Eekind’s Reviews > Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds > Status Update

Overlong description of his racist grandfather and then a Gen X TV show reference for a show that ended over 45 years ago…let’s wrap this up

The Gundamentalist bit was funny but everything else is very tired…do we really need to waste ink on why “The Good Guy with a Gun” is nonsense and Jesus wouldn’t support it…especially since he was misconstrued as a criminal for having his apostles bearing weapons after the Last Supper

I wish he wouldn’t say dumb shit like “I’m gonna lose all my liberal and moderate readers with this” and then they’re completely innocuous takes…it just feels like punching left and you aren’t saying anything mind blowing about Capital Punishment being bad. Literally you’re just repeating your Sermon on the Mt bit and acting like a contrarian

Light and Love to Fugelsang but I just think he’s punching above his weight theologically. These sexuality and sex hang up chapters have been so wishy washy and unable to craft a coherent argument beyond “Conservatives are hypocrites” and that’s not persuasive to me as a leftist so how is this challenging the conservative readership that is supposed to be courted by this book into changing their ways

This book is kind of preaching to the converted but I’d probably be more amenable to these arguments if every example wasn’t “We need to have the same policies as *Insert Country that is generally Racist to refugees and particularly cruel to Muslim Refugees*” as if that’s some kind of cheat code for undoing our racist federal structures

The Reproductive Health section was fine…I’m always very sensitive about using terms like “Limiting Unplanned Pregnancies” instead of Reproductive Health because euphemism’s can create a presumption that condoms and diaphragms are the “correct” type of contraception when Abortifacients have just as much historical merit as forms of contraception even tho they’re implemented after fertilization

“In other words, the Law was our monitor until Christ came to bring about our justification through faith. But now that faith is here, we are no longer in the monitor's charge. Each one of you is a child of God because of your faith in Christ Jesus.”Galatians 3:24-26, The Inclusive Bible

I liked the teachings of Jesus about the different types of Eunuchs. I could see this both as applied to queer men that don’t have relationships with women or gender expansive people when Jesus talks about people that god made that won’t cohabitate with women
The Roman centurion part was fine, it’s a nice story
Obvi I love Ruth and Naomi. Bigots are clutching at straws trying to hate on queer women for this

Unsurprisingly I preferred the New Testament section over the Old Testament section. I guess I appreciate that Fugelsang runs through all the Old Testament Rabbinical stuff that has been misinterpreted and then ends with “Jesus also told his followers that we don’t have to follow rabbinical law so you don’t have to follow the Old Testament word for word to be a Christian”. That was a solid send of for it

Also if we want to dig into sex work in the Bible and it’s contradictions and modern readings of it as it relates to decriminalizing sex work, we can actually take the time to tease that out instead of just making it a poorly justified afterthought in your Feminism section.

Also, I’d rather prefer women and sex workers who have had Slur weaponized against them to reclaim that word instead of some hack comedian