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There’s a lot of talk in the wake of Monday night’s Sojourners/Call to Renewal Forum on whether the subject of faith has become too interwoven in American politics and public life. That is an excellent question, but one I’m not going to address here because there are more relevant topics to discuss, such as the media coverage of the CNN-broadcast event.
Jack Kevorkian, the former pathologist and convicted murderer, was released from prison last week. It’s been interesting to see how the mainstream media have treated him and the euthanasia issue he is associated with. They’ve largely touted him as a compassionate, passionate doctor who helped terminally ill people in need of being put out of their misery. Any voices, such as those in the disability advocate group Not Dead Yet, that note that most of those who were killed with Kevorkian’s help weren’t terminally ill so much as disabled or depressed — were silenced.
The big winner in last night’s Democratic debate, according to a bunch of thinker-types, seems to be Sen. Hillary Clinton. She sounded presidential, she knew her stuff and remains the clear leader of the field, they say. But did she sound like a Midwesterner?
Anyone who knows anything about life in the USA knows that one of our strongest forms of civic religion is Christian football.
One of GR’s regular commenters, Rathje, drew our attention to one of the most lively discussions about religion I’ve read in a great long while.
So the Guardian ran an Associated Press story on Saturday about Pope Benedict XVI approving recognition of martyrdom for an Austrian who was beheaded by the Nazis for refusing to serve in Hitler’s army. The story ran far and wide.
In case you were wondering, the Associated Press reports that presidential aspirants include seven Roman Catholics, three Methodists, three Baptists, one Episcopalian, one Presbyterian, one Mormon and one who is “simply” a Christian.
Sometimes the biggest news stories are sitting right out there in the open where everyone can see them. But that’s the problem. There are trends that are so big that we can’t see them. This makes the big story hard to write because it is hard to pick one piece of it and get it into a newspaper.
Thomas B. Edsall wrote Thursday on The Huffington Post about how some Republicans are working to persuade others that IOKIYAR (for “It’s OK If You’re a Republican”) should not apply to Rudy Giuliani.
