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As the old saying goes, if you want to blow up a church all you really need to do is change the hymnal. You could say that, and much more, about efforts to change the texts at the heart of life in all liturgical churches.
Year after year, the Divine Mrs. M.Z. Hemingway has — as our resident liturgical Lutheran — played the role of liturgical enforcer here at GetReligion. This is not a small role, since so many of the traditional holidays in various faiths (can you say Chanukah? Or Hanukkah?) have been turned into secular festivals or twisted into forms that have almost nothing to do with their historic meanings.
We joke about the overuse of “fundamentalist” to describe people that reporters don’t like, but I think we need a special award for whatever happened in this Associated Press report filed from Paris:
I was writing a post about how we cover suspected or actual terrorism (which I’ll save for tomorrow) when word came that a gunman fired shots at the United States Embassy in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. As snippets of news came out about this on Twitter, I saw a picture of the gunman (seen here) and it appeared, because the picture wasn’t of great quality, that the man was wearing shorts. That seemed odd attire for a gunman in October. Sarah Schlesinger, a research fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute, explained:
Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) is up to his old tricks and has angered the European Council of Rabbis with his remarks about the Jews’ role in the crucifixion of Jesus. The bishop believes Jews are Christ-killers — and his latest words on the subject come as Pope Benedict XVI begins an inter-faith summit in Assisi. Among his many attributes, I must say Bishop Williamson has great timing.
No, the title of this post does not refer to a now forgotten second tier ’80s band. Mollie and the Spin Doctors will not join Souxsie and the Banshees, Hootie and the Blowfish, Adam and the Ants, and Echo and the Bunnymen in the remainder aisle at Wal-Mart. I chose this title to tell a cautionary tale about religious journalism concerning one of my colleagues at GetReligion, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, and the Communications Office at the Episcopal Church.
Last week we looked at some of the few stories about Muammar Gadafhi’s death that engaged religion angles. This past weekend, the religion angle became unavoidable.
âIn miracles we are dealing . . . with the unreal world of fairy-tale,” Matthew Arnold wrote over 125 years ago in God and the Bible. An observer of the BBC’s religion reporting would not be wrong in concluding the Corporation follows this general line, treating faith with a modicum of skepticism.
A few weeks ago, I spotted a pair of TOMS in Goodwill. Knowing the shoes run anywhere from around $50 to $100, it seemed like a cultural moment where the trendy shoes have made it into a second-hand store.
