Civil Commotion

Since Albert the Pious is the exemplar for opposition to the modernity struggling to get a toe-hold in the SBC, the presidential election is likely to be a showdown between the fantasists of the so-called Conservative Resurgence and the post-16^th-century fantasists. Further, since theological differences are not susceptible of resolution by appeal to facts, his nomination is all but certain to provoke a bitter fight. And, since Mohler has struggled for years to overcome his too-close association with C.J. Mahaney’s financial legerdemain and see-no-evil attitude toward sexual abuse, his nomination tracks a lot of fault-lines in the SBC.

I’m excited. It’s going to be the most entertaining convention in years.

Evolutionary Biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne is headed to Antarctica to deliver a series of lectures, and is traveling there on a ship named the Roald Anundsen. That ship, believe it or not, has a webcam on board which broadcasts continuously a 360-degree view of its travels. Go take a look: https://hurtigruten.panomax.com/ms-roald-amundsen.

In attacking all the diplomats, intelligence officers and civil servants who have stepped forward, at great professional risk, to bear witness against Trump, they are attacking the people who uphold the regulations — and provide the independent research and facts — that make our government legitimate and the envy of people all over the world, where many people have to bribe government workers for service.

Thomas Friedman

We are well past the expediencies that unavoidably accompany survival in a sometimes-raucous public square, and now are endangering the Republic itself. Of the many shocks that have accompanied Donald Trump, the greatest is the willingness of Republican lawmakers to debase themselves and injure their country to curry favor with Trump’s base.

Bruce Gerencser takes-up the question of dogs and heaven.

Evidently, more than a few Evangelicals are stressed out over whether Rover or Fido will go to God’s Heavenly Trump Hotel® when they die.

I could listen to a lot of demented preaching if it were accompanied by the promise that I’d see my dogs again, and I’ll bet that a lot of other people feel the same way, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Learned Theologians found a way to justify the claim that Fido is going to be waiting for us and wagging his tail when we get to the Pearly Gates.

If Trump survives the impeachment process and somehow wins a second term, many explanations will be offered. It may be that the Democratic Party went too far left, or picked a nominee with a glass jaw, or couldn’t swim against the political tide of a good economy. But there will be one reason behind all of these reasons: because evangelicals lost their taste for character and gave their blessing to corruption. And this grand act of hypocrisy would mark them for a generation.

[ … ]

But we should not underestimate the cultural trauma that many leaders of the religious right have inflicted. It is in the order of things that a younger generation should challenge the views and values of its parents. It is a source of cynicism and social disruption when an older generation betrays civilizing values in full sight of its children. Many evangelical leaders now lie drunk, naked and exposed. [an allusion to Noah]

Michael Gerson

The Evangelical Right squandered its moral credibility a long time ago, and I don’t mind admitting that I get a lot of pleasure from watching the rest of the country awakening to its moral squalor, its mean-spiritedness, its incandescent hypocrisy. As I said as they were high-fiveing the election of the most corrupt and wildly incompetent president in our history, they are done.