Columns
Atheist on the warpath
By Mark Silk — September 24, 2009
PZ Myers, biology prof and proud atheist, takes umbrage at what he see as a dishonest effort to reassure the public that all those Nones are not really Big Bad Unbelievers but mostly just skeptics about organized religion. No doubt, there are some who push in this direction–notably those (like Pew) who insist on referring […]
Do you suck your thumb at us?
By Mark Silk — September 23, 2009
Oy veh! I’ve caught some flak from the gentlefolk at Religion Dispatches for describing that worthy electronic rag as a place for “professorial thumbsucking.” Louis Ruprecht thinks I’m giving them the finger. Actually, professors, a “thumbsucker” is simply the term journalists use for a “think piece.” Professorial think pieces are RD’s stock in trade. Heck, […]
Dolan Ensconsed
By Mark Silk — September 23, 2009
Robert Kolker’s New York profile of Timothy Dolan is what you’d expect from a professional magazine writer doing his thing for the Church’s newly arrived Happy Warrior: competent, enthusiastic without ignoring all criticism, and lacking any awareness of what’s going on in the hierarchy today. There’s a lot of attention to abortion and same-sex marriage, […]
The None Denomination
By Mark Silk — September 23, 2009
One of the more interesting findings of the new Trinity ARIS study of the Nones is that those who grew up with no religion (i.e. were Nones at the age of 12) are just as likely to switch to a religion in later life as those with a religion are to switch to something else. […]
SBC retirements
By Mark Silk — September 22, 2009
A major changing of the guard at the Southern Baptist Convention is on the way with the retirementof two longtime officials–Executive Committee president Morris Chapman and foreign missions head Jerry Rankin. But they’ll have to pry the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission out of Richard Land’s cold dead hands.
Burke v. O’Malley
By Mark Silk — September 22, 2009
Wow. That Archbishop Burke should rally the troops against Cardinal O’Malley’s presiding at Sen. Kennedy’s funeral is, as David Gibson writes, “remarkable.” The occasion–an annual gala for Catholic conservatives–was not exactly public, but the semi-official report on it from Deal Hudson–no Randall Terry he–would not have been made without Burke’s assent. What we’re seeing looks […]
Brooks disses Kristol fils?
By Mark Silk — September 22, 2009
On père: So while others were marching to barricades, picking out bits of the truth that confirmed their own prejudices, editing contrary evidence and working themselves up a righteous lather, Kristol would adopt an attitude of smiling forbearance. He was able to pick a side without losing his clarity. Update: But see Sullivan’s brief evisceration […]
Abortion thought for the day
By Mark Silk — September 22, 2009
Currently about as many miscarriages take place in the U.S. as abortions–900,000 of the former and 800,000 of the latter, or 20-25 percent of all pregnancies in each case. Those who believe that there is a live person from the moment of conception presumably struggle from time to time with the theodicy question: Why does […]
Profile of the Nones
By Mark Silk — September 21, 2009
The latest report is out from the 2008 Trinity American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)–a profile of the country’s no-religion population. For political junkies, the big news is that whereas in 1990, Democratic Nones outnumbered Republican Nones by just 4-to-3, they now outnumber them nearly 3-1. That’s because virtually all the new Nones–those born after 1973, […]
Straw Huckabee
By Mark Silk — September 21, 2009
So Mike Huckabee won the Values Voters Summit 2012 straw poll with 28 percent of the vote, while second place was shared by Palin, Pawlenty, Pence, and Romney, each of whom picked up about 12 percent. Does that mean anything? Neither WaPo’s Chris Cillizza nor Time‘s Amy Sullivan thinks so, and it’s hard to disagree. […]
…umetukah!
By Mark Silk — September 18, 2009
On the faith-based hiring warpath
By Mark Silk — September 18, 2009
Yesterday, 57 religious and civil liberties groups delivered themselves of a letter to Attorney General Holder asking that the Justice Department dump the 2007 memo from the Bush justice department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that justifies religious discrimination in hiring, based on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Many of the signatories were […]
J Street makes its way
By Mark Silk — September 18, 2009
I’ve just got around to reading James Traub’s approving piece on the liberal Jewish lobby J Street in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, and am struck by the contrast with the Christian lobbies that have come to the fore in the Obama era. The latter–Catholics in Alliance, Sojourners, etc.–represent an effort to reassure conservative […]
Why the Catholic Bishops Matter
By Mark Silk — September 17, 2009
Steve Waldman, who’s been bird-dogging the abortion provisions of the various health care reform bills to a fare-thee-well, offers five reasons for why the bishops’ support is important. I’d offer a sixth: It knocks the pins out from under the anti-reformists on the Catholic right.
Cafeteria Catholicism on the Right
By Mark Silk — September 17, 2009
“No thanks, we’ll pass on that ‘health care is a right’ dish, especially if it’s Obamacare and we can pretend that what’s at stake is federally funded abortions.” The pseudo-puzzlement expressed by the likes of Deal Hudson and Russell Shaw is risible as they disdain that particular teaching of the (dare I say it) magisterium, […]
