Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“A few banal fantasies float across white evangelicalism. It seldom tires of arguing over hell, substitutionary atonement, or biblical inerrancy, and it never misses an opportunity to judge women or non-heteronormative sexuality. But if my claim is that white evangelicalism (as a political project) is quite recent, then I’m also claiming these older ideas are…
“The answer to bad speech, we are told, is more speech. The only way that tired bromide could be true, though, would be if it were possible for the bad speech to be definitively rejected through reasoned argument. That is to say, free speech can only be the solution if the result of the ongoing…
“Then he punctuates the story with one of his most theologically challenging statements: ‘Thus the last will be first and the first will be last.’ And the privileged people who worked a full day are irate. They can’t believe it! They were expecting equality. They were expecting to get paid more than the people who…
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others” –Nelson Mandela With all that’s been going on lately regarding the evocation of “free speech” from hate groups on the right, I wanted to jot down some more reflections…
“For the past few years, “free speech” has become a shortcut for shifting the frame of argument away from the content of bigoted speech itself and toward broader discussions of the value of free expression—a value we all share. The strategic advantage is obvious: It’s much easier to defend the right to bigotry with grandiose…