Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son’s kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class.

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about Barton’s 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.

By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class.

This is also another example of why my children will never attend public school in the US. I know that most public schools are not like this, but it’s a risk you run with the bureaucracy and the union power in public education. You don’t have this risk at a private school because not only are the standards typically higher, but the school has to answer to the parents. If something like this were to happen at a private school, and the teacher wasn’t immediately fired (especially after admitting that the account is true), enrollment would drop, and the school would feel the pressure.

And who does something like this, anyway? (continue reading…)

So, I was called “churchy” yesterday. And by a church person! So, this post is for you (and you know exactly who you are).

The whole idea of churchiness made me think of the stats in Unchristian about the large number of 20-somethings in the church who feel the same way about Christians as 20-somethings outside of the church. My wife and I have thought about it and found that we definitely fall into that category.

So, I was pretty shocked to be called “churchy”. I have tried very hard to not be churchy. Where did I go wrong? Well, it turns out that I went wrong in assuming that I knew the intended meaning. I was way off.

It turns out that this person’s definition of churchy is one that I think I can actually be proud of. But I think the definition can be better. So, if you’re reading this, I’m challenging you to redefine churchiness, and live it out. Share a story if you have one.

Photo: SNL’s Church Lady

On the way to work this morning I got to see the driver in front of me at an intersection open her door and dump out her cigarette butts. It’s rare you get to see that kind of…something. I was not amused.

1. Wade’s sermon this Sunday was interesting to me, not so much for what he said, but for how people reacted. We were talking about the books Unchristian and No Perfect People Allowed. The focus for the week was hypocrisy. Wade’s line of the day:

“Why do outsiders think we’re hypocrites? Well, the short answer is - we are.”

As he continued he said a lot of great and true things. But I was curious of the people around me. One of the points was that in order to stop being hypocrites, we have to stop pretending we have it all together. We have to be open about our struggles. We have to think about what we’re presenting to people, put off our pride, and let outsiders (and insiders) know that we are broken, and we’re relying on Jesus to heal us. We have to confess our sin to one another, and hold each other accountable.

I was trying to be a good hearer and consider myself, but the whole time, people around me are vocally affirming the message. “That’s right!” “Amen!” “Yes…” Normally that’s fine, but I have to wonder: Can you so confidently affirm this message if you’re really hearing it? (continue reading…)

This post is a smattering of thoughts about one thing: Sex. (Yes, the title is for attention, and it worked, because you’re reading…)

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Is that really all we care about? Is that why we believe what we do about certain things? Some people seem to think so:

Unfortunately, an event designed to promote understanding, justice, and mutual care for all students has often stirred up protest from certain Christian groups who can’t seem to separate advocating respect for GLBT teens from their own issues about sex.

I guess it must just be easy to dismiss opposition as a “sexual hangup”. What is it about sticking to millenia old teaching that coincides with biology (and common sense) that makes people say, “This isn’t deep enough…there must be something else behind it.” And then, how does the answer come to be something so simple and shallow as hating sex?

Even things that don’t really have to do with sex get labeled as hangups, so that they’ll be easier to dispense with, like abortion. But is abortion really about sex? No, it’s about who has the right to take life. Is abstinence about sexual hangups? No. If everyone abstained before marriage, we would have no more unwanted teen pregnancies. The spread of STD’s would stop. Abortion rates would fall. And those are just the social and political advantages.

There are some of us who do have issues when it comes to sex, but we aren’t limited to conservatives and evangelicals. Take the stance of some liberal and “sex-positive” groups and their insistence that we “take the dirtiness, the shame, guilt and menace out of sex, to set ourselves free,” while they lecture us “about [our] repression and the futility of monogamy.” I think there might be something going on there.

Here are a couple of great quotes related to the issue at hand:

And since I began living in San Francisco, I’ve come to realize that the only people who’ve ever made me feel really, really bad and guilty about my sexuality were the self-described sex radicals who wagged their fingers in my face and lectured me about my repression and the futility of monogamy. [...]

You can pile pleasure on pleasure on pleasure, I think, but it may never equal joy. From metroactive.com

Regnerus’ ultimate conclusion is not all that surprising. What really matters is not which religion teenagers identify with but how strongly they identify. After controlling for all factors (family satisfaction, popularity, income), religion matters much less than religiosity. Among the mass of typically promiscuous teenagers in the book, one group stands out: the 16 percent of American teens who describe religion as “extremely important” in their lives. When these guys pledge, they mean it.

“Even Evangelical Teens Do It,” Slate.com

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