Music

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Leaving God at Jackson's funeral

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Living in Los Angeles, it has been easy to think that for the past two weeks there has been no news but Michael Jackson news. The King of Pop has reigned supreme over nightly newscasts and Internet rumors and A1 centerpieces. So I was more than a bit surprised to survey other major West Coast newspapers last night and find that most didn’t even bother sending a reporter to the Staples Center to cover Jackson’s larger-than-life memorial service.


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Civil religion and St. Michael, the pop angel

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For generations, presidential inaugurations have served as the high holy days of civil religion for scholars studying the intersection of faith and public life. Want to know about the lowest-common-denominator faith that unites the muddy middle of the American marketplace of ideas? Dissect the religious language that presidents use when standing at that big pulpit on Day One.


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Michael Jackson: seeker

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There has been no shortage of news stories about the anticipated religious overtones of Michael Jackson’s funeral later today at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. (The New York Daily News reported yesterday that the family had stalemated on what religion meant most to MJ, so the service would be God free.)


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Icons, idols and the Gloved One

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If you run a Google News search for “Michael Jackson” and “idol,” you’ll get tens of thousands of hits. If you watched any news coverage of the death of MJ, “icon” was the go-to word for describing the King of Pop. Here’s Agence France-Presse, for instance:


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The wounded soul of Michael

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It will take time for mainstream reporters to find the thread that connects the young Michael Jackson, going door to door as a Jehovah’s Witness missionary, to the otherwordly middle-aged man who, after two decades of personal crisis, allegedly converted to Islam, like his brother Jermaine.


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