Columns
The Family and the Tea Party
By Mark Silk — September 16, 2010
The Family–the secretive Jesus-centric cult that runs the National Prayer Breakfast and solicits the engagement of Washington and world’s high and mighty–is creeping back into the news. The New Yorker‘s Peter J. Boyer has delivered himself of an extended report, while another book on the subject from the redoubtable Jeff Sharlet waits in the wings. […]
COMMENTARY: It will take more than Muslims to rehab Ground Zero
By Phyllis Zagano — September 15, 2010
EW YORK (RNS) Andrew Kelly was driving drunk the night his Jeep hit Vionique Valnord-Kassime in Brooklyn about a year ago. She was trying to hail a cab. He was speeding by. She died. He lived. The details are horrifyingly similar to the sad tales repeated every day in other places. In this case, a […]
Mediating Terry Jones
By Mark Silk — September 14, 2010
The old gag was that journalists are the ones who rush onto the battlefield after the fight is over and shoot the wounded. Nowadays, it’s the rest of the world that rushes in and shoots the journalists. How could they have paid so much attention to an obscure, publicity-hungry pastor like Terry Jones? What ails […]
Fred Phelps sticks in his oar
By Mark Silk — September 11, 2010
I figure ol’ Fred has been a little bummed that Terry Jones managed to get all that attention for threatening to burn some Korans, when the good folks of Westboro Baptist struggle to keep themselves in the public eye. So now where Terry has declined to tread, Westboro’s rushing in. But Fred is also planning […]
The Real Koran-burning Deal
By Mark Silk — September 10, 2010
It went down this way. Rev. Terry Jones heard from the Lord that all those excellent reasons for burning a Koran should be waived if and only if Cordoba House (aka Park51, aka the Mosque of Doom) is moved a few blocks uptown, lest the practice of Islam (“from the Devil,” in the theology of […]
The Future of Religion in America
By Mark Silk — September 8, 2010
An essay by yours truly, over at Patheos.
Daniel Pipes gets spooked
By Mark Silk — September 8, 2010
His anti-Islamism versus his allies’ Islamophobia. My view.
Christwire: Distinguishing Satire
By Mark Silk — September 7, 2010
What’s scary about the satirical website Christwire is imagining how many people who ran its page views up to 27 million in August actually take it seriously. “A close reader of ChristWire will soon figure out (one hopes) that the site is not serious,” Mark Oppenheimer wrote in his New York Times “Beliefs” column Saturday. […]
Civility’s Ordeal
By Mark Silk — September 3, 2010
I confess that I’m always a little bit embarrassed by the propensity of the American leadership of my people (the Jews) to try to get Christians to grant us admission in the, ah, club. The president of the Southern Baptist Convention opines that God doesn’t hear our prayers…well, why should we give a shit? Sorry. […]
Independents look like Dems religiously
By Mark Silk — September 2, 2010
According to my take on the latest Gallup numbers.
COMMENTARY: Real educators teach students how—not what—to think
By Phyllis Zagano — September 1, 2010
(RNS) Last spring, two knock-down, drag-out academic fights made the news. At the University of Illinois, a part-time religion professor lost his job for presenting Catholic teaching on homosexuality. At Catholic Seton Hall University in New Jersey, a tenured political science professor raised hackles for proposing a course on gay marriage. The end of the […]
Obama churching up?
By Mark Silk — August 31, 2010
According to the latest Newsweek poll, 24 percent of Americans think Obama is either Muslim or a follower of Islam. And 31 percent think it’s definitely or probably true that he “sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” I’m guessing that the Obamas will be joining […]
Beck’s Old-Time Gospel Hour
By Mark Silk — August 30, 2010
What’s up with Glenn Beck? The Washington media were shocked by the religiosity of his “Restoring Honor” rally last Saturday–but what do you expect from a press gang that only knows how to fight the last war. It overlooked last year’s Beck rally–and so hyped this one as Beck’s Second Coming. (See Douthat, Ross). But […]
Step up, ADL
By Mark Silk — August 30, 2010
Since it covered itself with obloquy by taking a stand against the proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, the ADL has been eager to put some distance between itself and its co-opponents. Franklin Graham, for example, who seized the occasion to issue his latest denunciation of Islam in general: President Bush and President Obama […]
