What makes a story newsworthy? Impact, relevance and timeliness are at the top of the list. But editors also love novelty.
Surprise! Jews pick Lutheran college
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Earliest Christian writing ever?
Yesterday I had a mini-meltdown when the BBC site was offline for an hour or so. I must be more reliant on them than I had realized! One of the stories I was trying to read was written by BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott, headlined “Jordan battles to regain ‘priceless’ Christian relics“:
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St. Augustine's Spankological Protocol
One of my favorite teachers in high school — all the kids loved him — was Mr. Richard Bonacquista. He was our Colorado History teacher — no one could make Colorado history more entertaining — and our baseball coach. In any case, one of the things he showed us from early first teaching days — over in mining country in the southwest part of the state — was a wooden paddle.
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Remember the Sabbath
A couple of years ago I reviewed a few books about the concept of the Sabbath as it’s understood by various groups. The piece generated a bit of feedback, most from parents and grandparents who were livid about the increasing practice of having competitive games on Sunday mornings.
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Northwestern prof: Sorry you're stupid
Mollie mentioned last week the human sexuality class at Northwestern University that watched a live sex act after class, and at the sanctioning of their professor. Now we get a report of that professor “apologizing” — for doing, as he sees it, absolutely nothing wrong at all.
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Sex and the college campus
Parents of students at Northwestern University might be interested to learn where some of the $40,000 they spend annually in tuition goes to. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
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Sex and the Christian campus, again
First things first. Let me confess two things before I dive into this Los Angeles Times story about an extremely predictable controversy at Westmont College about homosexuality.
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Exegetical malpractice in -- of all places -- Newsweek
For a religion reporter editor of a major magazine, Lisa Miller of Newsweek can be woefully undereducated about some religion basics. Such as the Old and New Testaments.
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On seminaries: Time ignores the obvious
A decade or two ago, in a previous ecclesiastical lifetime, I was asked to speak at a national gathering of Episcopalians who had been ordained as permanent deacons. In other words, most of them assisted priests in churches, or played other roles in parish life, after going to seminary. Seminary is the key.
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