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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:
We had a discussion in the comments on a post last week that has stayed with me. I had written that generic refrains of bias at given newspapers bother me because they fail to take into account how individual reporters perform their jobs differently. I also said that some complaints fail to take into account other things that are important when writing a story, such as writing well.
Rick Warren, who pastors the Saddleback megachurch in California and has sold a gazillion copies of Purpose Driven books, is frequently named a top evangelical by a variety of publications. He advocates using business practices to drive church growth and his teachings are widely followed by fellow Southern Baptists and folks from all denominations who want to increase their church rolls. He encourages pastors to preach about day-to-day problems rather than the historic Christian themes of sin, redemption and atonement. Warren could not be more popular.
Laurie Goodstein has a fascinating article in The New York Times about Zoroastrians. Their ancient and formerly sizable religion is facing a crisis of dwindling numbers. These followers of the prophet Zarathustra — and devotees of the divine being Ahura Mazda — are worried about the survival of their Persian religion.
This weekend, while many Americans were wrapping up their last summer vacations, another American was seen on an Al Qaeda propaganda video. The video, featuring ex-Californian Adam Gadahn, warned Americans to convert to Islam before it’s too late.
Neela Banerjee highlighted a fascinating evangelical phenomenon in a New York Times article. The article shows that Banerjee is really going out of her way to cover a wide variety of folks on her religion beat:
Two Fox journalists who were kidnapped several weeks ago were released on Sunday. To some extent it’s the same old story with a happy ending: Muslim terrorists kidnap reporters. Media groups express outrage. Hostages released.
Some unnamed Associated Press reporter in Oregon did a phenomenal job of working the phone to pull together a rather comprehensive survey of churches in the Beaver State that have or peal bells.
I really liked this Peggy Fletcher Stack piece in the Salt Lake Tribune. It’s not groundbreaking, but it nicely surveys a variety of churches in the Salt Lake region about an issue that’s somewhat universal.
