Asides

The good news: hate crimes were down by 6%. The inter­est­ing news: “The major­i­ty of those incidents—46.9 percent—were racial­ly moti­vat­ed, fol­lowed by 20.8 per­cent moti­vat­ed by sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and 19.8 per­cent moti­vat­ed by reli­gion. Inci­dents of reli­gious bias had pre­vi­ous­ly out­num­bered inci­dents of sex­u­al-ori­en­ta­tion bias since at least 1995…”  Things that sur­prised me: how few hate crimes there are over­all, how much greater anti-Jew­ish ani­mus is than anti-any oth­er reli­gion, and how much more preva­lent racial hos­til­i­ty is than any oth­er cat­e­go­ry.

For the First Time, Hate Crimes Against Gays Out­num­ber Those Against Reli­gion: Reli­gious bias had out­num­bered sex­u­al-ori­en­ta­tion bias since at least 1995.

At Chris­tian­i­ty Today, we’re con­stant­ly track­ing impor­tant devel­op­ments in the church and the world. Often we use our net­work of reporters around the world (and for that, vis­it our main site). But we …

Rich Mullins has long been one of my favorite prac­ti­cal the­olo­gians. Here he is in clas­sic form.

God’s Will for Your Life -

Some­times we become hyper­fo­cused and obsessed over the lit­tle things and lose track of the big pic­ture. In those moments, the sharp con­trast of a new per­spec­tive can be a great way to refo­cus. For tho…

Sane think­ing on a issue that often seems to be a well­spring of crazy.

Ed Stet­zer — Thurs­day Is for Thinkers with Katie Persinger: Above Reproach, Not Unap­proach­able

Ed Stet­zer writes and speaks on the­ol­o­gy, mis­si­ol­o­gy, church plant­i­ng, church revi­tal­iza­tion, and church inno­va­tion.

Clear­ly, Lord Vad­er has been busy. See Vad­er Chokes Offi­cer — I find your lack of faith dis­turb­ing for details.

Cen­sus reveals more peo­ple iden­ti­fy as Jedi Knights than athe­ists

The num­ber of Jedi Knights appears to have near­ly halved in the last decade, but still beats the amount of peo­ple who pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy as athe­ists in Eng­land and Wales, accord­ing to results of the …

I find this argu­ment plau­si­ble.

Roger Ebert on the medi­a’s cov­er­age of school shoot­ings

From his review of Gus Van San­t’s Ele­phant, a fic­tion­al­ized account of a Columbine-like school shoot­ing, here’s Roger Ebert on the

This is one of the most mar­velous exam­ples of peo­ple respond­ing to incen­tives that I can think of. Sur­pris­ing and yet obvi­ous in ret­ro­spect.

Snitch­ing mar­kets in every­thing

The pris­on­ers in Atlanta’s hulk­ing down­town jail had a prob­lem. They want­ed to snitch for fed­er­al agents, but they didn’t know any­thing worth telling. Fel­low pris­on­er Mar­cus Watkins, a…

Basic Instruc­tions deliv­ers again.

Basic Instruc­tions — Basic Instruc­tions — How to Gra­cious­ly Receive an Hon­or

As I told the sub­scribers when they saw this com­ic, some­one I know asked me to be the execu­tor …

I must con­fess that the truth behind the first myth was a sur­prise to me, and I con­sid­er myself very well informed on these issues. 

5 Myths about Jubilee

Found in Leviti­cus 25, the bib­li­cal prac­tice of Jubilee is becom­ing ever more promi­nent in dis­cus­sions about jus­tice, pover­ty, and debt relief. Many evan­gel­i­cal authors men­tion Jubilee as a bib­li­cal exam­ple of debt for­give­ness and redis­tri­b­u­tion of land. It has also gained pop­u­lar atten­tion in the news media.

Jubilee has been offered by sev­er­al sources as a solu­tion to our cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis. At Forbes, Erik Kain asked, “Could a debt jubile…

He makes a very good point in the final pan­el.

Basic Instruc­tions — Basic Instruc­tions — How to Talk Some­one out of Mak­ing a Wretched Mis­take

Thanks as always for using my Ama­zon Affil­i­ate links ( US , UK , Cana­da ).

There are some help­ful thoughts here about the chal­lenge of mak­ing his­tor­i­cal films. Leav­ing aside the specifics about the movie Lin­coln (which I have not seen), I agree with Douthat’s broad­er points.

Spiel­berg’s “Lin­coln” and Its Crit­ics

Is this fal­l’s big his­tor­i­cal film unfair to rad­i­cal­ism?