Opinion
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 […]
COMMENTARY: Israel attracts endless opinions
By Tracy Gordon — April 23, 2009
(UNDATED)Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, and ever since it has attracted an astonishing number of critics who are obsessed with providing the world’s only Jewish state with an endless stream of unwanted advice, ominous warnings, angry reprimands, or gloomy predictions. Both its friends and enemies have never been shy about telling Israel […]
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. […]
COMMENTARY: Terror on the high seas
By Phyllis Zagano — April 22, 2009
(UNDATED) I can’t get it out of my head. Some Somali mother’s son thought he could negotiate with the United States of America, and three of his thug-buddies got killed. You remember. The Somali pirates boarded the U.S. merchant ship Maersk Alabama on its way to deliver a shipment of food aid to Kenya. The […]
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 […]
COMMENTARY: Yearning on the everlasting arms
By Tom Ehrich — April 21, 2009
(UNDATED) My father and I were eating lunch at Marquette Manor, the retirement center in Indianapolis where he has lived since my mother’s death five years ago. A friend walked up and put his hand on my father’s shoulder. The two began singing, my father on melody, his friend on harmony. They do this every […]
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 […]
Quote for the day
By Mark Silk — April 19, 2009
“If I had my way, I’d destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more. At least they’re not sectarian.” –Baghdad police detective, New York Times
Common Ground We Can Believe In
By Mark Silk — April 19, 2009
If I were a religious progressive eager to change America for the better by forging a broad national consensus on an issue of profound moral concern, then I’d focus my efforts on putting pressure on the Obama administration and the Congress to pursue truth and justice in the matter of Bush torture policy. Last week’s […]
Right on the Ropes
By Mark Silk — April 17, 2009
As the prophets and politicos…er, priests… of the spiritual left tussle over the Mantle of Religious Progressivism (latest assessment here), there’s a growing consensus that, as Michael Gerson puts it in today’s WaPo, “[t]he religious right, at least in its cruder expressions, is indeed a phenomenon without a future.” Whether or not he believes the […]
COMMENTARY: You are what you eat (or read)
By Tracy Gordon — April 16, 2009
(UNDATED) Someday I’d like to be able to walk into a bookstore and have everything neatly laid out in three sections: “Fiction.” “Non-Fiction.” And “Not Sure.” James Frey’s notorious memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” was revealed to be partly a fictional fabrication and now is sometimes derisively called “A Million Little Lies.” Dan Brown went […]
Pro-life Zealots
By Mark Silk — April 16, 2009
The Catholic League does not ordinarily discern threats to civil and religious rights coming from anti-abortion Catholics, but then Randall Catholic Terry isn’t your ordinary anti-abortion Catholic. A few weeks ago, the founder of Operation Rescue managed to embarrass Vatican bigwig Raymond Burke by publicly playing a taped interview in which Burke called on faithful […]
COMMENTARY: Injustice in the criminal justice system
By Cathleen Falsani — April 15, 2009
(UNDATED) Twenty-seven years ago, Brenda and Scott Kniffen, a homemaker and an inventory manager of a diesel shop, were arrested and charged with sexually abusing their two sons, Brian, 6, and Brandon, 8. Under intense questioning by police and social welfare workers, the boys claimed to have been molested by their parents and ritually abused […]
