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A Barbie doll with a prayer rug and a hijab? I don’t have a lot of experience with Barbie Dolls (seriously!), but this seemingly incongruent combination struck me as one of those “signs of the times.”
I have a question about the following story in The New York Times. Is there a ghost in this journalistic visit to a Queens parking lot? A snapshot:
The Wall Street Journal ran a book review today that raised way more questions than it answered, including a possble hard-news hook to the ongoing tensions among the chaplains who serve the various branches of the U.S. military. Click here for a flashback on those stories.
The Catholic Church has banned homosexuals from entering seminaries and those currently in seminaries will be removed, according to this report on the Catholic World News Web site.
It seems obvious that two of the most controversial subjects in American government (and thus in journalism) are sex and salvation. The question is whether we now have to add a third “s” word to the list — science. Once you have asked that question, you then can ask whether the reason science is so controversial is that, when it evolves into philosophy and theology, it is shaping what journalists, politicos, academics, artists and others think about sex and salvation. So maybe we do not need the third “s” word after all.
OK, I tried hard on my latest Pat Robertson post to keep things short, so I had better jump in here online (I am still in Chicago during some lectures) and address one or two concerns of readers who could see some of the holes created by my brevity.
What a great read The Associated Press’s Roger Alford provided for us this morning. I forget, being a Presbyterian and a city dweller, that water pollution is not an issue exclusively for fishermen and nature lovers. I say kudos to Alford for his work in digging up this piece — that includes some interchurch conflict over baptism at the end — and doing some quality research as well.
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.”
There are many people on the Religious Right who are tempted to say that the great division in this land — shown by the “pew gap” — is between unbelievers and believers.
