William Frey, the Episcopal Church’s retired Bishop of Colorado, has often said his fellow Episcopalians can confuse Anglicanism’s celebrated via media with merely finding the synthesis of a thesis and an antithesis. As tmatt has mentioned before, Bishop Frey explains the impossibility of this approach by joking that, for some, the via media between a Christian and an atheist understanding of Jesus is “Jesus is occasionally Lord.”
In case of rapture, this blog will be unmanned
A pastor friend of mine passed along a truly horrible story by Reuters’ Andrea Hopkins. The premise is that “moderate” Christians are fighting “fundamentalist” Christians with regard to the rapture. The article is poorly written in a journalistic sense: it’s one-dimensional, doesn’t grasp scope of the issue and is layered with opinion.
A series of tubes that go straight to God
Washington Post Foreign Service writer Kevin Sullivan had a lengthy piece on religion and the Internet today. The article is full of details about how Indian Hindus use the Internet in their religious devotion. Here was one of the early paragraphs:
What America doesn't know about religion
We’ve ranted and raved about the lack of knowledge important Americans like senators and Congressmen have about Islam, but now it’s time to have a fit about how little most Americans know about the religion that is all around them.
Positively strange
Sometimes Oprah is too much even for Oprah America. That’s the encouraging sign evident in two essays — one in Newsweek, the other in Salon — that take apart her enthusiasm for The Secret, the latest bestselling book (and companion DVD) that champions prosperity theology.
In their own words
We tend to look at mainstream media religion reporters rather than mainstream media religion columnists, but there’s a new religion column in the San Francisco Chronicle that’s worth a look. David Ian Miller writes the column and he came to religion coverage quite recently, after covering city hall, personal finances and technology news. He decided to interview one person each week about their religion.
The Safety Dance
So if it’s Monday, that must mean I write about something from The New York Times Sunday Magazine. And so I will. Mark Oppenheimer used the hook of a nondenominational university in Arkansas permitting dance for the first time as a way to explore some Christians’ view of dancing. The piece is ridiculously smooth and well-written and looks at the issue from a number of angles.
The war on Epiphany
I am preparing to leave beautiful Colorado, where I spent the last few days of Christmas and the beginning of Epiphany with my family.
Young master Jeremy on Foleygate
As GetReligion readers know, I rather enjoy pointing out the good work of friends of this blog. That’s one of the nice things about communicating in such a personal medium.
