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Two people died and 21 people were injured — some quite seriously — during an incident at a sweat lodge at an Arizona resort. There is a spiritual component to this story. It turns out that self-help expert and author James Arthur Ray rented the facility as part of a “Spiritual Warrior” retreat that promised to “absolutely change your life.”
Much to my parents’ chagrin, I resisted early bedtimes from a very young age. So they would let me stay up and watch Johnny Carson. When Carson retired, I moved to Letterman. Somewhere along the line he lost me. He’s just seemed off for, well, a decade. And now I have Craig Ferguson, who I greatly enjoy. Here’s a sample.
One thing everyone can agree on is that Glenn Beck–the conservative star of TV, radio publishing and occasional live events–is hot. He’s also controversial, as a Beck-friendly columnist recently acknowledged in USA Today:
This past June, I commented on the popular use of the word “icon” to describe Michael Jackson. In a way, the story below is a fitting follow-up to the summer stories of the deaths of other icons, such as Farrah Fawcett and Ted Kennedy. (Don’t forget this Wall Street Journal piece that made fun of how low the “icon” bar had been set.)
When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts chartered Tufts College in 1852, the original act of incorporation said the college should promote “virtue and piety and learning in such of the languages and liberal and useful arts as shall be recommended.” The college began when Boston businessman helped the Universalist Church open a college there by donating 20 acres of land to it. Hosea Ballou, a Universalist clergyman was the college’s first president.
Don’t we Americans love studies, surveys and polls? Some are particularly vulnerable to reports that claim to bring statistical precision to messy topics like religion and spirituality.
It’s been a big weekend for God-haunted movie openings, with the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man” duking it out with British comedian Ricky Gervais’s “The Invention of Lying.”
If you want to split an oldline Protestant church, you start a fight over sexuality. You can read that story in major newspapers year after year from coast to coast, world without end. Amen.
I’ve been way too nice to the folks at the Los Angeles Times lately. I mean, I joined GetReligion with complaints about how these weren’t the days of Russ Chandler, or even Bill Lobdell, who was also great. But with the recent work of news columnist Steve Lopez and new blood Robert Faturechi, I’ve had nothing but nice things to say.
