rns-ee-migration
Hey, Mormon Woman! A No-Guilt Christmas Present
Hey, you! Mormon woman with the minivan. Does visiting teaching bog you down with miles of guilt? Do you pretend to have a fussy toddler when it's time for the annual visiting teaching conference, just so you can stay in the hall? When If you read the Ensign's monthly visiting teaching message to your assigned sister, do you feel like you're not measuring up and hope like hell you don't make her feel that way, too?
I heart the Menorahment
I was flying from Chicago to Washington for Thanksgiving last week when out of the corner of my eye I detected, on a page of SkyMall being flipped through in the next seat over, a photo of a Christmas tree topped by a Star of David. Talk about your revelations!
The (Continued) Politics of Racial Resentment
Affiliated Scholar Paul A. Djupe explores data which sheds light on the level of racial resentment toward Obama among white Americans.
Shopping for Jesus
Am I giving to charity via these glossy catalogs of chickens and goats, or am I just satisfying an insatiable need to shop?
Tuesday’s Religion News Roundup: “Two and a Half Hypocrisy”? Pope Benedict = Marlboro Man? Charity up, abortions down
End culture war, World Vision head tells Christians
As it dawns on the Republican Party that the American people are not entirely down with the Norquistian anti-tax pledge, so is it dawning that the upper hand in the culture war may not lie with religious conservatives. So along comes Richard Stearns, president of the evangelical international aid agency World Vision, with a call to Christians to lay down their arms.
Saudis say No to the Prophet Muhammad, Yes to Paris Hilton
The Saudis make a great deal of their honorific as the “Caretaker of the two Noble Sanctuaries” in Mecca and Medina. One has to wonder about a kind of Care that says no to the legacy of Muhammad, bulldozes it, and invites Paris Hilton in its place.
5 Things Not to Say If You Want to Get Your Book Published, #3: “This Book Is Ready for Publication”
“This book is like a baby that needs to be born and I am looking for a stable.” Can we just say that as a general rule it’s a bad idea to compare your book to baby Jesus? Baby Jesus did not need editing. Mary didn’t send the bambino back and say, “Well, all the basic baby organs are in place, but his eyes are too far apart, and he has redundant navels, and I’m not thrilled with the proposed Jesus title. Can you fix those problems in the second draft?” Those are the kinds of things an editor does.
Romney’s religious coalition should spook the GOP even more than I thought
A couple of weeks ago I called attention to a striking graphic from the Public Religion Research Institute that compared the religious layout of the Obama and Romney coalitions with the religious layout of the electorate by age cohort. Short version: Obama's (i.e. Dems) looks like the electorate of the future; Romney's (i.e. GOP's), like the electorate of the past.
Blood of the Innocents: Martyrdom of the Prophet’s Family, then and now
The real question is not just what Imam Hossein did in the month
of Muharram of the year 680 on the plains of Karbala in Iraq, but rather
what are we doing today.
5 Things Not to Say If You Want to Get Your Book Published, #2: “I’m Happy to Do Interviews”
I started this series with some softball advice: Don't mention in a query letter that God told you to write this book. Most of you were probably patting yourselves on the back when you read that, because you're not psychotic. (Well done, you!) So today's advice is a little less intuitive to sane people: don't tell your publisher that you're happy to do interviews.
Resist the temptation of Black Friday.
We are told, hundreds of time every day, to buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have.
Resist.... Boycott Black Friday.
Why America is losing support in the Middle East—and how to get it back
We have a fragile truce now.
Truce is not the same thing as peace.
Peace (salam, shalom) has to be grounded in justice.
Let us march purposefully, compassionately, boldy, towards a just peace.
Is the GOP evolving?
One way to gauge how the Republican Party's is evolving since the election is to see what its 2016 presidential hopefuls have to say about the pre-election litmus test issues.
5 Things Not to Say If You Want to Get Your Book Published, #1: “God Told Me to Write This Book”
This first short post in a five-part series aims to help authors avoid five all-too-common pitfalls that can instantly derail their query letters. First up: "God told me to write this book."