Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 30, 2023

A long outdated book adhered to by misogynists, racists and wanna be slave owners.

The grooming center is where priests, pastors and bishops groom altar boys to perform a very different kind of sacrament.

Religious conservatives have been targeting the wrong men in dresses.

Sinéad O’Connor had it right: Fight the real enemy. (But then she escaped Catholicism by … converting to Islam. Frying pan, meet fire.)

Someone ought to point Scot in the direction of 2 Thessalonians 3:10. B.D., you’re up.

If you pay close attention to Christ’s worlds and less about Pauls words you woud undertsand Christianity,

Not surprised, it was bound to happen!!

That’s my kind of church and my kind of Christian.

It has long been my contention that Jesus being real would be the worst nightmare of the so-called “Christian” right, because if there was a Second Coming, there would be a fearful judgment upon them.

Don’t expect a lot of so-called ‘conservatives’ comments on this one. They cannot deny its accuracy.

The Bible, and even more the New Testament, are among the most liberal, leftist and even “Communist” books ever written -with some expections regarding women, I admit. Some of the more “literal” Catholic monastic orders were so “leftist” that the Pope had to ban them as heretics before they gave all the Church treasures to the poor.

PS. Sodoma was destroyed (and Gomorra with it) not because of their sexual preferences but because they had NOT given hospitality to a couple of Angels in disguise – practically for touristic reasons, a kind of Bibical Tripadvisor.

Looks about right. As if it were a bad thing.

The grooming didn’t work on me for decades, as I was a GOP member until Obama.

Is it good enough to share? Can’t tweet anymore, but maybe (if Musk doesn’t censor it) I can X-crete the link over on X-critter?

The Bible also says, "…we gave you this rule: The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” 2nd Thessalonians 3:10

Christ was the most woke person ever, republicans hate that.

Church is liberal now? Since when?

It doesn’t seem like that bad of a sermon topic.

Yeah. I guess that’s part of the Bible they threw out. What’s that old saying about the Devil quoting Scripture?

And I’ve heard of a Christian Nationalist group that wants to bring back stoning. Literally. The kind with real stones. No mere 1950’s Regressives here, no sir.

“Conservative Christian” is an oxymoron. What passes as “conservative” these days (at least in the US) is antithetical to the teachings of Christ.

They even go so far as to idolize political figures in their churches. They preach authoritarianism in all certainty that God is a respecter of men. They know He is because the Bible explicitly states the opposite.

They even dispute the morality of charitable works out of the countermorality preached by avowed atheist Ayn Rand.

Proper hermeutics: To whom was this written? Under what covenant? Otherwise, it’s eisegesis.

In real life (not myth or fable) how many people were the models for the Biblical character of Jesus? In the absence of any real evidence, we’re stuck with probabilities:

0 — 15%

1 — 35%

2 or more — 50%

Supporting the 3rd hypothesis are anomalies such as “the Nazarene” being born in Bethlehem (a conflation of the divine-savior and political-savior traditions); dueling genealogies in Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38; the “Prince of Peace” stating “I come to bring not peace but a sword” and trashing the money-changer tables in the temple; the friend of the common people also recommending that “these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them — bring them here and slaughter them in my presence”; the same guy who said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” supposedly also saying “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”, thus creating the ongoing controversy over whether man is saved by works or grace; and the bringer of a new covenant claiming to uphold “every jot and tittle” of the old one.

These differences are what we’d expect if two or more itinerant preachers — probably illiterate themselves and certainly working in an illiterate society — were each delivering somewhat different messages, and word-of-mouth transmission confused who said what, much the same way as modern people will attribute quotations of unknown origin to William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, or George Carlin.

GODis a socialist.

Hmmmmm . . . last time I checked the list, child r_pists on the right outnumbered the ones on the left by roughly 50-1.

. . . says the people who call themselves good Christians.

Liberal is not a dirty word. It is an attitude about life and others. There are degrees of liberal; just as there are degrees of conservative.

