Colin Meloy’s band were raised on Roxy Music, British folk and concept albums. He isn’t big on Jethro Tull, but he’s in awe of Rick Wakeman’s King Arthur ice show

When I was a child, the story of Jesus miraculously healing the leper in Mark 1:40–45 made me thankful for two things: that Jesus had power over all diseases and that I didn’t have leprosy. The story didn’t seem relevant to me, a nonleper, beyond teaching me about Jesus’s amazing power to heal even the vilest of diseases—diseases that I probably wouldn’t have to worry about thanks to modern medicine. But is there more to the miracle? This brief article will explore the biblical-theological significance of the leper’s cleansing. Leprosy, the Priesthood, and the Need for Cleansing The focus of Mark 1:40–45 is on cleansing, not healing, though the two are related. The words “clean” or “cleanse” appear four times in the span of five verses (vv. 40, 41, 42, 44). Leprosy, which refers to various skin diseases in the Old Testament (Lev. 13), rendered people ritually unclean according to the Mosaic law. Anyone who touched a leper would’ve also become ceremonially unclean (see vv. 45–46). As a matter of uncleanness, leprosy’s significance is more theological and symbolic than biological and medicinal. Lepers needed a priest to pronounce them clean, not a doctor to prescribe them medicine. According to Leviticus 14:19, the priest had to offer a “sin offering” to “make atonement” for the leper as part of the leper’s cleansing process. Without the sin offering, the leper would remain unfit to worship God at the tabernacle. He was cut off from God’s presence—a dead man walking, much like Adam outside the garden. The law provided atonement and cleansing for the leper, but it was merely an external and ceremonial cleansing. It is, after all, what comes out of the heart that ultimately defiles a person (Mark 7:20). Mark recorded the miracle of the leper’s cleansing because he wanted us to see that Jesus is a superior priest who offers a cleansing that runs deeper than the skin. A few verses earlier in 1:24, a man with an unclean spirit identified Jesus as the “Holy One of God,” a title attributed to Aaron in Psalm 106:16 (cf. Num. 16:1–3). The Aaronic priests of the old covenant could pronounce a leper clean, but they couldn’t make anyone clean. Jesus was able to do both. Jesus’s priestly cleansing and his instruction to the leper to go to show himself to the priest set the stage for Jesus’s conflict with Israel’s religious leaders in the narrative that follows (Mark 2:1–3:6) and anticipates his confrontation with the high priest in 14:53–65. Mark wants his readers to ask, “Who is the true priest?” The Aaronic priests of the old covenant could pronounce a leper clean, but they couldn’t make anyone clean. The shocking nature of Jesus’s miracle is that he touched the leper without becoming contaminated. Perhaps Jesus’s touch symbolizes that he identifies himself with sinners to secure their salvation. He takes our stain; we get his holiness. The cleansing this priest provides runs deeper than the skin’s surface; it cleanses the body and the heart. Leprosy as Exile and Death The Old Testament associates leprosy with death. When Aaron and Miriam sinned against Moses, God struck Miriam with leprosy (Num. 12:1–15). She became as “one dead” and as a stillborn infant (v. 12). Lepers were to assume a posture of mourning—as though they were mourning the dead—by wearing torn clothes, letting their hair hang loose, and covering their upper lip as they cried out “Unclean, unclean” (Lev. 13:45; cf. 10:6; Ezek. 24:17, 22–23). They lived outside the camp in their leprous condition, where they experienced their own deathlike exile, cut off from God’s life-giving presence. As a symbol of death, leprosy was also associated with Egypt. God afflicted the Egyptians with boils when Pharaoh refused to let Israel go (Ex. 9:8–12). Boils are among the skin diseases associated with leprosy in Leviticus 13. After God delivered Israel from Egypt, he warned them that if they failed to keep the covenant, he’d strike them with the “boils of Egypt” and with “scabs and itch” of which they wouldn’t be healed (Deut. 28:27). Leprosy’s association with Egypt and death suggests lepers needed a cleansing that would follow the exodus pattern. God delivered his people out of the tomb of Egypt through blood (Passover) and water (sea) and brought them to his life-giving presence at Sinai to make them a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6). A cleansed leper followed the same exodus movement from the place of death outside the camp to life with God in Israel’s camp after being sprinkled with blood and oil and washed with water (Lev. 14:1–14). As part of his cleansing, a leper was restored to the covenant community the same way that priests were consecrated to God. He had sacrificial blood applied to the lobe of his right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the big toe of his right foot (Lev. 14:14; Ex. 29:20). He regained his place among the kingdom of priests to serve the living God. Leper’s Exodus and Ours The leper in Mark 1:40–45 is a man under the sentence of death and a symbol of exile. He has Egypt’s disease. He’s a microcosm of Israel. Israel may have been in the land when Jesus came to them, but they remained in spiritual exile, alienated from God. They needed deliverance not from the bondage of Egypt or Rome but from the tyranny of sin, Satan, and death. Perhaps Jesus’s touch symbolizes that he identifies himself with sinners to secure their salvation. He takes our stain; we get his holiness. Mark wants us to understand the leper’s cleansing as part of the new exodus that Jesus came to lead in fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” (Mark 1:3). Isaiah anticipated a day when God would make a highway in the wilderness to lead an exodus out of exile and back to Jerusalem (Isa. 35:8–10; 40:3). On that highway—the “Way of Holiness” (35:8)—no “unclean” person will journey (35:8), and in the restored Zion, the “unclean” will not dwell (52:1, 11). When Jesus “stretched out his hand” to touch the leper, he imitated God’s action in leading the first exodus out of Egypt (Mark 1:41; Ex. 3:20; 7:5). Indeed, Jesus didn’t merely imitate God; he’s the same God who saved Israel from Egypt and the same God who promised through the prophet Isaiah to redeem his people from exile. Jesus cleansed the leper to make him part of the end-time Israel—a new class of cleansed and consecrated priests. Far from being merely a man with an awful skin condition that we don’t have to worry about thanks to modern medicine, the leper is a mirror to our own plight. The leper reminds us we too must cry out to Jesus for cleansing from sin’s defilement and the sentence of death. The good news of the gospel is that what Jesus said to the leper, he says to everyone who comes to him in faith: “I will; be clean.”

Histories of religion and the American Civil War have, understandably, emphasized differences between Northerners and Southerners. White Northerners had a wide range of opinions about slavery’s morality, but they tended to share a quasi-sacred view of the American nation. Therefore, they deplored the Confederate attempt to divide that nation. White Southerners, meanwhile, generally agreed that the Bible permitted slavery. Some Southern leaders portrayed the South as a model Christian society with an orderly economy, led by slave-owning patrons and founded on a “mud-sill” class of enslaved laborers. The “theological crisis” of the Civil War, as historian Mark Noll has observed, resulted from the North and South’s inability to arrive at a biblical consensus about the permissibility of chattel slavery (a system in which masters treat slaves as transferable property). And thus, as Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address intones, “The war came.” These classic North-South divisions don’t explain, however, why Christians in the North were bitterly divided among themselves too. Obviously, their division wasn’t as severe as what cleaved South from North. But outbreaks of violence between Northerners during the war, and pro-Confederate sentiment among Northern “Copperheads,” showed that the differences could be sharp. Richard Carwardine’s Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union shows how these “warring religious nationalists” shaped the North during the Civil War. Carwardine is one of this generation’s top scholars of religion and politics in the antebellum and Civil War eras. I’ve regularly recommended his Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power as an excellent book on Lincoln’s religion. Searching for Parallels Many Americans today assume that during the Civil War, white Northerners largely supported emancipation. As Carwardine shows, that was simply not the case. Many Northern Protestant and Catholic leaders, as well as rank-and-file Unionists, adamantly opposed abolitionism, seeing it as fanatical and reckless. Although Lincoln’s own views are debated, he certainly made clear when he was elected president in 1860 that he didn’t intend to touch slavery in the South. He had no constitutional power to do so, he said. In 1860, slavery was widely understood to be subject to state, not federal, jurisdiction. The war and Lincoln’s role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces changed that legal understanding. More than a year into the war, Lincoln still stated publicly that preserving the Union was his preeminent aim. If he could preserve the Union without freeing the slaves, he was content to do so. Lincoln also made periodic comments, conventional for all but the most radical politicians, that he believed the white race should have the dominant place in American society. Still, Lincoln eventually embraced emancipation, believing that destroying slavery would help the Union win. Whatever the intent of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the