Columns
Palestinians Miss an Opportunity
By Mark Silk — October 12, 2010
Of course Bibi Netanyahu’s offer to stop settlement construction if the Palestinian leadership “will say unequivocally to its people that it recognizes Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people,” was designed to be rejected. And the Palestinian leadership immediately went ahead and rejected it. What would have been smart would have been to accept […]
On the SSM hustings
By Mark Silk — October 11, 2010
The, ah, irrepressible GOP candidate for governor of New York, Carl Paladino, managed to stick his foot in it by assuming the anti-gay posture in a speech to Orthodox Jewish leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (part of the GOP base in the Empire State). As the NYT reports: “I just think my children and your children […]
Same-sex marriage on the march
By Mark Silk — October 8, 2010
The latest Pew survey on attitudes about same-sex marriage shows a more striking shift than indicated by the Pew Forum’s headline: “Support for Same-Sex Marriage Edges Upward.” Yes, support edged up four percentage points over last year, from 38 percent to 42 percent. And opposition edged down five points, from 53 percent to 48 percent. […]
Honoring Jason Berry
By Mark Silk — October 7, 2010
Last evening, the Trinity College Program on Public Values, which I direct, honored author and freelance journalist Jason Berry with our biennial Berkman Journalism Award. Berry is the reporter who, a quarter-century ago, broke the Catholic sexual abuse story that continues to roil the church today. He is a writer of many parts who retains […]
The unconventional Tea Party wisdom
By Mark Silk — October 6, 2010
The big news from yesterday’s survey from the Public Religion Research Institute is that the conventional wisdom on the Tea Party is wrong: It’s not a libertarian movement distinct from the religious right and unconnected to the Republican Party. This really should come as no surprise to those with eyes to see (surveys) and ears […]
The Machpelah Shul
By Mark Silk — October 4, 2010
A couple of months ago, trying to come up with a situation parallel to the “Ground Zero mosque,” I imagined: An irenic Jewish group proposes building a community center devoted to peace and understanding a couple of blocks from the Cave of the Patriarchs, where on February 25, 1994, the Orthodox Jewish zealot Baruch Goldstein […]
Foolish Rally
By Mark Silk — October 1, 2010
Progressive religious folks will be on hand for tomorrow’s One Nation Working Together rally in Washington, putting their faith-based shoulders to the wheel in the Schultzian hope of changing the national script. And here’s hoping it all works out. But what I’d really like to see is a coalition of the Mainstream Religious (MSR) sign […]
LDS apology re: Prop. 8
By Mark Silk — September 30, 2010
Joanna Brooks’ fine essay on Elder Marlin Jensen’s apology for…well, we’ll get to that…at a meeting of 90 members of the Oakland, CA stake (diocese) points to ongoing uncertainty about the role of the LDS Church in public life these days. Jensen’s a lovely guy (I’ve had dinner with him a couple of times), and […]
COMMENTARY: Nature vs. nurture
By Phyllis Zagano — September 29, 2010
(RNS) I was always told that you’re not supposed to discuss religion or politics in polite company. That was before gay marriage became the item du jour. Polls indicate a little more than half of Americans favor legal protections for same-sex couples. Gay marriage is another story; 44 percent of Americans support it, while 53 […]
Chaput sticks it to the religion beat
By Mark Silk — September 28, 2010
At the Religion Newswriters Association meeting in Denver last weekend, the local Catholic ordinary, Archbishop Charles Chaput, delivered himself of a classic culture-war critique of the news media’s coverage of religion: Journalism is composed of knowledge-class professionals who make secularist assumptions about American society that shows they are out of touch with real Americans. Coverage […]
Young evangelicals–not so liberal
By Mark Silk — September 27, 2010
Responding to my wish to separate out the views on same-sex marriage of under-30 “sectarians” (evangelicals), Sherkat has kindly run the numbers. What they show, as he points out on his blog, is that the gap between this cohort and its non-evangelical peers is actually greater than between sectarians and non-sectarians in older age cohorts. […]
