Future.

A physician friend is featured in two videos embedded below. For those readers who know me, further foreshadowing is unnecessary. If you don't me, I don't feel like explaining, at least yet. At this precise moment, I'm not sure what to say, so I won't say anything. If it's possible to be shocked, unsurprised and saddened all at the same time, then those are my coordinates. I'll need to work my way through cognitive dissonance, all the while trying to retain the example of Shimon Peres in the recent article at The Atlantic.

Understanding how dissonance operates reveals a few practical lessons for overcoming it, starting by exafarm-near-me/">mining the two dissonant cognitions and keeping them separate. We call this the “Shimon Peres solution.” Peres, Israel’s former prime farm-near-me/">minister, was angered by his friend Ronald Reagan’s disastrous official visit to a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where members of the Waffen SS were buried. When asked how he felt about Reagan’s decision to go there, Peres could have reduced dissonance in one of the two most common ways: thrown out the friendship or farm-near-me/">minimized the seriousness of the friend’s action. He did neither. “When a friend makes a mistake,” he said, “the friend remains a friend, and the mistake remains a mistake.” Peres’s message conveys the importance of staying with the dissonance, avoiding easy knee-jerk responses.

I'm not sure I can.

From April 29:

From July 13:

As for how this intersection of Christianity and medical science makes me feel, that's easy. It makes me feel profoundly uncomfortable.

"Why Your Christian Friends and Family Members Are So Easily Fooled by Conspiracy Theories."

Photo credit: The Conversation.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across this article at Instrument of Mercy, "a Christian blog written and created by Joe Forrest."

Apart from a gratuitous swipe at the liberal-leaning news media (this particular atheist forgives the author for perpetuating this widespread conspiracy theory), this is an interesting read.

Why Your Christian Friends and Family Members Are So Easily Fooled by Conspiracy Theories

In sixth grade, I participated in a debate in which I attempted to convince my fellow classmates that we never landed on the moon.

It was the first time I used the Internet to research, and my partner and I found a treasure trove of information. We couldn’t believe it. It was so obvious. The U.S. clearly faked the moon landing in 1969 to trick the Soviet Union that we had superior rocket technology.

On the day of the debate, we exceeded our allotted 30-minute time slot by more than an hour. After the debate, we held a poll. My partner and I convinced 75% of our classmates that the 1969 moon landing was faked by the government.

I’m sure we made our science teacher proud.

In the words of the Apostle Paul, as I grew older I “did away with childish things.” And that includes my childhood belief that we didn’t land on the moon.

I learned a lot from my sixth-grade debate experience. But I didn’t expect to find the experience of convincing a bunch of sixth graders of a crazy theory so relevant to what we’re experiencing today with full-grown adults.

Especially adults who claim to be followers of Jesus and people of “The Truth.”

During Barack Obama’s presidency, it was fellow Christians claiming online (and sometimes from the pulpit) that Obama was a secret Muslim and the country was headed for mandatory Sharia Law (despite the fact that less than 1% of the U.S. population identifies as Muslim).

After the Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 26 people (most of them children), I was shocked at the number of Christian friends who posted videos claiming the attack was a staged “false flag” operation led by the liberal government.

During the 2016 Presidential Election, my blog’s inbox was flooded with emails from concerned Christians asking me to look into Hillary Clinton’s supposed ties to a pedophile sex ring. And after DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered, it was my Christian followers sharing links to conspiracy theories – even after Fox News retracted their original story.

And, with COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Presidential campaign in full swing, the amount of Christians posting and sharing conspiracy theory videos has attained critical mass.

For many of us, it can be demoralizing to watch beloved friends, family members, and mentors fall deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of convoluted government plots and paranoid speculation.

However, rather than attempt to debunk the plethora of conspiracy theories at play (a nigh-impossible task), it’d probably be more helpful to understand why we’re so enamored with them in the first place ...

(snip)

Everything that happens in the universe is a result of a cause-and-effect relationship. Nothing really occurs spontaneously. It’s just that sometimes, the real-world explanation of a catastrophic event isn’t very emotionally satisfying. A big effect needs a big cause, right? Shouldn’t dramatic events require dramatic explanations?

No.

Sometimes all it takes to change the world is a single deranged individual with access to a rifle and a decent perch. Or a religious extremist who exploits an overlooked security flaw in airport security. Or a bat that urinates on the wrong animal in an open-air market in China.

The idiocy of the "pastorpreneurs" -- or, the prosperity gospel, as lifted straight from the corporate capitalist playbook.

Don't worry -- Bill Hanson's own personal pastorpreneur is back on duty in today's News and Tribune, evangelizing on a platform of mass shooting aftermaths.

Now about those ten-percent tithes to keep the one-percent ensconced on their thrones ...

A Grift From God, by Meagan Day (Jacobin)

The prosperity gospel promises material riches to believers. It’s on the rise, and no wonder: it’s the perfect religious expression of capitalism, especially in the age of Trump.

Forty percent of Americans are liquid asset poor, which means that if they don’t receive their next paycheck they have no means to make ends meet. Why?

