Opinion
COMMENTARY: Greed, it turns out, isn’t so good after all
By Tracy Gordon — February 19, 2009
(UNDATED) “Greed is good.” So said the fictional Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) to the shareholders of Teldar Paper in the 1987 movie “Wall Street.” “I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good. […]
Traditionalist Catholics Heart Obama
By Mark Silk — February 19, 2009
First Things has posted its regular report from John Green on the Unversity of Akron’s quadrennial post-election National Survey of Religion and Politics, and I’ll bet the editors got a bit of an unpleasant shock. Alongside the unsurprising news that African Americans and Ethnic Protestants (read: Latinos) jumped toward Obama (from the 2004 Kerry vote) […]
Across the Bow
By Mark Silk — February 19, 2009
The ADL, which doesn’t always think so clearly before it sounds off, has sent a well calculated shot across OFANP’s bow, in the form of a letter to the president expressing concerns about his Feb. 5 executive order establishing his faith-based office. The letter goes beyond the hiring issue to make it clear that additional […]
COMMENTARY: Apologetics and apologies
By Cathleen Falsani — February 18, 2009
(UNDATED) Dwight L. Moody, the great 19th century American evangelist, once said that of 100 people, one would read the Bible, and the other 99 would “read the Christian.” Let’s face it: Christianity has an image problem. When you hear the word “Christian,” what comes to mind? Is it love, compassion, service, humility and grace? […]
Poverty, ctd.
By Mark Silk — February 18, 2009
Thumbs down on the Poverty Forum’s poverty agenda from American Prospect’s Sarah Posner and Peter Laarman over at Religion Dispatches. Laarman’s essay is particularly worth reading, because he places the exercise in historical context, showing how it fits into the downward spiral of seriousness about combating poverty since the 1960s. While he overlooks the odd […]
A gentle reminder
By Mark Silk — February 18, 2009
The Speaker got her audience. The Pope gave her his two cents. Following the General Audience the Holy Father briefly greeted Mrs Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives, together with her entourage. His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent […]
COMMENTARY: Accountability starts here, starts now
By Tom Ehrich — February 17, 2009
(UNDATED) How do the sayings go? “If you make a mess, clean it up.” “You made your bed. Now lie in it.” “The captain goes down with the ship.” These are the simple aphorisms of accountability. Actions have consequences. The one taking the action should bear the consequences. The captain who steered into disaster can’t […]
Poverty, poverty
By Mark Silk — February 17, 2009
Last month, Christian Churches Together in the USA, an organization comprising all the major Christian groupings in the country (including the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Catholics and the Orthodox, but OK, not the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), issued a report intended to strengthen its commitment to […]
Yes, Virginia, there is a religious right
By Mark Silk — February 17, 2009
The questions is: How much does it matter? Back in the 1990s, exit pollsters not very usefully included “religious right” on a list of religious identities for voters to select. The problem was that calling yourself a member of the “religious right” was not claiming a religious identity, but membership in something like a social […]
Sooner rather than later
By Mark Silk — February 16, 2009
The NYT weighs in on OFANP in the usual, straight-ahead separationist way it has with church-state issues: no faith-based hiring discrimination. My admittedly anecdotal sense is that there is more ambient interest in/concern about Obama’s continuation of the Bush office than mainstream media coverage would lead you to suspect. (It would be interesting to see […]
New RIN!
By Mark Silk — February 14, 2009
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the latest issue of Religion in the News is now online, featuring Doe Daughtrey’s story on the Mormon campaign for Proposition 8. It’s paired with “No Saints Need Apply,” an examination–complete with regression analysis!–by John Green and me of the impact of anti-Mormonism on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Also […]
What is to be done?
By Mark Silk — February 13, 2009
Now that I’ve established my separationist bona fides up around the Americans United and ACLU level, I’d like to take a walk back through some of the complexities the administration confronts as it wades into faith-based social service provision, department of hiring. First, it is a mistake to imagine that hiring discrimination by faith-based providers […]
COMMENTARY: My list of things not missed
By Tracy Gordon — February 12, 2009
(UNDATED) In Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta “The Mikado,” the Lord High Executioner sings about things he detests: “I’ve got a little list and … they’d none of them be missed.” I, too, have “got a little list” of phrases I dislike, and “they’d none of them be missed.” It starts with the trite response from […]
NAE Meets OFANP
By Mark Silk — February 12, 2009
The National Association of Evangelicals, under the imprimatur of its legal counsel Carl Esbeck, is on board with OFANP, and as such, its press release is worth a careful look in re: the hiring issue. Bear in mind that Esbeck, a law professor at the University of Missouri, is one of the progenitors of Charitable […]
GOP Elites
By Mark Silk — February 12, 2009
Over at Religion Dispatches, Michelle Goldberg offers an analysis of Republican elites desperately seeking to rescue their party from the religious right–an effort she sees as doomed to failure. Sympathetic as I am to looking at internal Republican dynamics in terms of the social conservative base, her bifurcated elite/rank-and-file model obscures more than it reveals. […]
