May 16 2010
…bad news to follow. Here’s a short introduction Ray Close (retired CIA) added yesterday to a recent essay by a credentialed Republican: This short essay contains no particularly original ideas or deep insights, but in the simplicity and clarity of its logic and language, (and the credentials of its author), it is exceptionally helpful. It …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/05/16/part-1-of-3-first-the-good-news/
May 10 2010
And I thought I wrote long sentences: “I have said all along that America is based on Judeo-Christian beliefs and, uh, nobody has to believe me though, uh, you can just go to our Founding Fathers’ early documents and see how they crafted a Declaration of Independence and Constitution that, um, allows that Judeo-Christian belief …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/05/10/sarah-palin-is-a-nimrod/
Mar 24 2010
… In 1941, Ezekiel Bulver recounted the story of how, at the age of five, his destiny was determined when he heard his mother say to his father – who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third – “Oh, you say that because you are a man.” …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/03/24/remarkable-evidence-that-ezekiel-bulver-is-dying/
Mar 21 2010
I came across this interesting (if dismaying can be interesting) article today: http://www.shipoffools.com/features/2009/a_visit_from_the_settlers.html It contains a link to the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI): http://www.eappi.org/en/about/overview.html Apparently Baptists in Sweden and the UK are a more enlightened bunch than our local crop of rapture-ready nimrods…
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/03/21/tourism-as-terrorism/
Jan 31 2010
Maybe what passes for congregational singing these days is part of the Christian suffering I am expected to endure during my sojourn on this doomed dirt clod in space… When did the tired cliché of a Broadway interlude become the model for all these clever-but-purgatorial tunes we trudge through Sunday after Sunday? Here’s a novel …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/01/31/when-a-congregation-is-just-an-audience/
Jan 24 2010
This discussion on God and Haiti’s suffering is very good: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith//2010/01/does_god_allow_haiti_to_suffer/all.html Frankly, I have been struggling with the idea in our book that all suffering is part of God’s handiwork, to either mete out divine vengeance or build us up (should we survive) for some future challenge. I need to go back and re-read (or …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/01/24/god-in-haiti/
Jan 16 2010
Curious about the origins of Pat Robertson’s outrageous comments about Haiti’s latest agony, my research turned up this interesting nugget in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti): “In 1912 Syrians residing in Haiti participated in a plot in which the presidential palace was destroyed.” Syrians in Haiti? My spider-sense for all things Levantine was tingling, so I digressed from …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2010/01/16/haiti-the-lebanese-and-the-bat-crap-crazies/
