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I keep meaning to highlight two stories from earlier this week that dealt with female ordination. The first was a very well-written and interesting profile of the Rev. Marsha Foster Boyd by David Crumm in the Detroit Free Press. She was ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and will be taking over as the fourth president of Detroit’s Ecumenical Theological Seminary in October.
Like a gazillion other people, I’ve started reading The Christian Science Monitor each morning. That’s because former hostage Jill Carroll has been telling her story on its pages over the last week and a half.
As I’m weeks away from my own impending nuptials, the thought of marrying more than one person seems awful — like residing in the Fifth Circle of Hell. Spouses are like noses. If you have more than one, people look at you funny.
The New York Times ran a rather shocking article on British Muslim calls to violence. The hook is that the Antiterrorism Act of 2006 makes it a crime to glorify or encourage political violence but that some Muslim leaders are doing just that without government reprisal.
Stephanie Simon has another great story in Thursday’s Los Angeles Times. She’s the faith and values reporter who consistently hits her pieces out of the park.
I was reading this completely engrossing CNN story on Malika el Aroud, the widow of suicide bomber Abdessater Dahmane. He was one of the two fellows who killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, head of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, by pretending to be broadcast journalists. Their camera hid an explosive. Anyway, she now lives in Switzerland with her new husband running a fan website for Osama bin Laden.
I’m not one of those people who pretends I caught something on TV because I happened to be flipping through the channels.
I read more gossip sites by 9 a.m. than most people read all day. So forgive me if I’m still stuck on the Mel Gibson story. Today’s entry comes from Alan Cooperman at The Washington Post. I don’t think the story is terribly important or hard-hitting but I do think it’s worth noting.
We all agreed to take a look at Jon Meacham’s lengthy mash note to the sainted Billy Graham. I alternately enjoyed the Newsweek piece and felt it went a bit over the top in luscious praise. But I’m pretty sure I would have hated it if I hadn’t read Meacham’s earlier pieces on the Nativity, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
