Where have all the dinosaurs gone?

One theory is that they drowned in the Great Flood, the one avoided by Noah and seven of his family members, along with a boatload (get it?) of birds and animals hand-picked in seven pairs of twos to repopulate the world. Maybe the dinosaurs were too big to be included. Maybe there were just too …

Let’s start 2017 off with a big ol’ pffft to 2016

So last year, I made three resolutions. I am a big fan of resolutions, eve if I am not that dedicated to actually keeping them. For 2016,  told myself I would: Learn to play the banjo Find a church Read the Bible cover-to-cover In fact, referencing the Meat Loaf song above, one out of three ain’t …

Meanwhile, in Christian scriptures…

I am continuing my push to read my entire Bible in 2016, and now find myself at the tail end of the book of Luke. Unlike some of the minor prophets, this is a book I read — a lot — as a kid, so I’m not finding new surprises so much as reacquainting myself …

The middle class is not mentioned in the Bible

Read this thought-provoking piece by Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Miroslav Volf are the authors of “Public Faith in Action: How to Think Critically, Engage Wisely, and Vote with Integrity.” McAnnally-Linz and Volf explore politicians’ (all of them) focus on the middle class (which didn’t exist in Biblical times), at near complete exclusion of the poor (who did).

Is Donald Trump a Christian?

The presumptive Republican candidate for President has said he is a Presbyterian, and that the Bible is his favorite book (though from the video above, he has a weird way of showing it, by pronouncing the source of a verse as “Two Corinthians,” when any half-assed Biblical scholar knows it’s pronounced “Second Corinthians.”)(She said.) But his closed-door-closed-mind …

A year ago today…

…a bigot-coward shot up a church in Charleston, S.C., and killed nine church-goers, with whom he’d been studying the Bible. Prayer and Bible study continue at the church. Here. Read this, from the daughter of a woman killed at the church.

The Chronicles are boring

So I’m reading the entire Bible, straight through this year as one of my New Year’s resolutions — the only one I’ve actually kept so far. And as Jac, who is also reading through, can tell you, I and II Chronicles are not-interesting. I’d forgotten that this is (as far as I can tell, as …

Sheryl Nuxoll? We’ll be a-prayin’ fer ye

GOP state Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, of Cottonwood, Idaho, has introduced a bill that would allow the Bible to be used to teach stuff. A state senate committee has given it preliminary approval. As I am delving back in and reading the Bible cover to cover, and as I happen to be in early Deuteronomy, I can …

In last week’s reading of the Hebrew scriptures…

(As a reminder, I, the fundamentalist with Mad Bible Skills, have started re-reading the Bible, from Gen. 1, using a guide I loaded onto my phone. Obviously, people read the Bible and find different things. Here’s what I found last week:) Moses was continually being told by God to rein in the Israelites, who couldn’t seem to …

In which Bro. Trump steps in it. Again.

The most popular Republican candidate for President has again embraced Robert Jeffress (more about him here) who responds with this tepid non-endorsement: “I don’t believe a Christian has to sell his soul to the devil to vote for Donald Trump.” Well, phew! I am going to rest easier knowing two lowest common denominators are friends. …