Opinion
Mutual Admiration Society
By Mark Silk — October 22, 2008
Palin chats with Dobson. GOP Platform Good. MSM Bad. Dobson reports a morning conference call with lots of people praying “for a miracle with regard to the election this year.” He’s been reading the polls.
Nothing to Fear?
By Mark Silk — October 22, 2008
A couple of days ago, Matt Sutton (a young American religious historian who’s knows from American Pentecostalism) argued on the History News Network that, whatever reasons one might have for being concerned about Sarah Palin in high national office, her religion should not be one of them. (He assumes, by the way, that she is […]
COMMENTARY: Profound sentiments in simple statements
By Tom Ehrich — October 22, 2008
I learned years ago to write simple declarative sentences. Now I am taking the next step: simple declarative thoughts. Few things are as simple as they can be stated. Reality is more like the formula Jesus used: “You have heard it said, but I say to you.” These “but” clauses aren’t equivocations. They describe the […]
Seismic Pew
By Mark Silk — October 21, 2008
Here are the religion cross tabs from Pew’s latest, which shows the biggest lead Obama’s ever had: 14 points. (Too big a margin, perhaps, but the sample was a huge 2,600 and cell phones as well as land lines were surveyed.) The points of major note: 1. Mainline Protestants and White Catholics have flipped by […]
Orthodox Signage
By Mark Silk — October 21, 2008
Not to be outdone by the Jews, the Greeks have come up with a less genteel take. Glossary: mavro = black guy malaka = limp dick
Lost Opportunity
By Mark Silk — October 21, 2008
The poll of Latino Protestants released last week by Faith in Public Life showed the biggest see-saw I’ve ever seen by a faith community in presidential preference: from 68-32 for Gore in 2000 to 63-37 for Bush in 2004 to 50.4 to 33.6 for Obama now. The authors properly point to anti-immigrant hostility that took […]
Inclusion Politics
By Mark Silk — October 21, 2008
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, John McCain ran a very different kind of campaign. Take a look.
Huh?
By Mark Silk — October 20, 2008
Mike Huckabee is circulating a petition supporting “the sanctity of life” and hopes to have 100,000 signatures by election day.
On that gay marriage thing…
By Mark Silk — October 20, 2008
Bill Donohue believes he’s caught Joe Biden in a logical contradiction. As the press release from the Catholic League intones: On today’s episode of “Ellen,” Joe Biden told Ellen DeGeneres “that if I lived in California, I would vote against Proposition 8.” This initiative reads, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid […]
Powell shakes up GOP
By cmcmorri — October 20, 2008
Beleifnet comments on Colin Powell’s criticism of rumors that have spread around senior members of the GOP calling Obama a Muslim, as if his allegiance would be to something other than America’s best interest, if the rumors were even true. On Meet the Press Powell said yesterday, “This is not the way we should be […]
Florida Senator Admits to Affairs
By cmcmorri — October 20, 2008
ABC has an interview in which Florida Democratic Senator Tim Mahoney comes clean about the truth of his extra-marital affairs and his attempts to cover them up. While his honesty and self-reproach appeals to the, “I’m only human, I make mistakes” defense, his admission surely dissolves the family values platform on which he ran during […]
Slow Pitch
By Mark Silk — October 20, 2008
Brody got his 20 minutes with Sarah Palin, and this is the best he could do? Brody: There have been some shots taken at you…regarding your Christian faith…The Pentecostal stuff, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Do you want to clear up exactly what you believe in and so that the record can be set […]
Jews = Dems
By Mark Silk — October 20, 2008
A big new study by Steven Cohen et al. suggests that Jews will be voting for Obama by something like the hefty margins that they support most Democratic presidential candidates. The survey of nearly 1,600 was done right after the Republican convention, when the race was even among white voters generally. Throwing out the undecideds, […]
The Vetting
By Mark Silk — October 20, 2008
So should it come as a surprise that, as reporteth Jane Mayer, some of that very conservative punditocracy that is now dissing Sarah Palin and her running mate for choosing her should have been part of the vetting party that pushed her into John McCain’s arms? Nah. For all the pious chatter about readiness for […]
Spreading the Wealth Around
By Mark Silk — October 19, 2008
Here’s what Teddy Roosevelt had to say about it, in his famous “New Nationalism” speech of 1910. No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered–not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by […]
