Columns
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 […]
What’s up with Uganda?
By Mark Silk — December 20, 2009
Second reading of Ant-Homosexuality Act maybe delayed to February. Indications that President Musaveni’s administration doesn’t like the bill much and that the president might veto it. Probability that “neo-colonialist” pressure is having the desired effect. To keep up with the news, the place is Box Turtle Bulletin.
Sen. Nelson, hearing from the clergy
By Mark Silk — December 18, 2009
As the last big Democratic holdout, Ben Nelson, negotiates with his leader, progressive religious leaders are weighing in, in response to his request to hear from them. There’s an interfaith group that sent a letter to the Omaha World-Herald as well as a lot of weighing in from Nelson’s co-religionists in the United Methodist Church. […]
Medieval blasphemy, today!
By Mark Silk — December 18, 2009
St Matthew-in-the-City Catholic Church in Auckland, New Zealand, has caused a commotion by erecting the above billboard with the aim of “challenging stereotypes.” But actually, the portrayal of Joseph as a feckless cuckold is pretty stereotypical–or at least it used to be. In Merrye Olde Englande, Christmas plays regularly indulged in such bawdry. Take, for […]
Uganda Bill, up for second reading
By Mark Silk — December 18, 2009
As the Uganda Parliament prepared to take up the proposed anti-homosexuality act for the second time today, Episcopal Cafe has rounded up the latest in the way of opposition, including statements of opposition from the European Union, the Church of Scotland, the Episcopal Church of Brazil, and the Archbishop of Canterbury (kind of). The latter […]
Jesus and the Census
By Mark Silk — December 17, 2009
I don’t see how this non-governmental ad for participating in the 2010 Census is “blasphemous” or “violates the concept of separation of church and state,” as Rev. Miguel Rivera, chairman of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, claims. But I’m not sure it sends Latino immigrants–its target audience–the right message. Which message […]
On the anti-abortion barricades
By Mark Silk — December 17, 2009
Over at America‘s In All Things blog, Michael Sean Winters slams his co-religionist pro-life zealots for demonizing Sen. Bob Casey’s effort to devise an abortion compromise in the health care bill. As Winters points out, the folks at National Right to Life are opposed to health care reform altogether, so their anti-abortion zealotry needs to […]
Aimee, mother of them all
By Mark Silk — December 17, 2009
Anthea Butler has a nice appreciation over on Religion Dispatches, but I would pick a small bone with the subhead and the conclusion. The subhead reads: Before there was Falwell, Robertson, Bakker, or the Crouches, there was Oral Roberts, the iconoclastic pioneer of televangelism. The conclusion is: My friend said, “What other Pentecostal leader had […]
Oral Roberts, United Methodist
By Mark Silk — December 16, 2009
What’s up with Pentecostal Pooh-Bah Oral Roberts having been a member of the United Methodist Church? George Frink writes in to ask. (GetReligion Capo Mattingly notes that the NYT omitted this interesting biographical fact, and pokes the UMC for failing thus far to acknowledge the demise of its most famous contemporary son.) Here’s the best […]
Oral Roberts, called home
By Mark Silk — December 16, 2009
Far be it from me to disagree with my old friend Grant Wacker, our leading historian of Pentecostalism, who told WaPo’s Michelle Boorstein: I’d say if we set aside Billy Graham and Martin Luther King and Falwell in the sense that their influence was religious but also political and social, outside them Roberts was the […]
Religion and the Supreme Court
By Mark Silk — December 15, 2009
Dahlia Lithwick’s piece on Slate last week, “Articles of Faith: Why Americans can’t talk about religion and the Supreme Court,” has its premise wrong, in my view. We generally don’t talk much about religion and the Supreme Court. We talk about the need for race and gender diversity on the court in brave, sweeping pronouncements: […]
