1/ To meet or not to meet, that is the question. Is Highfields Church going to keep meeting in-person on Sundays? (27 part thread coming up, for the brave-hearted), beginning with three intro comments:

2/ • This is a wisdom call not a right/wrong call; Satan would love to have churches & leadership teams divided on the topic, so we need to pray for unity and grace as we decide what’s best in our context.

3/ • What we decide will vary hugely on what the virus is doing in the geography and the demography of the church. I have friends pastoring where the case rate is over 1000, with majority older congregation. I don’t judge them at all for making the call to close.

4/ • I'm not going to rehearse the theological reasons for in-person gathering (e.g. by @WilliamsGarryJ earlier this week, which you can read again here:

5/ Rather this thread will focus on 10 practical reasons why in our context, we've decided to keep meeting in-person on Sundays (though we'll keep reviewing, in line with Welsh Govt guidance).

NEW from me for @amprog @CAPimmigration I lay out why the 100-day moratorium on deportation is critical and why the courts must let it go

So why is the moratorium so important? Over the 4 years of the Trump administration, ICE and CBP took actions that were both cruel and illegal, from family separation, to much much more.

The 100 day pause gives the administration time to get to the bottom of what happened.

Need more evidence? Last fall ICE deported someone even without a deportations order and even before he could go before a judge. They admitted their wrongdoing in court.

The same 1/20 Memo that set out the moratorium orders a top-to-bottom review of immigration policy at DHS. But to make that successful DHS has to ensure that no one is deported who otherwise shouldn't be. Hence the pause.

And yet Texas--who was all about executive authority on immigration under Trump, not so much now--sued to try and stop it, and a federal judge agreed, putting the moratorium on hold.

Here's why that is wrong.

A thread on election fraud, political grandstanding, and incitement—expanding on my tweets last week about Hawley and Carlson.
Let us begin by stipulating the following. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and the first rule of rhetoric is knowing one’s audience.

2. Consider three convictions (1) Widespread election fraud occurred, on such a scale that Biden “stole” the election. (2) You doubt that, but you think it’s at least possible. (3) You’re pretty sure that, despite irregularities here and there, they did not alter the outcome.

3. It is clear that President Trump, beginning election night and insistently thereafter, made claim (1). Polls and personal experience show that a large portion of the GOP public, for their own reasons or because Trump said so, also embraced claim (1).

4. However, when it comes to conservative intellectual and political leadership, I have not encountered anyone personally who holds claim (1). Some seem to hold claim (2), most, however, are in camp (3). They believe Biden won fair and square. So, apparently, do the courts.

5. Now, consider if you are in camp (2). You think there might’ve been serious fraud. You think it’s worth investigating. But you also recognize that’s a massive claim. A claim that could destabilize the entire political system for years to come.

(1/35) A thread about growing up as a gay kid in a Christian fundamentalist right-wing homeschooling family in the 1990s, and how I interpret today's political culture in light of those experiences.

Not all tweets are numbered but this is where it's going.
Tweets 3-9 "biblical law" and stoning gay people
Tweets 10-17 coming out in the evangelical church
Tweets 18-29 white-washing confederate history
Tweets 30-35 Scopes in modern politics & education

I grew up with R. J. Rushdoony on the bookshelf, an influential proponent of homeschooling who sought to instill Christian dominion in America. Reading @JulieIngersoll's excellent book last weekend inspired me to share how his ideology impacted my life. @C_Stroop @RLStollar

Ingersoll wrote in her 2015 book about how Rushdoony "advocated the death penalty for gays and incorrigible teens" (xiii). I made the same point in 2009, junior year of college, when I wrote an essay called "Education, the State, and the Fight to Take Back America."

In that 2009 essay, I wrote how Rushdoony promoted a "return to Biblical law, which he said should govern all nations, especially America" and how that law "would even apply the death penalty to homosexuals or rebellious children" (18). I wrote that line based on 2 sources:

What am I doing on my Sunday? Browsing @RepBobGood FEC filings for his largest donors and their identities. This will be a thread 😘 #VA05

Brian Hufhand, President of Amelia Overhead Doors, of Forest, VA gave Bob $5,600

Barry Clarkson, President & CEO of Equis Financial, of Concord, VA gave Bob $5,600

N. Jimmy Thomas, co-owner of RST marketing, of Lynchburg, VA gave Bob $7,600

Glen Thomas, co owner of RST marketing, of Forest, VA gave Bob $8,400

I asked the Taoiseach to ensure that the coroner carries out its duty in respect to the mass infant and child deaths in mother and baby homes👇.

