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CNN.com features a story about popular phrases that are wrongly attributed to the Bible. At the time I’m writing this, it has 111 pages of comments. That’s like 6,200 comments. And to think that editors sometimes wonder if religion stories have enough appeal.
To every thing there is a season, and Religion News Service this week chose to publish an excellent package of stories and sidebars — eight items in all — on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. (Here and here, Sarah earlier highlighted some of the coverage of the KJV milestone.)
Yesterday was Palm Sunday, which meant special services for many Christians. My congregation gathered outside with palms for the first reading, then sang the 9th century hymn “All Glory, Laud and Honor” as we all processed into the sanctuary. Our children’s choir, bell choir and horns were all in action. And we also had what I’m sure is the longest Gospel reading of the year, so long that we took six singing breaks. The reading is literally 141 verses long, All of Matthew 26 and all of Matthew 27. I wrangled and threatened my children and somehow we got through it. I’m also happy to report that my 1-year-old has stopped shouting “No!” during the sermon. Mostly.
Some people look at Newsweek‘s precipitous decline as an example of how to destroy a magazine. (Its most recent issue had six ads.) Other people apparently want to emulate it. Or so I’m led to believe by TIME magazine’s decision to have former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham write its cover story celebrating Rob Bell and his views on hell.
In case you haven’t heard, this year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. The Tennessean has a little quiz to test your biblical knowledge (though it’s not King James-focused per se).
An odd headline came to my inbox yesterday: “Pope exonerates Jews for Jesus’ death.” It was from the Associated Press, and I found it odd not that the pope had made clear that Jews did not have Jesus’ blood on their hands. It was odd that this was being reported as news now.