If you’re a socialist, the answer is that society’s capitalist minority is exploiting the working-class majority. People are broke because they are dependent on wages to survive, and their bosses are paying them as little as they can get away with. Low labor costs yield high profits, and the compulsion to maximize profits is the driving principle of capitalism. It’s baked into the economic system and exacerbated by low levels of organized working-class resistance.

If you’re a believer in the prosperity gospel, though, the answer is very different. The prosperity gospel is a movement within American Christianity, also known as the Word of Faith, that says God wants you to be rich, but you have to will his financial blessing into being. Forty percent of Evangelicals are taught the prosperity gospel, according to which the root cause of poverty is faithlessness.

Barbara Ehrenreich took a glance at the prosperity gospel in her book, Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. She links it to the overall trend of “positive thinking” that emerged first in self-help and business literature and has bled over into religion. According to the laws of positive thinking, writes Ehrenreich, “You can have all that stuff in the mall, as well as the beautiful house and car, if only you believe that you can.”

From a socialist perspective, it’s cruel enough that the prosperity gospel locates the potential for economic uplift somewhere else besides mass politics and united class struggle, distracting and demobilizing people, and making it harder for them to actually win real society-wide victories. But it gets worse.

Prosperity gospel ministers don’t usually stop at urging positive thinking. To manifest financial success, believers can’t simply have faith. They must demonstrate that faith — preferably in the form of a tithe to the person doing the preaching. As rapper Ice-T put it, “The preacher says, ‘I know God a little bit better than you. If you pay me, I’ll hook you up.’”

Like payday lenders, prosperity gospel ministers see the broke and struggling as a consumer market. Their target demographic is those who suffer from lack, and their product is the promise of abundance, or at least relief. Financially, the prosperity gospel is nothing but a swindle, prying money from people who by definition have very little and desperately wish they had more.

Ideologically, the prosperity gospel dovetails perfectly with right-wing ideology, which views poverty as a consequence of individual failure rather than rigged economic and political structures. As Ehrenreich writes, “Always, in a hissed undertone, there is the darker message that if you don’t have all that you want, if you feel sick, discouraged, or defeated, you have only yourself to blame.”

When times are hard, it’s because you didn’t think positively enough, pray hard enough, or tithe enough. It’s a spiritual spin on meritocracy, the ideological handmaiden to neoliberal capitalism.

The prosperity gospel is one of America’s greatest grifts. Little wonder, then, that it’s made its way to the White House, currently occupied by a master con artist himself ...

The Crusades, a video series about medieval holy warriors.

That dreaded word “journey” appears to have been banned: instead, we have proper, old-fashioned narrative history of the sort that TV has almost forgotten how to do, starting at the beginning and continuing until the end.
-- Robert Colvile

Indeed.

I vote in favor of old-fashioned narrative history, as with this series from a few years back.

---

Holy War 1/3: How the first crusaders marched 3,000 miles from Europe to recapture Jerusalem from Islam.

Clash of the Titans 2/3: Dr Thomas Asbridge examines the lives of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin.

Victory and Defeat 3/3: Dr Thomas Asbridge reveals how the outcome of the holy wars was decided in Egypt.

The official BBC Two site is The Crusades, with further background by Colvile:

The Crusades: holy warriors (The Telegraph)

Robert Colvile is inspired by a new BBC Two series telling the real history of the crusades.

A few years ago, I found myself standing on the ramparts of Krak des Chevaliers, Syria’s great crusader castle, just as a thunderstorm broke. As the wind howled through the slitted stone windows, I tried to imagine what would have gone through the heads of the knights who garrisoned this lonely fortress for more than a century, as medieval Christendom’s first line of defence against the Muslims to the east.

In BBC Two’s new three-part documentary series, The Crusades, Dr Thomas Asbridge of the University of London asks his viewers to make that same leap of imagination – to understand a world in which faith was so important that in 1095, Pope Urban II was able to convince anything up to 100,000 people to forsake their family lives and homes and answer his call to reclaim Jerusalem, even though the holy city had fallen to the Muslims centuries earlier. So alien is the devotion – the fanaticism – that was displayed that Asbridge has to spend almost a third of the opening episode easing us into the medieval mindset, making us understand how the Pope’s promise of salvation could outweigh any worldly good or blessing.

The resulting story, while gripping, is far from pleasant ...

The sense of “default Christianity” is vanishing in Europe.

The topic is a steadily diminishing "sense of being Christian by default" in Europe. We're seeing the beginnings of this in America, but at far lower levels.

The News and Tribune sees fit to publish not one, but two Christian advocacy columns on a weekly basis. When I made my dismay known in a social media comment, I was told by a reporter that this makes perfect sense because many readers are Christians.

Interestingly, research published in the archive of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science suggests that more Americans (and newspaper readers) are atheists than may seem apparent, perhaps as many as 25 – 30%.

As we await in utter futility for a balancing column slot ("Thirsty Pagan's Corner"?), over to the continent.

