Just when you thought it was safe to go to the thrift store…. They’re back! Yes, you remember those hilariously horrible old Christian album covers I found in one of my old silly posts? Unbelievably tacky pictures from a bygone era of people who were trying to be really cool, and failing dismally, and thinking they succeeded? [...]
Newly updated and expanded for Quivering Daughters. First published here September 26, 2009. Guilt, shame, and condemnation. Unspoken rules you have to live up to. Authoritarian leaders you can’t ever question. An exclusive “us-vs.-them” mentality. Subtle or not-so-subtle pressure to fit in. Barely veiled manipulation and peer pressure tactics. Fear of doing the wrong thing. Public [...]
Over at the redoubtable Internet Monk blog, Chaplain Mike (carrying on for the sainted Michael Spencer) just posted a splendid piece about worship. It’s exceptional, in all the many meanings of that word. He emphasizes the necessity of congregational involvement and the false dichotomy of “form vs. freedom” (because every service has a form!). I [...]
This is a follow-up to my post “Hypocriticism”, which pointed out some of the causes and effects of Christian hypocrisy. Both were first published in August 2008. I should have known. It’s dangerous to write about hypocrisy, because that gets you thinking about it, and that gets you looking for it. And then you find [...]
The always engaging SirNickDon recently posed an interesting question about church: “If your job was to remove five minutes from your Sunday-morning church service, what would you cut out?” (He voted to remove the “special” music, calculating precisely how many man-hours had been wasted watching someone do sign language to “I Can Only Imagine.” In [...]
Calvin and Hobbes, Revisited
@ericpazdziora 