Last week, tmatt reflected on how the above reading at Margaret Thatcher's funeral was being portrayed by some in the media. It seems some had a rather narrow and inaccurate interpretation of the text.
But I wanted to mention a couple of funny corrections affiliated with that text. People kept sending us emails about this and they finally added up. So here's Foreign Policy:
After being carried through the streets of London in a flag-draped coffin aboard a gun carriage, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest this morning in St. Paul's Cathedral. But the big story of the day wasn't Maggie. No, it was a 19-year-old Texan who stole the show from the deceased Iron Lady.
With a poise reminiscent of the elder Thatcher, Amanda Thatcher, Margaret's granddaughter, delivered a reading from Ephesians that has the British media agog. Amanda, who lives with her mother in Texas, chose a rather militant passage that calls on believers to "put on the whole armour of God." But the reading was a good one, delivered with remarkable grace by a young woman suddenly thrust into the international spotlight. In a tweet that nicely summarized the breathlessBritishmediareaction, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland couldn't help but speculate "whether somewhere a Texas Republican operative is watching Amanda Thatcher thinking 'Wonder if she has political ambitions...' "
... Poised, eloquent, the descendant of conservative royalty, evangelical Christian, and Texas-bred: It all seems to add up to a promising political future. She certainly hit it out of the park in her introduction to the world, and isn't it pretty easy to picture a clip of Amanda's speech at her grandmother's funeral playing a role in a future campaign commercial?
And (wait for the punchline) here's the correction:
An earlier version of this post referred to the Biblical passage from which Amanda Thatcher read as the Epistles. She read from Ephesians, which is one of the Epistles.
(Cue: Audible sigh.)
And yet that might be a less odd correction than what ran in the New York Times on the same matter:
Correction: April 19, 2013
Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about the funeral of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain referred incorrectly to the biblical passage read by Amanda Thatcher as the first lesson at her grandmother’s funeral. It was Ephesians 6:10-18 -- not VI Ephesians 10:18.
Or as one professor of religious studies put it prior to the correction:
Check out the report on Thatcher's funeral. I'm aware of the regular rumors that Anglicans know nothing about scripture, and I'm fully aware of how ignorant most journalists are about religion -- all religion.
But the idea that two NYTimes reporters could confidently state that a granddaughter of Thatcher, at her funeral, read the biblical passage of "VI Ephesians 10:18" -- well, that is even today a bit shocking.
This passage is apparently so confounding that it renders journalists helpless upon encountering it! The meaning, the citation, it's all so confusing!
So better luck next time, teams.