Did you know that it is possible to purchase Facebook likes? There’s a legal way and an illegal way to do this, but it turns out that neither of them actually help generate real interest in your site. The video above is very illuminating. The interwebs are filled with chicanery.
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What will be the terms of our surrender?
Ross Douthat has penned what I believe to be the most insightful analysis of what has happened in our country over the last week. He correctly observes that the debate over gay marriage in our country is all but over. Despite some regional holdouts, majority public opinion has moved in favor of recognizing gay marriage. And it’s only a matter of time before a majority of the holdouts—primarily in the South—move that way as well. The Supreme Court’s Windsor decision last summer ensures that legal gay marriage in all fifty states is a fait accompli at this point.
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Andrew Sullivan calls for tolerance for Christians
Andrew Sullivan strikes a sympathetic pose toward Christians in his “The Morning After In Arizona.” There are some things in here that I genuinely appreciate, but those items are counterbalanced by some pretty awful aspersions towards Christians. Here he is in his own words.
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The media failed us this week
The media’s reporting on the Arizona bill regarding religious freedom has been nothing short of Orwellian. As I wrote yesterday, the debate about the bill has been far more depressing than the actual defeat of the bill. Why? Because nearly every media outlet reporting on the bill has been propagating an erroneous group-think. They described the bill by turns as an attempt to enact Jim Crow style discrimination against gay people. The reporting has been biased and in some cases straightforwardly wrong on the facts.
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Does this look like Jim Crow to you? (part 2)
All eyes were on Arizona this week to see if Gov. Jan Brewer would sign or veto a controversial bill relating to religious liberty. Supporters of the bill had hoped that it would have given legal recourse to Christians (and others) who decline to participate in gay wedding celebrations. Opponents of the bill painted it as the resurrection of Jim Crow and as a cynical attempt to enact legal discrimination against gay people.
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Does this look like Jim Crow discrimination to you?
Last week, Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt joined their voices with the opponents of Christianity. In short, they argue that Christian business owners who refuse to participate in gay weddings are unjustly discriminating against gay people. Powers even went so far as to say that legal efforts to protect these Christians are tantamount to Jim Crow laws for gay people. Again today, Powers has another op-ed doubling down on her stance against these Christians.
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A word on translation theory
I’ve been reading Dave Brunn’s stimulating book One Bible, Many Versions—a work discussing the translation philosophy of various English Bible versions. This is a fine book in many ways. It engages an old controversy with an irenic tone. But if the book does anything, it shows that there is some confusion among evangelicals about what Formal Equivalence (FE) translators are aiming to do in their work. Brunn’s book shows that all translations—including FE translations like the NASB and the ESV—resort to Dynamic Equivalence (DE). His point is that not even FE translations practice their theory consistently, and he illustrates this fact with voluminous examples.
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Powers and Merritt double-down against religious liberty
Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt are doubling down on their argument that Christian business owners are morally wrong when they refuse to participate in same-sex wedding celebrations. In a co-written essay for The Daily Beast, they argue that Christian business owners are morally and legally obliged to participate in gay wedding ceremonies with their goods and services. Not to participate is tantamount to the kind of discrimination that whites in this country used to exhibit against blacks. Let me just say first of all that I am grieved by this article. Not merely because it is a moral and constitutional mess, but also because of who has written it. Do…
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What happened to McLaren, Bell, and Miller?
Kevin Miller has an article at CT’s Leadership Journal reflecting on the departure of Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, and Don Miller from evangelicalism. Ten years ago, these three were supposed to be the leading lights of a new kind of Christianity. But where are they now? Miller writes:
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Is temptation a sin?
Earlier this week, I contributed a piece to the Canon & Culture blog titled “Is homosexual orientation a sin?” I argued that homosexual orientation describes one who experiences an enduring sexual attraction to persons of the same-sex. Because the Bible teaches that it is sinful to have a desire for illicit sex, homosexual orientation is by definition sinful. So yes, homosexual orientation is a sin. Since publishing the article, I have received a good bit of feedback—some positive and some negative. By far, the most frequent response has been with respect to temptation: “Are you saying that all temptation is sin? Wasn’t Jesus tempted like us yet without sin (Heb.…