Clay Daniel

Founder @ClayborneEdu | Quiz Bowl Coach, The Covenant School | Former Board Member @cltexam | Reformed theology, classical education, and Scrabble nerd-dom!

[Jim Geraghty @jimgeraghty]

"But a goal will not count if a player is offsides."

"When is a player offsides?"

"Whenever anything exciting happens."

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

2) You're onto something, though, as to the "moral shock" of the Bible. For sure, people who view Jesus as a good moral teacher but not God have missed the mark. Someone with his audacious claims, if not God, is not moral, but either crazy or wicked. He offers only those choices!

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

@sapinker two thoughts from one who both has read the Bible multiple times and absolutely thinks it's the source of morality: 1) perhaps you're reading some accounts as if they're prescriptive? Just because the Bible recounts events doesn't mean it condones them. More in comment

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Anyone who insists that the Bible is the source of morality either has not read it or is not intellectually serious about the question.

[Hans Fiene 🦬 @HansFiene]

The desire to become righteous before God is something man cannot turn off, no matter how "unchurched" or "secular" he becomes. It animates everything he does. And every self-destructive impulse you see in the western world is the result of people coming up with insane answers to the "what makes me righteous" question after rejecting the answer that Christianity gives.

So when it comes to Muslim rape gangs, why are European leaders and progressives categorically unwilling to address the issue? It's because they believe that "not being racist" makes them righteous. That's what makes them good people, holy, acceptable to whatever concept of God they've cobbled together in their minds.

Present them with the evidence and many will simply ignore it. They will act like you said nothing so they can resume cooing over the beauty of multiculturalism and prove to themselves, and their god, that they are not racist and thus righteous, unlike all the racist people who have such unjustified views towards Islam.

Show the very faces of the girls who were raped to the most devout priests and priestesses of "not being racist" and they will literally laugh in their faces. They will boast of not caring. And they will boast of not caring because the righteousness they get from "not being racist" completely entirely 100% matters more to them than innocent girls being victimized. They would let five million innocents be raped before they would dare admit anything remotely approaching the "racism" that Islam is incompatible with freedom and peace and order and safety. They would let their own daughters be raped for the same reason. If you think I'm overexaggerating, consider how many people throughout history have sacrificed their own children to the gods they believed would favor them for doing so. Those people were made of the same flesh. They carried the same sinful nature. They are on the same quest for righteousness and forged the same dark paths on their journey.

And until you see Jesus as the answer, there is no way to get yourself on safe footing. Until you believe that Jesus Christ is the sacrificial Lamb who won your salvation and gave it to you freely, then you will always be inclined to sacrifice the weak and lowly in order to accomplish whatever you think you need to accomplish to be pleasing in the sight of your god.

So if you aren't a Christian but hate to see what has happened throughout Europe, and what is happening in America, the only way you can build a better future is through faith in Christ. Find a church. Hear the Gospel. Believe it. Understand that the only way to be pleasing to God is through the blood of His Son. The more we all believe that, the more we will all stop turning a blind eye to the blood of the innocent today.

[Ligon Duncan @LigonDuncan]

I love the PCA, and I prefer our problems.

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

@aaron_renn An excellent case study in what it looks like to comment on a complicated institution from the outside, laughably believing that two examples will suffice, without understanding it from the inside.

[Jared Cook @jkimballcook]

easy 150K

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

Yes, well said, and I’m sure it’s Klein who’s in the bubble. It speaks of an astonishingly provincial circle of solipsism. But in all charity, it’s a notable sentiment, even if driven by a Gnostic sort of phantom imaginary.

[Robby Soave @robbysoave]

I have never once in my life encountered someone expressing this sentiment. Either I live in quite a bubble, or Ezra Klein does.

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

@_BenRatliff What a gift to the church! Thanks upon thanks!

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

@DDFStrand Because it’s an uncontroversial statement in keeping with the whole history of the denomination. Anyone in the PCA knows that. We are not the ARP and certainly not the CREC. I’m not debating political theology, just pointing out the obvious. Denying the obvious is pointless.

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

@BruceBartlett Ha! If you have enough people posting, inevitably someone will post the exact opposite of the truth. It’s like monkeys and typewriters and Shakespeare.

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

This is beyond Orwellian, and it must be fought tooth and nail.

[Dries Van Langenhove @DVanLangenhove]

A very sad announcement.

I have just been convicted a second time for 'hate speech' and it is only due to a technicality that I could not immediately be sent to jail —to the judge's frustration.

In an ironic turn of events it's actually thanks to my previous prison sentence (for memes in a private group chat) that I am now still free —in a physical sense, at least.

Call me naive but I didn't think they would take it this far, given that this precedent criminalises many of the arguments used by even the most moderate politicians critical of mass migration.

