Three cheers for Paul Nussbaum’s witty lede on a Philadelphia Inquirer feature about evangelicals and politics:
Pedro offers you his protection
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"You have wasted your saliva"
The Times of London’s Ruth Gledhill is ecstatic at the appointment of John Sentamu, the Uganda-born Bishop of Birmingham, as the next Archbishop of York:
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A media-friendly media spanking
Ruth Gledhill of the Times of London has done a fine job of condensing the Archbishop of Canterbury’s 4,500-word lecture on journalists into a news story of one-ninth that length. As journalists often do — and I make no claim to escaping this habit — Gledhill focused on the most pointed language in the archbishop’s text, in which he said this about web-based journalism:
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Billy Graham in exile
When addressing members of the Evangelical Press Association in April, Anne Graham Lotz cited her father as a Christian who has remained focused on evangelism, even at age 86. Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times provides the details on what a toll Graham’s age has taken on his health, and the result is far more interesting than a snapshot of a plaster saint:
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Latter-day politics
Our blog missed the fuss earlier this month when an adviser to Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said this in National Review magazine: “He’s been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly.” National Review and The Weekly Standard both recently published cover stories about Romney. Though National Review‘s standing ovation gained more attention, The Weekly Standard‘s profile, by publisher Terry Eastland, represents the better work.
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The riddle of Thomas Merton
In a story for The San Diego Union-Tribune, Kimberly Winston shows how much a talented religion reporter can do with something as simple as a locally sponsored conference about a dead man with a popular following. In this case, it helps that the dead man is Thomas Merton, the agnostic-turned-Catholic-monk who was pursuing an interest in Buddhism by the time he died in 1968. (If you’re a fan of Matthew Fox, you may believe that sentence should end with “by the time he was assassinated in 1968.”)
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Anglican West to Anglican South: Drop dead
Don’t be deceived by the so-what-else-is-new headline on our friend Julia Duin’s report in The Washington Times. “African bishops reject aid,” as the Times’ headline puts it, has been a story since the latter months of 2003, when many African bishops announced their intentions to protest the Episcopal Church’s decision to consecrate Gene Robinson as an openly gay bishop.
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Goodbye Quakers, hello Frappuccino
Peter Slevin of The Washington Post has written such a moving profile of two Quakers’ long-term work in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing development that you may end up wishing this once notoriously violent community would stay together forever.
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Hollywood's naked public square
In 1997 I wrote a story for Christian Research Journal about Scientology’s expansion into Europe, where it was meeting resistance from various government officials — especially in Germany, where leaders have this well-founded thing about mass movements.
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