Monthly Archives: December 2008
Ky. diocese seeks foreign priests to plug clergy shortage
By Kevin Eckstrom — December 29, 2008
The Rev. Darrell Venters, lean and leathery as the Marlboro man – a cigarette in one hand and a cellphone with a ring tone like a church bell in the other – spends most of his days recruiting priests from overseas to serve in the small towns, rolling hills and farmland that make up the […]
Church searches for answers after `Santa Claus massacre’
By RNS Blog Editor — December 29, 2008
COVINA, Calif. (RNS) This Los Angeles suburb remains numb from the Christmas Eve murders carried out by a distraught ex-husband who dressed as Santa Claus and allegedly killed 10 people at the home of his ex-wife’s family. Bruce Jeffrey Pardo killed 10 people at the Covina home of his ex-wife’s parents before torching the house […]
Focus pulls interview over Beck’s Mormon faith
By RNS Blog Editor — December 29, 2008
(RNS) Colorado-based Focus on the Family has pulled an online interview with conservative television host Glenn Beck after concerns were raised about Beck’s Mormon faith. Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations for Focus on the Family Action, said that “differences in the Mormon faith and the historical evangelical faith are not inconsequential.” […]
Williams says disestablished church not `the end of the world’
By RNS Blog Editor — December 29, 2008
LONDON (RNS) Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says he believes that severing the centuries-old ties between the Church of England and the British government would “by no means (be) the end of the world.” The comment, in an interview with the British magazine New Statesman, was one of the Anglican leader’s most outspoken statements to […]
Icon exhibit hints at thaw in U.S.-Russian relations
By Bridget MacDonald — December 29, 2008
CLINTON, Mass.-In this sleepy former mill town, where geopolitical tensions seem a world away, Americans are getting a fresh look at Russia through a lens that’s seldom made available on U.S. shores: the Russian sacred icon. Weekly attendance at the two-year-old Museum of Russian Icons has doubled from about 250 to 500 since mid-October, when […]
Stop the Presses
By Mark Silk — December 28, 2008
Protestants read the Bible more than Catholics. Also: Politically, 41% of regular churchgoers are Republicans, 34% are Democrats, and 25% are unaffiliated with either major party. Fifty-six percent (56%) are politically conservative, 23% moderate and 20% politically liberal.
The New Establishment
By Mark Silk — December 27, 2008
Dan Gilgoff, late of Beliefnet’s God-o-Meter and now covering religion for U.S. News where he blogs as God & Country, has decided to crash our little three-way on religion and the Democratic Party. In a word, he objects to Pastordan’s denigration of Mike McCurry’s account of the Democratic Awakening. I’ll leave it to the good […]
Reading Benedict XVI
By Francis X. Rocca — December 26, 2008
Readers with an interest in religion (like you!) should be grateful to blogger Andrew Sullivan for his extensive and passionate treatment of the topic. But gratitude doesn’t preclude a demand for accuracy. In a Christmas Eve post on some recent, controversial words of Benedict XVI, Sullivan makes much of the pope’s failure to mention the […]
Bah, Humbug!
By Mark Silk — December 26, 2008
If the Wall Street Journal wishes to give its readers a Christmas gift next year, how about retiring “In Hoc Anno Domini,” the pseudo-scriptural holiday editorial tapped out by Vermont Royster in 1949 and published by the newspaper on or about December 24 every year since. Historically confused, intellectually incoherent, and by now virtually incomprehensible, […]
Wanted: inaugural sermons
By Adelle M. Banks — December 24, 2008
If you hear a sermon during Inauguration Week that you consider memorable, the Library of Congress wants to know about it. With the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama as the nation’s first African-American president, its American Folklife Center hopes to add sermons and speeches from an array of houses of worship and secular […]
Tres Amigos
By Mark Silk — December 24, 2008
Pleasant it is to arrive at (more or less) mutual agreement with cyberfriends, especially at this time of year. After a lively discussion, Pastordan, Rmj, and I seem to have found the same page to be on in re: the Democratic Party and its re-engagement in public religious discourse. Rmj offers a paragraph that, it […]
Bogus Bogus Trend Story?
By Mark Silk — December 23, 2008
Slate’s media watchdog Jack Shafer thinks he’s got the NYT dead to rights for Paul Vitello’s December 14 story on how the recession is boosting worship attendance, at evangelical churches in particular. Not so, clucks Shafer, citing Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport’s marshalling of evidence that there has, in fact, been no increase in church attendance […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — December 23, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service New Congress reflects overall U.S. religious landscape WASHINGTON (RNS) The religious makeup of the incoming 111th Congress roughly matches the overall American religious landscape, with overrepresentation among Jews and Mormons, according to new analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Just over half (55 percent) of […]
Hanukkah gets (almost) hip
By RNS Blog Editor — December 23, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Last week, Jill Miller Zimon, a writer from Pepper Pike, Ohio, attended her daughter’s school band concert. Four bands and orchestras performed. “All four played `Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah,”’ said Zimon, laughing. “I thought I was going to tear my hair out.” Zimon, who’s Jewish, doesn’t think that would have […]
Everyone’s got something to celebrate in December
By Nancy Haught — December 23, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) If ever a month was made for celebrations, it’s December. Days are at their darkest in the Northern Hemisphere, and a ray of light holds promise _ whether it comes as a sliver of the sun, the Prince of Peace or an instant of enlightenment. Anthropologists think the winter […]
