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The big news in David D. Kirkpatrick’s latest New York Times report from the front pews of the Culture Wars is hinted at in the lead and then buried way near the bottom. The big news: It seems that a few leaders on the Catholic left may agree to back a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriages.
What are we supposed to think when we read that pastor so-and-so is controversial because he is the leader of such-and-such a church (which may or may not call itself a church), which is part of the emergent stream of the emerging conversation inside the emerging or emergent church?
The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee is trying to find a successor to Bishop Bertram Herlong, and its 14-ballot roller coaster of an election, still unresolved, shows the profound divisions within the diocese.
The stunning news from the funeral of Los Angeles Times legend Otis Chandler is that the liturgists at the famous All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena were not more creative with the content of the service.
In Wednesday’s Lenten post, I noted that Slate‘s Andrew Santella wrote an interesting article about the revival of Lenten practices among Protestants. I chided him for throwing all Protestants together, from those that have marked Lenten penitence since the beginning with those evangelicals that are rediscovering the practices of the church.
Anyone who knows anything about global religious-liberty issues has known for several years that Nigeria is a bomb waiting to go off. In the north, Muslim states have pressed for sharia law. In the largely Christian and animist south, leaders have struggled to embrace the rule of law, as defined in the West. The two legal doctrines cannot, by definition, coexist and, thus, Nigeria has been sitting on a legal and religious landmine.
So speech and actions that “glorify” terror are now illegal in England, which represents a kind of victory for Prime Minister Tony Blair.
A dear friend of mine got married a few weeks ago in a service at a traditional Episcopal sanctuary. She’s not Episcopalian but she didn’t want to get married at her own church. That’s because her congregation meets for worship in a movie theater.
With Danish and Norwegian embassies in flames this weekend, it is clear that Muslim outrage over a Denmark newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad is not going away. We previously highlighted some of the issues involved, namely that Islam forbids rendering Muhammad in visual media and the obvious tension between Western values of freedom of the press and a Europe with a growing Muslim population. Yesterday Terry covered the stateside media treatment. But this religion and media story is causing such an international crisis that I feel compelled to point out a few other things.
