Australian Parliament Members Used Prayer Room for Sex
Australian Parliament Members Used Prayer Room for Sex
God's name was definitely heard in there.
Our little experiment with the Friendly Atheist newsletter is finally taking shape. We’re listening to your feedback and figuring out what works well for us (your newsletter authors). It seems that most readers we’ve spoken to would prefer a once-a-week newsletter that includes more content (as opposed to more frequent, smaller newsletters). So beginning next week, we’re going to switch to that format. Consider it your weekend reading, coming to you on a Friday night!
In addition, that newsletter will only be available to paying subscribers, HOWEVER, we don’t want to shut anyone out over an inability to pay! We appreciate you and understand pandemic times are hard. If you want to continue receiving the paid version of the newsletter, just send Hemant a short message at Mpromptu@gmail.com with your email address and we’ll give you a one-year gift subscription—no explanation needed :) (As always, the content will still be available for free via FriendlyAtheist.com.)
Thank you for bearing with us as we experiment with this format and work to deliver an informative and hopefully entertaining digest of news!
The Catholic headmaster of St. Martin de Porres Marianist School in Long Island, New York has been placed on leave after making a Black child kneel in front of him as a form of punishment he referred to as the “African and the Nigerian way.” Except the child isn’t Nigerian—that was a racist assumption made by the headmaster while thinking of how to best demean a student who dared to *checks offense* start his classwork early. And also, according to Nigerians, they don’t do that.
We’ll have more on this tomorrow, but Ted Cruz’s argument here is just 100% straw man.
Among those who managed to escape the King Soopers grocery store shooting yesterday were two young evangelicals who returned to the scene shortly after it was cleared in order to pray and give interviews with news stations. That alone wouldn’t be an issue — everyone deals with trauma their own way. It’s also possible they didn’t know at the time of the interviews that 10 people had died. Still, this reaction seems callous and cruel given what they must have known at the time.
… Pretty much the only reason we came back was we wanted to just sit up there and pray for everybody. Because I know this can be such a scary thing without God… People don’t know where they’re going unless we tell them about it.
… Yeah, we just want to, like, comfort them and let them know that, like, Satan hasn’t won today. Like, even though this evil thing has happened, like, Satan hasn’t won… Jesus has won. And God has won. I think this is even proof of it, like, how beautiful these mountains are right now…
April packs a lot of important points in this one-minute video.
Not only is Ark Encounter attendance still plummeting, they just went 12 straight months with lower attendance than the year before. Not surprising, given the pandemic, but the real question is how much they'll bounce back. (Did they already hit peak attendance years ago? I think so.)
Everyone listen to the man who will hopefully be Kentucky’s next senator:
Australia’s Parliament came out of left field with a sex scandal that permeates throughout the building—literally. As it turns out, the old boys’ club in the government are rampant sex abusers, swapping videos of themselves masturbating on female lawmakers’ desks after hours, calling in sex workers to service their bosses, and (the most lurid of all) having frequent sex in the prayer room. It’s not just aides; it’s the members themselves.
The Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis made the argument in an op-ed that “The Evangelicals’ Trump Obsession Has Tarnished Christianity.”
… What happens when Jesus’ brand ambassadors to a lot of Americans are Donald Trump and Jerry Falwell Jr., not Billy Graham and Pope Francis, much less Jesus himself? In today’s climate, you might be forgiven for thinking that Christians are, as [recently deceased evangelist Luis] Palau worried we would be perceived, “maniacs.”
Evangelical Christians thought lining up behind a Trump was worth it; they couldn’t be more wrong. The cost-benefit analysis that led them to support him as the “lesser of two evils” in 2016 didn’t factor in the long-term damage he, in fact, is still doing.
We disagree with Lewis’ premise that evangelical Christianity had a polished surface to begin with. Billy Graham and Pope Francis are known for their anti-LGBTQ views in a country where 67% of the population is totally cool with same-sex marriage. Trump didn’t do a disservice to evangelicals— he amplified the side of them they wanted to make mainstream, and because of that, racism, conspiracy theories, and LGBTQ bigotry are soaring.
Finally, have a listen:
