Once upon a time, I had one of the best seats at the famous “Stand in the Gap” rally held on the National Mall in 1997 by the Promise Keepers organization, since I served as a kind of religion-news color commentator for MSNBC — the only network that covered that massive event from dawn to dusk.
Put that cup of coffee down
I started to put this post up this morning but decided that it was not worth the risk. I did not want people spewing their coffee onto their keyboards.
Eat mor non-Sunday chikin
Let’s face it, there are not many controversial fast-food chains in America when it comes to issues of religion, politics and culture (as opposed to super-size-me issues of fat, cholesterol, calories, salt and other forms of human passion).
The fundamentalists are everywhere
There’s a certain irony in the relationship between atheism and Christianity and this ABC News story highlights that. It’s about some subset of atheists adopting a debaptism rite modeled on the Christian baptism rite.
A few strange words from 'El Mas Loco'
Does anyone out there remember that recent post about that bizarre and very powerful narcotics gang down in Mexico that calls itself La Familia Michoacana? If that doesn’t ring a bell, you may remember the following memorable headline about this bunch in Time magazine: “Mexico’s Meth Warriors: Fueled by Evangelical zeal and America’s appetite for meth, a provincial Mexican gang breaks into the big time.”
Poor, uneducated and easy to barbecue?
Narco-thugs for Jesus (no not that One)
There are so many positive things that I want to say about the gripping Time news feature that ran under the following double-decker headline: “Mexico’s Meth Warriors: Fueled by Evangelical zeal and America’s appetite for meth, a provincial Mexican gang breaks into the big time.”
Pitching softballs to only one team?
Religion reporting as public therapy?
Once again, we need to flash back in time to look at that amazing and increasingly relevant memo that New York Times editor Bill Keller wrote to his staff in response to an in-house study of his news operation. You may recall that the study was called “Preserving our Readers’ Trust (pdf)“.
