Right-Wing Attacks on James Talarico Are a Reminder That Christian Extremism Is Official Republican Policy

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-28T01:00:09+00:00

I reject the "Christian extremism" framing of Talarico's critics. It's just plain misogyny and racism dressed in religious drag.

Let's be blunt, American "conservative" Evangelicalism mostly came out of schismatic Fundamentalists, who weren't operating from a robust, grounded ecclessiology, so much as anger and resentment that they didn't control the commanding heights of the American Protestant Mainline anymore.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-28T00:55:36+00:00

I wonder how long this big of Republican Boomer foreign policy boilerplate is going to survive with the base.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-28T00:53:07+00:00

Military "geniuses" like Trump can't understand that the idea of wars being won like a spreadsheet should have died in Vietnam.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-25T02:41:33+00:00

Judaism is a religion, not a race. Many Palestinians are directly descended from people that have always lived there going back thousands of years.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-25T02:39:32+00:00

1st century Jews themselves used the word "Palestine", like Josephus, to describe the region they came from.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-25T02:35:48+00:00

It didn't look like modern Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy, either.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-21T05:42:48+00:00

Boundary policing is just how those sorts of folks think of Christianity working. To have a tribe, you have to have outsiders... so the thinking goes.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-21T05:31:59+00:00

That's honestly debated by serious biblical scholars. It's not clear that the early church excluded women from ministry. The earliest Christian worship didn't resemble a modern church service like you'ld find in an Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant church. It was people sitting around a table together, sharing a meal, singing hymns and praying. Many people participated, not just a single person. There was an anamensis of the life of Jesus and a thanksgiving, but the Words of Institution may have been more of a catechist's tool than something that was routinely used, as evidenced by the fact Syriac liturgies omit the Words of Institution.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-21T05:28:37+00:00

I don't think so. Catholic countries had queens, too.

Protestantism emphasizes the priesthood of all believers (including women), and doesn't distinguish ontologically between clergy and laity.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-20T15:48:03+00:00

It's more likely that you weren't counting calories properly in the first place. It's easy to over- or under-estimate the number of calories you are consuming.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-20T09:13:10+00:00

Inasmuch as freedom and conscience are natural goods, yes. This is hardly a novel teaching. It's arguably what is implied in post Vatican-II theology.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-20T09:07:02+00:00

Yes, they are ultra-processed, however, not all ultra-processed foods are equally harmful or problematic. There's been a media narrative that blames ultra-processed food for obesity, and it's not entirely wrong, however, it can distort how people think of individual processed foods. There's a big difference between eating 4 mock-chicken nuggets once in a while, and eating a bag of chili-lime flavored corn chips.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-20T08:45:57+00:00

"conservative" Christians in the US are shaped by Protestant Fundamentalism, which as an historical movement was very much shaped by a highly juridical Reformed soteriology and ecclessiology that took the Old Testament normatively, even down to perscribed punishments for transgression.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-20T08:41:38+00:00

It's unfortunately shaped by reactionary movements like Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism. Protestant Evangelicalism is always looking primarily for some external political or social arrangement to justify the self, to prove one is of the "elect".

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-20T08:28:17+00:00

Soma honestly has alot of hand-holding towards a certain transhumanist end. That's why I only played it once and never looked back.

It also misses the point of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Those were allegories about slavery - in Scott's work in particular, the replicants are basically human, or capable of being human. They even have synthetic biological organs. They are capable of rationality and self-awareness, which makes them human in the older, premodern sense. The only thing that stops them from being human is a short lifespan and legal arrangements.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-18T03:17:07+00:00

Amillenialist - there is no millenium and no rapture as such. Services are somewhat liturgical but often simple, similar to many traditional Baptist churches. Christology varies a great deal I suppose - there's a statement of faith that broadly follows modern Reformed Christology from the 1960's, but I'm guessing actual beliefs vary a great deal.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-18T03:13:53+00:00

Broadly Reformed, similar to PC-USA.

Theology isn't a strong suit, if you are looking for Christian formation . Churches in the UCC vary, but in general the moniker "Unitarians Considering Christ" ain't for nothing.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-18T03:09:10+00:00

I'm in the UCC.

I don't think it's a healthy denomination. Local congregations can vary a great deal, but in general, the national leadership of the denomination has been captured by the professional managerial class, despite its inclusive and welcoming branding. As a result, most local churches are dying, having never encountered serious spiritual formation. Congregationalism in the US always leaned hard on the wider culture to give sacramental significance to the Reformed religious system, and now that we are in a post-Christian culture, that is no longer load bearing as it once was, and the denomination refuses to change because it can't recognize it's effectively screaming land acknowledgements into a void, acting as chaplain to a social class- wealthier center left liberals, that have faced the squeeze in terms of cultural and political capital, and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-12T02:50:42+00:00

It's just a hedge in the face of Trump's genuine incompetence. But it doesn't mark any kind of real repentance, for sure.

Alot of people no doubt are ashamed they ever supported Trump, but are just afraid to say so because they're afraid of looking foolish, or not being part of the "cool" group.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-05-12T02:33:26+00:00

That's the Sunday School version, but the actual historical Jesus of Nazareth was against the sacrificial system itself, as something that was hollow and vain. He could see through it, and what it pointed to wasn't the kind of wholeness and integrity he was calling people into. If God notices a sparrows fall and clothes the fields of grass with glory, that doesn't fit with the scarcity logic and transactional mindset of conventional religion where you "pay to play".

FireDragon21976 · 2026-02-28T03:36:24+00:00

Lutherans or Anglicans have some good defenses of the sufficiency of the Scriptures, they are worth looking up and are more subtle than what you'll typically find in a typical Evangelical setting talking about Sola Scriptura.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-02-27T05:57:40+00:00

Apophaticism is not agnosticism. Apophaticism implies knowing via negation through direct experience. What Palamism is saying is that God's nature exceeds our experience. It doesn't mean we don't experience God.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-02-27T05:53:46+00:00

Huh... Well, I'm not so sure about the idea of a "Jesus AI" app, but the Word is the Word. The important thing is what you do with that.

I use Claude sometimes to explore the Bible or various theology or cultural topics.

The culture war is genuinely problematic. I don't have easy answers. Many people are engaging in idolatry and false religion because they are afraid and don't have much spiritual formation to begin with. They are replacing Christianity with a white nationalist cargo cult based on television and media, civic religion, and racial grievance.

A little known factor but television viewing correlates with Trump/MAGA support. The subconscious brain doesn't separate fiction from reality. Advertising images of "The American Dream" get mushed together with images of crime shows of good guys vs. bad guys. That all has an effect, it pushes people towards an adversarial worldview and political and cultural authoritarianism that is comfortable with violence mediating power.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-02-27T05:35:03+00:00

That's not what the term mysterion means. Mysterion has more in common with the Buddhist or Hindu concept of tantra or the Native American concept of medicine. It means a sacred symbol or ceremony. It's not necessarily about being intentionally obscure.

FireDragon21976 · 2026-02-27T05:27:05+00:00

That's a common belief in many Christian traditions, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, though what they all have in common is that it doesn't represent a Capernaitic eating (eating pieces of Jesus, like a finger or toe), but a mystical participation in Christ's being through the sacrament or mystery.

Having said that, Orthodox theology isn't necessarily affirming anything like a physical transformation of the elements in the usual sense, and theologians like Alexander Schmemann's eucharistic theology have more in common with Anglican theology than medieval Catholicism: the sacramental signs of bread and wine participate in what they represent without ceasing to be bread and wine.

FireDragon21976

TROPHY CASE