My Patheos column today – on the Ku Klux Klan and Victimization Narratives

You can catch my column for this week here:
http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Fear-and-Danger-Responding-to-the-SBCs-Richard-Land-Brian-McLaren-09-29-2011.html
Also, don’t miss George Sarris’s recent piece on hell and evangelism – especially chilling, this:

The first Christian missionary to Japan, St. Francis Xavier … wrote in 1552:

One of things that most of all pains and torments these Japanese is that we teach them that the prison of hell is irrevocably shut. For they grieve over the fate of their departed children, of their parents and relatives, and they often show their grief by their tears. So they ask us if there is any hope . . . and I am obliged to answer that there is absolutely none. The grief at this affects and torments them wonderfully; they almost pine away with sorrow. . . . They often ask if God cannot take their fathers out of hell, and why their punishment must never have an end. We gave them a satisfactory answer, but they did not cease to grieve over the misfortune of their relatives; and I can hardly restrain my tears sometimes at seeing men so dear to my heart suffer such intense pain about a thing which is already done with and can never be undone.

I’m in the midst of an unusually intense period of travel – sorry posts have been less frequent this week.