How is that liberal? It doesn’t say, “You shall have Caesar open wide his hand to your brother…”

Until the needy and the poor are sent to a rich enclave.

Not everything in that book is so benign…“No one whose te$ticles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.” — Deuteronomy 23:1

The bible can be bent to support most liberal or conservative views. That’s what makes it such fun reading and discussion.

a bit different than helping the needy (noting the distinction) but.. 2 Thessalonians 3:10New International Version“10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” "

Jesus was a liberal groomer and the Beatitudes were his manual.

As Carlin the Great said, “Religion is [REDACTED]”

Many small c religious people see it only as a tool for mass condemnation for people who don’t agree with them.

Perhaps the most harmful Christian grooming directive ever (it has competition):

Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Authorization for absolute credulity, and the history of negative outcomes resulting from that.

I work as a volunteer at a food pantry at a local church, supported by that house of worship and 3 others. Yet some of the parishioner committee members in the church want us to close the pantry because they believe it’s an “unnecessary expense.”

Do I need to even tell you what generation the naysayers belong to (hint: rhymes with “rumor”)? And do I also need to tell you that church’s population of members/parishioners continues to decrease, and that they are not attracting many younger folks to take over from the older ones? And they wonder why they can’t get the younger generation to, in their minds, “commit to Jesus.”

As the comedian says, “Here’s your sign…”

Jesus wouldn’t get a foot in the door of the modern Republican party. A brown guy who won’t shut up about the poor? Get him outta here!

That guy in front of Scott’s church would probably be at the front of the line to kill Jesus if he returned preaching the same thing he did 2,000 years ago.

News Flash: it’s all fantasy… and Tolkien did it better.

Trump will win! Sorry leftist communists!

Some portion of the population — ehem! — seems to have lost sight of ’What Jesus Would Do". =8-o

What is sad this is true.

So, if the government uses my tax dollars to help the poor do I get to go to heaven?

Another reason the OT is superseded by the NT.

Trudeau making a common sense political comment. How refreshing!

At this point, cruelty is a core Republican value.

Ah, but does the “anti-woke” version say which side of the hand one is to give to one’s brother, the needy, and the poor? The greatest argument that I see against Christianity is Christians. Having spent decades in Baptist and later Evangelical churches, it seems to me that for most it’s just a social club and for the right-wing “church” it’s more of a political club where the Bible is used as a weapon while it’s heart (particularly the 4 gospels) is ignored. (Then there’s all the televangelist scammers but that’s getting off-topic.)

should Christianity be illegal in USA i think so!

Help me out here. Do we still have Pharisees running around loose?

For you were slave in the land of Egypt from which I brought you out, so help the stranger, the orphan, and the widow.

And I guarantee they were both wearing red hats displaying 4 letters.

Yeah, those evangelical “Christians” sort of ignore what He taught if it contradicts their politics and desires to make the U.S. of A. a theocracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology This has nothing to do with real Christianity. But The Right, the further right you go, choose to be rich in money rather than in spirit.

The Bible recommends the actions of individuals with their own money, not government with other people’s money.

Yeah, the Bible has a liberal bias.

IMHO wokeness is an extrapolation of political correctness which IMHO is itself an extrapolation of basic civility. Rarely have I encountered a conservative who had any use for civility.

I’ve always wondered – how is it so many of these people automatically know what a grooming center looks like? I mean, you normally only know things you’ve directly seen or been a part of.

Are they telling us they were groomed? Or were part of a grooming group? Are they former groomers (or current groomers)? I mean, they seem to know a lot about how it supposedly works – something only an insider would know.

Me,I’m getting hungry just looking at those cheeseburgers

“What is the biblical evaluation of sex?”

“It is considered original sin”

“And all these holy people got themselves begat through original sin?? All that sinning make them any less holy?”

INHERIT THE WIND—1960

So…so many Christians are so horrified by actual Christianity

Straw man argument. Republicans donate more of their own income to charity than Democrats do. Progressives love to confiscate other people’s money and claim to be charitable when they give a small portion of it to the needy to gain their allegiance.