Arts & Media
COMMENTARY: A realistic view of the second time around
By Dale Hanson Bourke — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS.) UNDATED _ What exactly is sin and what are its consequences? It’s not a question raised in polite conversations. It’s not even a discussion heard in most churches these days. Calling something a sin seems far too definitive in a society given to […]
NEWS FEATURE: At 86, retired archbishop has new dream stirring
By Bruce Nolan — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service NEW ORLEANS _ He is a familiar figure on balmy evenings, trodding the grassy bank of Bayou St. John, eyes down, a rosary dangling from one hand. His gait is a bit more of a shuffle than it used to be, and one shoulder tends to droop a bit. Usually […]
NEWS FEATURE: Artisan blends old and new in creating, recreating sacred space
By Cecile Holmes — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service CHICAGO _ One brief glimpse of Joseph Luis Ramirez’s restoration of St. Scholastica’s chapel takes one through a tunnel of artistic time. A luminous countenance of a welcoming Jesus initiates the journey. Angels, apostles, saints and martyrs flank the image ancient iconographers called Christ Pantocrater. A slain lamb, representing Jesus’ […]
NEWS FEATURE: Holiday book guide on religion and spirituality
By RNS Blog Editor — December 8, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Every year, American publishers release around 50,000 titles to an often dazed book-buying public. With the arrival of the colder months, many bibliophiles snap up larger than usual numbers of volumes _ some intended for personal pleasure on windy, wintry evenings, and others bought as gifts. Here, for […]
COMMENTARY: The high cost of being a Christian celebrity
By Daniel Burke — November 12, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of Religion News Service) UNDATED _ It’s lonely at the top, or so they say. It’s also lonely at the front. Just ask any member of the clergy who has stood before a congregation to encourage their spiritual development. And for that group of people […]
NEWS PROFILE: Faith, family inspire popular `painter of light’
By RNS Blog Editor — February 19, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Like a modern American Renoir, Thomas Kinkade is a”painter of light”whose cozy, flower-laced cottages invite onlookers to crawl inside their warmly lit windows for a romantic evening before the radiant hearths imagined within. Images of Kinkade’s idyllic Victorian villages and inspirational landscapes”account for more sales than any other […]
COMMENTARY: Hiding what we cannot face
By Kathleen O'Brien — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service (Kathleen O’Brien is a columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.) UNDATED _ There was a gap in the obituaries of Frank Sinatra, a cluster of years glossed over because they were of scant musical interest. They were the years just before his death, when he had been withdrawn from […]
NEWS FEATURE: Ten years after losing empire, Swaggart keeps low profile
By Bruce Nolan — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service BATON ROUGE, La. _ It might as well have been the Ebola virus that swept through the sprawling, once-thriving Jimmy Swaggart headquarters here 10 years ago. A decade after Swaggart tearfully confessed to an association with a prostitute, the $144 million campus that once bore his global hopes is almost […]
NEWS ANALYSIS: Bringing religion to the `wasteland’ of TV
By Daniel Howell — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Over the past 18 months, three 30-minute weekly religion news shows strode boldly onto television, famously called the”wasteland”several decades ago. The trio are serious efforts to report on the moral and ethical dimensions of society. That’s good. But the question is: Does anyone know they are there? Certainly […]
NEWS FEATURE: Heirs of Holocaust victims try to recover art they’ve never seen
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service ROME _ Johanan Vitta had never laid eyes on the paintings he so fervently claims are rightfully his. At 56, he has no memories at all of his grandfather’s prized collection of 19th-century Italian oil canvases. Among them are Giovanni Fattori’s”Cavalry Soldier with Two Horses,”and a Silvestro Lega, entitled”Girl Sewing.”There’s […]
NEWS FEATURE: Network of artists seeks to bring art to church, faith to artists
By Kein Eckstrom — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ Michelangelo had the Sistine Chapel, da Vinci had”The Last Supper,”and Tom Jennings has Manhattan’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church and his piano, where a bit of soul and a splash of Otis Redding dance along the keys during worship services. Redeemer, which meets on the campus of Hunter College, […]
NEWS STORY: Body painting rituals invite beauty from the gods
By Ronald Goldman — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ This past Valentine’s Day in New York’s posh SoHo neighborhood, bag-toting shoppers at Zona, a home-design and gift store, browsed among country furniture while in the back crowds formed around a long, wooden table covered with velvet cloths and burning candles. There, six artisans from the Mehndi […]
NEWS FEATURE: Americans get chance to match their angel images with the masters
By David Finnigan — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service LOS ANGELES _ Americans _ some 75 percent according to a recent poll _ believe in angels. And now, thanks to the Vatican and the Chrysler Corp., they’ll be able to match their mental images of heavenly beings with the representations of some of the world’s most famous artists. A […]
NEWS FEATURE: In seeking God of the poor, author finds `fierce compassion’
By Cecile Holmes — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service HOUSTON _ In seeking God, China Galland, Texas-born author and adventurer, traveled thousands of miles from her home in San Francisco to such diverse places as Vietnam, Brazil, and India. She found God _ the God of the poor and voiceless, who dwells among the neglected and defends the weak […]
NEWS FEATURE: Artist’s work is her ministry to the needy
By David Briggs — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service CLEVELAND _ Middle-aged men sit scattered around the bare room on a weekday morning, their heads bowed in sleep on dining tables. One man, lost in his own world, makes periodic animal noises. Above their heads at the St. Augustine Hunger Center is a painting of Jesus standing in a […]