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2d ago
I think this is true of many denominations. Most of the congregations (and most of the wealth) in my denomination are Red Tribe. For my last baby's dedication I was a tad nervous that the pastor would say "it takes a village" like he did for an earlier dedication while my and my wife's families were in attendance (increasing attendance by 25%). The dynamic in my denomination was progressive theologians and elites actively undermining the denomination but would play Motte and Bailey very well. Red Tribe would screech about the Baileys. The Blue Tribe PMCs at the universities would sit down with the progressives, who would retreat to the Motte, and they were clever and would play semantic games asking exactly what they said was so bad. It took quite a bit of work, but eventually the smarter Red Tribers were able to amass enough evidence of the professors playing in the Bailey.
The PMC Mormons I know had a distinct distaste for Trump's aesthetic. They are also very trusting of the Deep State, probably largely because they all know someone deep in the Deep State. Like in my denomination, they take the Motte of the progressives hook, line, and sinker.
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3d ago
I'm not UMC; I've quipped for some time that instead of trying to turn our denomination into the UMC, the heretics should just go be United Methodists... which some did when they had their credentials stripped.
It's of course multi-factorial, but yes: I would assert that the Blue Tribe ethos curated in the last 30 years within the pastoral pipeline contributed to his inability to function in a Red Tribe environment.
Does the UMC even materially believe in hell anymore?
I'm focusing less on sexual immorality because several of the most well known theologian and pastors who were driving inclusion of homosexuals into the clergy were defrocked.
I agree that 1 Corinthians 5 probably doesn't apply to many political differences. I'm more exploring how to approach hostile people within the church and maintain a religious community.
A section I thought about discussing in the post but felt it was too far of as aside was how liberals seem to dislike conservatives far more than the other way.
liberals showed three times more bias than conservatives.
liberals overestimated how much they were dehumanized, conservatives underestimated how much they were dehumanized.
I believe that likely the UM clergy is imagined microaggression is projection of his own feelings towards the outgroup.
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4d ago
After a friend wanted to talk about it, I listened to Smarter Every Day on the problems with capitalism stemming from his trying to "manufacture" something 100% in the us. One of his lament is the lack of metal stamping. And while of course there are many sneaky hard things, I strongly believe that there are plenty of smart technical people in the US that could figure it out in relatively short order with the incentives were there. Especially at the level of stamping BBQ scraper handles.
Love Thy Neighbor Unless They're in the Outgroup
I’m told the denomination my family has been a part of for generations is “Missionary Oriented.” We support and fund full-time professional missionaries. Anyone who’s been in it for a few generations seems to know someone - if not be related to - a missionary who served in Swazila - oops, sorry - Eswatini or more recently Papua New Guinea, or PNG as the missionary kids call it.
Twenty-odd years ago I took a world religions course that had a requirement to visit other religious services. One week we went to a Hindu temple. A few of us stood in the back and observed while the vast majority of my fellow students danced and chanted in front of literal idols. The next class, one of the students who had stood with me in the backs asked how we could not feel absolute sorrow for the Hindu children being led astray in that environment. The professor berated him for being closed-minded. The man stood up and walked out of class and never came back.
The other day I had dinner with a different man who came up a few years after me. He went to seminary, took a church in a small rural community, and the Red Tribe scalped him. If he still identifies as Christian it’s only nominally: “When my faith was strongest God abandoned me.”
Then there’s this story from NPR: A queer Methodist minister didn't feel safe at an Idaho hospital; their conference won't return to Boise next year. I have always judged the United Methodist Church as a Christian denomination, but I never felt real contempt for them until I saw this kind of cowardice. Mary Moffat Livingstone died of disease at 41. Damien De Veuster’s flesh literally rotted off his living body. Countless others suffered and died in pursuit of their faith. These United Methodist clergy will not go to Idaho because of microaggressions.
I have less contempt for the actual heresies of the progressive theologians inside my own denomination than I do for the cowardly Motte and Bailey they played for decades. They helped destroy the pastoral pipeline. Modernity did most of the grinding, but those worms didn’t help.
All these bleeding hearts with endless empathy for the “fargroup” cannot stand to be near their actual neighbor. My denomination trains people to go into some of the most culturally distant places on earth, yet it could not prepare a young man to minister in the culture of rural Nebraska.
This pattern has been covered before in the classic I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup.
For the first time in my life I look forward to going to church. Per capita, it may have the most influential and connected congregation in the denomination, including several theologians and family members of people at the highest levels of the church hierarchy. The pastor is Blue Tribe, but that’s not surprising as that’s the pipeline. The leadership of the whole denomination is Blue Tribe. And it’s worked out very well for my pastor, as he probably also pastors one of the most Blue Tribe churches in the denomination.
My denomination does not seem lost to me. Despite being Blue Tribe and bamboozled for decades by the Mottes of the progressives, the church has now stripped multiple heretical theologians of their ordinations. As a true progressive in my congregation discusses if we really need Paul, my Blue Tribe pastor politely says, “Sorry, we settled that one a long time ago.”