It is the duty of a coroner to hold an inquest when a body is found in their district. See here: ℹ️ https://t.co/jQmq6ex1GK

The Government Action Plan👇published in response to the report makes no mention of inquests or accountability and simply does not reflect the magnitude of the crimes committed. In fact, it seems like a blatant attempt to avoid these very issues.

ℹ️

We need to make sure survivors get justice.

If you agree, I am asking you to email your TDs, the Taoiseach & the Min for Children to tell them there needs to be an inquest into the deaths, as well as redress, access to data, a commission for the disappeared and further research.

If you need some help getting started, you'll find a draft email template here: 📧https://t.co/h5v4LY3mkr

I recommend reading the joint statement from Adoption Rights Alliance, Justice for Magdalene laundries and the Clann Project: ℹ️

I have also put together a brief Q+A below on what has happened and will happen next in terms of the Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes👇👇👇.

Q. Where can I read a copy of the report for myself?

A. Right here:

My dear law students, I know that the events in Brisbane are at the top of your minds, so I will jump on the bandwagon and talk about one aspect of this wonderful test series that appealed to me. Right through the series, we have seen the role of fortune in a player’s success.

Rishabh Pant escaped a stumping before he went on to win the game for India in Brisbane. In Melbourne, Ajinkya Rahane was dropped before he went on to make a hundred. But is it not the case that we give these players credit for their achievements despite their fortune?

We also hold these players responsible even if what happened was their misfortune. India’s 36 in Adelaide was a collective failure no doubt but it was also a perfect cocktail of bad luck-pitch, conditions, and all the Australian bowlers managing to get their line & length right.

That’s test cricket, but we might say that’s life in general. Luck, good and bad, plays an important role in how the world judges us. We might go further and say that the law reflects life in this respect.

When I look at the way the law apportions responsibility, I am amazed that there is widespread acceptance of the system. Take the law of negligence that all of you study in the first year. The law of negligence establishes an objective standard of care.

@spencermorgan93 I'm going to open up a can of worms here, I dont know if you will read this or if even what the next step would be but its a web of connections that needs a real journalist to investigate

So let's start with the latest debacle
School meal boxes as highlighted by Marcus Rushford

The company that supplies them is Chartwells foods
Chartwells food is owned by a parent company called The compass group
Compass group supplies the jockey club there events catering

On the board of directors at the jockey club are
Baroness Dido Harding, of failed T&T fame

Also on this jockey club board was the late Rose Patterson
The husband of Owen Patterson
The mp for North Shropshire and the former secretary of state for Environment and rural affairs

Owen Patterson is also a consultant of a company called Randox

Let's dig deeper shall we

Let's look at another consultant of randox

John Penrose
The Mp for weston and the government's anti corruption champion is also a paid consultant for the company called RANDOX

Lets look at RANDOX for a moment

Randox are a laboratory company who surprisingly won the multi million £ contract to process PCR tests which just happen to have 2 influential advisors

But how does this link into the jokey club and in turn Matt Hancock?

I'm disappointed that the following needs to be said, because professors ought to educate themselves on basic facts, instead of accepting myths uncritically and behaving harmfully towards minoritized women in STEM.

People, especially women, who are Black and/or Indigenous have especially challenging pathways into tenure track faculty positions, because academia is still racist and sexist in ways that are intersecting and nonlinearly compounding.

The following myths and facts are paraphrased from the 1996 research article about Ford Foundation Fellows by Smith, Wolf-Wendel, Busenberg et al, "The Pipeline for Achieving Faculty Diversity: Debunking the Myths" at

Academia changes slowly, so these 1996 research results still hold, and in fact other studies indicate that the representation of Black faculty has worsened since 2005.

