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A film featuring exploding vehicles, men with rippling biceps, lots of gunfire, women of the big bosom — it must be the latest work of Michael Bay film, or a project aimed at “giving succor to the religious right.”
From the non-apocalyptic front in Supreme Court news, Ronald Brownstein writes in today’s Los Angeles Times:
Jeffrey Weiss of The Dallas Morning News offered an amazing package about Pete Seeger on Saturday and Sunday, including a Q&A about his nominal Unitarianism, another Q&A on his standing up to the House Un-American Activities Committee and his life as a happy lefty; and still another brief feature on his strawberry shortcake recipe.
Evangelical Protestants, it’s sometimes said, are cautious in doctrine but willing to experiment broadly in how they get the message across. That’s always been evident with Willow Creek Community Church, which — as historian Randall Balmer observed in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory — worships in a facility that looks more like a corporate headquarters than a worship space.
Comedy and abortion rarely mix in film — Alexander Payne tried it with Citizen Ruth in 1996 — but director Don Roos (pictured) now adds his film Happy Endings to the list. (Laura Dern of Citizen Ruth is in the cast.)
For a few decades now, John Lennon’s “Imagine” has served as a secularist hymn. From the end of The Killing Fields to the post-9/11 America: A Tribute to Heroes broadcast, “Imagine” has been there to tell us that the world could be so much more pleasant if only everyone were inclusive enough to set aside what they believe about God, the afterlife and other trivial matters.
Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service does a brilliant job this week of contrasting the United Church of Christ’s “God is Still Speaking” ad blitz with its historic image:
Did ya ever notice that, for all the fuss about Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans, Roe vs. Wade still stands?
Today’s New York Times includes this report about Sleeper Cell, a 10-part Showtime series about a faithful Muslim named Darwyn (yes, we get it) who infiltrates a terrorist group. The Times mentions the producers’ goal of high realism, but also must grant that, while some Muslim FBI agents exist, there’s no way to know if any such agent has infiltrated a terrorist cell.
