The August cover story for Christianity Today, a magazine I write a column for (here’s the latest) has been making a bit of a splash. Mark Regnerus’ “The Case for Early Marriage” discusses how the chastity advocates forgot to mention that waiting until you’re old to get married might not be the most effective strategy for abstaining from sex until you’re married.
Wafer madness
There is no question what the Roman Catholic Church calls the holy bread that is consecrated during the Mass. It is called the “host.” Anyone who knows anything about Catholic liturgy knows this.
Apocalyptic fun
Josh Levin, senior editor of Slate, wrote an epic series this week on the theme “The End of America.” The series begins here, and rolls on in eight segments and about 23,000 words. That’s not counting Slate’s embedded notes and thousands more words in The Fray. Slate also offered discussions on Facebook and Twitter, so the most obsessive readers easily could have devoted an entire week to debating Levin’s reporting.
That evangelical Jewish journalist
Since I have the pulpit for a bit of tmatt-authorized shameless self-promotion, I’d like to share with you a little UCLA tradition my college roommates and I created and that the university is trying to kill. I’d like to tell you about Undie Run. But I won’t. This really isn’t the right venue for such potty talk.
Can nuns go "beyond Jesus"?
Your GetReligionistas are big fans, when it comes to the work of Associated Press religion scribe Eric Gorski. However, there are times when it is hard to pack all of the good stuff into the small package that is the typical wire-service story.
Correlation is not causation
I meant to highlight this good example of skepticism last week by USA Today‘s Cathy Grossman. It all comes out of an interesting study showing that states with more Catholics tend to favor expanded rights for homosexuals. Grossman highlights the finding and discusses a bit of it in context:
Wal-Mart Fundamentalists
Normally I don’t look at book reviews since they’re just opinion pieces, more or less. But this New York Times review of books about Wal-Mart had some problems with how it handled religion. One of the books is To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise by Bethany Moreton.
Coming to a media outlet near you
As I noted in my Monday post about the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, there’s other news going on in the Anglican world — the rapid move to put openly gay bishop candidates on slates in Los Angeles and Minnesota. Here’s the scoop from the CNN.com website. (A minor problem with this story: I’m not aware of any “aligned Anglican Church in Canada.” Although that national body is headed in roughly the same direction).
Muslim perspectives on dead Christians?
One of the bigger religion stories yesterday was the killing last weekend of seven Christians by Muslim Pakistanis. Many more were wounded in attacks on the Christian community of Gojra. Here’s how the New York Times began its story on the attack, headlined “Hate Engulfs Christians in Pakistan“:
