If Rick Warren should boycott Zondervan...

then so should John MacArthur.

In recent posts (here and here) over at Christian Research Network, Rev. Ken Silva calls on Rick Warren to boycott Zondervan, the publishing house that prints his book The Purpose Driven Life. His reasoning behind this is that Zondervan is owned by News Corp, which is in turn owned by Rupert Murdoch. News Corp owns several pornography channels in Europe, and Rick Warren has apparently claimed to be Murdoch's pastor (this is still hotly contested, and is not an issue I'm going to get into here). Among its other holdings, News Corp also owns HarperCollins, which publishes The Satanic Bible. So what?

I'm glad you asked.

Zondervan, owned by News Corp/Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the company that publishes The Satanic Bible, publishes two of John MacArthur's books: The Gospel According to Jesus, and Charismatic Chaos. If Rick Warren should boycott Zondervan because of it's connection to The Satanic Bible, then Ken (and other discernment ministries that have picked up this story) should call on John MacArthur to do the same. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Ken Said WHAT???

I couldn't let this article at CRN pass without comment. Aside from Ken's usual slander and name calling (posers to the faith, neo-liberal cult, etc.), this is the part that made my jaw drop:

This Memorial Day weekend, how about we ask God to help us remember the Biblical doctrines of grace that we as Christians are supposed to be preaching and then use these useless books of the so-called emerging church to light our bonfires. Let’s use them to fuel our cookouts, at least then they might just produce something useful after all…

I cannot believe that Ken is actually advocating that we burn books! People, this is what the Nazis did! And lest Ken try to pull the article and say it never happened, I have taken a screenshot.

Is Ken really advocating this kind of suppression of ideas? Burning books?

I still can't believe it.

That's it, I'm done.

I am officially finished commenting at the new Slice of Laodicea. I have had two comments on one post today result in Ingrid acting as if I was attacking her personally, and the second comment was to try and shed some light on what I was getting at in the first comment. I didn't call Ingrid crazy, I didn't say she was standing on a street corner screaming about fire and brimstone, nor did I say that all fundamentalist churches do so, or that they are all crazy or have bad hygiene. I am pleased to inform Ingrid (and anyone else who reads this) that I am dealing from a full deck of cards, thank you very much, and that I don't get my theology from late night comedy sketches. I have, however, come to a realization; there is no benefit to contributing to the comment section at Slice of Laodicea. To be honest, after the response I received to one of my early comments at Slice 2.0, I don't know why I continued commenting there at all. My comments were taken in entirely the wrong way and words were put into my mouth. But, then again, coming from the "discernment/remnant" crowd, should I expect any different?

Verse of the Day

This is more likely to become Verse of However Often I Get Around to Posting It, but that notwithstanding...

"The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives." ~Psalm 37:23 (NLT)

A Slice of Hypocrisy at CRN

In a recent post (by the ambiguous "editor") over at CRN, Doug Pagitt was criticized for removing a post from his blog. I would like to note, and make clear, that while I didn't see the original post (and therefore will have to take the "editor's" word for it), Doug did post on *why* the original is now gone, and why he has replaced it. This is far more than we have seen from CRN in it's former incarnation, Slice of Laodicea (which has been reborn, but that's another topic). In it's days as SoL, multiple posts simply disappeared off the site, with no explanation. It was as if they had never existed, and many would likely not know they had ever been there if not for the work of bloggers who did see the posts, and pointed readers to the Internet Archive at wayback.org. This is hypocrisy of the highest order. Pagitt at least gave us an explanation for what he did and why; Slice/CRN would prefer to act as though the post in question simply never happened, as long as it's on *THEIR* site.

Falwell Goes Home

The Raw Story is reporting at this hour that Jerry Falwell has been pronounced dead after being found unconscious in his office. May God be with his family as they mourn.

JammieWearingFool has updates, links, and reactions. Sadly, some of the reactions from the left are definately not safe for work, and are truly disgusting.

And the Missed Joke Goes WOOSH!!!

Right over the head of the mysterious "editor" over at CRN. Specifically, their post entitled Nice to Worship, to Worship Nice! Naturally, I had to investigate this for myself, because what was being written seemed just a little too... well, out there. Upon investigation of the article the editor linked to, I found a few clues, namely, the fact that the article was published on April 1st of this year. (Side note: in Europe, dates are commonly written in the DD/MM/YYYY format, whereas we in the US usually use the MM/DD/YYYY format). I won't go over this with a fine tooth comb here, but another clue was the name of the production company: Boulderdash. Sounds just a bit like balderdash, doesn't it? It also seems to be the case that Boulderdash produced many arcade games which are now considered classics. And we can't forget the "promotional deal" that is supposedly being "negotiated personally by the Archbishop of Canterbury." Really now.

But what really tipped me off was the premire date at the end of the article: Sunday, April 1st, 2008. Astute readers will remember that this year, April 1st fell on a Sunday, and so it cannot possibly do the same next year. In fact, April 1, 2008 will fall on a Tuesday. A mere typo? I think not.