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If you’ve not followed the decades-long theological debate between apologists for evangelical Protestantism and apologists for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, brace yourself. You’re probably in for an extended mass media discourse on those differences, at least until the primaries settle who will be the Republican nominee for president.
In The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, Mark Oppenheimer built a lengthy case that the philosopher Antony Flew is, amid painfully documented memory problems, being exploited by a few evangelical authors. Oppenheimer argues that There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, “a book attributed to Flew and a co-author, the Christian apologist Roy Abraham Varghese,” bears far more editorial fingerprints by Varghese than by Flew.
The Economist has organized a near-miracle: A debate about religion that doesn’t involve Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. There’s more happy news: The Economist is offering 10 free tickets to readers of GetReligion.
I was too slow to express my interest in posting about David Kirkpatrick’s epic New York Times Magazine essay, so Terry beat me to it, and with greater thoroughness. Still, Terry graciously invited me to write an additional post if I had a different perspective on Kirkpatrick’s reporting.
In celebrating its 150th anniversary, The Atlantic invited writers and artists to discuss the future of the American idea. The results, while not entirely disheartening, leave the impression of a people largely ill at ease with their nation’s future and, in a few cases, openly contemptuous of the country’s elected leaders (or, in the words of Greil Marcus, “those who presume to rule the nation”).
GetReligion’s friend David Crumm sent email this week with the news that he will take a months-long leave of absence from the Detroit Free Press to develop a project called Read the Spirit. To call Read the Spirit a blog focused on religion news would be an understatement.
I’m not sure whether to call it a meme, but there’s certainly a monotony to reports about the Religious Right’s indecision on which Republican candidate to support. The same few names keep popping up, primarily James Dobson and Richard Land, and I think the entire country must know by now that both men would refuse to vote for Rudy Giuliani.
Reviews are beginning to appear for Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis, and they are renewing an age-old question among fans of Schulz: What did Schulz believe about God?
Last week I expressed my disappointment in Paul Elie’s essay for The Atlantic on various efforts to claim the mantle of Reinhold Niebuhr. Wilfred McClay — who was one target of Elie’s essay and a friend of this blog before this blog even existed (i.e., a friend of mine through email) — dropped me a note to express his dismay about Elie’s treatment of his remarks.
