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I have a friend, and former editor, who used to watch televangelists with a drinking buddy. They would come home from a night on the town and keep drinking while watching CBN or some other preacher network. It was all fun and games until one night they accidentally donated $50 to Pat Robertson. The good news is that they realized they needed to cut back on their drinking.
You know you’re in trouble when you’re a conservative Christian and an unabashedly conservative Christian magazine goes after you for being linked to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. You know you’re in even deeper muck when the Washington Post points this out in an article headlined “From a Conservative, a Lack Of Compassion for Ralph Reed.”
The current immigration debate in Washington, D.C., is chock full of religion issues that are floating just under the above-the-fold stories on the legislative processes and debates. The religious angle in immigration cuts across political boundaries and shoots directly at the center of the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Abdul Rahman, the Christian man who was in danger of being executed under Afghan’s Islamic laws, was released and flown to Italy. The cabinet of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi granted his asylum plea in an expedited process. And just in the nick of time, as the BBC reports:
Vatican’s foreign minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo created a bit of a stir this past weekend when he said that the “time is ripe” for the Pope and China to establish diplomatic relations, according to this Associated Press account of Lajolo’s interview with the Hong Kong station I-Cable TV, which the Vatican made available to the press.
A disturbing trend I’ve noticed among American newswires is the instinct to take a foreign newswire report, copy the news of the story and spin it as a circus or side/freakshow for Americans to laugh at those loonies. The articles often involve religion, and that’s especially disturbing because of the cultural intricacies and details that are often lost in translation.
An Afghan court dismissed the case against a man facing possible execution for converting from Islam to Christianity, according to various reports. His release date has not been announced but could be very soon.
I wanted to share a thought that’s been bugging me amid the furor surrounding the resignation of former Washingtonpost.com blogger Ben Domenech due to evidence that he plagiarized material in his younger years.
By April 8 we should know whether Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown is guilty of copyright infringement in Great Britain. According to reports in the Washington Post and New York Times, the judge’s questions seemed to indicate that he was not too thrilled with the plaintiffs.