As French Catholics hail a martyr, the faith is fading in Europe (Erasmus; The Economist)

The sense of “default Christianity” is vanishing

 ... Arnaud Beltrame, a police colonel, died of his injuries over the weekend after voluntarily taking the place of one of the hostages seized by a fanatical Islamist in a small French town. As it happens he was a devout Catholic who devoted much spare time to pilgrimages and helping with religious instruction ...

A French priest who had been preparing to solemnise the policeman’s marriage (he was already married civilly) instead found himself sitting at his friend’s bedside, conducting the last rites. With understandable emotion, the cleric described Beltrame as a man who “had a passion for France, her greatness, her history and her Christian roots which he rediscovered with his conversion.”

SNIP

But whatever the truth of that statement about cultural roots, how much longer will such language be comprehensible, let alone appealing, to people growing up on the continent? A study of religious attitudes and practice among Europe’s young adults, published a few days ago, found that faith was shrinking almost to vanishing point in several countries, although there was huge variation across the continent. Europe’s secularisation, reflecting a break-up of traditional communities and more materialist attitudes, is familiar to sociologists. But its impact is highlighted in recent numbers.

The researcher's numbers are reviewed.

He concluded that the sense of being Christian by default was vanishing across much of Europe, though loyalty to Catholicism remains quite robust in certain countries. In some places (like Poland and Portugal) Catholic allegiance was accompanied by comparatively high church attendance, whereas in others (Lithuania, Austria) many had a cultural loyalty to Catholicism but only a minority seriously practised. Generally, loyalty to Catholicism was holding up better than loyalty to what he called state-affiliated Protestant bodies, such as the national churches of Scandinavia. And Europe has no equivalent to America’s zealous evangelicals.

Again: "Europe has no equivalent to America’s zealous evangelicals."

That's a relief.

I'm troubled and distressed. Maybe it's time to forsake Bill.

At the risk of belaboring the point ...


ON THE AVENUES: On a wig and a prayer, or where's the infidel gardening column?

... I find it enduringly odd that the News and Tribune promotes multi-culturalism in its editorials, and yet runs only Christian advocacy columns like this on -- and sometimes others like it.

Media bias?

MAY: Troubled by violence, by Tom May (Flailburger)

About a year ago, several outbreaks of violence occurred one right after the other. On July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling was shot several times at close range while being held on the ground by two Baton Rouge police officers. The incident was recorded on a bystander’s cell phone. Twenty-four hours later, Philando Castile was shot and killed by officer Jeronimo Yanez in a Saint Paul suburb after being pulled over. On the final day of the trinity of terror, Micah Johnson ambushed and fired upon a group of police officers in Dallas, killing five and injuring nine other officers and two civilians. Johnson later said he was angered by the recent police shootings.

Dallas pastor and best-selling author, Tony Evans, posted words on his blog the next day that were reprinted with permission by The Washington Post and several other papers. His thoughts have been seared on my mind since. “Unless the Church steps forward collectively to fulfill its God-given role of influencing the conscience of our culture, our country will keep spiraling downward into the depths of fear and hate.”

There is an intriguing verse of Scripture in the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles. The nation of Israel, God’s people, had wandered from their faith. Their religious leaders failed to teach people sound doctrine, watering down the truth so as not to offend anyone. Their government authorities no longer held the Law as the standard for behavior. “In those days it was not safe to travel about, for all the inhabitants of the lands were in great turmoil. One nation was being crushed by another and one city by another because God was troubling them with every kind of distress” (2 Chronicles 15:5-6 NIV). The passage concludes that if you forsake God, He will forsake you.

Have we become a troubled, distressed society? ...

... Tom May is a freelance writer who provides content for newspapers, magazines and websites. He is an adjunct instructor in the Communications Department at Indiana University Southeast. He has held paid and volunteer ministry positions at several churches in the tri-state area. Reach him at tgmay001@gmail.com.

THE BEER BEAT: Schansberg explains Sunday and Indiana's lingering sales restrictions: "Support for restrictions is driven by greenbacks more than blue laws."

I've decided to post this link on Saturday so you'll have time to read it before Sunday, when you can readily purchase cold beer to go at your local brewery, but not at a liquor store or a grocery.

We still refer to restrictive laws like these as "blue," but as Eric points out, the prime motivator usually is green.

SCHANSBERG: A history of Sunday and what it has to do with beer, by Eric Schansberg (Funding 'Bama on Bill Hanson's Knee)

In his new book, “A Brief History of Sunday,” Justo Gonzalez explains how we arrived at our sense of Sunday and “the Sabbath.” It is worthwhile to review this history and then consider how it relates to “blue laws” — legislative restrictions on economic activity on Sundays.

Before Christianity began to dominate world culture, civilizations used different ways to identify “weeks” and “months,” needing to observe lengths of time between days and years. Setting the table for Christianity, the Jewish calendar was built around a seven-day week, with its Creation-based Sabbath.

I'll cut directly to the part about "blue laws," because this is a beer column, after all.