So I sit here enjoying my pastor’s deep sermons and going to small group at the house of one of the denomination’s theologians in the cool part of town, and I wonder if I am a detestable cowardly worm. I have harbored plenty of ill will toward the progressives - what they have done to Christianity and to the church my family has been part of for generations. It has probably crossed into hatred. Still, I keep mulling a question: is there any more convenient mission field than the outgroup? Paul says not to associate with any so-called brother who is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler… “Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.” I’m not sure that applies to disagreements over refugees and welfare.
My denomination, like many, is shrinking in the developed world. I am sentimental, I do not want it to schism and die, or just fade away. Maybe I can at least slow the fading if I can help mend some of the tears.
The Culture War is so toxic because everyone is a theocrat. An old now defrocked classmate of mine rails to his hundreds of thousands of followers about the dangers “CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM!” while preaching the enforcement of his own version of Christian morality with the dog-whistle: "Jesus says love thy neighbor." By which he means state-enforced welfare and socialism.
War is violence; we tag “culture” onto “war” to differentiate it from literal war, but the reality is we’re still trying to wield violence at arm's length. What if they gave a culture war and no one came? You can love your neighbor by actually helping them yourself. You can persuade, organize, and gather as many people as you want to voluntarily sacrifice their own time and resources for the vulnerable.
But now I’m just preaching my own political philosophy as if it were the moral one… is it my idol?
This post motivated by me planning on grabbing coffee with my pastor and chatting with him as he is taking on a bigger roll in the church
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4d ago
I'm willing to bet Zendaya is easy to work with, she's talented enough, and fills diversity requirements. I would submit she's both good and hot in Challengers.
People like me have been predicting far worse inflation for... decades. I'm fond of the quip "Peter Schiff has successfully predicted 20 of the last 2 recessions!" But hey, if the return is big enough; I'm not sure it is. Anyway, End the Fed!
Hopefully I am wrong, and I have been for decades, but I still think the time is coming where the piper will need to be paid. More and more I think it will be a slow malaise spiraling as we make worse self-reinforcing populist/socialist policy changes rather than a relatively short- to mid-term hyperinflation shock.
Hopefully the US can keep growing at a faster pace than we accumulate debt, maybe AI saves us. While food prices are going up (wages have been as well), food price inflation is still well within the bounds of frugality. So what the food discourse indicates to me - I already believed this - is that a bunch of people on the "right" don't have what it takes for real austerity. If you're throwing a tantrum over a hiccup in beef prices - a primarily example I see of "Oh you don't think it's that bad?! LOOK AT THE PRICE OF BEEF" - you don't have what it takes do do what's necessary to really address these issues, and removing 50 to 100 million people from the country isn't feasible and probably won't actually fix the problems.
We can all agree inflation is an economic problem AND also agree that we each must take responsibility for what we actually control, and change our behavior accordingly. That just pisses off people that can’t understand that the cards you are dealt may be unfair (societal problem) but you still have to play them best you can (personal responsibility.)
Often, where you should be fighting tooth and nail in the political arena to reject intolerable conditions, you should simultaneously as an individual resign yourself to reality as it currently exists and more or less just get on with it as best you can. There may be political conditions in which it’s just literally impossible for this or that group to get ahead, but that’s not true of any group in the United States of America in 2025, whatever real challenges exist.
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18d ago
Democrats had a presidential candidate willing to nuke us cities over the second amendment.
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18d ago
As I bring up when people talk about how they want guns to be regulated "at least" as much as motor vehicles. Vehicles are regulated when used on public infrastructure. There are virtually no regulations when utilized on private property.
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25d ago
And a reason why one should do as much as one can to keep your kid away from that crowd.
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26d ago
Ivan and Phoebe by Oksana Lutsysyna
On my wife and my anniversary date night we go to a book store pick out three books for the other and then pick one that we'll read. Ivan and Phoebe came out of that. I'm liking it better than I expected. An initial thought I had is that Ivan feels like a man written by a women, but then I started thinking that maybe that is how men with one foot in the university revolutionary/art scene behave. He lashes out in some weird - what I would consider feminine - ways and and then furthers what could be called Eastern European patriarchy.
Another interesting thing is how poor post Soviet states were. There's a joke about how Party members don't spreads butter on their breads but put chunks of butter on it instead.
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1mo ago
I had written up a response about how buying a foreclosed property requires way more cash up front than a normal mortgage and that seems like a rare situation where a parent is really hard up while a kid has a decent amount of money laying around, but AI tells me NJ specifically wrote this law to give a 90 day window to find a normal mortgage.
