A professor fired for threatening Christians. Christians fired up about Trump the Blasphemer. Christian colleges on the rocks. And, yes, racist organic farmers in Indiana. All these stories and more made our list this week:

How can a professor get fired in Iowa? By saying, “It’s not pretty, and I’m not proud, but seeing what Evangelical Christians are doing to this country and its people fills me with rage, and a desire to exact revenge.” At IHE.

White evangelicals once changed their minds about lovin a president. Will Trump be next? At WaPo.

“Whether we like it or not, a major problem we face as evangelical Christians today is the identification in the popular mind of the religious position we represent with the Nixon administration and its actions. We are ‘middle America,’ the group sector that gave President Nixon his ‘mandate.’ We are the war party, the white backlash (if not racist) party, the Watergate scandal party.”

Some evidence that younger white evangelicals are already giving up on Trumpism, at 538.

But there are increasing signs of a generational rift: Younger white evangelicals have not fully bought into Trump’s politics and are less receptive to Trump’s message of cultural decline. The age gap among white evangelicals in some ways just mirrors the age gap among the public overall with regards to Trump, but in conversations with a number of younger white evangelical Christians, many said they are reexamining the way their faith informs their politics and whether the two have become too tightly intertwined. . . . Two-thirds (66 percent) of young white evangelical Christians (age 18 to 34) say that immigrants coming to the U.S. strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents, a view shared by only 32 percent of white evangelical seniors (age 65+). A majority (54 percent) of older white evangelical Christians believe that immigrants are a burden on American society.

…still a lot of Trump-ism in there.

…or maybe all the blasphemy will drive evangelicals away? At WaPo.

Trump is neither the “Second Coming of God” nor the “Messiah.”. . . .

I am a conservative evangelical who cast my vote for Trump for the very same reason many other evangelicals did: his conservative stance on issues concerning abortion and religious freedom. I visited Washington last October for a briefing at which faith leaders listened to White House officials address many policy issues. . . .

We must . . . vocally denounce [Trump’s] blatantly egregious actions, including not only Wednesday’s tweets but also his consistently negative interactions and dialogue with people of different races, genders and ethnicities.

Christian mom vs. teacher-led school prayer, at Christianity Today.

Though I understand it’s pleasant for some to hearken back to a day when a tight-bunned teacher led children through a crisp Pledge and a Prayer (no matter what her heart, mind or soul actually believed) as somehow holier, better, safer, they weren’t. Schools with teacher-led prayer refused to admit black children. Schools with teacher-led prayer burnt to the ground. Students were still bullied. They still had sex, got abortions, and got high. Homes were still broken. Kids were still confused and frightened by their sexuality. Even back then. Even with all that prayer.

Yoga: Banned in Alabama, at CBS42.

“I don’t know if it is the school system or if it is a polarized subject, like abortion or common core,” Gray said. “It’s one of those things that people think is bad.”

Another good time not to be the mayor of Bloomington, Indiana. What are they supposed to do with racist organic farmers at their farmers’ market? At NYT.

Bloomington has declined to remove Schooner Creek from the market. Mayor John Hamilton said the farmers had First Amendment rights to their personal views as participants in a city-run market, and said the farm did not appear to be breaking any written rules about how vendors should behave at the market.

While some in Bloomington want Schooner Creek to leave, others said they wished protesters would drop their cause. In late July, an associate professor at Indiana University was arrested as she held up a paper sign in front of the Schooner Creek stand. Protesters yelled “Shame, shame!” as police officers escorted her away from the market.

Tough times for evangelical colleges, at WORLD.

Nyack College, a Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) school in the New York City area, received an independent audit in 2017 with an opinion any institution dreads: “substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

• Could desperate Christian colleges actually BENEFIT from scandal? Here at ILYBYGTH.

What will the future hold for LGBTQ exemptions? Will evangelical institutions be forced to comply? At The Atlantic.

For religious groups and institutions that teach that homosexuality is a sin, and that men and women were created as such by God, the prospect of this kind of legislation is worrying. “It would be years of litigation—that’s what we would look forward to under the Equality Act as currently drafted,” Shirley Hoogstra, the president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), told me. For the nearly 140 Christian institutions that are members of her organization, she said, the bill “would put federal funding, it would put accreditation, it would put hiring rights, it would put campus student-life policies all at risk.” Fundamentally, these kinds of groups want to be able to preserve what they see as religious integrity in their own spaces—and they object when that is described as bigotry. “The Equality Act as currently drafted has caused Christian institutions to really wonder about whether their particular educational contribution is valued in America,” Hoogstra said.

Send in the clowns: A historical review of clownish leaders at HNN.

Making fun of those who have power over us is a small blow against authority. But the clown princes go further. What could be more anti-elitist than to take politics to the polar opposite extreme? Elitists read books, use evidence to make arguments, rely on science, demand proof; the clown prince needs no such intellectual crutches; they rely on passion, emotion, feelings. Lashing out is their feel-good option.

Women, transgender women, and sports. What is the fair solution? At Arc.

Free speech on campus: A new book argues that conservative gripes are bogus, at IHE.

Is denying someone admission to a college a threat to that person’s free speech? Is failing someone in a class a threat to their free speech? Is a student not being able to disrupt a class whenever they want a threat to free speech? We take these limits as a given, and even a positive in colleges, yet when it comes to students requesting or demanding that colleges not allow professors or students to say racist, transphobic and other offensive language without punishment, that becomes a step too far for administrators. So I would question whether they’re really afraid of limiting speech (which, as I said, they do all the time), or whether they’re afraid of confronting just how common and ingrained transphobia, racism and other forms of oppression are on their campuses.