When people ask me where I’m from — a common question for anyone in Washington, D.C. — my standard response is that I am a prodigal Texan.
Hello Yankees, this is (sorta) Texas
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Rounding up Madrid's 'Popestock'
I’m often amazed by anything that can get a million or so young people to do anything or gather anywhere in one location. The Roman Catholic Church managed to do that at World Youth Day (or, what Rocco Palmo calls “Popestock”), which concluded in Madrid yesterday.
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Ethics evolve with technology
It’s been well over a week since the New York Times published a provocative piece where women are interviewed who, after using fertility drugs and procedures, become pregnant with twins and decide to undergo “selective reduction” for lifestyle reasons. That’s a euphemism for the killing in utero of one perfectly healthy twin in a pregnancy. It’s an unbelievably difficult read if you’re of the mind that ending these lives is a major human rights crisis. But I can’t help but think it’s a difficult read even if you support the right of people to abort any child for any reason at any time in the pregnancy. I wanted to write about it all week but found it too difficult to broach.
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Evangelical royalty's game of thrones
Frank Schaeffer has, as The Economist once put it, “made a career out of criticising his evangelical parents Francis and Edith Schaeffer.” While I and my people were not influenced by the Schaeffers, they’ve had a tremendous influence upon some of my favorite people (including GetReligion’s Douglas LeBlanc). They founded a Christian retreat center in Switzerland where many people transferred from fundamentalism to evangelicalism or to greater engagement with the culture, including secular culture. They are known for their apologetics and influence on a wide swath of people including everyone from Jesus People organizer Jack Sparks to musicians Larry Norman and Mark Heard. To say those parents were very well regarded among evangelicals, even by their evangelical critics, is an understatement.
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Will Islam affect future for Egyptian gays?
Anyone who closely followed the events of the Arab spring knows that the demonstrations that rocked Egypt and other lands drew a unique and highly complex mix of people into the streets in opposition to the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.
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Faith-free (almost) cooking on Egyptian TV
Anyone who knows anything about religious communities — especially ethnic communities — knows that food plays a crucial role in both public and private life. Wednesday-night Lutheran church suppers (hello Garrison Keillor) in the Midwest, or in Baptist fellowship halls in Texas, have quite a bit in common with breaking-the-feast dinners during Ramadan.
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Republicans give, but ...
Someone please tell me to stop reading articles about Michele Bachmann. Really, the Republican race is much bigger than her campaign and there are so many other candidates and issues to consider. But I cannot wrap my head around some of the strange coverage of her faith as these articles have become my recent guilty pleasure for some reason.
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Pod people: abortion, confession, absolution
On this week’s Crossroads, host Todd Wilken and I talked about media coverage of Rick Perry’s appeal to evangelicals, the role of religion in the U.K. riots and World Youth Day.
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Perry may get fair coverage, said a source
Long-term GetReligion readers probably know that I am a conservative Democrat with Texas roots (so that makes me pro-life and willing to raise taxes, I guess). Tea parties? I like my tea iced, with lemon.
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