Opinion
Not pro-abortion
By Mark Silk — August 12, 2008
In their proposed new platform language, the Democrats toss a bone to the pro-life community by spelling out ways to make abortion rarer: We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s […]
So what’s an evangelical?
By Mark Silk — August 11, 2008
Barna has a new survey of likely presidential voters, and one arresting take-away is that evangelicals only support McCain over Obama by 39 percent to 37 percent. Before getting all amazed, be aware that Barna has Obama up by nine percentage points overall (43-34), twice the margin of other non-tracking polls but smaller than the […]
Progressive Huck Redux
By Mark Silk — August 11, 2008
Readers of this blog will know that it has taken a rather dyspeptic view of Mike Huckabee’s incarnation as Republican Party shill. When Alaska Rep. Don (“Bridge to Nowhere”)Young is one of your designated faves, you’ve got a lot to answer for, in my book. Equally, there’s been nothing on Huckabee’s blog to indicate any […]
Prophetic
By Mark Silk — August 10, 2008
As the McCain spin machine continues to beat up on Obama for his alleged messianic or prophetic pretensions (I say prophetic, Waldman says undeserved), the worry in a number of black quarters is that Obama is not prophetic enough–or more precisely, that his candidacy threatens to undermine the ability of black America to lift up […]
The Edwards Affair
By Mark Silk — August 9, 2008
I was always deaf to the Edwards music–Gail Collins seems to me to have it about right. But I’m grateful that, in the Woodruff interview, he at least kept the religion down to the bare minimum: “In 2006 I told Elizabeth about the mistake, asked her for her forgiveness, asked God for his forgiveness.” Sufficient […]
McCain’s Privacy
By Mark Silk — August 8, 2008
Brody has interrupted his vacation to share the news flash that the McCain campaign is distributing a letter on his faith to “conservative grassroots groups” around the country. The letter consists of excerpts from his book, Faith of My Fathers. So what’s the news? Other than the fact that the McCain campaign is revealed as […]
Landish
By Mark Silk — August 8, 2008
CBS’ Brian Goldsmith’s interview of Southern Baptist Convention public affairs meister Richard Land is worth a read. Land’s a political junkie, and loves the ins and outs of a campaign almost as much as that senator’s son, Pat Robertson. Take-aways from the interview include: 1) a huge lack of excitement about John McCain; 2) only […]
Obama Effect?
By Mark Silk — August 8, 2008
Rep. Steve Cohen’s overwhelming 79-19 victory in Tennessee’s ninth congressional district Democratic primary has got to warm the cockles of even the most cynical journalistic heart. Nikki Tinker’s race- and Jew-baiting ads, designed to encourage voters in the majority-black district to choose one of their own, backfired with a vengeance, as Americans’ rosiest accounts of […]
COMMENTARY: China, the Olympics and the Bible
By Tracy Gordon — August 8, 2008
“Everything you can say about China is true … somewhere in China!” Such was the insight offered by my 90-year-old friend, Rosa, who with her sister, the late Ruth Graham Bell (Billy Graham’s wife), was raised in China. The observation is timely and useful as the Olympics are upon us and we Westerners are trying […]
Toward Saddleback
By Mark Silk — August 7, 2008
Over at GOM, Dan Gilgoff has a nice dissection of Barack Obama’s short pre-Saddleback “on Faith” essay for Time, showing how well calculated it is to appeal to evangelicals. I agree that it hits a lot of evangelical buttons, though not, perhaps, the most important one. It says nothing about his personal born-again experience–something he […]
Religion in the Empire State
By Mark Silk — August 7, 2008
Today’s Quinnipiac poll of New Yorkers has McCain winning Catholics by the relatively hefty margin of 54-40 and trailing Obama among Jews by the relatively small margin of 37-60. In 2004, Bush carried the Catholic vote in the Empire State by only 51-48, while Kerry carried the Jewish vote by a whopping 80-18. Yet for […]
Undecided evangelicals
By Mark Silk — August 7, 2008
The latest CBS poll has white evangelicals choosing McCain over Obama 58 percent to 24 percent, with 15 percent undecided. If the undecided break 50-50, that would give Obama nearly one-third of the white evangelical vote–a big improvement over Kerry’s performance in 2004. For him, opportunity knocks. McCain, by contrast, has got to ratchet up […]
What Catholic Vote?
By Mark Silk — August 7, 2008
Today’s NYT article on abortion and the Catholic vote by John Broder is pretty inadequate. The back-and-forth on abortion in Democratic presidential politics is OK, but the account of Catholic electoral behavior leaves a good deal to be desired. For starters, Broder does not differentiate between Latino and white Catholics, the former as solid a […]
Object lesson
By Mark Silk — August 7, 2008
Amidst this year’s charges and countercharges of whether or not someone’s playing the race card, it’s worth being reminded, I suppose, of what open bigotry in electioneering looks like. And so we have Tennessee’s ninth congressional district in Memphis, where Nikki Tinker is challenging first termer Steve Cohen, who happens to be Jewish. And very […]
COMMENTARY: Summer Sabbath
By Cathleen Falsani — August 7, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) At last … August. Summer’s languid afternoon. The loveliest, laziest days of the year. For most of my life, August has meant vacation. When I was a child, my parents would pack my brother and me into the station wagon, head to the ferry dock on the Connecticut side […]