president took a great risk by potentially alienating conservative religious nationalists who wanted to preserve the Union while leaving slavery alone. By “conservative,” Carwardine means nationalists who wanted to “conserve” the Union largely intact. By the book’s end, Carwardine also proposes parallels between the conservative Christian nationalists of the 1860s and those of the early 21st century. This stilted comparison is the least helpful part of Righteous Strife. We already have more than enough books that clumsily try to discover the religious origins of Trumpism in various Christian movements in the past. Celebrating a Specific Nationalism Yet Carwardine also more intriguingly argues there can be a good kind of Christian nationalism, if its adherents support moral policies. Obviously, Carwardine prefers Christian nationalists in the 1860s who thought the nation should abolish slavery because America was Christian. They insisted that slavery violated the nation’s God-given mission. Carwardine offers his most thoughtful comments on Northern figures, including Lincoln, who moved from conservative (anti-emancipationist) nationalism toward abolitionist nationalism during the war. Some of Carwardine’s most astute observations in this vein are about Princeton Seminary theologian Charles Hodge. Hodge was arguably the era’s greatest defender of scriptural authority against higher biblical criticism. But on slavery, he was a moderate. Hodge had many Southern students and was a slave owner himself. From a plain reading of Scripture, Hodge could find no rationale for condemning slavery “in the abstract.” The Bible largely seemed to accept the institution and didn’t comment directly on its morality. Hodge was arguably the era’s greatest defender of scriptural authority against higher biblical criticism. But on slavery, he was a moderate. Yet Hodge was sharply critical of the South’s chattel slavery, riddled as it was with abuse and corruption that violated biblical ethics. Many slave masters were willing to break up slave families with the stroke of a pen. Many whites resisted teaching slaves to read the Bible, fearing that stories such as the exodus would give enslaved people subversive notions about liberty. Hodge also exhibited typical nationalist reverence for the American Union, believing that the Confederacy’s crusade to separate from the United States was paranoid and foolish. Like many Northern Christians, Hodge opposed secession precisely because he was a conservative. Although Hodge had long opposed abolitionism, he came to support Lincoln’s Proclamation. He affirmed Lincoln’s notion that emancipation was an essential wartime measure needed to preserve the Union. Hodge still warned that if emancipation became the ultimate aim of the war, it would sow dissension among Northerners and foment radical social revolution. But Hodge saw the Proclamation as a limited executive action. Its abolition of slavery didn’t apply to the border states remaining within the Union, or to parts of the Confederacy that lay under Union military control. (Wholesale emancipation came later, in the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865.) In other words, the Proclamation was conservative. This conclusion allowed Hodge to transform himself from an anti-emancipation nationalist to an emancipationist one. Most of Hodge’s Old School Presbyterians followed his lead. The war taught them that Southern proslavery fanaticism had only precipitated “rebellion, war, and bloodshed.” Therefore, slavery must go. Pursuing a More Perfect Union In his conclusion, Carwardine makes patronizing and unnecessary comments about today’s “white evangelical churches” and their “studied whiteness.” This may alienate some Christian readers. I still think, however, that such readers can find useful content in Righteous Strife related to the “Christian nationalism” debate. Since 1776, Christian ethics has deeply influenced American culture and law. But the federal Constitution didn’t make America a “Christian nation” in any formal sense, preferring instead to prioritize “free exercise” of religion. So where does this leave American moral reform based on Christian ideals? Christian ethics has deeply influenced American culture and law. But the federal Constitution did not make America a ‘Christian nation’ in any formal sense. Polemicists have cited Christian values on both sides of almost every major political debate in American history. We may question how many of those appeals have been substantial and sincere. Yet a type of cultural and theological Christian nationalist argument has undergirded every noble reform movement in America’s history, from abolitionism to civil rights to the pro-life cause. Whether or not the term “Christian nationalism” is redeemable, Righteous Strife reminds readers of the great good that has come when leaders such as Lincoln have appealed to the nation’s providential calling and to the “better angels of our nature.”

