Mark Silk
Mark Silk is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and director of the college's Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. He is a Contributing Editor of the Religion News Service
All Stories by Mark Silk
The Pawlenty Walk
By Mark Silk — June 30, 2008
Brody’s hawking his interview with Gov. Tim Pawlenty and a couple of the clips are worth a perusal. I. If John McCain needs to do as much work rounding up evangelicals at this point in the election cycle as Pawlenty suggests (and he sure seems to), then the presumptive GOP nominee is farther out of […]
Pet Peeve
By Mark Silk — June 30, 2008
The Denver Post‘s Karen Crummy has a series of articles (here, here, here, here, and here) showing why Obama may do better than his Democratic predecessors in a number of Western states (Montana, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico). But among the various factors she looks into, the prevalence of religious categories favorable to the Democrats […]
SUSA Keeps On Keeping On
By Mark Silk — June 30, 2008
Now Virginia. I continue to be struck with the consistency with which SUSA’s state polls show McCain leading strongly among regular worship attenders, Obama among those who attend occasionally and almost never. John Green and I have always measured what we call the religion gap by the differential in the votes for Republican and Democratic […]
Johnny and the Grahams
By Mark Silk — June 30, 2008
Did McCain get what he wanted out of Franklin and Billy? “My father and I were pleased to have an opportunity to meet and visit with Sen. John McCain today,” Franklin Graham said in a statement. “The senator and I both have sons currently serving in the military, and also have a common interest in […]
Faith Based
By Mark Silk — June 29, 2008
Once upon a time, in a country far away, what the president cared most about, and what most exercised public debate, was something called a faith-based initiative. The idea was that religiously inspired organizations could do a better job delivering social services than mere secular or, God knows, governmental agencies. Or at least could do […]
Keeping the Faith
By Mark Silk — June 28, 2008
Being a professor, I don’t get to write just anything, but one of the touching things about Hunter Thompson epigones like Matt Taibbi is how they like upholding gospel truth against the contemporary prosperity gospel. As in: McCain’s transformation is so complete that at a recent town-hall meeting in Nashville, when asked to name an […]
Dobson 0, Obama 1
By Mark Silk — June 28, 2008
Dobson <a href="lays an egg with former Bush White House apparatchik Peter Wehner. The jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme petition is up to 10,000 and counting. The beginning of a movement? Cf. Sam Freedman pushing from this end.
New Yorker Evangelicals
By Mark Silk — June 28, 2008
Unfortunately, the powers that be at the New Yorker have not seen fit to put Frances Fitzgerald’s Annals of Religion piece up on the web–the latest effort to answer the question: Is the old religious right giving way to a new, broader, more moderate engaged evangelicalism? Fitzgerald, who’s been on the beat off and on […]
Burke to Rome, pronto
By Mark Silk — June 27, 2008
The appointment of St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke to head the Vatican’s highest court, effective at 5 p.m. today, has prompted the following assessment from Thomas Reese, S.J. of Georgetown University’s Woodstock Center (via a press release emailed around by Fr. Reese himself): “The appointment should make pro-choice Catholic politicians very nervous,” said Reese. “He […]
Time Poll Sez
By Mark Silk — June 27, 2008
More bad karma for McCain: Despite all the drama over Obama’s church and his former pastor’s inflammatory remarks, 40% said they felt he was more comfortable talking about his religious beliefs versus 34% for McCain. And in evidence that McCain has some work to do shoring up social conservative voters, when asked which of the […]
Obama and the Evangelicals
By Mark Silk — June 27, 2008
Brother Greenfield explains. But there’s starting to be a little evidence that O may be making some actual inroads.
