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To mark the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, Newsweek has published a poignant but sloppy story about two pastors scarred by the experience. The contrasts are strong:
In the wake of some give-and-take about what constitutes a religious and what a secular perspective on the recent post about the ‘death’ of conservative Christianity, I was much taken by a brief BBC Newshour story a few days on, of all things, ghosts. Did you know that, according to a recent Theos poll, almost four in ten Britons believe in ghosts? Five out of ten believe in heaven, and, and seven out of ten believe in the human soul. Apparently the belief in ghosts has actually grown over the past four decades.
Yesterday I noted a Detroit Free Press story that referred to a Good Friday Mass at a Catholic church. No Mass is celebrated on Good Friday but the service is called the Mass of the Presanctified. So I sort of gave the reporter a pass, even though it violates Associated Press style guidelines.
Please allow me to jump into tmatt’s file of guilt for a moment of confession about a recent news item from Fort Worth, Texas.
I will not see the dead-tree-pulp edition of the Washington Post Sunday edition until tomorrow, since it is delivered at my office on Capitol Hill.
In the wake of EEE’s post on the latest nonNewsweek sermon from the Rt. Rev. Jon Meacham, please allow me to jump in with a comment or two on the Wall Street Journal counter-statement — before several dozen readers send me the URL.
Many of you know that Newsweek editor Jon Meacham has written books on topics as diverse as the friendship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the faith of the founding Fathers, and the nation’s seventh President, Andrew Jackson. In the YouTube clip above, he’s discoursing in a Gettsburg College lecture about faith and President Abraham Lincoln.
Of all the stories written about the defrocking of Ann Holmes Redding, an Episcopal priest who converted to Islam, the most widely disseminated seemed to be this one from CNN. That’s unfortunate, since it was remarkably shallow and one-sided. No one from The Episcopal Church, much less the diocese that disciplined her, is quoted:
