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There was a stunning, amazing news story yesterday in the struggling, scandal-rocked Orthodox Church in America and the man at the center of it used be known as James Paffhausen.
It’s a good thing I have been following the Proposition 8 battle because if I hadn’t, there is no way I would have understood this Los Angeles Times story at all. It’s about a protest organized by opponents of the Proposition 8, the initiative that passed Tuesday amending the California Constitution to define marriage as an institution involving one man and one woman. While a non-constitutional ballot initiative saying the same thing passed with an even greater margin 8 years ago, the state supreme court had ruled that bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. Anyway, this initiative — already in the works before the June ruling — passed and there have been various protests around the state.
Regular readers at this weblog are probably aware of the fact that each of my computers — at home and work — contains an email folder labeled “GetReligion guilt.” It contains religion-beat articles that I really intended to write about, but things, kept, getting, in, the, way.
Based on personal email, I know there are GetReligion readers who want to know what I think of that small — but fascinating — USA Today story about one of the statistical mysteries in Christianity here in the American context. The question is, “What in the world is actually happening in Eastern Orthodoxy?”
Many GetReligion readers have been anxious for more religion stories that deal with the economic crisis.
From time to time, readers on the left side of the cultural aisle get upset with the GetReligionistas because of the amount of space we dedicate to abortion and other “Culture of Life” issues.
Six of 17 chaplains Virginia State Police chaplains have resigned because of new restrictions on prayer. The state police superintendent ordered them to offer only non-denominational prayers at public events. All stories about movement on First Amendment protections are big and the Washington-area papers made sure to cover it.
The other day, I added an “Orthodoxy” category to our filing system here at GetReligion.org — for a perfectly logical reason.
New York Times religion writer Peter Steinfels devoted his Saturday column to media use of the word “orthodox” as a religious descriptor. The article, titled “The Audacity of Claiming the Last Word on This Word,” is a thoughtful and interesting media critique against the media being the arbiter of what makes an orthodox believer.