Of course, legislation and political economy are always a matter of theory vs. practice. If one wants to legislate rest, the ideal may be prayer, study, acts of service and devotion. But those who don’t want to pray or pray so much will do other things with their “spare time.” So, the reality was often a desire to play instead of pray — something that legislation also sought to regulate.

This brings us to today’s “blue laws.” While fading in recent decades, such laws are still on the books in many states. In Indiana on Sundays, for example, dealers cannot sell cars. And as the recent case of Rickers Oil Co. reminded us, there are restrictions on alcohol sales (although fewer so for bars, restaurants and breweries and wineries that have been granted exceptions by the state).

An economist would expect “blue laws” to be driven by three motives ...

You'll have to go to the newspaper to read the rest, but it's worth the time. Will Indiana's legislature ever get its act together with regard to the crazy quilt of conflicting alcohol laws, exceptions and re-exceptions?

(breaths aren't being held on this end)

"Christians, especially white evangelical Christians, are much more likely than non-Christians to view poverty as the result of individual failings."

Not that the rampant deficiencies of capitalism have anything to do with it.

I wonder what Wendy Dant Chesser thinks about this topic -- or even more humorously, Bill Hanson?

Maybe Bill's forced-religion columnist can take it on, and Wendy can incorporate the conclusion in a 1Si power point presentation: "Oligarchs are more than twice as likely to blame a person’s poverty on lack of a useful college degree."

Pearls of wisdom, guys?

Christians are more than twice as likely to blame a person’s poverty on lack of effort, by Julie Zauzmer (Washington Post)

 ... “There’s a strong Christian impulse to understand poverty as deeply rooted in morality — often, as the Bible makes clear, in unwillingness to work, in bad financial decisions or in broken family structures,” said Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “The Christian worldview is saying that all poverty is due to sin, though that doesn’t necessarily mean the sin of the person in poverty. In the Garden of Eden, there would have been no poverty. In a fallen world, there is poverty.”

Cringe alert: News and Tribune treats us to double the usual dose of religious advocacy. Since when has it become a Christian circular?

"Could not agree more. If it's going to be an unreadable, poorly edited rag, at least keep it secular."
-- Regular Reader JS

Our perennially underachieving, Jeffersonville-based newspaper already has a weekly pro-Christian column written by the publisher's former pastor, and this is why I question the necessity of importing a syndicated "guest columnist" from Florida to tip the balance (um, what balance?) even further.

But in the end, it's just an institutional reflex action, isn't it, like when the doctor hits your knee with the little rubber thingy?

No more thought went into the selection of this column than what it takes to chew and swallow a lunch of chain restaurant food.

Still, let me be clear: The addressable point here isn't the columnist's religious proselytizing. It's her address. If the News and Tribune is to be a Christian newspaper, then surely it can find local Christians to preach it, rather than syndicated dreck-slingers.

KENNEDY: When God says ‘I told you so’, by Nancy Kennedy

... Just before Jesus raised a man from the dead he told the man’s sister, “Did I not say to you that if you believe you would see the glory of God?”

I think God loves to reveal his glory and loves to say “I told you so” when he answers our prayers and surprises us with himself.

The faraway author:

— Nancy Kennedy is the author of “Move Over, Victoria - I Know the Real Secret,” “Girl on a Swing,” and her latest book, “Lipstick Grace.” She can be reached at 352-564-2927 or via email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.

And my oh my, the tags:

Cathy Worship Christianity Food God Mom Jesus Glory Nancy Kennedy

Join the all-new Crusades and smack the Muslims with Jesus (working knowledge of the Russian tongue required for battlefield promotions).

It's a mistake to berate fundamentalist Christians in America for their inability to grasp that dispensing with church-state separation leads directly to a theocratic situation not unlike the one favored by Islamic militants.

In fact, they grasp it perfectly well, and it's what a good many of them actively desire. If you're wondering why many of these reverse-jihadists are untroubled by the Trump-Putin bromance, it's because somewhere underneath the residue of godless Bolshevism, there is Orthodox Russia's traditional imperative to bring Christianity to its surroundings.

Sound familiar? Russia is a potential ally in the Jesus pincer movement against Them Muslims. Consequently, the Trump presidency is the ideal time to relaunch the Crusades, but this time as a reality television show.

For a taste of the script ... the dude seems serious.

A New Crusade Must Be Declared Against Islam, And Christendom Must Rise Again To Have The Cross Crush The Crescent, by Theodore Shoebat (some crazy ass website)

The nations of Christendom will soon restore themselves back under the refuge of the Holy Cross, the Holy Roman Empire will rise again through divinely destined Russia, and the Holy Cross will crush the crescent.

Coffee grounds: Sunergos, Jesus, Yarmuth ... and Schivelbusch.

Yesterday's hyperbolic local social media culture war over Christian caffeine led me straight to one of the most influential books I've ever read, Wolfgang Schivelbusch's Tastes of Paradise: A social history of spices, stimulants and intoxicants.

In a moment, a key passage about coffee from the book. First, what the most recent fuss is all about. For the Sunergos side of the story, visit with Sara Havens here.

Dark coffee: LEO’s expulsion from Sunergos, the facts and why you should care, by Aaron Yarmuth (Louisville Ecentric Observer)

This is one of those reasons LEO was started in 1990.

On Monday, Sunergos Coffee called LEO to ask that the paper no longer be distributed at its shops. The business has since cited the “family-friendly” environment of its shops and “the increasingly sexually explicit content and advertising.” The call was made before we published our Valentine’s Day issue, featuring four recently-married couples. On the cover was a beautiful picture of one couple, two women, kissing. It embodied the story inside.

So, it is unfortunate that the shops’ customers will miss the story of these beautiful families.

LEO’s removal has sparked a public controversy on Facebook and Twitter, as people wondered whether the coffee shop was reacting to our Valentine’s Day story. This is intended to provide facts and context.

We’ve been thrown out of plenty of establishments before, and we will undoubtedly be tossed out again. But we definitely won’t stop printing stories and photographs that reflect the community, and those that provoke discussions on important issues. We also will not stop running ads from legal businesses, including those that provide adult entertainment. LEO has been running those since its first issues. In fact, LEO runs significantly fewer adult-oriented ads today than it has in the past (much to our dismay).

While we disagree and are disappointed with the coffee business’ decision, we feel it is important to defend its right to carry, or not carry, any publication it chooses. We also want to make sure that the business is not unjustly criticized for dropping us because of this issue, or the beautiful cover.

There. That’s the story ...

As an aside, Yarmuth correctly observes, complaints about LEO's adult advertising content have occurred from the start, and historically, they seem to have been equally divided between preachers and feminists. These ads are undeniably tacky, though I've never been as offended by them as those purchased by Budweiser.

On Friday, numerous individuals on social media were busy surveying the extent of Christian influence on local coffee. Had they been paying attention, it would have been recalled that not even three years ago (July 23, 2014), Gabe Bullard got there first.

How Christianity Shapes Louisville’s Coffee Culture, (WFPL-89.3)

... It may not have converted anyone, but nearly every serious coffee drinker in Louisville has been affected in some way by the actions of Christians behind the counter. Many of the early purveyors of pourover brewing, latte art and various techniques of the so-called Third Wave of coffee have been either devout Christians or employed by devout Christians. And the attraction to coffee isn’t driven by scripture. Rather, it’s scripture that inspires the quality of the drinks.

More recently, conspiracy theorists will note that Caitlin Bowling's Insider Louisville story about the advent of New Albany's new 410 Bakery (it serves Sunergos coffee, by the way) includes the owner's explanation of the name.

While 410 Bakery may seem odd for a business with the address number 140, (Emily) Butts said she came up with it because it is the address of her current Patrol Road space and also corresponds to one of her favorite Bible verses, 1 Peter 4:10: “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

In this long but essential excerpt from a 1997 review of the book by David Denborough (Dulwich Centre Newsletter), Schivelbusch is seen to demonstrate that the connection between Christianity (in the beginning, stemming from the Protestant Refromation) can be traced much further back in Western history than the more recent founding of Sojourn Church.

Obviously, none of these linkages have ever stopped this particular atheist from enjoying coffee, a beverage brought to Christian Europe by invading Muslim Turks.

At any rate, as you're about to see, coffee turns out to have been about sex (or its absence) all along. Take it away, David and Wolfgang.

---

The birth of Puritanism

When the Reformation tried to redefine the relationship between the individual and God, it also sought to regulate the relationship between individuals and alcohol. Schivelbusch argues that these attempts were ‘laying an essential foundation in both realms for the development of capitalism’ (p.34). It was the Protestant work ethic that sought initially to alter relationships with alcohol. From that time on, attempts to work on issues of alcohol and other drug-related problems have often been influenced by the moral prescriptions of Puritanism. What do these histories mean for those of us wanting to find collaborative ways of working on such problems today?

According to Schivelbusch the social drinking habits and relationships of pre-industrial Europe were very strong and it therefore took more than Puritan ideology to condemn ‘Demon Alcohol’ (p.34). Attempts to prohibit toasting rituals repeatedly failed to achieve desired results. The way Schivelbusch describes it, alcohol consumption only dropped when broader changes occurred in the society – changes that came:

With a more highly developed society and economy … a higher degree of work discipline – and also a new group of beverages that could replace the old ones. For without substitute the existing traditions would not disappear … These requirements were fulfilled by the new hot beverages that reached Europe in the 17th Century – above all, coffee, (p.34)

Coffee

Coffee functioned as a historically significant drug. It spread through the body and achieved chemically and pharmacologically what rationalism and the Protestant ethic sought to fulfill spiritually and ideologically. With coffee, the principle of rationality entered human psychology, transforming it to conform with its own requirements. The result was a body which functioned in accord with the new demands – a rationalistic, middle-class, forward-looking body. (p.39)

Schivelbusch writes of the social meanings that are to be found in the rise in popularity of coffee as the drug of choice in 17th century. With the rise of Puritanism, coffee began to be seen as ‘awakening a drowsy humanity from its alcoholic stupor to middle-class commonsense and industry’ (p.34). Schivelbusch describes the ways in which the effects of caffeine, including the ways in which it enhances mental activity and speeds perception and judgement, make coffee ‘the beverage of the modern bourgeois age’ (p.34).

Coffee promised to lengthen and intensify the time available for work and what’s more it was seen as anti-erotic. It replaced ‘sexual arousal with stimulation of the intellect’ (p.37). This combination, according to Schivelbusch, made coffee the ideal Puritan drink: ‘Coffee as the beverage of sobriety and coffee as the means of curbing the sexual urges, it is not hard to recognise the ideological forces behind this reorientation’ (p.37). There developed a moral imperative, in the minds of some, to drink coffee rather than alcohol.

Schivelbusch also briefly touches upon how coffee houses became centres for communication, and how these centres were often exclusively male. He describes how the increasing use of coffee and the exclusion of women was protested:

In 1764 a broadside caused a great sensation in London. Its title: ‘The Women’s Petition Against Coffee.’ … The text expressed in no uncertain terms the fear that coffee would make ‘men [as] unfruitful as those deserts whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought’. It is easy to identify the sociopolitical impulse behind this complaint: the English coffeehouses of this period excluded women, and in their pamphlet the women were rebelling against the increasing patriarchalisation of society. That this opposition should use the argument that coffee makes men impotent shows, on the one hand how powerful this notion was at the time, and on the other, how unpuritannical, indeed how anti-puritannical, the women of this time were, (p.37)

Churchgoers adore the heathen Trump because of a Christian subset that "reveres authority and acts from fear."

It doesn't explain the hermetic Gahan's appeal. Money?

The essay is a year old, but even more relevant today. Without the authoritarian streak, would Christians be so prone to advocating a theocracy?

Paul Prather: The mystery of Christians’ support for Donald Trump is solved (Kentucky.com)

You might be puzzled that so many churchgoers back Trump for president

A Massachusetts scholar has solved the puzzle

These are the subset of Christians who revere authority and act from fear

I’ve expressed before my puzzlement that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump could win so many disciples among the Christians who make up a hefty portion of the Republican base.

Trump is an insulting, profane, thrice-married, megalomaniacal billionaire from New York City who can’t even pronounce 2 Corinthians correctly. Indeed, he seems to proudly stand for everything the Christian faith supposedly opposes.

And yet a great throng of Christians love the guy.

If you, too, have been scratching your head in wonder at this conundrum, allow me to say this mystery has been solved.

The answer made great sense, too. It even led me to contemplate an ancient divide within Christianity itself.

It came from a poll by Matthew MacWilliams, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

He wrote a brief essay for Politico.com about his research.

MacWilliams sampled 1,800 registered U.S. voters from across the political spectrum in an attempt to understand Trump’s popularity.

“I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter’s preferred candidate,” he said. “Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the former was far more significant than the latter.”

Authoritarians, a group studied by social scientists for decades, inclined sharply toward Trump.

MacWilliams summarized what it means to be authoritarian:

“Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened.”

Sunday scriptural realities: "Apparently, America is only a Christian nation when it’s convenient."

In less than two weeks, Donald Trump has done more to highlight the perennial pervasiveness of Christian hypocrisy in America than any freethinker or atheist of whom I'm aware. It has been like a nationwide litmus test. Those of us who've been making these points for our entire adult lives are feeling something along the lines of shock and awe.

As most readers are aware, my anti-Trumpolini credentials date to the second Reagan Administration, but a proper sense of intellectual (in this instance, anti-intellectual) honesty compels me to give credit where credit's due.

Now, pop open a locally-brewed beer, and let's listen to the outraged rebuttals from the comfy white evangelicals whose votes for Trump were cast from a position they insist resembles fundamental decency.

(crickets chirp)
(pins drop)
(somewhere, a dog forlornly barks)
(the flutter of this passing moth's wings is deafening)

But seriously: I know there are many Christians who don't merit inclusion in this hyperbolic rendering. I know that you, too, are dismayed, and furthermore, many of you will be speaking to these issues from the pews on your side of the aisle. If you'd like to write about it here, in this blog space, let me know. I'm happy and eager to make space available for your thoughts -- after all, the newspaper will ask you to keep it to 200 words, and I won't.

These Prominent Evangelicals Are Pretty Sure Trump’s Refugee Ban Is Perfectly Moral, by Carol Kuruvilla (Huffington Post)

Apparently, America is only a Christian nation when it’s convenient.

Some of President Donald Trump’s top evangelical advisors have reached a troubling, and somewhat baffling, theological consensus about a restrictions he’s placed on refugees entering the country.

Based on The Huffington Post’s interviews with a few leaders who have the president’s ear, the consensus is this: The Biblical command to welcome, clothe and feed the stranger applies only to churches and individuals. The government doesn’t have to abide by that standard.

In essence, for these evangelicals, their traditional Christian values should have an impact on how the president makes decisions about abortion and same-sex marriage. But on the matter of refugees fleeing war, it’s perfectly fine for the president to turn his face away from suffering, because safety comes before being a Good Samaritan to those in need.

White evangelical Christians’ overwhelming support for Trump helped put him in the White House. As a whole, members of this spiritual tradition have a high regard for the Bible as the source of ultimate moral authority. But beliefs about how to apply Biblical principles to politics can vary greatly ― and the debate about Trump’s “extreme vetting” plan is bringing up some of that tension.

Trump signed an executive order on Friday that establishes new vetting measures to keep “radical Islamic terrorists” out of the country. The order blocks refugees from Syria indefinitely and temporarily bans people from a few unnamed countries from entering the U.S.

The National Association of Evangelicals, which has helped refugees for decades through the resettlement agency World Relief, called Trump’s plans “alarming.” Other Christian aid groups have also criticized the temporary ban.

But some prominent evangelicals, including a few who were part of Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, find no problem with it.

Video: "We've Reached the End of White Christian America."

Possible cause for encouragement at The Atlantic:

The United States is no longer a majority white, Christian country, and that is already beginning to have profound social and political implications. At 45 percent of the population, white Christians are a shrinking demographic—and the backlash from many members of the group against the increasing diversification of America has been swift and bitter. “People fight like that when they are losing a sense of place, a sense of belonging, and a sense of the country that they understand and love,” says Robert P. Jones, the author of The End of White Christian America, in this animated interview. “How do they reengage in public life when they can’t be the majority?”

As testaments go, there are new and old -- so I'm told.

Muslim terrorists aren't the only ones being called to militancy by the "internet.' You'll see something like this on social media, repeated hundreds of times daily.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?? THEY WANT TO KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF US.

It tends to be followed immediately by self-identified Christians competing to topple the most mosques, close the greatest expanse of border, and confine the most Muslims in concentration camps.

I'm just the village atheist, and to be completely honest, very little of my time has been spent perusing that "good" book.

But really, an eye for an eye?

Jesus Christ, that's dumb ... although, on further reflection, He beat me to this conclusion long, long ago.

Debunking Pascal's Wager, which Christopher Hitchens aptly described as "hucksterism."

A variant of Pascal's Wager has been circulating (again) on social media.

You don't believe in God? Fine. Why is it so important for many of you to mock those of us that do? If we're wrong, what have we lost when we die? Nothing! How does our believing in Jesus bring you any harm? You think it makes me stupid? Gullible? Fine. How does that affect you? If you're wrong your consequence is far worse. I would rather live my life believing in God and serving Him, and find out I was right, than not believe in Him and not serve Him, and find out I was wrong. Then it's to late.

It's a bit more complicated that than, but not much. Pascal's Wager holds that one might as well believe in God, just in case God exists, rather than risk eternal damnation if She doesn't.

Pascal's Wager is an argument in apologetic philosophy devised by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623–62). It posits that humans all bet with their lives either that God exists or that he does not. Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).

A few days after I saw the Fb passage, I took my mother to her dentist in Georgetown, where I grew up. The Southern Baptist church in the middle of town has an electronic message board, and it was transmitting a two-part admonition, paraphrased: Those who deny Jesus Christ are rebelling against God.

Why must I mock those of you who believe? I typically don't, although I also don't take kindly to being threatened, because as a rebel against God, am I not marked for some variety of physical punishment, perhaps by an angry mob of believers?

I might turn this notion of presumed mockery on its ear, and say "Why is it so important for so many believers to impose their belief system on me," as when Governor Pence describes himself as a Christian first, conservative second and Republican third?

I can't recall any point in my life where theism made sense, but I've no interest in mocking the devout so long as they stay off my porch, metaphorically.

In an interview roughly a year before his death, Christopher Hitchens briefly dispenses with Pascal's Wager. It's at the 22.13 mark. The entire interview is worth watching.

However, this blogger does an even more thorough job of it.

The Fatal Flaws of Pascal’s Wager, by Diplodocus G (Average Atheist)

... The point, and I think Christopher Hitchens was on to something when he called it hucksterism, is that Pascal’s Wager isn’t an honest question. It’s a trick. It’s trying to goad the non-believer into staying quiet about religion and just go along with the Christian majority. It’s saying, “Hey, you don’t believe, but wouldn’t you rather get along with all of us who do? Yes? So why not just make the professions, perform the sacraments, and come join us in church? It’s easy; just tell yourself you believe every night before you go to bed. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll wake up and it’ll be true! I mean, think about it: What if you’re wrong about Jesus?” Well, what if you’re wrong about Muhammad? Or Mahavira? Or Sheva? Or Ganesh? Or Zeus? Or Odin? Think about it.

"When they recite falsehoods over the corpses of Paine, Darwin and now Hitchens they move from the extremely seedy to the outright creepy: from vultures to vampires."

I've never been one to refrain from piling on when it's for a noble cause.

