skylark

over the weekend i found myself watching a formal debate - sponsored by the Miller Center, i believe - on the question of religion in modern american politics. even though the opposing team included the loathsome chuck colson, and even though i disagreed profoundly with just about every premise, conclusion and assertion of that opposition, i was seriously-enough impressed by the adult bearing of the whole thing - the reasonableness of it all - that i was inclined to give bishop harry jackson some benefit of the doubt when he described evangelicals as, really, just normal people with a need for a specific ethical framework.

that benefit, of course, lasts only as long as it takes me to be reminded that, in fact, bishop jackson himself is in the minority of educated, quasi-rational evangelical thinkers, and that far too many of the mass "believers" (and their leaders) are batshit insane.

(and yah, the smiling, polite mobs that joel osteen packs into his stadium may not have pinwheel eyeballs, but really, it's a very small step from so-called "prosperity gospel" to the conviction that if for some reason you fail to prosper you are beneath consideration, or worse, require ideological correction.)