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One cannot overstress the following fact: The whole “red” and “blue” typology works at the level of the Electoral College and, much more so, when applied to “progressive” and “traditional” cultures with counties (think college towns vs. rural) and zip codes (think latte artsy urban vs. Home Depot suburban). But it is impossible to divide American culture into two zones at the level of most people’s lives.
There’s little new about the story that Jamie “Jay” Bakker — the son of PTL Club cohosts Jim and Tammy Faye — survived a hellish journey through teenage alcoholism, reclaimed his Christian faith and has become a pastor in Atlanta. Bakker wrote about it in his autobiography, Son of a Preacher Man (2001).
Last week, when the whole world was abuzz with news that the Spanish arm of the Catholic Church had made noises to the effect that condoms were AOK in the fight against AIDS, a few friends asked me what I thought of this new development of doctrine.
GetReligion fell silent last week on the several stories about Rolling Stone rejecting an ad for Today’s New International Version Bible. Why?
Some of you may have heard that we had a wedding down here in Palm Beach County. Yes, Donald Trump’s third trip to the altar did receive a little bit of media attention here and elsewhere.
In a story that must have been in the can for a while, Newsweek reports that 271 independent members of what used to be known as the Christian Booksellers Association closed down in 2003. No word on store closures for 2004, but Bill Anderson, president of the CBA, “estimates that 200 more are sputtering.”
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the Los Angeles Times is on a tear these days on the religion beat? Several times a week, the newspaper’s push-tech email I receive every morning includes two or three stories that dig into the religion hook of major events and the lives of interesting people.
During the past few years, I have hesitated to write about the national coverage of Baylor University’s academic civil war — either in my Scripps Howard columns or on this blog.
In an interview last year with Salon, Terry Gross of Fresh Air addressed the charge of some conservatives that National Public Radio works from a liberal bias:
