Dick Staub
Dick Staub is an author at Religion News Service.
All Stories by Dick Staub
Ewan McGregor pulls off a convincing Jesus in ‘Last Days in the Desert’
By Dick Staub — January 30, 2015
PARK CITY, Utah (RNS) McGregor delivers a stand-out performance, and quipped that “somehow playing Satan came more naturally to me then playing Jesus."
COMMENTARY: The prophets of Sundance
By Dick Staub — January 30, 2014
PARK CITY, Utah (RNS) The annual Sundance Film Festival is like a tribe huddled around a campfire listening to the stories. These stories function like burning bushes, as prophetic calls to action.
Sundance Diary: Imagining the world as it ought to be
By Dick Staub — January 24, 2013
PARK CITY, Utah (RNS) It's said that Hollywood films comfort the afflicted while Sundance films afflict the comfortable. Film offers a vicarious entry to the world the way it is, and the films I saw at Sundance 2013 left me longing for the world as it ought to be.
COMMENTARY: Jesus loves the little Palestinian children, too
By Dick Staub — October 6, 2011
(RNS) Inasmuch as others have attempted to clear up the muddy waters of religious dogma and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, let me further muddy the waters with some insights from my own experience. As the child of an evangelical pastor, it was clear that my father and mother shared a special affection for Israel. They led […]
COMMENTARY: Journalist has soul-science on the brain
By Dick Staub — November 13, 2009
(RNS) Are you a brain, or do you have a brain? This clever question was asked of our panel during a recent “Kindlings Muse” podcast in which we discussed Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s book “Fingerprints of God.” Bradley Hagerty, National Public Radio’s religion correspondent, offers a travelogue through the world of research into the unseen. She […]
COMMENTARY: Light amidst the darkness
By Dick Staub — December 12, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) I recently hosted a show featuring Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s poems written from his prison cell during World War II. I was particularly taken by a comment made by Sandy, a busy mom enjoying a rare night out. Reading Bonhoeffer had put her life and circumstances in perspective, she said. Whenever […]
COMMENTARY: Learning thankfulness the hard way
By Dick Staub — November 15, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Every year around Thanksgiving I recall a weekend in 1967 when I learned about thanklessness the hard way. I was involved in a musical performance that included a song about gratefulness. The leader asked me to share something about being thankful. It was the weekend before finals, I was […]
COMMENTARY: Is this the best we can do?
By Dick Staub — October 31, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Perhaps it’s the political season that brings on this present melancholy and the realization that the ancient wisdom of Ecclesiastes still stands: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? […]
COMMENTARY: A good investment for turbulent times
By Dick Staub — October 17, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The ferry is gliding through the still waters of Puget Sound. In the distance, the warm orange glow of sunset reflects off the clouds. I am heading back to my island home after a busy weekend in Seattle spent with artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians _ thoughtful creatives for whom […]
Calendar of October/November religious events
By Dick Staub — October 3, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed _ for lack of a better word _ is good.” So goes the Gospel According to Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film, “Wall Street.” Jesus, however, had another take. “There is none good but God,” he said. These extreme statements bookend our nation’s […]
COMMENTARY: The Islam I know
By Dick Staub — September 19, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) With the anniversary the tragic, evil events of Sept. 11, 2001 so fresh in our minds, it may seem an odd time for me to write positively about the Islam I know. In the aftermath of the attacks, the airwaves have been packed with shrill,demonizing rhetoric about radical Islamic […]
COMMENTARY: Political (mis)communication
By Dick Staub — September 4, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) In today’s political, rhetorically cluttered soundscape, it is important to reflect on two seemingly incompatible facts: talk is cheap, and words matter. This came to me not long after Sen. John McCain selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, when Larry King asked Democratic analyst James Carville […]
The futile search for Billy Graham’s successor
By Dick Staub — August 22, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Having spent his life in the limelight, Billy Graham now lives at his mountain retreat in relative seclusion, while down below there is a clamor to crown his successor. (By the way, I should say at the outset, this is a subject that holds zero interest for Graham himself.) […]
Christian broadcasters nervous about Fairness Doctrine
By Dick Staub — August 8, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) “Everything you can say about China is true … somewhere in China!” Such was the insight offered by my 90-year-old friend Rosa, who with her sister, the late Ruth Graham Bell (Billy Graham’s wife), was raised in China. It’s a timely and useful observation as the Olympics are upon […]
`Walking with God’ tops best-seller list
By Dick Staub — July 25, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) If you share my concern about the spiritual, intellectual and creative impoverishment of American culture, consider what two stuffy academics in Oxford and an American philosopher and Dutch art historian in Switzerland reveal about the nature of cultural transformation. Let’s start with the Oxford academics, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. […]
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