And why should you obey your parents, girls? It’s good practice for obeying your husbands! — the minister’s wife, to a Sunday school class full of teenage girls, including me. When I wanted to write a novel playing around with the loup-garou legends of Cajun Louisiana, I started with whatContinue Reading
By special request — an essay ranting about Christian Rock! I first encountered Christian Rock when I was 12 years old, right in the middle of a very chaotic thirteenth year. (Yes, I just now realized that the year you are twelve is your thirteenth year. Oooooooooo! Superstitiousness!) My thirteenthContinue Reading
It comes up in this blog quite a bit that I was raised as an evangelical Protestant during the 70s and 80.1 So I was right on the front lines as end-of-the-world fever became an epidemic, and evangelical Protestantism turned into a doomsday cult. I read the Chick tracts andContinue Reading
Santa Claus Every Christmas season, at least one movie will come out where the main thrust of the story is an argument demonstrating the virtue, in fact, the absolute necessity of all children everywhere believing in the literal existence of Santa Claus. Yet every adult connected with this venture knowsContinue Reading
I grew up in southern California with a full quartet of grandparents, something Paul envies. My mom’s parents, Bernice and Judson Phillips, lived in Brea, near a park with a jungle gym shaped like a rocket ship. Grandpa Judd and I shared a birthday, and we celebrated together nearly everyContinue Reading
I happened to recently read this piece on CNN’s website, “When Christians become a ‘hated minority’” (even though the piece itself is from a month ago). It tries too hard to be even-handed, I think, and ends up feeling unreasonably flattering to the “your intolerance of my bigotry is theContinue Reading