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Sister Leonella already had a bodyguard and the gunmen in Mogadishu killed him, too. The short Associated Press report carried in the Chicago Tribune clearly states what we know — or think we know — at the moment.
As an individual piece of journalism, last week’s Washington Post article on how a church is using a skateboarding park to share the message of the gospel is excellent. Its appropriately edgy style is matched by a straightforward accounting of the facts and a description of an hour or two spent observing the high-flying action:
Here are some random thoughts this misty Saturday morning while I’m reading the free-speech fallout on the wire services.
And thus it came to pass: The content of Pope Benedict XVI’s speech stopped being the story — including the fact that the speech was an attack on secularism in the West — and the reaction of many Muslim leaders became the story.
Actually, that is not the issue right now as we finish day two of this media storm, a day dominated — to the tune of 1,000 major media reports or so — by Muslim outrage about Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks in Germany about faith, reason and jihad. Click here for an early but updated collection of public reactions to his words, gathered by the awesome Christianity Today weblog crew.
Even as we speak, the journalist previously known as Mollie Ziegler — soon to be professionally known as M.Z. Hemingway — is preparing to walk down a church aisle and tie the knot. Pass the tissues, folks.
As the child of baby boomers, I found Newsweek‘s Sept. 18 piece on how baby boomers’ unprecedented religious journey changed the country revealing. Everything from Transcendental Meditation to Kabbalists to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon to Jehovah’s Witnesses to Scientology gets a mention and a bit of history. The author skillfully weaves these different religions together to form a single theme: baby boomers like their options and independence, and this includes Christian groups like Promise Keepers and the megachurch movement.
Did President Bush lose the evangelical vote? Is he trying to get it back? Was there ever an evangelical vote for the Texan to corral? The history of the Bush administration’s relationship with Christians is nowhere near being closed, but Bush said something rather significant Tuesday that is going to receive quite a bit of attention — first from reactionaries claiming that he is trying to bring a theocracy to America, and later from historians.
Time‘s David Van Biema and Jeff Chu have a cover story about the Prosperity Gospel this week. I can’t wait to read the whole thing, but the full article requires a subscription. So I’m writing based on CNN’s summary. The story appears to take a rather hard look at advocates of the strain of teaching that God wants people to make it rich:
