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The Westboro Baptist Church saga has always intrigued and appalled me, in large part because of my background in church-state studies and First Amendment rights. I am also intrigued with people who are so radical that they defy easy description. As the old saying goes, sometimes people go so far to the right that they end up on the left (and vice versa).
There’s an old joke that Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah, Protestants don’t recognize the pope as the leader of the Christian faith and Baptists don’t recognize each other at the liquor store.
If you are interested in reading a really great news story about pancakes, The Newspaper That Lands In My Yard has just published a really fine one. It has lots of butter and syrup.
A reader pointed us to this piece in the Canton Repository by Charita Goshay headlined “Clergy debate over Planned Parenthood shows no signs of abating.” OK, a journalistic debate sounds promising. Until you read it and see that the reporter managed to locate clergy on only one side of the story. And that side, you will be stunned to know, is the side that sees no problems with Planned Parenthood or the services it provides, including abortion.
As I have said many times here at GetReligion, I cannot think of a topic in my work for the Scripps Howard News Service that draws a higher rate of response from readers than columns I about changes in how believers worship — especially changes affecting the Church of Rome.
Massive layoffs at mainline denominational headquarters. The local Episcopal diocese just sold off several lovely sanctuaries.
Have you seen those “I’m a Mormon” ads that are, well, everywhere I seem to go on the internet? They’re always the “recommended” YouTube video that pops up when I sign on to show my children pictures of cats or whatever.
A decade or two ago, in a previous ecclesiastical lifetime, I was asked to speak at a national gathering of Episcopalians who had been ordained as permanent deacons. In other words, most of them assisted priests in churches, or played other roles in parish life, after going to seminary. Seminary is the key.
If you are a consumer who truly loves books (and libraries, and news magazines, etc.), that recent A1 Washington Post news feature on the death dive of the Borders bookstore chain was a real eyeopener. Grab a box of tissues and read it, including this shot of reality:
