Fred Clark
Patheos
West Whiteland Township, PA, United States
Contact Fred
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Past articles by Fred:
Life during wartime (this ain’t no disco)
We're approaching 1,000 confirmed cases here in Chester County, with more than 60 dead. But I'm hard at working making sure our lawns look spectacular. → Read More
Smart people saying smart things (3.18.20)
"There are more things to admire in humanity than to despise." → Read More
Pack up all your dishes
Happy White Bronco Day! Plus: "Dangerous Deliveries," the "Central Jersey" controversy," and did Donald Trump get Sony hacked? → Read More
Ignoring hateful extremists doesn’t make them go away
Maybe if we ignore the influence of hateful demagogues that influence will just disappear? This approach has been tried before and it has failed, catastrophically. → Read More
We need to do something about Rick Wiles
Rick Wiles may be a "fringe" figure, but he has a large audience of "mainstream" white evangelicals. And Rick Wiles is also a raving anti-Semite. → Read More
A First Amendment for me, but not for thee
Here's the story of a First Amendment dispute involving free speech that illuminates parallel First Amendment disputes involving religious liberty. → Read More
Hell is a slander against God, and against the victims of evil
Jesus chased the money-changers out of the Temple with a whip of cords. The way the story is told in the Gospels he put them to flight, chased them out the door, then basically hollered after them "And stay out!" The money-changers had it coming because, Jesus said, they had turned a house of prayer into a den of → Read More
An old hoax that people still choose to want to believe
"It dawned upon me that there was lots of money in being a Munchausen of the right kind, and for twelve years I gave it to them hot and strong, but never too hot." → Read More
If ‘we’ didn’t know, now ‘we’ know
It's not that "we" didn't know any better before this new era of awareness. It's that "we" had not yet been forced to acknowledge that we knew better. → Read More
Who’s an ‘evangelical’? Depends on who’s asking. And why. (And when.)
As usual, the disagreement wasn't actually about the definition of the term evangelical, or about the boundaries of it. The dispute, rather, was about who gets to set those boundaries and who gets to enforce them. → Read More
Today in Satan
I have a Google news alert in my RSS feed for the word "Satanic." You never know what might pop up from that. → Read More
The shape of Brett Kavanaugh’s lies
The key thing here is not that Kavanaugh's blanket denials were false. The key thing here is the shape that can be discerned beneath the blanket. We know that shape. We've seen it before. → Read More
The republic for which it stands
For all of the creepiness inherent in any ritual loyalty oath, the Pledge of Allegiance does get right something that a great deal of American culture gets very, very wrong in 2018. It specifies what the flag stands for. → Read More
The compass spins between heaven and hell
Ezra Klein: "That Republicans in this Congress have proven so subservient to — or scared of — Trump that they have let the fate of the country hinge on whether his staff can adequately distract and calm him is a subversion of the constitutional order and an abdication of responsibility." → Read More
Jesus and his lawyer are coming back
Steve West is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist who thinks "Jewish cabals" are "harvesting baby parts" via Planned Parenthood. So, naturally, he won his Republican primary by 25 points and has been endorsed by the Missouri Right to Life PAC. → Read More
'If Jesus had broken the law then he would have been sinful'
Paula White thinks breaking the law is always a sin; and that complying with the law is equivalent to being sinless. She thinks outlaws like Corrie Ten Boom, Anne Frank, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Mary Dyer, Shiphrah and Puah were all unforgivable sinners. → Read More
Fly, Iggles, fly
The crowd for the Eagles Super Bowl parade was much, much larger than the crowd for Donald Trump's poorly attended inauguration. Also: A theodicy of Dr. Strange; laying the groundwork for tyranny; and breaking into the wrong $#*@ rec room. → Read More
Theory: White Nationalist Theology Might Explain Support for White Nationalist Politics
Wadsworth suggests that perhaps one reason that a large portion of white evangelicals enthusiastically support a white nationalist and white supremacist president is because -- for centuries -- a large portion of white evangelicals have always supported white nationalism and white supremacy: → Read More
Every ‘Ten Commandments’ is a Sectarian Choice — An Establishment Of Religion
Any numbering of the Ten Commandments must be explicitly sectarian. Every representation of the commandments that lists them in ten divisions, even without numbers attached, constitutes a sectarian preference. One specific sect is being commended and elevated, all others are being rejected. → Read More
The Harrowing Of Hell, and All Its Works
What does this very strange story/folklore/doctrine of the "Harrowing of Hell" tell us that Jesus was up to down there? It says he plowed through the place, raking it to pieces, pillaging and plundering and leaving it forever traumatized. → Read More