Columns
Notre Obama
By Mark Silk — May 1, 2009
Catholics may not love Obama as much as Muslims, Jews, and Nones, but a 67 percent approval rating isn’t anything to sneeze at. That’s four points higher than the national approval rating. Given that Catholics supported Obama in the election at just the national rate of 53 percent, it means that he is now outperforming […]
Hispanics support gay marriage?
By Mark Silk — May 1, 2009
According to a new Quinnipiac poll, 27 percent of blacks, 38 percent of whites, and 52 percent of Hispanics support same-sex marriage. The same poll has 48 percent of blacks, 56 percent of whites, and 71 percent of Hispanics in favor of repealing the law against gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. Forty-five […]
Obama Romana
By Mark Silk — April 30, 2009
Yesterday Rome spoke on The 100 Days and found that they were…not as bad as feared. According to the front-page story in L’Osservatore Romano, President Obama has operated with laudable caution, including on matters of ethics and morals. Notably, the pope’s paper found reason to praise the administration’s proposed guidelines for funding stem cell research […]
Doctrinaire
By Mark Silk — April 29, 2009
Today’s Gallup poll on The First Hundred Days suggests that Obama has shrunk his religion gap. Whereas 41 percent of weekly worship attenders and 61 percent of seldom or never attenders supported him just before the election, now the numbers are 69 57 percent and 57 69 percent respectively. Thus the gap between the two […]
Friedmania
By Mark Silk — April 29, 2009
Defending the Obama approach to torture, Tom Friedman claims that 1) prosecuting the malefactors (up to and including George W. Bush) would “rip our country apart”; and 2) torturing was justified because only torture was capable of deterring al Qaeda, an enemy like no other we have ever had. The first claim is guesswork, but […]
But who’s counting?
By Mark Silk — April 28, 2009
Arlen Specter’s party switch leaves just one Jewish Republican serving in Congress–House GOP whip Eric Cantor (R-Va).
Mighty Righty
By Mark Silk — April 28, 2009
A decade ago, conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas won some liberal props for criticizing the religious right in Blinded by Might, a book he wrote with Grand Rapids megachurch pastor Ed Dobson. Thomas and Dobson were old comrades-in-arms of Jerry Falwell–Thomas VP of the Moral Majority and Dobson associate pastor of Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist […]
Religious dropouts
By Mark Silk — April 27, 2009
In today’s release of the follow-up to its 2007 Landscape Survey, Pew offers an answer to the intriguing question: Which major Christian tradition is most likely to have its members drop out of religion. (Pew calls these folks “unaffiliated,” we at ARIS call them Nones–I won’t argue the point here.) The answer, in the immortal […]
Little Faith-based
By Mark Silk — April 27, 2009
Over at CT Politics, Douglas Koopman is unhappy with the Obama administration’s faith-based initiative so far. A political science prof at Calvin College, Koopman is one of those center-right evangelical types who was disappointed at the politicizing of the Bush effort but nevertheless remains an enthusiast of the approach. His is not the clearest exposition […]
Is the Center the New Left?
By Mark Silk — April 24, 2009
You’ve got to admire the Audacity of Jim. As Ted Olsen over at Christianity Today Politics details in chapter and verse, Wallis of Sojourners has made a career of keeping his distance from the Religious Left–portraying himself, like God, as someone who stands at the radical center. So now to have a minion send around […]
Nones, NE and NW
By Mark Silk — April 23, 2009
Yesterday, the Connecticut legislature set its good housekeeping seal of approval on the state Supreme Court’s decision allowing same-sex marriage, adjusting state law to bring it into line with the ruling. A probably unnecessary provision, borrowed from Vermont, was written in to give religious organizations–but not individuals–the right to refuse gay couples facilities and services. […]
Hire me this
By Mark Silk — April 22, 2009
Pastordan is a bit befuddled by Michelle Boorstein’s God in Government post reporting that the Advisory Council of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFANP) is not, after all, going to take up the thorny faith-based hiring issue. Since I reported a month ago that the Council was going to take it up, let […]
Stem Cell Compromise
By Mark Silk — April 21, 2009
The NIH’s draft guidelines on stem cell research funding have gladdened the hearts of common ground conservatives, as rounded up by Faith in Public Life. Scientists and hard-line conservatives, not so much, though both camps seem more shocked into silence than anything else. No one seems to have expected that the administration would propose a […]
God in Gov
By Mark Silk — April 20, 2009
I‘ve been meaning to tip my hat to a new playmate in the religion-and-politics sandbox–WaPo’s God in Government, featuring the newspaper’s two religion reporters, Michelle Boorstein and Jacqui Salmon. This a.m. they’ve got a couple of must-read posts, an interview with Rich Cizik by the latter and a scoop by the former on the faith-based […]
Getting Past Torture
By Mark Silk — April 20, 2009
There was a touch of the Lincolnesque in President Obama’s statement on the release of the four Bybee memos last week. It smacked of the promise at the end of the Second Inaugural Address to “bind up the nation’s wounds.” This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions […]
