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Here’s one of the more playful uses of “get religion” I’ve seen in a headline: “Getting religion about health,” which is Salon’s Q&A with Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee about his weight loss, his self-help book Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork and whether his health campaign could be related to any broader political ambitions.
Chuck Colson has become one of the elder statesmen of evangelical Protestantism since his conversion, his prison term for Watergate crimes and his long-term involvement with ministry among prisoners. Colson also has long shown a concern for Christian apologetics, whether through the books he’s written with various coauthors, his bimonthly column for Christianity Today, his BreakPoint radio commentaries or his other media appearances.
In writing a brief profile of newly approved federal judge Priscilla Owen, David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times touched on her experience at St. Barnabas the Encourager Evangelical Covenant Church:
Last Sunday’s clown Eucharist at the Episcopal Church’s powerhouse congregation of Trinity Wall Street has miraculously eluded any coverage in The New York Times, though it picked up a squib in the Daily News. That paper’s headline made the inevitable reference to Judy Collins’ hit song: “Rev. sends in clowns to teach a lesson” (to which I feel compelled to add, “Don’t bother [maudlin pause] they’re here.”
Just when you thought it was safe to watch SpongeBob SquarePants again, David Crumm of the Detroit Free Press reports on the cartoon character’s effect on a professor’s free-speech rights. The main focus of Crumm’s report is on the new book What God Has Joined Together? A Christian Case for Gay Marriage by psychology professor David G. Myers — of Hope College in Holland, Michigan — and Letha Dawson Scanzoni.
Carolyn Bower of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch masters understatement in her report on Lindbergh High School’s students holding separate baccalaureates this year. It seems one group didn’t want to hear anything from the Qur’an, while another group didn’t want to be preached at. But let’s turn the narrative over to Bower’s story, which is all the richer for its just-the-facts tone and lack of scare quotes:
If Time magazine can name Rick Santorum, a lifelong Roman Catholic, as one of the top 25 evangelicals in America, Santorum is happy to extend the ecclesial mix and match to President Bush, whom he calls America’s first Catholic president.
Meg James of the Los Angeles Times has a good ear for the deadpan humor of network executives talking like network executives. Witness Leslie Moonves, the immeasurably hip 56-year-old chairman of CBS, discussing some programming changes:
I missed a Boston Globe profile of science philosopher Michael Ruse at the beginning of this month, but Rich Poll’s Apologia Report has pointed it out. Ruse, a vigorous defender of evolution, distinguishes between evolution and evolutionism, and he criticizes fellow academicians who do not see the clash of worldviews behind the public debates.
