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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.”
If you are interested in news and commentary about the theological issues linked to Katrina, the Anglican Web Elves up north — wise guys in multiple meanings of that phrase — have started a blog that includes all kinds of useful links. This is the CaNN site, which stands either for Classical Anglican Net News or Clergy Against Nabobs of Negativism. I can never remember which is right. Wait, that last one would be Clergy Against Nattering Nabobs of Negativism, which would be CaNNN.
Alan Cooperman’s article in Sunday’s Washington Post on the how some see God at work in the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina disappoints. In taking on such a heady issue, Cooperman fails to go outside the usual sources and seems to trip up over the fact that the typical heavyweights in Christian circles failed to issue harsh condemnations from heaven on the sinners of New Orleans.
Different people spew their breakfast drinks for different reasons. What gets to me, as a former headline writer, are those page-toppers that seem to say something so obvious that you want to pound your head on your bagel or anything else on the table at the moment.
It seems that the Rt. Rev. Douglas LeBlanc and young Daniel Pulliam are both traveling this long weekend and I am all alone with the hurricanes, the U.S. Supreme Court and who knows what all. So I am, in my own way, going to punt. This means I am going to keep mining my deep, deep file of major stories on which I wanted to blog last week and did not have the time.
Anyone who has read GetReligion for a while knows that, as a rule, we are fans of the work of religion-beat star Laurie Goodstein at The New York Times. Click here for a flashback to her fine work on a story that other papers we could mention have been, well, oversimplifying a bit.
The New Yorker has published another lengthy feature story — this time about an entrepreneurial “cemeterian” in California named Tyler Cassity — that’s available only in print (the Aug. 29 issue). Tad Friend, author of the 12-page article, discusses it in this online Q&A.
As always, we tend to steer clear of op-eds here at GetReligion, since we are all about news. But Colbert King at The Washington Post has written the theologically appropriate column of the day, whether he knows it or not. This is excellent and I hope lots of MSM editors and network producers read it.
The pros at the Religion Newswriters Association have posted a collection of resources linked to Hurricane Katrina and the swarm of spiritual and moral questions events such as this raise. Check it out.
