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I would like to extend warm congratulations to guardian.co.uk, which responded to a tedious bus-slogan campaign in the most appropriate way: Launching a Web-based challenge for readers to write new counter-slogans.
Inspired by David Gibson on his Pontifications blog, I will float these predictions for the Godbeat in 2009. I lack the courage to commit myself to any one answer, or the insight to write every item with serious intent.
As you may know, this here weblog has been on the move the past 24 hours from one server universe to another. So, while your GetReligionistas wrestle with all of the new bells and whistles in our updated software, let me pass on some good news from the religion-writer hereafter.
You might think that the debut of his Christmas special was as good a time as any for journalists to explore the beliefs of Stephen Colbert, one of television’s most vocal comedians, and 2008 Presidential candidate who disappointed millions (thousands? his immediate family?) by being forced to drop out of the race in South Carolina last year (go on and laugh –but who could have envisioned Minnesota’s Al Franken?).
I was watching MSNBC on Monday night, but the Home Companion heard the theme song from Countdown with Keith Olbermann begin, and then changed the channel. No one else in the room — neither I nor the three spayed female cats we liberated from the nearest no-kill animal shelter — dared voice even the briefest protest. Such is the dismal state of my life in November 2008 in what Americans, in our hubris, call the United States of America.
Well, you have to admit that this Texas-sized story is a whole lot more exciting to write about than a monk from Dallas being elected leader of the scandal-rocked Orthodox Church in America. Right?
Is there something religious (not to mention potentially idolatrous) about the relationship some sports fans have with their beloved teams?
We rarely discuss opinion columns here, unless they contain content that might be helpful to mainstream reporters who are trying to cover religion news in the mainstream.
Just as Young Man Pulliam said last week, Deborah Howell devoted her most recent ombudsman column to the controversy over Pat Oliphant’s anti-Pentecostal cartoon that was published on WashingtonPost.com. Howell had noted in an earlier column that readers were right to complain over the cartoon. This weekend, she ran a lengthier piece about political cartooning in general.