To summarize the research...

Myth: Potential faculty of color are sought out by numerous institutions, and the competition to hire them is fierce, because there are so few candidates of color.

Fact: Supply and demand statements like this are greatly exaggerated.

Christmas Eve does not feel to me like the ideal time to be trashing Ravi Zacharias. But neither should RZIM control the story line over the holiday. I offer these thoughts on their admission yesterday that Ravi “engaged in sexual misconduct over the course of many years.”

First, the worst of Ravi is yet to come. RZIM law firm said in a letter to their client “Some of that misconduct is consistent with and corroborative of that which is reported in the news recently, and some of the conduct we have uncovered is MORE SERIOUS.” (my CAPS). Stay tuned.

Second, I was wrong when I publicly stated that the RZIM investigation would be a whitewash. Clearly the ministry has committed to letting at least *some* of the ugly truth about Ravi Zacharias be known.
This is a dramatic and welcome change from the very recent past.

That said, I do not trust RZIM any more than I did the day before yesterday. $40,000,000 in annual donations is at stake, not to mention the personal reputations of Ravi’s loyal and long-term enablers, who remain in power at RZIM. Their game continues.

Yesterday RZIM said “Unfortunately, Ravi had died several months before we first learned of these allegations, so we were unable to explore them with him directly.” Are we to believe that nobody in RZIM leadership had any idea that Ravi was a serial sex abuser?

Pelosi's mot that the chose "their whiteness over democracy" disappoints me. 1/

It disturbs me when liberals recourse to racism as a universal explanation for everything bad the right does. It's reductionist. And it's not to excuse the right and its racism to point this out... 2/

In fact, reducing everything bad the right believes and does to white supremacy limits our grasp of their terribleness: in most cases in's white supremacy PLUS (and in some cases, NOT white supremacy. Non-white conservative tradition deserve consideration on its own terms). /3

a major part of the PLUS is gender-based. In the late 1970s, the ideology that cohered the Christian right, and made them such a force in Reagan's coalition and beyond, was far more eliminationist rage against LGBT people than racism. /4

Most of the people traveling to DC to protest IRS rules on Christian schools in 1979, many of them former segregationists, were witnesses to their eliminationist rage against LGBT people (conspiracy theories held the IRS sought to force Christian schools to hire gay teachers). /5

Let’s talk about “the mark of the beast.”

Every time some new vaccine becomes necessary, there’s a small-but-loud group of evangelicals and otherwise who believe taking this vaccine could be “pledging your allegiance to the devil.” But does this have any grounds in The Bible?

The so-called “mark of the beast” appears in The Revelation, so first we’ve gotta dispel some myths about the book as a whole.

I’d argue that if there’s one book that has been twisted most heavily by the “evangelical fanfiction lore” of the 80s and 90s, it’s gotta be Revelation.

American Christianity in the 90s was wack. After years of politicians stoking fears of communism & new world order, conservatives snowballed their vision of what “the apocalypse” would look like, and reverse-engineered their fears back into Revelation with stuff like Left Behind.

The Left Behind books were pretty critical to the end-times fearmongering. Even Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell said at the time, "in terms of its impact on Christianity, Left Behind is probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside The Bible.”

Meanwhile, Theologian David Carlson said, “Left Behind promotes a skewed view of the Christian faith that welcomes war and disaster, while dismissing peace efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere—all in the name of Christ.”

BK Dems can't continue with business as usual until we see real accountability for hate speech. We're calling on
@bkdems leadership to hold DL Lori Maslow accountable & for candidates to boycott the Jan 31 public forum until they do. 🧵 https://t.co/DNYAumTuSJ

In early January 2021, hateful, xenophobic, violent and racist remarks against Chinese, Palestinian and other communities of color by District Leader Lori Maslow were uncovered on Twitter.