In February 2024 I gave a lecture at Catholic University Leuven wherein I linked mass migration to crime and a deterioration of our quality of life. Every single point I made was 100% the truth and based on scientific evidence.

Cynically, even the judge that convicted me admits as much by writing in his verdict: “Even if all of the statements made by Van Langenhove are based on scientific evidence and statistics, it makes no difference to the criminal intent. Van Langenhove is not charged with spreading false information. He is charged with presenting facts in a way that incites hatred against persons on the grounds of one or more of the protected criteria in the Anti-Racism Law.”

That's a lot of words just to say he wants to send me to prison for speaking the truth.

Even the regime media write: "It did not matter to the court that Van Langenhove was quoting scientific sources. The judge argued that Van Langenhove's main message was that a big part of the societal problems like insecurity, housing shortages and lowering educational standards are due to mass migration."

You may think the regime media are being sympathetic to me in the first sentence, but in reality they are warning people: even if you speak the truth, if you go against our narrative, we will crush you in every way possible.

Both the public prosecutor and the judge did not present a single real argument as to how or against whom I would have incited hatred. So even if I would accept their crazy, dystopic law, I still did not break it.

The only argument they present is that I created a "hostile atmosphere of us versus them” in regards to migrants. But even this silly argument (which is not even a punishable offence) is not true. To me, the deadly disease is self-hatred and one of its worst symptoms is replacement migration. My enemy is thus NOT the migrants themselves but those orchestrating the mass migration.

Sadly, in Belgium, evidence is not needed and ‘vibes’ are enough to put someone in jail.

Given the fact that I have another court case coming up in September and that I have a dozen active criminal investigations for hate speech, time is running out for me. I have already paid more than €420,000 in legal fees and there is no ending in sight. I have been in an intense battle of attrition for eight years and must now regroup to make sure I can still win.

If you want to help me, you can do so via the links below. If you can help in other ways, please contact me via DM.

If you live in a country that still has free speech, never let them touch it, however noble they make the motives sound, because this is where it leads to.

[Sage Steele @sagesteele]

❤️🤍💙

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

This is the behavior of an absolute snake. To air this opinion about judicial colleagues in the media is despicable malpractice. Beware.

[ABC News @ABC]

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says her colleagues' handling of the Louisiana voting rights case may have compromised the court's impartiality in political matters. https://t.co/O4VhYXUR3q

[Pastor Rick Brennan @rickbrennanjr]

The Roman Catholic backlash to @gavinortlund and @WesleyLHuff has been instructive. Both men are irenic, careful, and respectful in how they address what they believe are errors in Roman Catholic doctrine. Yet both have drawn deeply personal attacks for their apologetic work. This raises an important question many Protestants are asking: why do thoughtful, respectful critiques of Roman Catholicism often provoke such a visceral response?

The visceral reaction many Catholics have when Rome is challenged makes sense once we understand the Roman Catholic system. Rome is not merely one church among others in their theology. It is the visible institution possessing the fullness of the means of salvation, the sacramental economy, the authentic interpretation of Scripture and Tradition, and the Petrine office of universal authority. Therefore, to challenge Rome is not received as a mere doctrinal disagreement. Rather, it is received as an attack on the what they believe is the very structure by which Christ supposedly teaches, governs, absolves, and saves.

In contrast, Protestants are less threatened by challenges to a particular church tradition because Protestantism, at its best, does not locate salvation in institutional submission. The Baptist does not need the Baptist church to be indefectible. The Presbyterian does not need every presbytery to be incapable of grave error. The Lutheran does not need Wittenberg to be the necessary center of visible unity. Protestants argue fiercely, but their assurance rests finally in Christ’s finished work received by faith, not in the claim that one visible hierarchy or institution uniquely dispenses the fullness of saving grace.

That is the real issue: Rome’s authority claims make historical criticism an existential threat. Protestantism can admit that church history is messy because the visible Church is always in need of reform. Protestants can also recognize ambiguity in the historical record and draw reasoned conclusions that differ from others without collapsing the faith. Rome cannot do this so easily. If too much historical complexity is admitted, Rome’s claim to be the indefectible guardian and interpreter of the apostolic deposit begins to weaken. History must produce clear answers because Rome must show that she has always taught what she now requires believers to confess—whether baptismal regeneration, Eucharistic transubstantiation, or papal supremacy. If the historical record shows change, ambiguity, contradiction, or later accretion rather than apostolic continuity, the entire sacerdotal system is threatened.

So when a Roman Catholic lashes out at a protestant theologian or historian who is making an argument that runs counter to the approved narrative, the issue is often deeper than the topic being debated. The Protestant is arguing about history or doctrine. The Catholic may feel that their whole edifice of certainty, grace, authority, and salvation is being pulled down. And in a sense, the Catholic is right to feel critical importance of the stakes. If Rome is wrong about herself, then she is not merely wrong about secondary matters. She is wrong about the very place she has assigned herself between Christ and the believer.

