Opinion
Results! The Jews
By Mark Silk — November 5, 2008
Keeping in mind the several caveats noted yesterday, the overall conclusion to draw from yesterday’s voting by religion is that the more things change, the more they stay pretty much the same. Let’s start with the first of the Abrahamic faiths–the Jews. In 2004, they bumped a bit toward George W. Bush, up from 79-19 […]
COMMENTARY: A life that matters
By Tom Ehrich — November 5, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ My new “Blood Donor” card from the New York Blood Center arrived last week. It contains important lessons for these turbulent and frightening times. The card has my name on it _ a reminder that I am unique, something we tend to forget in the aggregation of […]
What’s Up, Mormons?
By Mark Silk — November 4, 2008
Here are a few last findings from Harris and Pew, the former having to do with registered voters and the latter with likely ones. The polls are pretty close overall, Obama 53-44 (Harris) and 52-46 (Pew). White Catholics diverge radically: McCain 57-40 (Harris), Obama 47-45 (Pew). Harris has white evangelicals surprisingly close (for them): McCain […]
What We’ll Know and When We’ll Know It
By Mark Silk — November 4, 2008
Pre-election polls come and go, and obsessed as we are with them, they matter little when all is said and done. But exit polls are something else entirely, both for historians and political scientists assessing the significance of elections and for politicians and their minions planning for the future. Think, in recent years, of the […]
At the AAR
By Mark Silk — November 3, 2008
For the past couple of days, I’ve been in Chicago attending the annual meeting of that big, baggy association of scholars known as the American Academy of Religion. From a balcony outside the lavish Conrad Room (as in Paris’s forebear) high atop the Chicago Hilton on Michigan Ave. you can look down at the white […]
There goes that theory
By Mark Silk — November 1, 2008
From the latest WaPo-ABC tracking poll: Younger white evangelical Protestants (under age 39) break more for McCain than do older people in that group, 85 percent to 13 percent. We’ll see how it all turns out on Tuesday, but I’m betting on white evangelicals splitting not by age but by region. As for the Jews, […]
The First Amendment
By Mark Silk — October 31, 2008
We’ve entered the wacky pre-election days, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at anything. But the Dole ad is one for the history books, and now we’ve got Sarah Palin claiming that media criticism of her for criticizing Barack Obama threatens her First Amendment rights. That’s a beautiful thing. But, as Cab Calloway once […]
He Who Cannot Be Named
By Mark Silk — October 31, 2008
It’s obvious that the alleged anti-Semite that McCain apparatchik Michael Goldfarb cannot name is Jeremiah Wright, who has made statements sufficient to warrant considering him less than friendly toward the State of Israel. Why can’t Goldfarb name him? I have little doubt that he’s under orders from the campaign not to–and the question is why. […]
The other Antichrist candidate
By Mark Silk — October 31, 2008
A friend from England writes: “Just in case America is tempted to do something stupid on Tuesday please tell everyone you know that “Vice President Sarah Palin” is an anagram of “Is Perhaps Evil Incarnate.”
COMMENTARY: Is this the best we can do?
By Dick Staub — October 31, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Perhaps it’s the political season that brings on this present melancholy and the realization that the ancient wisdom of Ecclesiastes still stands: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? […]
COMMENTARY: Is this the best we can do?
By RNS Blog Editor — October 31, 2008
Perhaps we can blame this sense of melancholy on the political season-the realization from Ecclesiastes that “all is vanity.” Or maybe it’s our current economic instability that gives rise to the sense of doom and a certain “thin-ness” of human existence. (Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of […]
Et tu, Huck?
By Mark Silk — October 30, 2008
A scummy extended version of Dole’s Godless ad–posted on Huck’s blog.
White evangelicals and their Mirror Image
By Mark Silk — October 30, 2008
From Pew’s latest: White Evangelicals: McCain 65, Obama 22 No Religious Affiliations: Obama 65, McCain 22
Wow
By Mark Silk — October 30, 2008
This is an ad that will live in infamy. And Campbell Brown’s commentary deserves to be remembered too.
Marriage in the Land of Steady Habits
By Mark Silk — October 30, 2008
On Tuesday, CT voters get to decide if the state should hold its first constitutional convention in 40 years–the fond hope of those who would like to do away with same-sex marriage, as recently mandated by the state supreme court. And indeed, according to a new Hartford Courant poll, the voters seem to want to […]
