God or luck?
In Santa Monica, a pair of atheists won the rights to 18 out of 21 spaces reserved for holiday displays at a city park, leaving more than a dozen churches who had previously used 14 of the 21 spots out in the cold, or what passes for cold at Christmas in Santa Monica.
The city developed a lottery system to make awarding the spaces more fair, but allowed individuals to bid on up to nine spots each. A coalition of churches got two spots, a Jewish group got another. Two atheists scored 18 spots. Don’t play cards with those guys.
Good news (for the believers): the atheists are only using three of the spaces. Bad news: their holiday messages include quotes like the one from Thomas Jefferson: “Religions are all alike — founded upon fables and mythologies.
The Lubavitch Hasidim, an Orthodox Jewish community, will use their spot to display a big Hanukkah menorah, as they like to do.
It is unlikely that Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae star, will be lighting candles on that menorah this year since he shocked the devoutly Orthodox Jewish world by shaving his beard (that’s the new him, at left) and tweeting a cryptic explanation.
Did Newt Gingrich peak too soon? Ron Paul may finally have his turn as Republican flavor-of-the-day.
Gingrich did displayed great sensitivity in dismissing a new Iowa campaign chief who referred to Mormonism as a “cult.” Or maybe it’s because Greg Bergman called his new boss “the smartest unwise man in America. Because unwise means making bad choices.”
Mitt Romney, Gingrich’s other main rival, is talking more openly about his Mormon faith.
Rick Perry’s ad claiming President Obama is waging a “war on religion” in America may not help him with Iowa’s Christian conservatives as much as he’d hoped. “Sometimes the worst advertisements for Christianity are its adherents,” writes Peter Wehner, a bona fide Christian conservative.
But Perry has moved ahead of Romney to claim third place in Iowa polling. For what that’s worth.
“Have Evangelicals Lost Their Sway?” The New York Times asks the question of several evangelicals, who gaze at their navel and generally like what they see.
They won’t like new Pew numbers on the national marriage rate, which is at a record low. But that’s mainly a problem for straight folks. Gay marriage, on the other hand…
New research into primate societies (that’s monkeys to most of us) is shedding light on how the family unit evolved. Now we can teach monkeys how to undo all of that.
Is the “workplace spirituality” movement a (Christian) capitalist tool?
Rise up! And maybe you, too, will be listed as Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2011: “The Protester.”
George Washington, the most staid but also most successful protester in American history, might be pleased. He died on this date in 1799, just short of the new century, and at the age of 67. He always seemed older, but maybe that’s because he seemed to know he was destined to be adopted as the Father of the Country.
“I walk on untrodden ground,” Washington once said. “There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn in precedent.”
He was also prepared for death. “When the summons comes I shall endeavour to obey it with a good grace,” he said three months before the summons came.
— David Gibson