I rarely disagree with the results of the Religion Newswriters Association poll that selects the year’s Top 10 stories on the religion-news beat.
Obama's year: Cairo or Notre Dame?
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Putting the ho, ho, ho in holidays
If, like me, you’re long since tired of reading stories about Tiger Woods’ sordid personal life, please hang with me for one more.
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Department of abstinence department
The Washington Post‘s Rob Stein has an important story looking at how federal funding of abstinence-focused education might be included in the behemoth health care reform legislation pending in the Senate.
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Behind the Music: Handel edition
It’s that time of year when concerts of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah occur with seemingly ubiquity. The New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini reviewed one such performance yesterday, remarking that the bass “sang the repeated ‘the dead shall be raised incorruptible’ and ‘we shall be changed’ with such prophetic vigor that the prospect seemed almost terrifying.” I read a review of a different Messiah concert in the same paper a few weeks ago.
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Discovering a conservative giant
David Kirkpatrick had a fascinating profile of Robert P. George in the Sunday New York Times magazine. George is a Catholic public intellectual — a professor at Princeton who writes about policy and politics. The first thing to say about the piece is that it’s a great idea. I’ve been reading George for years but, then again, I’m the type of person who reads First Things and The Public Discourse. The average Sunday New York Times magazine reader probably doesn’t. Considering the influence George has on conservatives, a profile makes perfect sense.
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Search: 'Obama' and 'baby Jesus'
I know that I do, especially when I am trying to read about a subject that (a) the mainstream press doesn’t care that much about and (b) hot-headed partisans in the media care too much about. Thus, you get these short incomplete reports about subjects that “aren’t really news,” only that to some people the events are symbolic and, thus, transcend news (so they tend to scream about them at advocacy sites online).
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On the banks of the Yamuna
The Washington Post foreign service — which thankfully still exists –Â sent out this story on Thursday: “New Delhi’s filth continues to choke once-sacred Yamuna River.” It’s a very interesting and well-timed piece in light of all the talk this week at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen about getting better environmental controls in rapidly industrializing countries, particularly in China and India. The story does an excellent job illustrating the environmental problems and challenges in contemporary India. Can’t fault it there:
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Cooler temperatures at Air Force Academy
Four years ago, a battle over religion at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs seemed intractable. Now tempers are cooler, according to an Associated Press story by Dan Elliott. Interestingly, the story, “Air Force Academy says religious climate improving,” says one solution to the problem was more religion, not less:
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Birds of a doctrinal feather
The church-state junkie in me really does not know where to begin when it comes to evaluating the mainstream media coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case pitting the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco against the campus chapter of the Christian Legal Society.
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