Books

Textbooks? What textbooks?

Sometimes it’s surprising how little institutional memory the mainstream media has. Take this story from the New York Times, explaining a debate over a building plan by a Muslim school in Northern Virginia. Reporter Theo Emery explains that Islamic Saudi Academy officials in Fairfax, Virginia, are seeking permission to erect a new classroom building and move hundreds of students from another campus. But some neighbors are opposed because of congestion. Other neighbors have a different basis of opposition altogether:


Please respect our Commenting Policy

This should have been very interesting

As several readers have written to let us know, this USA Today mini-package seemed like a great idea. I mean, GetReligion readers ought to want to dig into a feature that runs under the headline: “A window into the faith of religion reporters.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy

The Crumb manuscript

The latest issue of The New Yorker includes an 11-page comic strip by R. Crumb that depicts the accounts of the Creation and the Fall from the first three chapters of Genesis. (The feature is an excerpt from the forthcoming The Book of Genesis: Illustrated by R. Crumb.) The online version requires a subscription, and that’s too bad.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Ghosts in the Armenian genocide

On Friday, President Barack Obama broke a campaign promise to Armenian voters to declare the 1915 massacre of Armenians an act of “genocide.” As Glenn Kessler noted in a March Washington Post story anticipating that this might happen, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joseph Biden for years have not minced words about labeling as “genocide” the deaths of Armenians. They regularly lambasted President George W. Bush for not using the word “genocide.” And Obama’s promise that he would use the word — compared with Sen. John McCain’s position — got him enthusiastic support among the Armenian community.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Breaking: Fundamentalists are people too

Several years ago, when I submitted an interview article in the Evangelical Press Association’s Higher Goals Awards competition, my grim (and non-evangelical) judge dismissed the piece because it was a Q&A. Never mind that it was a friendly Q&A with Andrew Sullivan, soon after he wrote Virtually Normal, and appeared in the newspaper of the evangelical ministry Episcopalians United — not exactly Sullivan-worshipping territory.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Christopher Buckley's wistful nonbelief

I’ve posted before in this space about the tensions between Catholic faith and glamour that existed in the household of William F. Buckley Jr. and his beloved wife, Pat. Now comes a tantalizing excerpt, through The New York Times Magazine, from Christopher Buckley’s memoir, Losing Mum and Pup.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

We are all conservative Christians now

Johann Hari, who made news earlier this month with his interview of Tony Blair, has written a 5,000-word profile of Andrew Sullivan for Intelligent Life, a magazine published by The Economist. The story is filled with glowing praise and unquestioning assertions of Sullivan’s crucial importance:


Please respect our Commenting Policy