Culture: March 2021 Archives
About the Greek Language by Harry Foundalis
A guide to the modern Greek language, including pronunciation, grammar basics, common expressions, and handwriting. Useful information for this student of ancient Greek curious about how the language has evolved: the disappearing dative case, the emergence of contractions of εἰς + article (στου, στον, στο, etc.), enclitic and accented particles.
I Was America's First 'Nonbinary' Person. It Was All a Sham. | Intellectual Takeout
Jamie Shupe writes:
"The best thing that could have happened would have been for someone to order intensive therapy. That would have protected me from my inclination to cross-dress and my risky sexual transgressions, of which there were many.
"Instead, quacks in the medical community hid me in the women's bathroom with people's wives and daughters. 'Your gender identity is female,' these alleged professionals said....
"Three years into my gender change from male to female, I looked hard into the mirror one day. When I did, the facade of femininity and womanhood crumbled... When the fantasy of being a woman came to an end, I asked two of my doctors to allow me to become nonbinary instead of female to bail me out. Both readily agreed....
"I do not have any disorders of sexual development. All of my sexual confusion was in my head. I should have been treated. Instead, at every step, doctors, judges, and advocacy groups indulged my fiction."
Cowboy Christianity: A Short Review of Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne - Neil Shenvi - Apologetics
"...Du Mez offers no exegesis of key biblical passages about gender, power, or authority. Indeed, the book offers little if any theological reflection at all on these issues. Rather, it simply assumes without argument that the conservative views it describes are perversions of genuine Christianity. Yet how can we know whether that's the case in the absence of appeals to Scripture? Granted, the cultural zeitgeist is surely on Du Mez's side. Yet this is dangerous ground for a Christian....
"...Du Mez is not merely criticizing particular expressions of gender roles but the very existence of gender roles, either in the church or in the family. Here, the omission of any kind of biblical argument for her position becomes particularly noticeable. Certainly, complementarians can try to appreciate the truth in some of Du Mez's critiques. But we have to do so with the understanding that she is operating from an entirely different understanding of gender roles....
"If "patriarchal authority" is not only broad enough to include all complementarian views but is also the motive force behind evangelical commitment to a traditional view of inerrancy, gender, sexuality, the existence of hell and even substitutionary atonement, what happens if we commit ourselves to deconstructing "the patriarchy"? Worse still, how can we defend these doctrines on the ground that they're biblical? Such an attempt could merely be dismissed as an effort to "protect patriarchal power," whether it comes from a man ("male privilege") or a woman ("internalized sexism").
"I sincerely wish that this book had been written by a complementarian. But I just as sincerely wish that this book had been written by an egalitarian. Or a radical feminist. What do I mean? I mean that I wish the book had been written by someone who was explicit about their own theological commitments, who made overt appeals to the Bible, and who provided arguments for their claims. As it stands, the book subtly encourages a very corrosive approach to doctrine, one that appeals to our reflexive moral intuitions and to skepticism towards power rather than to exegesis or to careful argumentation. If we begin to see doctrines as expressions of privilege, rather than as objective truth claims made by Scripture, it will be difficult to turn back. This approach, once embraced, is spiritually deadly."
The Most Dangerous Bill of Our Time: The So-Called "Equality Act" -- Robert A. J. Gagnon
Gagnon, a professor of New Testament at Houston Baptist University, explained in 2019 how the Democrats' proposed Equality Act endangers religious liberty, opens the door for excluding Christians from the professions, and eliminates any protection for women's private spaces against men who claim to be women. This same bill was blocked by Republicans in the Senate and White House in 2019, but now, barring a successful filibuster or the defection of centrist Democrats, is apt to pass.
