Category Archives: Politics

Epilogue

stone wall photo
Photo By JojoOwn work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

*tap tap tap* Is this thing still on? So…It’s been a while. How is everybody?

Let me start by saying that this is NOT a reboot of SFL. As the last three years have gone by I’ve thought about this blog and all of you with nostalgia and warmth but with no real desire to return to regular writing here. It was fun while it lasted.

So why this post? I’m glad you asked.

A short walk from my house is a fundamentalist church that I sometimes pass by on a quiet Sunday morning and count the six aging cars outside. Six cars — never any more than that but sometimes even fewer. There’s a deceptiveness there in those tiny numbers, a temptation to assume that because the IFB movement continues its slow slouch towards irrelevance that fundamentalism itself is all but dead. Have a care. It is not dead but sleepeth.

Scan a social media feed, listen to a podcast, pick up a newspaper (if you’re of a certain age) and the kinds of behaviors that fundamentalism has long cherished leap off the page. Try as you might, you cannot avoid the yelling white men in the suits and ties. They bully and belittle. They spread fear and lies. They inspire people to the very worst bargains, offering safety in exchange for your son’s inheritance and security in trade for your daughter’s humanity. “If you’re not with us, you’re the enemy,” they say. We can’t all just get along.

It’s all very familiar — but this time Fundyland has gone mainstream, unencumbered now by the outmoded guise of morality or spirituality. It’s plain at last that many evangelicals may have long embraced the right but never righteousness. After all, why be good when you can be great instead? It seems that the proffered pottage of a little power is all it takes to steal the birthright of millions of the pious. So it goes. So it has always gone. All that has changed is the pretense.

So how then shall we live? What is our way of being in the world? The same as always, I suppose. Be kind. Speak the truth. Love each other. These things are needed now more than ever. Live them in your community. Encourage them in your friends and family. Vote them whenever possible.

The good news is that we’ve all seen this kind of thing before and we know that eventually it collapses under the turgid weight of its own hubris and avarice. Until then I hope to hear that you all are well. Thank you for everything.

~ Darrell

Top 10 Reasons Donald Trump is the Perfect Fundamentalist Candidate

Donald Trump

10. He doesn’t like women very much.

9. Brown people bother him too.

8. He believes in suits so much he has his own line of them.

7. Wants to pay everybody the same way most fundies pay their staff.

6. He’s the undisputed king of the comb-over.

5. He loves to insult people.

4. …almost as much as he loves building new buildings to glorify himself.

3. And man, does he know how to pack a pew.

2. He’s also got a great TV outreach program. (And knows how to fudge the numbers on it.)

1. He’s a rich and powerful white Republican. I mean…do you really need another reason?

Freeeeeeedooooooooom!

The election season is always a fun time in fundamentalism as strange times make for even stranger bedfellows. In this case, Ted Cruz has put on his nightgown and headed for Bob Jones University to hold a Religious Liberty Rally.

As anybody who follows politics will know, the location picked for campaign events are never accidental. Unfortunately, the “religious freedom” fight that Bob Jones is known for is the fight for tax-exempt status back in 1983 over the university’s refusal to allow inter-racial dating. Apparently Cruz thinks that this issue of “no taxation without miscegenation” is still a winner with some part of the country.

As a connoisseur of both political and religious chicanery, it’s fascinating to me to see how the left and right have approached this issue in the same way by comparing marriage equality issues with racial equality ones.

While the Left trumpets a message of: “you don’t want to side with the fundamentalist racists!”, the Right is apparently yelling back “You don’t want to be like the people who made the fundamentalist racists pay taxes!”

It’s all going to be very, very interesting.

FWOTW: CSTNews.com

ctsnews

Buckle up, folks, we’ve got a live one today. Don Boys (Ph.D) is a fundamental Baptist preacher who was also elected to the Indiana House of Representatives, and was identified by the media as the ”most conservative member of the General Assembly.” And with good reason.

His articles include telling us why Jesus Wouldn’t Raise the Minimum Wage and a treatise on whether or not animals go to heaven.

He also runs websites muslimfact.com and TheGodHaters.com.