Columns
Christianity and the Crash
By Mark Silk — January 1, 2010
As an old newspaperman, I tend to bristle at the conventional charge that this or that sensationalist story was put out there “to sell papers.” Since World War II, virtually all American newspapers have been sold by subscription and delivered to homes. No single story can bump circulation, except perhaps in New York City, where […]
Illustrative Jews
By Mark Silk — December 31, 2009
In a nice obituary appreciation in today’s NYT, Michael Kimmelman calls the New York Review’s fabled illustrator David Levine “one of the great artists of the last half-century,” and then asks: But how so one of the great artists? Every great artist inhabits a genre, and remakes it. Saul Steinberg reinvented the gag cartoon, Jules […]
Catholic divisions on health care
By Mark Silk — December 30, 2009
Over at Politics Daily, David Gibson offers a well-balanced assessment of the reported (and partly denied) split over health care reform between the Catholic bishops and the nuns and hospitalers who do Catholic health care. Key graphs: On the other hand, the CHA and the religious orders of nuns that generally operate Catholic hospitals tend […]
Who’s the most “Christian”?
By Mark Silk — December 29, 2009
From a new survey by the Center for Immigration Studies.
Religion story of the decade
By Mark Silk — December 29, 2009
What was the biggest religion story of the decade? Unquestionably, the story of how American Catholic bishops, aided and abetted by civil authorities and mental health professionals, had systematically covered up the abuse of children by priests. This was big news locally in every Catholic diocese in the country. It became, because the USCCB was […]
Avatar’s Christian theme
By Mark Silk — December 25, 2009
Having just returned from Avatar (something for Jews to do on a day like today), I’d like to pick a bone with the NYT’s callow conservative columnist Ross Douthat, who denounced director James Cameron a few days ago for soft-headed Hollywood pantheism. Yes, the movie does not lack for anti-colonialist, aboriginal people-loving tree-huggery. But strictly […]
Uganda push-back
By Mark Silk — December 24, 2009
The Roman Catholic archbishop of Uganda comes out against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in his Christmas message. Money quote: “The recent tabled Anti-Homosexuality Bill does not pass a test of a Christian caring approach to this issue” Likewise, the leade of Uganda’s main opposition party: What two consenting adults do, the state has no business… absolutely! […]
Jimmy Carter’s Al Het
By Mark Silk — December 23, 2009
I’ve had a hard spot in my heart for Jimmy Carter since 1988, when he tried to get me fired for writing an exposé of the Carter Center. (Happily, he didn’t succeed.) So what to make of his Chanukah greeting to the Jewish community offering “an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine” […]
WCC GenSec Kobia v. Uganda law
By Mark Silk — December 23, 2009
It can’t hurt that the Methodist cleric who serves as General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Samuel Kobia, has written a letter to Ugandan President Museveni expressing “concerns” about the proposed anti-homosexuality act. Coming from next-door neighbor Kenya, Kobia can hardly be accused of being just another neo-colonialist seeking to impose Western values […]
Attacking J Street: the old playbook
By Mark Silk — December 22, 2009
In 1973, in the wake of the Yom Kippur war, more than 100 Reform and Conservative rabbis plus a number of leading Jewish intellectuals formed Breira: A Project of Concern in Diaspora-Israel Relations. The organization, which at its height numbered over 1,500 members, was dedicated to finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict in the […]
Religiosity by state
By Mark Silk — December 21, 2009
Pew has a cool new study out on religiosity by state according to four scales: importance of religion to the individual, worship attendance, frequency of prayer, and belief in God. The national average for those who say religion is very important in their lives is 56 percent. Among the 22 states (plus D.C.) above the […]
Day of Judgment
By Mark Silk — December 21, 2009
I’m sorry, but sometimes the truth overwhelms my desire to maintain at least some small measure of academic disinterestedness in this blog. Whitehouse has it right, not least about the return of the Hofstadterian right-wing paranoid style of the 1950s. And it’s time for the comfortable pundits of the Beltway to wake up and see […]
Stupak’s crowd
By Mark Silk — December 21, 2009
In his wrap-up of the Great Senate Abortion Compromise on Politics Daily, David Gibson suggests that Bart Stupak’s opposition spells doom for the compromise in conference committee: “The reality, however, is that the House is not likely to pass a bill that Stupak does not support.” That seems to me a misreading of the situation. […]
Robby George, marital metaphysician
By Mark Silk — December 21, 2009
David Kirkpatick’s fine profile of Princeton’s Robert George, intellectual guru to the Conservative Catholic Bishops of America, shows a man as captivated by the potential of Reason to move the world as any Enlightenment philosophe. No doubt some will cavil at his elaborate argument for why only a one-man/one-woman, vaginal-intercourse-performing couple meets the Natural Law […]
Abortion and heath care reform: the Medicaid solution
By Mark Silk — December 20, 2009
So far as I can tell (from Wapo’s account), the key to bringing Ben Nelson on board for the health care bill was Medicaid. On the sausage-making front, Nebraska’s senior senator managed carve out a special Medicaid subsidy for…Nebraska. On abortion, the arrangement whereby states can opt out of permitting abortion coverage in the insurance […]