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There has been some amazing coverage surrounding this morning’s execution of convicted murderer Stanley “Tookie” Williams. The gang leader, who killed four people in two separate robberies in 1979, unsuccessfully tried to receive clemency from various courts and Gov. Schwarzennegger.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has put into words part of what I was struggling to say in my post about the God-haunted side of comic genius Richard Pryor.
The European papers are all over this study from Oslo University on the trauma abortion can cause, which appears to be greater than the trauma caused by a miscarriage. The interesting thing here is that while European journalists jump all over this story, there is relatively little noise over in the United States. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
I’ve caught most of Showtime’s Sleeper Cell. The 10-hour miniseries follows an Al Qaeda terrorist group in Los Angeles and the FBI agent who infiltrates it.
… For editors to require religion-beat specialists to pull dozens of holiday and Holy Day stories out of a hat. Here is the official Religion Newswriters Association tip list for stories this year.
Face it — it’s very hard for someone who grew up as a Southern Baptist preacher’s son (that would be me) to feel very comfortable with the kind of language that the late Richard Pryor used on stage.
Nearly four out of five folks in this country self-identify as Christian. And (to understate widly) there are very few political issues that 80 percent of the country agree on. The war in Iraq certainly is not one of them. Many of the soldiers fighting the war are Christian. Many of the people opposing the war are Christian. Christian lawmakers voted for the war. Some Christian lawmakers voted against the war. One Christian voted for the war before he voted against it.
Now it’s official: The “Have Yourself a Megachurch Christmas” story is going to roll all the way through Dec. 25, which is the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (to get technical about it).
I am not the kind of person who lingers over the business pages in my morning newspaper. In fact, that is probably the section to which I pay the least attention and it is certainly not the turf in which I expect to find faith issues covered in a detailed and sensitive manner.
