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
Jewish Supers
By Mark Silk — April 1, 2008
Last week, the Forward played Jew/Not a Jew with the Democratic superdelegates and came up with 74 of them. Nearly half (36) have declared for Hillary Clinton, while only a dozen are in Obama’s camp. (The balance are thus far neutral.) This is pretty much what I would have expected, but it’s nice to see […]
Jesus or Barack?
By Mark Silk — March 31, 2008
Take the RADAR quiz. Hint: It’s harder than you think.
Religion Gap
By Mark Silk — March 31, 2008
For those of us (and if we aren’t legion neither are we a tiny few) who have shouldered the burden of tracking religion in the current campaign, the, ah, Godsend that was the Obama/Wright affair has just about run itself into the blogground, leaving in its wake a discernible absence of news. This may be […]
Enough Already
By Mark Silk — March 30, 2008
Jacques Berlinerblau, the Washington Post‘s house church-state separation absolutist, sticks his tongue in his cheek to advocate a constitutional amendment that begins, “The right of presidential aspirants to discuss religion, invoke sacred texts, or mention God on the campaign trail is hereby repealed.” The amendment also proposes that, “Whenever a religious figure endorses any candidate […]
Conversion
By Mark Silk — March 29, 2008
Yesterday, a man I know told me that he had “converted” to Barack Obama as follows. He had been trying to make up his mind between Obama and Clinton, and while Obama’s speech on race impressed him, it was not enough to cause him to get down off the fence. What did, instead, was his […]
Sheik Obama
By Mark Silk — March 28, 2008
You’d think by now that anyone who wasn’t aware of Barack Obama’s religious identity would have to be living under a rock. If so, there are a lot of American voters living under rocks. According to a Pew Research poll, 10 percent of voters think Obama’s a Muslim, up six percent from an AP-Yahoo poll […]
Two Martins
By Mark Silk — March 27, 2008
In the public intellectual department, gray eminences are pretty few and far between these days, but two of them, Martin Marty and Martin Peretz have weighed in on the Obama/Wright affair, both in the cause of the defense. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Marty paints a sympathetic portrait of Wright, his former student at […]
The Hitch
By Mark Silk — March 26, 2008
Is it just me, or has Christopher Hitchens turned into a caricature of himself? Once upon a time, he was one of those Shakespearean fools whose license to speak truth to power was exercised in often brilliant puncturings of sacred cows and other pious beasts. Since his ascent to the office of national Atheist-in-Chief, he […]
Interfaith Clinton Smackdown
By Mark Silk — March 26, 2008
This interfaith condemnation of Hillary Clinton’s poke at Barack Obama for sticking with Jeremiah Wright is pretty newsworthy. It reads, in part: Today, you took a new and disquieting step when you decided that it would be to your political benefit to wade into the waters of the issues surrounding Senator Barack Obama and his […]
More from Dean Snyder
By Mark Silk — March 26, 2008
On the jump is an extended passage from Dean Snyder’s Good Friday sermon that makes use of Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” line. It softens the application, making it more palatable–and obliquely identifies with the Obama critique. Pretty good use of Moltmann, I’d say. Worth a look.
Hillary’s Church
By Mark Silk — March 26, 2008
A number of readers (nice to hear from you) have written in to say they think Hillary Clinton’s current church is the Fellowship (or “the Family”), the rather secretive organization that for decades has run the National Prayer Breakfast and which sponsors various prayer groups for government officials and their spouses. Clinton joined up when […]
Hillary at the Plate
By Mark Silk — March 25, 2008
OK, gang. Hillary Clinton is now prepared to call Barack Obama to account for what his pastor says. As in the following quotes from today’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton said. “You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend…”You know, I spoke out against […]
The Precious
By Mark Silk — March 25, 2008
It’s probably not worth overburdening the analogy, but since James Carville has insisted that he said what he meant, and meant what he said, I’ll indulge myself. Whether or not we are (as Reid suggests) to understand Hillary Clinton–really, the Clintons a deux, since Bill Richardson is Bill’s disciple–as Jesus, the idea is that Richardson’s […]
Dems by Religion
By Mark Silk — March 24, 2008
A new Gallup poll breaks down the Democratic primary electorate by religion. Gallup properly ledes its story with the finding that Jewish Democrats favor Clinton by a small amount (48 percent to 43 percent) that is within the margin of error. Exit polls in states with a sufficiently large Jewish population to provide meaningful results […]
Obama v. Wright?
By Mark Silk — March 24, 2008
In comments airing today on Philadelphia’s WPHT, Obama suggests that he and Jeremiah Wright have been discussing their differing views of the world for 20 years.
