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
Father Mike
By Mark Silk — May 29, 2008
Father Michael Pfleger, the priest of the Chicago’s famous largely African-American Catholic Church St. Sabina’s, has been called the greatest white black preacher in America. Here, last Sunday, he did some major signifying as the guest preacher at, yes, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, wherein he makes some serious ugly fun of Hilary Clinton […]
Protestant-Catholic-None
By Mark Silk — May 29, 2008
The latest Pew poll shows Barack Obama widening his slight lead among Catholics over John McCain since April from two to four percentage points, losing seven percentage points to McCain among Protestants, and increasing his margin over him among the unaffiliated by nine percentage points. The biggest shift came among white evangelicals, who now favor […]
The Abortion Card
By Mark Silk — May 29, 2008
GOM wonders why John McCain, in seeking to firm up his evangelical support, hasn’t played the abortion card. After all, his record on abortion (with the not unimportant exception of his support for stem cell research) is as good as any pro-lifer could wish. The answer, I submit, is that abortion has become a much […]
Field of Marital Dreams
By Mark Silk — May 28, 2008
If the new Field poll is on the money, not only is same-sex marriage a done deal in California, but anything looking like the national GOP of the past generation can pack up and head back east. The only religious bloc in solid opposition are evangelicals (those identifying themselves as born again). Other Protestants (by […]
Catholic split
By Mark Silk — May 28, 2008
An AP review of polls shows Obama and McCain splitting the Catholic vote. So, it seems, no particular Catholic problem for the Illinois senator.
Existential blongst
By Mark Silk — May 28, 2008
Tomorrow at 5:30 Eastern Daylight Savings Time I’ll be talking about the campaign on a radio show called The Blog Bunker, which airs daily on Sirius Radio’s Indie Talk Channel 110. The Blog Bunker bills itself as a “cutting-edge roundtable featuring a selection of the over 100 million bloggers around the globe,” which makes me […]
Lieberman Hearts Hagee
By Mark Silk — May 27, 2008
Max Blumenthal, who has been on the Hagee beat for a long time (in not a positive way), goes after Joe Lieberman for continuing to support Pastor John in the wake of the Great McCain Separation. Lieberman, of course, has endorsed McCain’s presidential bid with a fervor rarely displayed by one senator for another, much […]
The Matter with Kansas
By Mark Silk — May 27, 2008
Strictly speaking, the constitutional ban on religious tests for office only prohibits the government from erecting religious barriers to public office, such as a requirement to swear to one’s belief in the Trinity. But the ban has over the years cast a penumbra, casting into disrepute efforts to make candidates’ religion (or lack thereof) a […]
Jew v. Jew
By Mark Silk — May 26, 2008
Julia Duin’s roundup of Jewish defenders of Pastor Hagee in the Washington Times has the virtue of making clear that holding God in some way responsible for the Holocaust is not beyond the bounds of Jewish opinion. Which isn’t to say that Jewish opinion is unanimous on this subject–as if Jewish opinion were unanimous on […]
Department of Clarification
By Mark Silk — May 25, 2008
Is Abe Foxman having second thoughts about John Hagee? Back in March, after charges of anti-Catholicism unsettled Hagee’s endorsement of John McCain, the ADL’s national director waved away the controversy as “not a Jewish issue,” telling the Forward, “Are we troubled by Hagee’s support of McCain and McCain’s acceptance? The answer is no, and that’s […]
Whither the Jews?
By Mark Silk — May 24, 2008
He’s the man the people choose, Loves the Irish and the Jews. In the wake of Barack Obama’s recent foray into South Florida’s Jewish community, Terry Mattingly has trouble getting his head around the 2008 version of the Jewish vote. “Very complex and confusing stuff,” saith tmatt. Actually, the stuff is not so complex or […]
Preachers on Parade
By Mark Silk — May 24, 2008
Anyone interested in following the time line of Wright/Hagee/Parsleyana in the campaign should take a look at Hans’ posting on the Obama-loving website, Too Much Information Anonymous.
And then there were none
By Mark Silk — May 23, 2008
And so, in one day, McCain has rid himself of the two troublesome clerics, disendorsing both John Hagee and Rod Parsley because he was shocked, shocked, at what had escaped their lips. To be sure, he did it gracelessly. He adjured one and all not to indulge in any moral equivalence by equating the vile […]
…Sage, Rosemary, and Hate
By Mark Silk — May 22, 2008
ABC is on the case about Rod Parsley, the Columbus pastor into whose warm endorsing embrace John McCain has been happy to fling himself. Nothing said by Jeremiah Wright or John Hagee comes close to mattering as much to a presidential candidate as Parsley’s straight-up denunciation of Islam. No “militant Islam” or “extremist Islam” for […]
UCC Off the Hook
By Mark Silk — May 22, 2008
Obama’s appearance at last year’s United Church of Christ convention in Hartford was about as carefully managed by denominational authorities as it could have been. The IRS complaint was close to frivolous, as yesterday’s IRS dismissal suggests.
