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Authors » Mark Silk

Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review.

In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist.

In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College.

Professor Silk is the author of "Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II" and "Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America." He is co-editor of "Religion by Region," an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of "The American Establishment," "Making Capitalism Work," and "One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics." He inaugurated "Spiritual Politics" in 2007.

Most Recent

Biblical Sex

Reluctant as I am to disagree with my friend Michael Sean Winters over at NCR, I think he goes a bit overboard in criticizing Garry Will's column on marriage as "the worst column (so far) on gay marriage." Really?
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What Ron Paul Wants

For the last month, Beltway political scribes have been twisting their knickers trying figure out what the heck Ron Paul is after. Yesterday, after weeks of trench warfare in state GOP delegate conventions from which he has emerged with a hefty pile of delegates, Paul puzzled them further by announcing that he would not be spending money to campaign in upcoming primary states (including the big prizes of Texas and California). OMG!
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Romney Does Liberty

It's no wonder that Mitt Romney won plaudits from evangelical bigwigs for his commencement speech at Liberty University on Saturday. It showed he's learned how to talk to them--or at least, learned to listen to the people who know how he's supposed to talk to them.
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Tennessee: Gateway to Sex

 I'm mighty glad that Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has gone ahead and signed that bill banning teachers  from condoning "gateway sexual activity." As Haslam told Stephen Colbert the other day, "Kissing and hugging are the last stop before reaching Groin Central Station, so it's important to ban all the things that lead to the things that lead to sex."
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Golden Rule Obama

In declaring his support for same-sex marriage yesterday, President Obama took his stand on the Golden Rule, Jesus' saying in Matthew 7:12 that is popularly rendered as, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." At the National Prayer Breakfast three months ago, the president refer...
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Dick Lugar, International Religious Liberty Stalwart

With the defenestration of Dick Lugar adding a few more graphs to the obit of responsible Republicanism in Congress, let us not omit a few words in praise of Lugar's work on behalf of victims of religious persecution around the world. Back in the last century, he kept on his staff John Hanford, a Presbyterian minister, who to work full time on these issues.
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Romney Says a Mormon Thing in Public!

You can understand why, while campaigning for president, Mitt Romney keeps clear of Mormon distinctives like visits to LDS temples, quotations from the the Book of Mormon, and references to Mormon history. But once a blue moon, the veil drops and we get a glimpse of his religious world.
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GetGetReligion: Ghostbuster

We would be remiss in failing to call your attention to Mollie Ziegler's lengthy response to our inaugural GetGetReligion feature, wherein we suggested that her ongoing critique of news coverage of the HHS contraceptive mandate may not have been as innocent of partisan spin as the GetReligionista ideology likes to pretend. In her apologia pro blogga sua, she protests to the contrary.
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The New Mormon Math

Kudos to the Salt Lake Tribune's Peggy Fletcher Stack for smelling something fishy in the new decennial numbers showing Mormonism to be the country's fastest growing religion and determining what it is. The LDS Church didn't actually add two million members between 2000 and 2010, as the latest Religious Congregations and Membership Study indicates. Rather, they've changed the way they count their members.
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Who Gets Religion

Welcome to the first installment of GetGetReligion, an occasional look at GetReligion, the daily review of mainstream religion coverage that is dedicated to the proposition that "the press...just doesn't get religion." Written by Godbeat graybeard Terry Mattingly and a shifting cast of young associates, GetReligion is bankrolled by conservative moneybags and Mattingly pal Roberta Ahmanson, a sometime MSM religion reporter herself.
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