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Hats off to Robert Pigott, religious affairs correspondent of the BBC, who takes on the ambitious question of how God has fared during the first decade of the 21st century. The series title of “What Have the Noughties Done for God?” may be too precious by half, but I cannot dismiss it as being forgettable.
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).
Gosh, did everybody see that wave of coverage of the United Methodist Church’s recent General Conference, the one in which evangelicals won two very important victories — moving in precisely the opposite direction as the course taken by the Episcopal Church?
While it may surprise GetReligion readers who reside in some parts of the United States, there are thousands of evangelical Christians — millions, globally — who worship in United Methodist pews week after week. That is certainly true down in the Southeastern corner of the Sunbelt, where there seems to be a United Methodist congregation in every small town and in almost every zip code.
I came across an interesting quote over at Beliefnet editor Steven Waldman’s blog. It comes from an essay written by the founder of the Interfaith Alliance, C. Welton Gaddy, and published on the Huffington Post. In it, Gaddy shares memories of newsman Walter Cronkite, a former chairman of the Interfaith Alliance. The Alliance exists to fight groups that it believes are part of the omnipresent religious right:
Terry highlighted one of the more glaring holes in some of the stories covering the public health insurance debate. There have been some other problems with the media’s look at the abortion debate.
The New Yorker‘s Joan Acocella writes elegantly. Her recent article on Michael Jackson as a dancer was one of the finest non-mawkish reflections that followed Jackson’s sudden death early this month.
So my husband fell ill with the flu last week — likely swine flu. We’ve been taking the necessary precautions, which include not attending Divine Service today at our church. While much of the hoopla surrounding swine flu is overblown — we’ve learned it’s basically the same as normal flu, just scarier sounding — the pandemic is affecting the way congregations handle communion.
What would you ask President Obama if you got an interview with him this week? ABC News’ Terry Moran sat down with the President yesterday to discuss his health care reform effort. It’s not the longest interview, but most of the questions deal with the political debate surrounding health care. Then, at the end, it shifts to Afghanistan for a couple of questions. Finally, we get this:
