Around the block is Ebenezer's Coffeehouse, the scene of right-wing meetings and Christian rock bands. When the Pentacostal movie-theater Christians bought the abandoned diner-bus-depot that was there for decades, they called their modern, airy coffee house renovation "Ebenezers," too.
It is a magnet for midwestern and southern transients in D.C., very young people and on certain days earnest Assemblies Christians, all using Wifi, of course. For this crowd the owners left out the apostrophe, to signify their hip rejection of textual fixity and their embrace of vernacular orality.
Of course MLK's church was Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, not Ebenezers . . .
Just in: Bush's last pardon is for two border guards who were convicted of shooting a marijuana mule in the back and then cleaned up after themselves to conceal what they did. They will now go free and become GOP talk show and radio regulars.
Ebenezer was where the ark of the covenant was before the Israelites relied overmuch on being God's chosen people. First, God recognized Samuel as a king by telling him in a vision that the house of Eli, his senior, would be cursed for all time, with no sacrifice ever being permitted to exonerate them. (Because Eli's sons demanded God's offerings for men.) Samuel had to tell Eli this himself. "Hey, what's up, guess what God told me?"
Then the Jews brought the ark of the covenant out and put it in battle, using it to fortify their confidence, parading it about like in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Philistines were afraid, but they were rallied by a commander, and fought back, and defeated the Israelites and killed thousands of them.
"Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod" (1Sa5.1).
In other words, Religiosity for worldly ends displeases God.
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