FXBG Advance Thursday, June 18, 2026
Cage Matches and Christianity. Work That Dirties Your Hands. Oh, Yes, Wait A Minute Mr. Postman. What's Going On....
Cage Matches and Christianity Don’t Go Together
By Rev. Richard Cizik, Executive Director, Evangelicals for Democracy
“There’s only one person more incredible than the Incredible Hulk, and that’s my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”
These are the words of Josh Hokit, the former NFL player and heavyweight mixed martial artist who was one of the fighters participating in the UFC Freedom 250 tournament that took place on the south lawn of the White House on June June 14—Donald Trump’s 80th birthday.
Dubbed “the next chapter of America’s fighting history” and timed as the official start of the 250th anniversary celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, this bloody series of seven cage matches had nothing to do with Christianity or being a Christian in modern-day America.
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On the Virtue of Work That Dirties Your Hands
By Shaun Kenney, Advance Columnist
This year will mark the 100th anniversary of Colonial Williamsburg, a place that first began as more of a museum than living history, but eventually gave visitors an idealized glimpse of what it was like to live in 18th century Virginia—to read their newspapers, hear the sound of hammer and tong next to the heat of a coal furnace, feel the linens and cottons of the day, catch the scent of lavender and rose water in the shops, watch furniture makers and bookbinders and silversmiths move with the surety of craftsmen and craftswomen.
Industrialization came late to America, but it never quite arrived in Williamsburg in the way that it touched other places such as Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Norfolk. Fears then—as now—revolved around the changing nature of work, education, commerce, markets, culture, and trade with the arrival of the railroads, coal, machines, ports, tobacco, wheat, and the replacement of manual labor (enslaved and free) with mechanical labor and the mechanics whose duty it was to oil, repair, and eventually program their every need.
James Fox is by no means an American household name, but in a marvelous book titled Craftsman: In Search of Lost Arts and Disappearing Trades we get a glimpse of things lost back in merry old England. Matthew Crawford’s magisterial text Shop Class as Soulcraft sounded the alarm as far back as 2010 about the distinction between mechanic and technician. Alexander Lagland’s book Craft explores similar themes, and who could possibly neglect the Foxfire series written by Georgia high school students in the 1970s and right up to the present day.
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The Postman Doesn’t Always Ring Twice
By Theodore G. Blackwell, Guest Column
The U.S. Postal Service has issued a proposal in which they will refuse to transmit mail-in or absentee ballots unless certain requirements are met, such as a state-specified list of voters compiled and maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, all in the name of “election integrity.”
Considering the fact that in 2022, the year of Virginia’s last midterm election, there was only one instance of voter fraud conviction, I fail to see how our election integrity was at risk to begin with.
Since Virginia has not complied with the requirement, and was sued by the Justice Department, all I can wonder now is will my mail-in ballot be picked up? What do I do if the USPS refuses to carry it? Approximately 8 percent of all votes cast in Virginia were by mail in the last midterm. What will happen to our votes this time?
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What’s Going On
VaNews/Virginia Public Access Project
Mother, mother, there’s too many of you crying. Brother, brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dying. You know we’ve got to find a way to bring some lovin’ here today, yeah. Or, if you want to look at it another way: Articles from newspapers throughout the Commonwealth and Washington D.C. Firewalls will block you from reading some, but you’ll at least have some idea about what’s going on from the headlines, which, let’s be honest, are all many of us have time to read anyway.
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