How do you prioritize health? How do you stay sharp? Can you be friends with church members? How do you care for your wife? When’s a time you were wrong? How do you choose what to preach? And many, many more questions pastors may be asking. In this special episode of The Everyday Pastor, Matt Smethurst and Ligon Duncan answer listener-submitted questions, recorded live at TGC’s 2025 National Conference.

We tend to notice big extinctions—elephants, glaciers, coral reefs. But not everything that vanishes makes headlines. Some losses are quiet, almost imperceptible, until one day you realize they’re gone. The fireflies you chased as a kid. The bank teller who knew your name. The silence you used to find on a walk in the woods. […] The post 10 Ordinary Things Likely Disappearing from Our Lives Soon appeared first on Listverse.

Franchises should ideally be simple. If a story is successful, then it gets a sequel to expand on its ideas and give audiences more of what they loved. When a series dries up, studios either leave it alone or reboot it with fresh faces and novel narratives. Any layman can understand that process. Of course, […] The post 10 Fictional Universes That Reset the Canon appeared first on Listverse.

No one’s cheering the pace of accountability since the Biden administration ended. Not even those who promised it. Bureaucratic obstacles, legacy systems built to resist scrutiny, and a federal culture allergic to transparency have slowed progress — sometimes to a crawl.The reality is worse than expected. Even those with the best intentions have found it nearly impossible to extract and expose the truth. That failure isn’t just frustrating. It’s unacceptable.A commission on political persecution would offer Americans what they’ve long been denied: justice, reconciliation, and a full accounting of the truth.One of President Trump’s key promises for his second term was accountability — real, lasting de-weaponization of the federal government. His success will be judged by whether he delivers on that pledge.Several months in, it’s clear the current approach may not be enough. What’s needed isn’t more subcommittees or working groups. What’s needed is a Trump-style solution: a big, beautiful operation designed to supersede the siloed efforts now underway. Every new administration faces the same dilemma: clean up the last one’s messes while managing the day-to-day chaos of federal governance. Cabinet secretaries and agency heads walk into jobs already on fire. Few have the time, staff, or political will to launch sweeping internal investigations — especially when they’re tasked with running the agencies they’d be probing.And time is the enemy. As months pass, political momentum cools. Distance sets in. Memories fade. I saw this firsthand during Trump’s first term. Having worked on the House Oversight Committee during the Obama years, I believed we would finally get answers about Benghazi, Operation Fast and Furious, and Hillary Clinton’s emails. We didn’t. Too many in Washington shrugged and said it was time to “move on.”That can’t happen again.The Biden administration oversaw one of the most sweeping and coordinated campaigns of federal abuse in modern U.S. history. Nearly every major department played a role.The Department of Justice targeted pro-life activists and traditional Catholics. The FBI chased down January 6 defendants over misdemeanor charges and shattered lives in the process. Federal health agencies turned Orwellian, assuming censorship powers once considered unthinkable. Immigration authorities weaponized the law against citizens while rewarding illegal entry.Meanwhile, intelligence agencies manipulated information, partnered with tech companies to censor dissent, and colluded with legacy media to shape a false public narrative. All of this operated with one shared goal: crush political opposition, and above all, destroy Donald Trump.This wasn’t rogue behavior. It was systemic. And systemic abuse demands a systemic response.A few scattered task forces won’t cut it. Today, we have the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group, a task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias, and another to combat anti-Semitism. Fine. But these efforts lack coordination, power, and focus.They should be consolidated — or at least centralized — under a larger, empowered investigative body.RELATED: Democrats smear, stall, and spin to stop Trump’s DC cleanup francescoch via iStock/Getty Images This new entity must have one mission: hold the weaponizers accountable. It must have real teeth — subpoena power, prosecutorial authority, the ability to grant immunity for witness testimony, and the mandate to provide restitution for the Americans harmed by the Biden administration’s abuses.We’ve seen this before. The United States has convened truth-seeking bodies to investigate civil rights violations. Other democratic nations have formed “truth commissions” to heal from periods of state overreach.A commission on political persecution wouldn’t just fulfill one of Trump’s key promises. It would offer Americans what they’ve long been denied: justice, reconciliation, and a full accounting of the truth.If Trump wants to succeed where others failed, he must go big. Not with more bureaucracy — but with a focused, powerful effort to make the permanent government answer to the people again.