I have a bit of an embarrassing confession to make: Before she died Sunday, I’d never heard the name Debbie Friedman.
When religious icons die
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A 12 days of Christmas mystery
Let me begin with the obvious: A merry, merry 12th day of Christmas to one and all, if you are among the handful of Western Christians who mark this as the end of the traditional Christmas season (as opposed to the nonsectarian season between the first showing of “Elf” on cable TV and the first day of Christmas, which is Dec. 25).
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Big Ben's new counter-reformation?
While it is hard to explain to outsiders, one of the most fascinating battles in the American Catholic church today is the one that pits the kneelers vs. the non-kneelers. I refer, of course, to the issue of whether bishops should — bowing to the modernization of ancient rites — attempt to prevent the faithful from kneeling before the altar as they receive Holy Communion during the Mass.
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Pod people: Hark the Gutenberg press?
GetReligion was launched around the idea of ghosts — religious aspects to stories that went unexplained or ignored. Sometimes those ghosts are very straightforward. Sometimes they’re more about subtext and nuance. In this week’s Crossroads podcast, we discuss some of the lingering ghosts surrounding that provocative New York Times celebration of a marriage built on the failure of two previous marriages.
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Here We Come A-wassailing
In a sea of silly stories during the Advent march to Christmas, I was pleasantly surprised to hear (via the Rev. Dr. R. Albert Mohler) a great piece on NPR. It’s a perfect radio piece — snippets from songs with an expert teaching you things you never knew. In this case, the topic is Christmas carols. Here’s the transcript, here’s the web version of the story, and here’s the link so you can listen. I definitely recommend you choose the last option.
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Organist jobs die in worship wars
Of all the subjects that I write about for the Scripps Howard News Service, columns about trends in worship consistently generate some of the most intense responses from readers.
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Rapper: prison to Promised Land
It seems like every few months I read about another celebrity who has suddenly discovered they’re Jewish or that they at least might like to be.
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Something borrowed, something Hindu?
Pop singer Katy Perry and comedian Russell Brand married this weekend in India. Katy Perry began her career as a singer in the Contemporary Christian Music market so I was a bit surprised to read that it was a traditional Hindu ceremony. Maybe. I read that in the Washington Post, the Boston Herald, Entertainment Weekly, ABC News, Telegraph, Daily Mail, New York Daily News, MTV, and so on and so forth (this is a story of international importance). Here’s a snippet from a typical news report:
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Belle and Sebastian ... and God
Last night we had some friends over for dinner and they raved about the new Belle and Sebastian album “Write About Love.” One of their new songs came on over the transom XM Radio and our guests stopped the conversation to listen and tell us about how fantastic it is. I’ve just listened to the full album — courtesy of NPRMusic.org — and it is really good.
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