They are trying to prevent misused directly with:
With respect to the borrower or the borrower’s next of kin, the right of 1st refusal only applies if the foreclosure is due circumstances outside of the borrower’s control (e.g., financial hardship, physical or mental illness, divorce, death of borrower or borrower’s spouse/dependent, etc…)
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1mo ago
Got all kinds of thoughts around that stuff, if wife is breastfeeding a new born, and the kid's being a hard ass, it may be constant grind to keep everyone's head above water. I'm blessed and my kids are great sleepers and usually chill. My wife admits I do more than my fair share of work around the house so I've got no qualms taking a few hours for myself every now and then. Most of the time I take the toddler with me because he's a cool guy. When he's old enough to comprehend making sure he fully understands the trade-offs concerning the choices he makes is a reason I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff.
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1mo ago
Were talking about going to a bar. I was in Vegas for one of the Stanley Cup matches and I'm thankful the event I was there for overlapped the game because would have been a debate whether or not to drop the money.
Yeah, sports bar or one of the bars on the beach. This specific beach town is known for being safe. We will be visiting bars outside of this frequently.
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1mo ago
He’s the husband of my wife’s best friend. I went to his wedding, helped his soon-to-be sister-in-law move with him, and I’m obviously going to his sister-in-law’s wedding. My own wedding was held at his in-laws’ house. His father-in-law just texted me late last night inviting me to a mezcal tasting tonight in preparation for the trip. There's a social question, do I stand up my trivia team tonight to grab drinks with the very wealthy guy and partake of his crazy expensive alcohol collection?
I’d be completely fine going solo, but I doubt he knows that. If the roles were reversed, I would consider it an obligation to at least make an appearance under similar circumstances.
The actual event itself is a fairly minor thing in my mind. Like being close to totality for an eclipse and not making a relatively low effort to go watch it. Being in Wisconsin and not having a cheese curd. Being in Hawaii and not going to a beach. These aren't moral failing but I'm going to squint at you.
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1mo ago
point is that not everyone shares your view of what a good time is
Obviously and I would even venture it's the vast majority of people.
it's narcissistic to view this as some kind of personal sleight.
I'm not so post-modern to think everyone's idea of a good time has equal value. Do I think this person is a degenerate for skipping out on an experience? Of course not. I will happily take them up on their offer of a quiet cocktail another night. If he asked me to game with him some night, or do a quick DnD campaign I would even though it's not my highest preference for an evening.
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1mo ago
And if that choice makes people happier/more content/whatever else, that's great one should 100% live that life.
Socializing is a lot like eating well or exercising. Some people naturally stay thin and fit, while others are just really lucky and actually love working out.
If someone is content with their life, doesn’t get lonely, or in another example has no problem with the reduced mobility that comes with obesity, no skin off my back. On The Motte, I tend to believe people are willing to accept the trade-offs of their actions (or lack thereof). For society at large, I highly suspect that’s generally not true. I see the "male loneliness epidemic" as very similar to obesity. Society used to heavily incentivize not becoming obese, just as it heavily incentivized building and maintaining social circles. Now modernity has removed the guardrails, so people pursue short-term desires and later lament the long-term outcomes.
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1mo ago
I literally was thinking about the hot crazy scale and thinking about some kind of skill coolness factor. Like if you're really high skill in specific areas you're still cool even if you're lame in a bunch of others. Doesn't quite fit.
I'm taking the piss a bit. I was definitely a loser up until Sr. year of highschooler. The guys that were bullying me got kicked out - so that was helpful - and I decided I was going to start with working on eye contact which I couldn't even maintain with guys. That's where I push back on the effort aspect, it took constant concerted effort, deep introspection, on my part not to be a loser.
I think about it through a lens that Scott presents with fashion and cellular automata, and I often consider myself to be second tier in many areas. It put's me in the place of being able to conceptualize greatness and realizing just how far away it is.
I have some pretty top tier friends and acquaintances in athletics and intelligence.
Much more limitedly I have rolled with some effortlessly cool guys. Groups form around them from the ether, seeing that look in a women's eye when it clicks that she wants him. They're the people I feel the most distance from.
Even more being a dad, if an easy interesting opportunity presents itself, I think one should take it. Set an example for the kids.
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1mo ago
For me not getting into it is a little like this meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-wish-i-was-at-home-they-dont-know
You're in the party even if you stay in your room. Every goal, every attempt, every penalty or lack their of you're going to hear. Don't just stand in the corner.
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1mo ago
Sure if you got something better to do. Maybe this is context that lacking but it's Sayulita for 11 days. The match is 19:00. We will be availing ourselves of the local fair extensively. I wouldn't be surprised if they projected it on to Teotihuacan (not really) Plaza Garibaldi you could do both and it's gonna be crazy during the match, probably more intense than what I could find. For the vast majority of Mexico this is gonna be the only game in town (see what I did there, so subtle).
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1mo ago
I am not cool - extra not cool now that I have kids - but it's two hours. I'll be spending way more time with my family than normal. Most likely my son is going to be jumping right there with me, my wife jumping with my daughter strapped to her. I would not judge a father in my circumstances for not being in the mix, this dude, not a dad.
When society indulges someone's insane fantasies and privileges them beyond what reality can bear, tragic things happen.
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