Orthodoxy

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Evangelical royalty's game of thrones

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Frank Schaeffer has, as The Economist once put it, “made a career out of criticising his evangelical parents Francis and Edith Schaeffer.” While I and my people were not influenced by the Schaeffers, they’ve had a tremendous influence upon some of my favorite people (including GetReligion’s Douglas LeBlanc). They founded a Christian retreat center in Switzerland where many people transferred from fundamentalism to evangelicalism or to greater engagement with the culture, including secular culture. They are known for their apologetics and influence on a wide swath of people including everyone from Jesus People organizer Jack Sparks to musicians Larry Norman and Mark Heard. To say those parents were very well regarded among evangelicals, even by their evangelical critics, is an understatement.


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Will Islam affect future for Egyptian gays?

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Anyone who closely followed the events of the Arab spring knows that the demonstrations that rocked Egypt and other lands drew a unique and highly complex mix of people into the streets in opposition to the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.


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Faith-free (almost) cooking on Egyptian TV

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Anyone who knows anything about religious communities — especially ethnic communities — knows that food plays a crucial role in both public and private life. Wednesday-night Lutheran church suppers (hello Garrison Keillor) in the Midwest, or in Baptist fellowship halls in Texas, have quite a bit in common with breaking-the-feast dinners during Ramadan.


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Can't Armenians and Azerbaijanis just get along?

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The Washington Post published a news feature the other day about the stunningly complicated and delicate post-Soviet-era standoff in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, which pits Armenians against Azerbaijanis. On top of the story, of course, is a feature photograph — the first in a series.


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Still rebuilding at Ground Zero

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A couple weeks ago, I went to the liturgy at a Greek Orthodox church in Brooklyn. One of my best friends goes there and her fiance is taking instruction there at Sts. Constantine and Helen Cathedral. My daughters will be in their wedding and they thought it might be good for them to have a refresher on what Greek services are like before the big wedding day.


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Silly Meatless Mondays question

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However, it is silly for a reason. There is an interesting hole in the following story — maybe. I mean, there may be a journalistic hole in the story. Then again, there may be a somewhat obvious religion hole in the event or the trend that the story is about. I do not know.


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So is he Muslim or not? (UPDATED)

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Last week, I woke up to news reports that someone was taken into custody near the Pentagon after a suspicious device was found in his car. Three major thoroughfares were shut down as police investigated. The initial reports included plenty of errors. For instance, no suspicious device was found in a car! Reports that others fled the scene also washed out. The device that “looks like a bomb”? Who knows. The “controlled explosion” they were going to do with the car? It didn’t happen.


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Watch out for Orthodox typos!

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In a way, it just isn’t fair to criticize the reporters and editors who work in small and even midsized newspapers. They often are forced, by the facts on the ground, to be journalistic jacks of all trades to a degree that is often staggering. It is rare to have experienced people working on specialty beats (except, of course, for stories involving religion — oh, sorry, I meant to say sports).


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