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I have a friend who grew up in Japan and, a decade of so ago, he took me over for a week to speak to several gatherings of Christian missionaries with years of experience in that unique cultural environment.
Christmas gift giving puts our little household in a quandary. I spend hours figuring out what to get my husband for Christmas to show him the careful thought and energy I put in to finding him something he wants. He, in turn, will wait until Christmas Eve and then complain about the traffic he has to fight to get me a video game. After a long trip to the mall, I gush about finding the perfect gift for family members. He wails about the mass consumption that reeks during Christmas. Ah yes, the time of year when people give out of love and give out of necessity.
I’m a big fan of the Reuters religion team and love that reporters there are given time and freedom to really explore stories. But I have to admit that this story about a Muslim revival in Chechnya didn’t exactly delight me from the get go. Here’s how it begins:
It would be impossible not to be moved by USA Today feature story about the volunteers at Santa-America, who swing into action this time of year in 40 states to minister to children who are living in hospice care or those who face the lose of a parent.
Four years ago, a battle over religion at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs seemed intractable. Now tempers are cooler, according to an Associated Press story by Dan Elliott. Interestingly, the story, “Air Force Academy says religious climate improving,” says one solution to the problem was more religion, not less:
If you want a play-by-play of Oral Roberts’s life, look no further than Bill Sherman of the Tulsa World. Sherman’s piece was one of the first posted when news first broke that Roberts had died and is jam packed with Roberts’s chronology. For example, I didn’t know this piece of info: “The O.W. Coburn School of Law opened in 1979, and in 1985 regents voted to give the school to CBN University–now Regent University–in Virginia Beach, Va.”
It’s a cliche for a reason — sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Suffice to say, I quickly understood what this Washington Post story was about before I even read it thanks to the picture included with the story (and reproduced here to the right). It’s about a poster produced by the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) and distributed to some 7,000 churches in an effort to get Hispanics to increase participation. As you can see, the poster has stirred a bit of controversy.
I sit on the side of the cultural divide that is more familiar with MC 900 Ft. Jesus than Oral Roberts and his 900-foot Jesus. But it’s hard to forget Roberts’ dramatic televangelism, his faith-healing, the travails of his various ventures, his contributions to the world of direct mail and database management. The man’s a legend and many people are mourning his death.
Obviously, one of the major religion stories of the day is the death of the Rev. Oral Roberts at the age of 91. I would imagine that the major newspapers have had obituaries ready for a decade or more.
