many to follow him.

  129. 129.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Melancholy Jaques: Well I allus sucked at pool but I spieled pretty fair Schach in my salad days (when I was a green vegetable dripping with oil & vinegar) so I’ll take the other guy.

    Fun fact: The Byrne brothers were the victims in two of Bobby Fischer’s most famous victories. D. Byrne vs Fischer, Rosenwald Tournament, NY, 1956 is widely known as the Game of the Century – Bobby was only 13 when he crushed International Master Donald Byrne with a stunning queen sacrifice. Six years later it took Fischer, again with the Black pieces, only 21 moves to smash International GM Robert Byrne in the 1963/64 US Chess Championship in a game that confounded the chess world – a pair of IGMs commenting on the game thought Fischer was dead lost at the moment Byrne resigned!

    (FTR Fischer was an arsehole. But he was also one magnificent chessplayer. He won that US Championship with a perfect score of 11-0.)

  130. 130.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Spanky: ​I have that CD! Great stuff. “So danco samba” is also on a Verve album “Stan Getz Bossa Nova” which has N-1 brilliant tracks out of N (on the one stinker Astrud Gilberto got conned into doing an American soft jazz song)…

  131. 131.

    RevRick

    @Geminid: I’m only guessing here, but Tim Alberta has chronicled the struggle between the majority of the Evangelicals who have gone completely Trumpy and those who think churches should confine themselves to winning souls and eschew politics.

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