"To claim (Christopher) Hitchens posthumously for evangelical Christianity is to defame a man who was a champion of the Enlightenment."

Or, better stated, a morale boost for my Sunday morning.

Deathbed conversion? Never. Christopher Hitchens was defiant to the last, by Nick Cohen (The Guardian)

 ... One of the charges against Christopher Hitchens that has stuck is that he was a member a new breed of “militant” atheists that besmirched the genteel world of modern western culture. Hardly anyone who threw around the term worried about the moral equivalence they were drawing between men and women, who used only the power of language, and a wave of genuinely militant religion that crushed lives, sexually enslaved women and made medieval prejudices modern. Nor did they reflect that “faith-based” political action, from the Rushdie affair via 9/11 to Islamic State, placed a moral duty on atheists to adopt a more robust mode of argument.

I am delighted to say that Taunton’s sole achievement is to show us that, in death, Hitchens provided a further reason for militant rejection of religion: its creepiness.

"To claim (Christopher) Hitchens posthumously for evangelical Christianity is to defame a man who was a champion of the Enlightenment."

One is tempted to read no further than "Alabamian evangelist."

Christopher Hitchens and the Christian conversion that wasn’t, by Matthew d'Ancona (The Guardian)

 ... The religious knew that it was worth claiming the spiritual scalps of the founding father of evolution theory and of Italy’s pre-eminent Marxist. In our own era, a resourceful Alabamian evangelist is exploiting his friendship with Hitchens, who died in 2011, to allege that the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything was, in fact, on a secret spiritual journey and halfway to embracing Jesus ...

 ... There is so much wrong with this book that one hardly knows where to start. But its fundamental error concerns the nature of intellectual inquiry itself. For Taunton, there is only one such pursuit, and it is unidirectional: if you are interested in morality, you are, axiomatically, interested in religion – which, for a southern evangelical, means the gospels. When Hitchens observes that a child and a piglet are morally different, Taunton says that “this was unambiguous theism, as he well knew”.

Of course, Hitchens knew no such thing. For him, as for any atheist, morality did not need the framework of religion. Philosophy did not depend upon the supernatural, and ethics did not require a godhead to be worth discussing – a discussion that can be traced back at least as far as Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro.

Two must reads: The myth of religious violence, and why there’s no such thing as Islamic State.

It's impossible to reduce this "long read" of Karen Armstrong's into a single convenient pull, but I'll take a stab at it.

The myth of religious violence (Guardian)

... After a bumpy beginning, secularism has undoubtedly been valuable to the west, but we would be wrong to regard it as a universal law. It emerged as a particular and unique feature of the historical process in Europe; it was an evolutionary adaptation to a very specific set of circumstances. In a different environment, modernity may well take other forms.

Another commentary in the Guardian approaches the issue from the standpoint of language:

Why there’s no such thing as Islamic State: From Isis to Aum Shinrikyo, the way language works can distort reality. We must be vigilant in reading between the lines, by David Shariatmadari

 ... Linguists have argued for decades about the strength of this effect: the consensus is that language guides, rather than determines, thought. It can set up habits, no more. But habits can be tenacious.

Politicians have long known this. Advertisers know it. And so do terrorists. And with the evolution of Islamic State (Isis) we have a neat case study in the power of proper nouns.

Must reading: "How Christianity Shapes Louisville's Coffee Culture," by Gabe Bullard.

Ever wonder why "Louisville's coffee scene has an undeniable undercurrent of Christianity that isn’t the case nationally"?

Gabe Bullard explains, in depth. While reading, I was reminded of various other implications of coffee, and Wolfgang Schivelbusch's thoughts on the matter in his book, Tastes of Paradise, as summarized in this e-notes excerpt.

Called “the Great Soberer,” coffee became a symbol of the emerging bourgeoisie, who were delighted by its stimulating effects. Conservatives blamed it for the deterioration of society and said it was dangerous.

Coffee came to Europe from the Arab world, and initially was known as the "wine of Islam." The simple observation that a caffeinated beverage differs from an alcoholic one suffices to explain how coffee became an instrument to advance tee-totalling, as opposed to intoxication -- not necessarily from religious motivations, but because sober workers would produce greater profits than drunk workers.

Obviously, these are not Bullard's considerations. Rather, he contributes substance to clarify innuendo, and as a coffee drinker and frequent patron of the Quills branch in New Albany, I appreciate the effort. I'm a pagan, fanatical, unbelieving atheistic threat to the established order ... and I've always felt welcome at Quills. This is as it should be.

How Christianity Shapes Louisville's Coffee Culture, by Gabe Bullard (WFPL)

... It’s unlikely the third wave of coffee would have skipped Louisville. Had Sunergos and Quills not brought it here, someone would have. Just like with Heine Brothers. Had Mays not brought better coffee to Louisville in 1994, Starbucks would have in 1999. But the market is driven by those who act first and act well. In the case of Louisville, with third wave coffee, it was devout Christians, driven by an interest in coffee and mandated by their faith to work as hard as possible.