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The October issue of The Atlantic offers another rich meal of religion references, especially in Joshua Green’s “Roy and His Rock,” an 8,200-word essay on Judge Roy Moore and his traveling granite monument of the Ten Commandments. The Atlantic‘s website limits access to the full article, but I’ll quote some favorite passages here.
There are many people on the Religious Right who are tempted to say that the great division in this land — shown by the “pew gap” — is between unbelievers and believers.
It’s rather hard to get through the working day with a live video feed on your computer screen showing the U.S. Senate hearings on John Roberts. But I think The Washington Post‘s blog is amazing. Then, of course, there is National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog. What other blogs are readers following right now? This is all just another sign of an evolving technology and its changing role in our lives. Is anyone vblogging yet?
There is an old saying in the world of mass media theory (especially if you hang around the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) that “technology shapes content.” This is certainly true in the world of newspapers. Ask any layout specialist or headline writer who has ever tried to make the move from a broadsheet newspaper to one that uses a tabloid format.
Please consider this a short follow-up post after my recent “Watching Katrina with Sen. Moynihan” effort. You may recall that this raised some questions about the moral, cultural and even religious issues looming in the background of the failed evacuation of New Orleans.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which often covers news stories that the news desk does not want, had an interesting feature this week about a quiet little political trend in American Judaism.
I’m not sure these days whether to be thankful for The New Yorker‘s frequent interest in the Godbeat or to be frustrated that it posts so few religion stories to its website. Fair enough, the web content for the September 12 issue focuses heavily on Hurricane Katrina’s devastating effect on New Orleans. When your archives include a 28,000-word essay by John McPhee on efforts to control Mississippi River flooding, you’re wise to raid the archives.
Stephen A., I think you’re missing a critical distinction. The Mormons are not Trinitarian, to put it mildly; their 19th century Scientology-like theology is in contradiction to every other Christian group, and certainly to doctrinally focused traditions such as fundamentalism. The fundamentalists think that the Catholics are wrong, to be sure, but the scope of error is entirely different. Listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” sometime and notice how they’ve changed the words. Indeed, that is part of the discomfort about the Mormons. Externally, they are relentlessly normal; their theological innards are, well, weird. . . .
While the 2008 Presidential elections seem a long way off — and we are still appropriately focused on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — I found a bit of presidential politics surprisingly refreshing. Here is an article in this month’s Washington Monthly on “Mitt Romney’s Evangelical Problem.”
