Salt City Sinner

Posted on 11/23/2019 by the Salt City Sinner What does it mean to love God, what does it mean to love power, and what does it mean to love Donald Trump? Are these separate questions, or have they become scrambled together? Given that 81% of Evangelicals voted for Trump , it’s safe to conclude that the latter is the case. Unpacking the tangled webbing of fear, greed, superstition, and credulity that binds white Evangelicals to Donald J. Trump, the most profane and libertine President in United States history, will be the project of generations. Religious conservatives didn’t get here overnight, and it’s an odd place for them to have arrived at, but the journey isn’t as mysterious as it might seem at first glance. A good place to start is Believe Me: the Evangelical Road to Donald Trump , by John Fea . Fea’s book is an attempt to answer these questions in a serious way, and from the standpoint of one who shares many of the values and presuppositions of the average parish...

posted on 6/25/2019 by the Salt City Sinner Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist recently wrote about one particularly hateful character, Cheryl K. Chumley. Ms. Chumley boasts the hilarious title of “online opinion editor” at the Washington Times, where she wrote this :   Nothing shows cultural degradation like a nation that was forged by Christian faithfuls on a quest for religious freedom and built by Judeo-Christian principles being torn asunder and cast into judicial, legislative and cultural confusion by the likes of group that hails Satan during a prayer moment at a government get-together. … The First Amendment is being twisted and turned inward and used as a weapon of cultural and political destruction against America by cockroaches that, just a few short years ago, were constrained to dark corners. And they were constrained to dark corners because the moral majority wouldn’t tolerate it otherwise. Mehta does a great job of taking apart Chumley’s idiotic argu...

posted on 7/26/2015 by the Salt City Sinner (In part one of this post , I very briefly addressed some of the historic witch hunts, both literal and figurative, that Christians in the West have engaged in. Today we're going to focus in a little closer on literal, 'get him/her, she/he's a witch' witch hunts. ) To be fair, it’s not just Christians in the West (or “Christendom,” as some right-wing Christians have adorably taken to calling it again) who have engaged in this type of hideous nonsense. Listverse compiled ’ 10 Modern Attempts to Police the Occult  -- a fascinating and quick read that is completely worth checking out, by the way -- and only two of the entries on the list are from the West; one example from the United Kingdom and one to Canada. Given the content coming up in the third and final installment of this post, leaving the U.S. off the list strikes me as a little weird. Also, it’s worth noting that Islam is at least as unhinged as Christianity w...

posted on 6/20/2015 by the Salt City Sinner On Wednesday night, Dylann Storm Roof allegedly entered a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. He sat through most of the prayer meeting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church and then opened fire with a handgun, killing nine people including a sitting South Carolina state senator who was also the pastor of the church. Roof was motivated by hatred of Black people, and has since reportedly confessed to committing the crime in an attempt to start a race war. In the wake of such an outburst of deadly violence, I was not sure what to expect from right wing media, be it Fox News, talk radio, or the open, reeking sewer that is the conservative internet, including borderline white nationalist sites like Joseph Farah's WND (formerly World Net Daily). Excuses, sure. The usual bullshit about antidepressants and Big Pharma being the real hidden force at work behind white men committing mass murder in places like Sandy Hook or Aurora (viole...

posted on 5/13/2013 by the Salt City Sinner "Wh-wh-why can't I force people to pray how I want?!"   The advent of video sharing online has led to many amazing things, from the humble   Arnold mash-up  to the lofty grumpy cat   smile video . It has also led many organizations – both those I loathe and those I love – to apparently scrap their marketing departments entirely and wallow in the gutter of “viral” videos. This is unfortunate. Exhibit A: Anonymous. This crafty hacker anarcho-collective is savvy and fun-loving enough to   light up  the Westboro Baptist Church’s web presence like the world’s most obscene and hilarious Christmas tree. Happy face! Presented with the opportunity to make a video, however, their efforts quickly devolve into the standard puddle of internet   horribleness : the dramatic music, the silly logos, et cetera et cetera. Sad face! If a web video call-to-arms induces chagrin when it comes from a source I quasi...