[Alisa Childers @alisa_childers]

Since people seem to be commenting on Tim Keller's legacy (or at least they were and I'm late to the party), some thoughts:

-Tim Keller made an intellectually reasoned case for Christianity when I desperately needed to know that one existed.

-Tim Keller caused me to think deeply about the core significance of the atonement.

- Tim Keller challenged me to identify idols in my life that might not look like idols.

-Tim Keller highlighted the difference between gifting and qualification in ministry, which was pivotal in my thinking.

-Progressives hated Tim Keller. (A compliment)

-Tim Keller said some confusing, unhelpful, and sometimes downright inexcusable things about race, politics, and abortion.

-Tim Keller was soft on evolution, and soft on Side B ideology (although it would be difficult for someone to make the case that he was squarely Side B).

-I am grateful for how God used the ministry of Tim Keller in my life.

-I am sad about some things he taught and believed.

-I will meet him one day in glory.

[RBe @RBPundit]

Worth noting that antisemites keep winning Democrat primaries and losing Republican ones.

[Clay Daniel @claydaniel]

@TimHannan

[Moshe Emilio Lavi @MosheELavi]

Much has been written about @NickKristof's latest NYT opinion column over the past 24 hours, most of it focusing on the specific claims and their sourcing, but what I think deserves most attention is something broader: how this kind of journalism, whatever its intentions, ultimately makes accountability harder to achieve rather than easier, and harms the very people it claims to champion.

The principle that Israeli abuses should be investigated and condemned is not in dispute, and nobody serious is arguing otherwise. Israel is not above scrutiny, and in fact it operates under more intense international scrutiny than almost any country on earth, routinely held to standards applied nowhere else.

The problem here is something different entirely: the complete collapse of evidentiary standards the moment Israel is the subject.

This piece reads less like rigorous reporting and more like a catalogue of hearsay, unverifiable allegations, and activist claims stitched together into a sweeping moral indictment. Its sourcing leans heavily on Euro Med Human Rights Monitor, an organisation repeatedly criticised over extremist ties, disinformation, and deeply questionable methodology, yet treated throughout as a credible authority while its leadership openly engages in pro Hamas propaganda on X.

Worse, the same ecosystem of activists and self appointed “experts” that amplifies Euro Med’s claims online increasingly feeds narratives into more established organisations and media outlets, laundering deeply contested allegations into the appearance of institutional credibility.

The most severe claims are anonymous, uncorroborated, and presented in the emotional register of established fact rather than allegation, despite lacking meaningful evidentiary backing. Yet Kristof largely adopts them without serious scrutiny, publishing the piece in the Opinion section because even the already diminished evidentiary standards often applied to reporting on the Israeli Palestinian conflict would likely not suffice for it to pass as straight news reporting.

This approach doesn't strengthen accountability, it actively destroys it. When every allegation is immediately inflated into systematic rape and "standard operating procedure" before any serious verification, genuine investigation becomes harder rather than easier.

Real abuses, if they occurred, get buried beneath maximalist narratives so extreme that large portions of the public simply stop trusting any of it, and the people who actually suffered pay that price.

It also alienates the vast majority of Israelis and Jews worldwide, including the many who are perfectly capable of criticising Israeli policy and supporting investigations into misconduct, but who understandably recoil when accusations begin resembling modernised blood libels dressed up as human rights reporting. The framing matters enormously, and so does proportionality, and so does evidence.

Nor does any of this serve Palestinians. Atrocity inflation entrenches both sides deeper into defensive tribalism, and every dubious claim amplified by a prestigious outlet makes legitimate criticism easier to dismiss when it actually matters.

The timing compounds everything. On a day when documented reporting on Hamas sexual violence was again circulating, the NYT chose to run an opinion column built substantially on unverifiable anonymous testimony asserting that Israelis are conducting systemic rape campaigns, not as a rigorously evidenced investigative report but as an opinion piece with the imprimatur of the paper of record.

Kristof is not a naive bystander in any of this. In 2014 he used the full credibility of the NYT to repeatedly platform Somaly Mam, a Cambodian anti-trafficking activist whose harrowing personal story he championed across multiple columns, until it emerged that her backstory was substantially fabricated and he was forced to issue a public correction. When challenged this time around on his sourcing, corroboration, and methodology, he defaulted to bad faith engagement on social media rather than addressing the underlying concerns seriously.

It is the same pattern, playing out again in a different context. Real journalism requires skepticism, corroboration, and restraint applied consistently regardless of the subject, and when those standards disappear the moment Israel is involved, what remains is not human rights reporting but narrative activism wearing a journalist's costume that does far more harm than good to everyone it claims to serve.