Since this discovery, there have been multiple calls from elected officials, BK political clubs, County Committee members, & Chinese, Muslim & Palestinian - American community groups for Leader Maslow’s resignation as District Leader & State Committeemember from the Dem Party

To date, Leader Maslow has not resigned nor has the BKDem Party officially called for Leader Maslow’s resignation or denounced her violent rhetoric. Instead the BK Dem Party made their Twitter account private, blocking access & communication to BK Dems & going silent on the issue

The issue is now not only the responsibility of Leader Maslow’s but has become one of the Party’s. This institutional problem with the Brooklyn Democratic Party must be addressed. We call on the leadership of the Party to take action on the following before the January 31st forum

The first reaction to the Mother and Baby Homes report from the Coalition of Survivors is: "Cop out“.
"What occurred was but an aspect of the newly established State which was profoundly anti women both in its laws and culture and out of which emerged the Mother and Baby Homes."

Here is an overview of the 3,000 word report. Thousands of children died, in some years at a rate of 40%, with no concern from state or society. It details graphic and sustained mental and physical abuse of children and pregnant women.

Resident F (14) was pregnant and taken to Castlepollard: "I was beaten by the nuns with a stick.
"You got beaten by sticks or by their hands, across your face, your head, arms, legs or torso." She said that nuns made her unblock toilets with her bare hands.

Resident (A) was raped by her boyfriend and became pregnant at 18, she told the commission she saw "about ten" deceased babies being sent for burial in what appeared to be shoeboxes.

I'm not going to keep pasting the testimony as it's upsetting for people who might choose not to read it for whatever reason. It's harrowing. I had to get up and walk away twice when reading it.

🧵 After much deliberation concerning the events of last week concerning homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in our Catholic schools, Toronto—St. Paul’s New Democrats have decided to act.

Members of the @TCDSB and other publicly-funded Catholic institutions and boards have repeatedly attacked members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. The 2SLGBTQIA+ community is an at-risk community; the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected many at-risk 2SLGBTQIA+ youth.

Many Catholic publicly-funded school boards neglect or intentionally omit 2SLGBTQIA+ resources, which may affect the availability of life-saving information and/or resources.

However, we recognize with sadness that there is a culture of homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in the @TCDSB and in publicly-funded Catholic education based on recent events.

We welcome the 14 January 2021 action wherein the @TCDSB passed a motion to establish 2SLGBTQIA+ resources and to create an advisory committee to deal with issues thereof.

not to go anthropological on everyone but america, the nation, truly does not have much culture and very little history.

we do not respect the land and it's people.
we do not respect each other or newcomers.

and although these aren't specific to america, they are stronger here

america is built on capitalism and very few other values under the false pretense of social and class mobility. but if that were true than most everyone in this country would not be as poor as they are. and we wouldn't have billionaires who profit off of dying people.

america might be the land of dreams but like most dreams there is a harsh reality to wake up to. the people here are probably worse off than most other nations under the skewed and inaccurate qualifier that is GDP per capita.

just because america is rich doesn't make it good.

and then there's america's political influence that pretty much forces other nations into becoming capitalistic, thus slowing all social progress in the name of greed.

I don't hate capitalism as much as you'd think but I do hate greed, and capitalism is rarely without greed.

since america is such a consumer culture as well, preservation is often looked down upon. for instance, cutting down trees for wood, or not respecting burial sites or sacred land in the name of progress.

this often has a multitude of consequences and some that we can't fix.

1/ Further thoughts on @DavidAFrench's important essay on #ChristianNationalism.

It's great to see a leading evangelical thinker publicly engaging the topic.

But....

2/ It would be even better if @DavidAFrench would engage with work on #ChristianNationalism by scholars and journalists like:

@ndrewwhitehead @socofthesacred @praxishabitus @sarahposner @kathsstewart @AntheaButler @Nicholef and yours truly @GorskiPhilip

Also...

3/ With the work of black theologians such as:

Willie Jennings, @JemarTisby @stewartdantec @esaumccaulley to name just a few.

If he did, then....

4/ He'd know that there are much better and more nuanced definitions of #ChristianNationalism than the one offered by @ThomasSKidd, who is a smart guy, but not a scholar of the subject.

Plus...

5/ He'd know that the phenomenon is, in fact, much more widespread than he implies, not just amongst white evangelicals but also amongst non-evangelical white Protestants and white Catholics....See "Taking America Back for God" for the receipts.

So, why do I keep saying "white"?