While interviewing Walter Isaacson on Wednesday’s Fresh Air, guest host Dave Davies raised the point that Albert Einstein has become an icon of unattainable genius. True, but he’s arguably the one scientist who most strongly attracted the affection of Americans. Whether because of his wonderfully untamed hair, his doleful eyes or that photo in which he sticks out his tongue, Einstein also became an icon of the scientist as approachable, and maybe even humble, human being. What other acclaimed scientist could have inspired Walter Matthau’s oddball role in the film I.Q.?
Generic fundamentalists attack church-state wall!
Back in the early 1990s, I wrote a column about the “Scopes II” conflict in east Tennessee between public educators and conservative Christians.
Thoroughly modern United Methodists
This is the time of year when religion-beat specialists scramble to try to cover a liturgical parade of events in both Judaism and in all forms of Christianity. In the past few decades, one of the standard stories around this time of year has focused on the historical links between Passover and Holy Week, between the Passover meal and Holy Communion.
Missing the Obama-Jesus story
Did you hear that Barack Obama looks a lot like Jesus in a sculpture at the The Art Institute of Chicago? Oh wait, he is supposed to be Jesus in the sculpture. Quick, someone inform Slate’s Timothy Noah, who has been dutifully chronicling the “Obama Messiah Watch.”
Text education
In a mostly winsome cover story for this week’s Time, David Van Biema quotes the important players in the humble but growing movement to teach the Bible in public schools — not as a tool for proselytism but as a topic of cultural literacy. This is his key paragraph:
Blunt voices on the Anglican left
Ave Maria delivers (headlines)
Alan Cooperman was understated on Sunday in covering conflicts between Thomas Monaghan and Joseph Fessio, S.J., the founding chancellor of Monaghan’s Ave Maria University in southwestern Florida. Monaghan abruptly dismissed Fessio (a former student and longtime friend of Pope Benedict XVI) as chancellor of the school, then brought him back within 24 hours as theologian in residence.
From the high priest of religion news
This is one case in which I am tempted to simply haul off and print an entire online commentary by a famous writer, claiming that it is a guest column for GetReligion.
A nation of Islam
Harvard religion professor Diana Eck’s New Religious America: How A “Christian Country” Has Now Become The World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation looks at how changing immigration laws have shaped the country. She tells stories about Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists.
