Columns
The Muslim Bogeyman
By Mark Silk — August 9, 2010
In her round-up of anti-mosque protests in yesterday’s New York Times, Laurie Goodstein found her way to Diana Serafin, an unemployed California grandmother who’s been frequenting Tea Party events and anti-immigration rallies. She said they read books by critics of Islam, including former Muslims like Walid Shoebat, Wafa Sultan and Manoucher Bakh. She also attended […]
Cardinal George v. Judge Walker
By Mark Silk — August 6, 2010
“Do the citizens of a state have the right to define legal marriage as a man-woman relationship? Or can courts overrule them on behalf of same-sex marriage?” So Russell Shaw began a piece in that avatar of Catholic conservatism, Our Sunday Visitor, a couple of weeks ago. Shaw went on to acknowledge that courts have […]
Serving the Bishop
By Mark Silk — August 3, 2010
David O’Connell, the former president of the Catholic University who was anointed coadjutor bishop of Trenton last weekend, may be a great guy–but given all that’s been happening in the church over the past few months, his allocution left me cold. His official episcopal slogan, Ministrare non ministrari–to serve rather than to be served–sounds humble […]
Sauce for the ADL’s goose
By Mark Silk — August 2, 2010
Criticism of the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to Cordoba House, the Islamic center proposed to be built two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, has been widespread and well-deserved. Stephen Prothero has a sharp essay over at CNN’s Belief blog, as does Peter Beinart on the Daily Beast. Beinart makes the important point […]
Latest Religion in the News now online
By Mark Silk — July 30, 2010
Volume 13, No. 1 of Religion in the News is now online, and before describing its contents, I need to announce that as of this volume we are cutting back from three to two issues annually. Partly this is the consequence of shrunken resources, but it’s also the case that given the amount of real-time […]
Religious Liberty in Tennessee
By Mark Silk — July 29, 2010
Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who happens to be running for governor of the Volunteer State, has caught a bunch of flak for his recent comments on the stump suggesting that Muslims might not merit First Amendment protection. Asked to comment on the proposed construction of an Islamic community center in Murfreesboro, he said, “You […]
Jeffs got what he deserved from Utah Supremes
By Mark Silk — July 28, 2010
The prosecutors overreached…sez I.
Getting the Vatican story straight
By Mark Silk — July 27, 2010
In the indispensable Commonweal, Nicholas Cafardi, dean emeritus of Duquesne Law School and eminent canon lawyer, does a yeoman’s job of trying to sort out the Vatican’s sexual abuse story. The basic problem is this: In his 2001 letter clarifying John Paul II’s motu proprio establishing the authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of […]
Constitution Party’s anti-Constitutional Attitude
By Mark Silk — July 27, 2010
On the country’s religious founding.
Latino Catholics v. political meddling
By Mark Silk — July 26, 2010
Making his own effort to explain Latino Catholic support for same-sex marriage in California, Joseph M. Palacios offers the following: It is important to note that modern Latin Catholicism has a dual nature: it is “conservative” in the sense of family communalism and tradition that the church offers, yet it is classically “liberal” in the […]
Why Latino Catholics support marriage
By Mark Silk — July 23, 2010
The most notable result of the new Public Religion Research Institute survey of attitudes toward Proposition 8 is the divide between Latino Catholics and Latino Protestants. The former are more in favor of same-sex marriage than any other ethno-religious group in the survey; the former are more opposed. (That’s Catholics 57-38 in favor versus Protestants […]
Help! The President’s Faith-Based Initiative is Missing!
By Mark Silk — July 23, 2010
A few days ago, WaPo’s Michelle Boorstein put up a plaintive post on the newspaper’s Under God blog asking for help in finding out what’s up with the faith-based initiative out in the dozen federal departments that have dedicated officials embedded in them. I’ve been requesting access to even a few of these offices for […]
Shirley Sherrod, an old source of mine
By Mark Silk — July 22, 2010
For the story I wrote back in 1993.
Angle glosses Jefferson
By Mark Silk — July 22, 2010
Tea Party paladina and Southern Baptist Sharron Angle, the Republican running to unseat Harry Reid in Nevada, recently offered the following interpretation of Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1801 letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he interpreted the religion clauses of the First Amendment as erecting a “wall of separation” between church and state. “Thomas Jefferson […]
