While my recent thread about rites on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day rolls on and on, please allow me to raise another seasonal issue that is dear to my heart.
Merry Christmas! (This is not a joke)
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Christmas, economics and the spiritual
How often do you see scripture appropriately quoted in a front-page news article? I was hoping I would see something like this in one of the mid-sized American newspapers before the Christmas season was over. To my pleasant surprise, my own local paper, The Indianapolis Star, on Christmas Day gave its readers an informative, meaningful and insightful news article on how the Christmas holiday season and the current economic downturn is affecting people spiritually.
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Reason for the killing spree?
This is not the Christmas story that I wanted to write about, today, but The Los Angeles Times has raised a question that makes it, for me, a must cover for this weblog.
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Can a punishment fit this crime?
My great Aunt-Jennie was Jewish.As a child, I recall my parents teasing her, when a Jew became the focus of media attention: Aunt Jennie, is this good for the Jews?
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Putting the Mass in Christmas
During the past 25 years or so, I have written more than my share of mainstream news stories and columns about religious seasons.
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Give peace a chance
For one angle in the brouhaha surrounding Rick Warren’s slated Inauguration prayer, blogs did most of the heavy lifting. Thanks to Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report, Christina Hoag of The Associated Press and Alex Koppelman of Salon for mentioning, in varying levels of detail, that Warren and rock singer Melissa Etheridge met each other at an event sponsored by the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
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Early Christmas present -- for us
Here’s the perfect Christmas and holiday season gift for that local editor that you’ve been meaning to call about the quality — good or bad — of the religion-news coverage in the newspaper that lands in your front yard each morning.
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The war on Advent
Of all the seasons of the church year, the first — Advent — is definitely the one that leaves me feeling most out of touch with my fellow Americans.
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Spiritually frozen tropics
Sometimes it’s more difficult to praise a fantastic piece of journalism than it is to critique a weak article. With a bad article, you can point out the errors and missteps. But what exactly makes a great piece great? Sometimes it’s difficult to pin down.
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