Monthly Archives: June 2009
Scientific search for God leads reporter back to faith
By Tracy Gordon — June 25, 2009
(UNDATED) For more than a year, Barbara Bradley Hagerty was a sleuth on God’s trail, hunting for evidence of the divine as far afield as a Native American tepee, brain scans, and epilepsy clinics. As chronicled in her new book, “Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality,” the award-winning National Public Radio […]
COMMENTARY: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
By Tracy Gordon — June 25, 2009
(UNDATED) When it comes to patriotic celebrations and the role of religion in America’s founding, views typically range from a nostalgic exaggeration of our Christian roots to an outright (and equally misleading) denial of religion’s role. To find the truth, it might help if we could return to two original founding documents, both of which […]
Mark, we hardly knew ye
By Mark Silk — June 25, 2009
In his at times barely comprehensible press conference remarks yesterday, Mark Sanford did manage to make it clear that he’d been spending time wandering through the woods of Bible-based therapy, seeking to recover his moral compass and repair his marriage. It’s about what one would expect of a Southern Republican politician these days. But Sanford […]
Liberty offers compromise on student political clubs
By Tracy Gordon — June 25, 2009
(RNS) Liberty University has decided to detach itself from all campus political clubs that misrepresent the schools’ Christian mission, stripping them of funding, but compromising on regulations. Classifying them as “unofficial clubs,” the conservative Baptist school founded by the late Jerry Falwell adopted new policies to regulate school groups that “are not aligned with Liberty’s […]
France to consider banning burqas
By Tracy Gordon — June 25, 2009
PARIS (RNS) Five years after France banned Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in public schools, the government has launched a probe into another Muslim garment — all-covering burqas or niqabs — that may lead to a similar injunction in public spaces. In July, a 32-member parliamentary commission will begin a six-month investigation into the burqa […]
Obama and pope to meet on July 10
By Tracy Gordon — June 25, 2009
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has agreed to meet President Obama at the Vatican on July 10, the pope’s spokesman said on Wednesday (June 24), for what would be a rare afternoon encounter arranged to accommodate Obama’s travel schedule. The Rev. Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican press office, stopped short of officially confirming […]
Evangelicals tap new top lobbyist
By Tracy Gordon — June 25, 2009
WASHINGTON — The nation’s largest evangelical umbrella group has tapped a veteran expert on refugee settlement and international relief efforts as its new top lobbyist in the nation’s capital. Galen Carey was announced Wednesday (June 24) as director of government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. Carey, 53, has worked for more than 25 […]
Blame Calvin
By Daniel Burke — June 24, 2009
Southern Baptist Convention bigwig Morris Chapman left little doubt yesterday about who’s to blame for his denomination’s decline in members (pssst…it’s John Calvin). See our story on how Calvin is shaking up the evangelical world 500 years after his birth here.
The Awakened Ones
By Daniel Burke — June 24, 2009
Why do some Buddhist monks sleep in an upright position? (I wasn’t aware that they do.) The monks at the Samye Dechen Shing Buddhist retreat in Dumfriesshire, England are supposed to sleep upright for five hours a night in a “meditation box,” according to the BBC. The idea is, you’re not as groggy when you […]
Coffee talk
By Daniel Burke — June 24, 2009
The Montana group “Gay Loggers for Jesus” has neither gays, nor loggers, nor Christians. Discuss. Apologies to Linda Richman.
Religious twits
By Daniel Burke — June 24, 2009
Religion professor/prolific author Stephen Prothero is tweeting the world’s great religions, boiling them down to 140 characters. Or, as he says, “wiping out religious illiteracy 140 characters at a time,” which seems like slow-going, but to each his own. Some e.g.’s: “Buddhism140: Life=suffering. Clinging=the disease. Nirvana=the cure. Path=let go(d), be good/wise/mindful. Buddha=dried shit. Wake up! […]
Nixon and the Jews
By Daniel Burke — June 24, 2009
The Nixon Presidential Library has just released 150 more hours of recorded Oval Office conversations featuring Tricky Dick’s musings on, among other things, good-looking Republic women, punishing political opponents and the Jewish diaspora. During a 1973 telephone conversation with Billy Graham (yes, that Billy Graham) he says: Anti-Semitism is stronger than we think. You know, […]
COMMENTARY: A heart is a terrible thing to waste
By Cathleen Falsani — June 24, 2009
(UNDATED) The hole in Vasco Sylvester’s heart isn’t there anymore. In a three-hour operation on June 10, surgeons at Hope Children’s Hospital outside Chicago, using a piece of white Gore-Tex, patched the quarter-size hole that had been there since Vasco was born. The doctors also removed an extra membrane between the top and bottom chambers […]
Southern Baptists asked to `honor’ Obama’s election
By Tracy Gordon — June 24, 2009
(UNDATED) Southern Baptists on Wednesday (June 24) overwhelmingly expressed their “pride” in President Obama’s election as the nation’s first African-American president while also criticizing his policies that they oppose. The resolution, adopted at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Louisville, Ky., said Baptists “share our nation’s pride in our continuing progress toward racial reconciliation […]
10 minutes with … Julie Lyons
By Tracy Gordon — June 24, 2009
(UNDATED) As a crime reporter working in a rough stretch of South Dallas in the early 1990s, nothing shocked Julie Lyons. Prostitutes wandering the streets, addicts getting high on the corner, gunshots ringing through the air — it was all the norm. There was something, though, about a tiny church that got her attention. In […]
