The movie is called Zero Dark Thirty, and it was originally slated to be released in October—just in time for the presidential election. But now the word is that it won’t hit theaters until December. Here’s a description of the film from Entertainment Weekly:
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Call it what it is—the Westboro cult
I grow weary of editorials and commentators who make facile comparisons between orthodox Christianity and the fringe group known as “Westboro Baptist Church.” Just this week, The Baltimore Sun published an editorial comparing Chick-fil-a president Dan Cathy to the Westboro extremists. I know not everyone can be a religion reporter, but this kind of ignorance of the basic differences between mainstream evangelicals and Westboro hatred is inexcusable.
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Southern Baptists and Calvinism
Over the last several years, Southern Baptists have been having a pretty intense intramural debate about Calvinism. In a conversation that sometimes generates more heat than light, I am glad to see a recent conference that was more constructive. The conference was called “Calvinism: Concerned? Curious? Confused?” and it featured a panel of four Southern Baptist leaders who addressed the division in the SBC over this issue. Speakers included David Dockery, Frank Page, Hershel York, Kevin Smith, and Steve Lemke.
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I Am the God of Wine
I have always believed it to be a great irony that a Baptist minister should be named after the Greek “god of wine,” but I am. I will never forget as a young man stumbling across a “baby names” book in my house and flipping quickly to the D‘s to find out what my name meant. And before I knew it, there it was: “Dennis: the Greek god of wine.” I was gobsmacked. I was only ten years old, but I had been Baptist long enough to know that something was terribly amiss. As far as I knew, my teetotaling parents had given me my name, but this just wasn’t…
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Man Apologizes to Rachel, the Chick-fil-a Worker
Earlier this week, I pointed to a video of a guy who protested Chick-fil-a on Wednesday by giving the “what for” to the girl working the drive-thru window at Chick-fil-a. He posted a video of the encounter on YouTube and lost his job as a result.
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Tom Schreiner on the “first task” of interpreting Paul
I doubt that I will write a full-length review of Michael Bird’s edited volume Four Views on the Apostle Paul, but I will make some remarks on it here and there as I read through it. In the book, the first “view” on Paul is the “reformed reading” by Tom Schreiner. In commenting on Paul’s view of salvation, Schreiner says this: How can God command people to keep his law and to repent and believe when they are utterly unable to do so? Our first task is to explain Paul, even if his worldview is foreign to ours. We must beware of conforming him to our worldview and of only…
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Does the press overlook Gabby Douglas’ Christian faith?
After winning the gold last night for the Olympic gymnastic all-around competition, Gabby Douglas gave “all the glory to God” on live television. Yet Marvin Olasky notes how press reports today by and large have omitted Douglas’s conspicuous Christian faith from their coverage of her victory. The New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times all left it out, even though Douglas has repeatedly mentioned it as a key part of her life and performance in the games. Olasky explains:
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The good, the bad, and the ugly of Chick-fil-a Day
The scene above is disconcerting. It’s a video of a man in Tuscon, Arizona who visited Chick-fil-a on Wednesday and who did so as an act of protest. He orders a free water at the drive-thru and then proceeds to give the Chick-fil-a worker the “what for.” The video was featured in the news because the guy was the CFO of his company and subsequently lost his job after he posted the video on YouTube.
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How To Fight the Culture War
Kevin DeYoung has a fantastic post on how Christians ought to conduct themselves in the culture war. He writes: Call it what you want-a culture war, a battle of ideas, an ideological struggle-there is no question we have deep division in America. The most obvious division right now concerns homosexuality. When Dan Cathy’s off-handed, rather ordinary comment in of support traditional marriage sends big city mayors out on their moral high horses wielding the coercive club of political power-and when the subsequent response from middle America is a record-breaking avalanche of support for Chic-fil-A–you know there is more than a skirmish afoot. I know every generation thinks they are facing…
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What happened to contemporary Christian music?
Joel Hartse asks “What happened to contemporary Christian music?” in a recent column for Christianity Today. He notes the unprecedented explosion of Christian rock during the 1990’s (with an interesting focus on some of the alternative bands) and how that heyday is long gone now. He gives three explanations for the decline: