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Civil religion and St. Michael, the pop angel

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For generations, presidential inaugurations have served as the high holy days of civil religion for scholars studying the intersection of faith and public life. Want to know about the lowest-common-denominator faith that unites the muddy middle of the American marketplace of ideas? Dissect the religious language that presidents use when standing at that big pulpit on Day One.


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God and Steve McNair

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It’s not a surprise, but Nashville police today classified the deaths of former NFL MVP Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi as a murder-suicide, with Kazemi killing McNair because she suspected he was having an affair with another woman — no, not his wife — and then turning the gun she had just bought on herself.


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Behold, the pope is ... Catholic?

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In a week in which the homepages of the heavy media hitters have been drenched in Michael Jackson coverage, there has, believe it or not, been other news. President Obama met with Russian leaders Medvedev and Putin and negotiated agreements of import to the United States. U.S. troops died in Afghanistan implementing new U.S. strategy. And oh, by the way, Pope Benedict XVI issued a new 144-page encyclical, “Charity in Truth,” or “Caritas in Veritate.”


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What Diogenes said

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Before we launch into Pope Benedict XVI’s views on Michael Jackson, no, wait, the state of the global economy, I would like to note an interesting GetReligion-esque riff by the omnipresent “Diogenes” over at Off the Record blog at the conservative Catholic World News.


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Worshiping the King of Pop

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I came so close to being able to avoid the Michael Jackson worship service held at the Staples Center. But I caught a few minutes while feeding the world’s hungriest baby. (Seriously, I think I gave birth to Otesanek.) I caught the “We Are The World” group sing and a couple of teary eulogies.


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Roman holiday for Turkish converts?

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As a rule, your GetReligionistas focus our attention on the mistakes that mainstream journalists make, or the holy holes that they leave in stories, when they fail to “get religion.” We also like to praise news organizations when they get it right, but whenever we do that readers don’t leave many comments. So, you know, we have to focus on the negative.


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A leading reformist clerical group?

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Independence Day weekend might not be the best time for a major story to get its due. Case in point is this fascinating New York Times story about Iranian clerics defying Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the rigged presidential election there.


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