Friday: Spotted in the wild

Courtesy of the handy BlogThis! feature of Blogger, a brief rundown of some good blog entries I spotted over the last week. Again, due to other circumstances in my life, a lot of these are later rather than sooner. (Sorry.)

The Jollyblogger has a good rundown of a) the case that John Stott makes a better representative of evangelical Christianity than Jerry Falwell and friends; and b) liberal "sour grapes" reactions to the argument, e.g. "Jerry Falwell is an outspoken anti-homosexual bigot, and John Stott shares the same moral views, therefore John Stott is a soft-spoken anti-homosexual bigot." Start with "David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan and John Stott" and follow the links from there.

Ambra Nykol argues in favour of abstinence-based sex education, but notes correctly that, like other controversial ethical stands such as abortion, it will only be successful after people's minds are changed:

Do I think teenagers (or anyone for that matter) should be encouraged to have premarital sex? I can say with about 658.9% certainty: NO. What I recognize is that gaining of any ground on this issue is going to take some diplomacy. (Not compromise, but diplomacy). In addition, this country is too carnal and too self-seeking to latch-on to the reality that premarital sex for anyone, is ultimately a bad decision. For the nation to come to that revelation alone would take the mighty hand of God. For this very reason, Conservatives need to be wise as serpents in how we push abstinence-only education and other similar initiatives because the very semblance of "morality" or "Christianity" will send Liberals flying off the handle. Not only that, the Liberal knee-jerk reaction to abstinence-only education is usually to write-off abstinence education altogether and I believe that possibility to be very dangerous.

[Read Abstinence-Only Education Part #6758302]

Finally, some brilliantly withering satire from the Evangelical Outpost takes on abortion, euthanasia, "moral neutrality," and the Groningen protocol (a/k/a Reason #86,204 to nuke the Dutch):

Jan: "Marsha! How are you girl? I haven’t seen you in ages.
Marsha: "Hey Jan, you’re looking great. How’ve you been?"
Jan: "Just peachy. Hey, guess what? I’m going to have a fetus!"
Marsha (excited): "That’s wonderful! Oh, I’m so happy for you. Now we both have parasites growing in us."
Jan: "Yeah, but you’re having twins. I’m so jealous."

[Read She's Having a Fetus]

Enjoy.

(Also, I'm late blogging about the latest Christian Carnival. Stand by.)