Riparian Church

Mardi Gras Celebratory Drink Calculator

Otter — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 02:36:14 +0000

Tulane Girls After A Mardi Gras Parade

Otter — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:53:56 +0000

Playing Otter / Praying Otter

Otter — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:12:00 +0000

Nunsploitation Films And The True Sexual Conscience of Religion

Otter — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:28:23 +0000

We’ve all had that experience when we’ve been watching a nunsploitation film and wondered, “What collision between a religious conscience and libertinism does this genre represent? How does it relate to the individual and collective conscience about sex, and what does it have to do with the fact that this allegedly medieval nun is wearing nail-polish and sporting a navel-piercing?”

Reflections on the nunsploitation genre, sex, Catholicism, guilt, French literature, Freud, and conscience.

Story-Truth and Happening-Truth

Otter — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:17:07 +0000

John Piper's Moral Madness

Otter — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:38:41 +0000

It’s not that complicated, Dr. Piper.

The Siege of Vienna Tempts The Otter Away From Useful Work

Otter — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:13:33 +0000

I’m a dead-beat grader, with books like James Reston, Jr.’s Defenders of the Faith: Christianity and Islam Battle For The Soul of Europe, 1520-1536 hanging around…

Best Google Searches Leading To RipChurch

Otter — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:39:13 +0000

The Historicity Of Jesus

Otter — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:53:40 +0000

Testimonium Flava Flavium: Credo ut Hiphoppam. Not to be confused with Josephus.A reader asks about whether the texts can be trusted. Did Jesus even exist? What’s the critical mind say about the gospels as history? About Josephus and his “Testimonium Flavianum” that apparently offers objective evidence of Jesus’ existence? Does Jesus resemble other literary messiahs?

We get our historical-literary fingernails dirty in this Sunday’s edition of Riparian Church.

Summary and money quote:

I think it’s overreaching on the evidence: what the evidence does not imply is that there was no Jesus. What it strongly implies is that certain factions in Judaism were strongly disposed to write accounts of that man in literary patterns that were meaningful to their audiences. And once again we see why it’s so freaking important that Christians have chosen at their peril to assume that a simplistic gospels-as-historical-fact reading serves their best interests. It leaves them vulnerable at every turn, not just to misunderstanding their own texts, but to weird charges, like “Jesus never existed.”

What Can Five People Do With One Guitar?

Otter — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:03:30 +0000