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Rev- Elizabeth Eisenstadt-Evans
For years there’s been a move among some in the emergent and evangelical churches, conservative churches reaching out to the young, and some mainline congregations to adapt and retool (if that’s not too irreverent) ancient liturgical practices in a way that reaches contemporary congregants. (See the late Dr. Robert Webber’s work on this topic.)
Sometimes we seems like a society that has a desire to major in the minors. Why spend more than five minutes (OK, 10) discussing whether it was appropriately presidential (in fairness, he thought his words were off the record) for President Barack Obama to call rapper Kanye West a “jackass”? Why focus on some nondenominational pastor’s sexual misbehavior when so many other churches are grappling with issues around mission, doctrine or social justice?
It’s a little surreal to be pondering this post on the day after the eighth anniversary of September 11, when two hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center towers, one hit the Pentagon, and some amazingly brave men and women brought down another hijacked plane in western Pennsylvania.
As my colleague Mollie recently commented, journalists often write stories that analyze happenings in a particular context: winning and losing. Who is climbing up the greasy pole and who is sliding down? Because some find this aspect of a writer’s art fascinating (the closer they live to D.C. or state capitols or New York City, the stronger the temptation to obsess) they sometimes ignore theologicals or doctrinal perspectives in favor of the current catfight.
One of the threads I rarely see covered in our larger American media outlets is what I’d call a “meta-theme” — the way that religion and politics, an oft-incendiary combo, are twinned in our national history. My colleague Mollie is much more of an expert in this arena than I am, but as a historian’s daughter, I am steeped in the tension between American sacred and secular voices, one that goes back to the Puritans and the Quakers.
I’ve been pondering why it’s important, as we GetReligionistas do from time to time, to venture beyond our shores to either see how American media cover stories in foreign countries, or the diffferent ways in which foreign journalists cover religion through the lens of their own cultures. We love to make merry with the British press and their sometimes outrageous tendency to make a lot out of a very little and for sometimes dancing on the cliff of truth — but do we understand why? It’s not only that the British market is competitive — the way the Brits cover religion says something about English culture.
Since starting to write for GetReligion last year, I’ve become increasingly aware that there are outposts in American religious life that rarely get much, if any attention from the mainstream media. One of these (can you say Eckhart Tolle, anyone?) is New Age spirituality — and beliefs that syncretize New Age beliefs with Christian or Jewish practices.
Bacchanals at his residence, liaisons with prostititutes, an ambiguous relationship with a teenage girl — allegations against the Italian Prime Minister have been roiling the country for months.
