The Nexus

Samples from over 1800 topics include:
Babbittry - The American cult of pretentious materialism as illustrated by the protagonist George Babbitt in the satirical novel “Babbitt” (1922) by Sinclair Lewis (a satire is serious criticism while a parody is humorous criticism).
bibliomancy - The practice of opening the Bible, blindly locating a scripture and assuming that the passage is providential guidance. No. This is bibliomancy - a form of divination (See divination).
centrifugal versus centripetal religious cults - Psychiatrists distinguish between centrifugal cults which look outward to a reformation that renders an improved belief system and centripetal cults which look inward to a restoration of the pure original church of antiquity (See characteristic #5 under cults).
circumlocution - The use of wordy language and carefully crafted statements in an attempt to carry out deception in the written or spoken word.
Circumlocution is a process that has gone by several different terms and definitions.
Accordingly, Winston Churchill called it “terminological inexactitude”. Thomas Sowell calls it “verbal virtuosity” (including “verbal cleansing” and “verbal banishing”). Martin Buber called it “speechifying.” Laura Ingraham calls it “subtle attitudinizing.” William Safire called it “weasel words” or “oleaginous weasel words.” William Buckley called it “kneaded words” (as one would knead bread dough). Psychiatrist Robert J.Lifton calls it “loading the language.” The Psalmist called It “wrested words” i.e. “Every day they wrest my words” (Ps. 56:5 KJV). Plato called it “the noble lie.” Jim Wallis (Pres. Obama’s spiritual advisor) calls it “reframing the language.” Linguist George Lakoff (the “Yoda of the secular-progressives”) calls it “wordsmithing.” Francis Schaefer called it “semantic mysticism.” CS Lewis called it the “stealthy transition.”
Other terms relating to circumlocution include pettifogging or quibbling over trivia (as in “ankle-biting pettifoggers”) and studied ambiguity or parsing.
While circumlocution deals with how others deceive us, see self-deception for the mechanisms by which we deceive ourselves.
hammer, the law of the - The law of the hammer holds that “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” To the black writer, everything looks like racism. To the feminist writer, everything looks like monstrous male patriarchy. To the gay writer, everything looks like homophobia. These trends clearly affect the quality of the writer’s work (See also agenda-driven or ideologically-driven scholarship).
Hillel’s interrogatory – “If not me, who? If not now, when?”
Rabbi Hillel (30 BC-10 AD) was president of the Jewish Sanhedrin.
Kraus’s Law – Freudian psychoanalysis is the very cause of the problems it purports to correct.
Malvolio effect – A pompous, arrogant, and puritanical attitude by some self–righteous religious people. The notion comes from William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” (1600) where Malvolio was Shakespeare’s one and only satirical portrait of a Puritan.
Matthew effect – The tendency in academic publications to give all credit to the senior members of a team at the expense of the junior members who did the work. It’s based on Matthew 13:12 (RSV) - “For to him who has will more be given and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
Megiddo report – A US government–sponsored study begun in 1999 designed to identify which religious cults have the potential to turn violent or dangerous. The term “Megiddo” is taken from the historical Plain of Megiddo–the location of the predicted final apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and evil (See cults).

A similar such approach, designated the Clarion Project, seeks to identify those Islamic groups or mosques that represent a threat to America.
Niebuhr’s reduction of liberal Christianity – “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of Christ without a cross.” – By H. Richard (not Reinhold) Niebuhr.
recreational provocateur/recreational iconoclast – An individual who gets a big charge (recreation) out of challenging the revered traditions of the received culture and watching people squirm and cringe as a result. A common example is a young person wearing a “Che” T–shirt (See “Che” effect).
stolen valor – The false claim that one is associated with a group that commonly elicits awe, reverence and respect, but the individual is unwilling or unable to meet the requirements for legitimate affiliation.
For example, ever since the mission that killed Osama bin–Laden, nearly every bar in the country reports a higher percentage of patrons who are “ex-Navy Seals.”
tranquil haven theory – According to Rabbi Daniel Lapin, “It’s not an accident that America has provided the most tranquil haven of prosperity that Jews have enjoyed in 2000 years, and it’s because America is a Christian nation.” In fact, Rabbi Lapin refers to America’s bible belt as “Judaism’s safety belt.” For these reasons, Rabbi Lapin says that he is “terrified of American Christianity caving in” (See America as a Christian nation).
“verse of the sword” – “Fight those who believe not in Allah” (Surah 9:29 of the Quran).

Also applicable is the doctrine of abrogation which holds that where scriptures appear to be in conflict, the latter revelations, as in this case, abrogate the earlier revelations.
“war on Christmas” – A yearly assault on Christmas that’s almost entirely from three secular organizations. They are the ACLU, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the American Humanist Association.
The Freedom Alliance Foundation (FAF) will defend pro bono anyone who is sued by one of these organizations. The FAF wins a vast majority of their cases.
Wesley’s quadrilateral – “Reason, experience, scripture and tradition”, recalled by the mnemonic (m is silent) device and acronym REST. John Wesley (1703–1791), founder of the Methodist Church, held that decisions and doctrines in the church should be based on “reason, experience, scripture and tradition”, which constitute the four standards of Wesley’s quadrilateral.
Yad L’Achim – A Jewish ultra-orthodox anti-Christian advocacy group in Israel specializing in harassing messianic Jews by publishing their names, phone numbers and addresses and encouraging retribution for their conversion to Christianity.

The reader will encounter more concise and germane information in this work of over 1800 topics than in the next dozen books he or she purchases.

Some reviewers have even recommended “The Nexus” for college prep purposes.