Marginal Christianity

May 1, 2015 by Lee C. Camp, host of Tokens Critics are, well, so critical. But nonetheless much is to be learned from them, even if I say so begrudgingly. I do think that one of the finer parts of being raised Southern is our suspicion of those who speak in such (over) confident, (over) authoritative ways. The Southern pejorative use of “Yankee” is, in large part, a judgment upon such (over) esteem for one’s viewpoints. For all the foolishness of the Lost Cause mentality, there is something about that ethos that serves a constructive social function of questioning the powers. So, as a Southerner, I have often enjoyed reading social critics, as diverse as Leo Tolstoy and Reinhold Niebuhr, and even one of the greatest of modern haters of Christians, Friedrich Nietzsche, whom I first started reading as an undergraduate many years ago.  There are many supposedly cultured despisers of Christianity who, with condescension oozing from their blog comments, frankly don’t know what they’re

In USA Today columnist Anthony D'Ambrosio reflects on the reasons marriage tends to fail today ( http ://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/07/sex-columnist-5-reasons-marriage-doesnt-work-anymore/25398635/ ). They are: 1) Sex becomes almost non-existent. 2) Finances cripple us. 3) We're more connected than ever before, but completely disconnected at the same time. 4) Our desire for attention outweighs our desire to be loved. 5) Social media just invited a few thousand people into bed with you. This rings true for me. But I'm not interested in marriage here. Rather, I want to reflect on these dynamics in regard to the church. The church has failed as radically as marriage has, perhaps more so. To what degree are these dynamics D'Ambrosio identifies operative in it as well? Sex becomes almost non-existent. Physical expression of love (“love one another”) falls prey to the urgency of other “necessities” and allures of

Tom E hrich        | Apr 1, 2014 |     (RNS) I don’t know about young girls, but I know from experience that young boys obsess about sex. Show caption Teenage couple kissing outdoors at the park. Photo courtesy of michaeljung via Shutterstock They crave it, fantasize about it, do everything in their meager power to obtain it, worry about their adequacy, get confused by their longings, and for the duration of adolescence — and often beyond — see people in terms of “getting laid.” I suppose this obsession is natural, and that it serves some fundamental purpose, such as perpetuating the species or giving us something to think about besides our gangly bodies, weird thoughts, and being young and insecure. I don’t know any adult who would willingly repeat adolescence. Yet here we are — we Christians seeking hope, grace, mercy and purpose, we believers in a God of justice — treating our faith as an endless adolescence centered around sex. We obsess about

November 27, 2012 By Timothy Dalrymple   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/philosophicalfragments/2012/11/27/sex-god-and-politics/   Is sex more satisfying for conservative women?  Or are liberal women just making an idol out of sex? The always-stimulating (no pun intended) Mark Regnerus , a Patheos blogger and one of the most significant sociologists of religion practicing the craft today (and Mark is a gadfly in the most salutary sense, but far more controversial than he should be), points to a very interesting correlation between political liberalism amongst women and the desire for more sex. The New Family Structures Study asked respondents, “Are you satisfied with the amount of sex you’re having?”  As Regnerus reports, women of all political persuasions report roughly the same frequency of sex — so, before you leap to conclusions, conservative women are not “frigid” or sexually unsatisfied.  Indeed, they might be more.  18-39 year-old women who lean to the left p