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The October 17 issue of The New Yorker features an extended profile of Jørn Utzon, the Pritzker Award-winning architect who designed the Sydney Opera House. The profile, written by Geraldine Brooks, focuses on how Utzon was dismissed from the Sydney project because of tensions with a minister of public works who was elected midway through the building project.
I am still catching up after the Tennessee tour, so here is another quick post saved from earlier in the week.
He’s baaaaaaaccccckkkkk. Meaning Ted Olsen over at the Christianity Today blog. He collected several hundred HHGR links (OK, OK, I didn’t count them all) so you don’t have to. Now, I call that servant leadership. Greater love hath no blogger …
Sorry to be absent from the blog so much. I am still on the road for a few more days. However, let me quickly point you toward an interesting call and response over at Beliefnet between Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer and that guy we used to know — young master Jeremy Lott (away writing his book on why hypocrisy beats the alternatives).
Before I head out the door on an eight-day speaking trip (perhaps with spotty blogging prospects in terms of time and web access), I want to try to connect a few dots on the HHGR story.
Here is a level-headed news tip from Andrew Sullivan and, surprise, surprise, it’s about the Roman Catholic Church.
Like the Rt. Rev. Doug LeBlanc, I am not fond of the whole “scare quotes” school of writing about religion and social issues.
Talk about rigging the debate. While nothing may be higher on the Catholic agenda than abortion (even more, it appears at time, than war and poverty), it doesn’t mean the death penalty is some minor issue unrelated to Catholic teaching. A Catholic who supports the death penalty is a cafeteria Catholic. The church is not neutral on the death penalty and it is clearly in opposition to church teachings even if abortion is the only litmus test . . .
Earlier this week, our friends over at the ethics and diversity office at Poynter.org published a column that I wrote pleading for journalists to drop the Rev. Pat Robertson from their list of “usual suspects” that they call to speak for the world of conservative Christians and other moral traditionalists. I thought the headline was pushy, but appropriate: “Excommunicating Pat Robertson.”
