As of the moment I started writing this post, the following headlines graced — if that’s the right word — the top of The Drudge Report. ‘Gang fight’ at Black Friday sale… Man Punched in Face Pulls Gun On Line-Cutting Shopper… Woman busted after throwing merchandise… Thousands storm VICTORIA’S SECRET… VIDEO: Insane battle over phones… Mayhem at Nebraska mall where 9 murdered in 2007… Shoplifter tries to mace security guards… Men Steal Boy’s Shopping Bag Outside BED, BATH & BEYOND…... Read more
Breaking news from the Telegraph … the newspaper’s Rome reporter reports that one Joseph Ratzinger, a.k.a. the Bishop of Rome, Pontiff of the Catholic Church alias Benedictus PP. XVI, claims Jesus was not born December 25, in the year 1. As I read this story, “Jesus was born years earlier than thought, claims Pope” I could envision the clatter of the teletype in the background with three bells ringing to tell the news room a major story had come across... Read more
Even though I’m not a big basketball fan, I’ve had a lot of fun with this story about Grinnell College’s Jack Taylor shattering the NCAA record books by scoring 138 points in a single game. The whole team beat Faith Baptist Bible 179-104. Faith Baptist Bible’s David Larson went an impressive 34 for 44 shots to score 70 points, too! Imagine scoring that many points and being a footnote to the story. Anyway, all the outlets covered it and ESPN... Read more
To the shock of legions of mainstream reporters, the Church of England fell just short of approving the long-debated step of raising women to the Anglican episcopate. The issue that seems to have some reporters stumped, a bit, is why the laypeople who cast these votes didn’t go along with this latest evolution in Anglican orders. Take, for example, the pretty solid report from Reuters, as offered by The Huffington Post. Here are two summary passages that contain the key... Read more
Yesterday I wrote a jeremiad against the media’s curiously inconsistent approach to science. The hook was the media outrage over Sen. Marco Rubio’s comments (in the middle of a fluffy GQ interview about rap music) equivocating on the age of the earth. I didn’t have a beef with the question so much as the larger media context, where only certain people are asked science questions. Over at National Review, I began reading a piece that begins with a telling of... Read more
A new film that premiered last week has resurrected moral questions that some Poles hoped had been settled long ago. The 20 Nov 2012 front page of the Warsaw daily Gazeta Wyborcza was dominated by the controversy surrounding the film Poklosie (Aftermath). The headline reads “Poklosie under attack“ — but the reaction of many Poles is that they are under attack from Poklosie. The film questions Poland’s self-identity as an innocent victim of Nazi aggression. While there is no doubt... Read more
Oh my! We may have a Nativity Lent miracle on our hands! Trust me that I have read enough horrible “Christmas wars” stories in my journalistic life to recognize a decently reported one when I see it. I think the following Los Angeles Times story about the ongoing Santa Monica Nativity scene battles includes a few paragraphs of material — from a qualified, informed source — that make all the difference. First, here is the sad, sad drama that is... Read more
I wonder if any of our readers have read Thomas Nagel’s new book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. I’ve been reading the reviews and they’re fascinating. The New Republic review says Nagel, a devout atheist, has “performed an important service with his withering critical examination of some of the most common and oppressive dogmas of our age.” From Alvin Plantinga’s review “Why Darwinist Materialism Is Wrong” in The New Republic: ACCORDING... Read more
Suffice it to say that I started working my way onto the religion-news beat in the late 1970s, precisely the era in which the Southern Baptist Convention — the mega-denomination in which I was raised, as part of a family active on all levels of SBC life — veered into a civil war that took very few prisoners. For better and for worse, I speak fluent Southern Baptist. While at The Charlotte News and then The Charlotte Observer, I began... Read more
The Boston Globe reported last week on an evangelical student group at Tufts University facing the potential loss of its funding: In a collision between religious freedom and nondiscrimination codes, Tufts University is considering whether an evangelical Christian student group should be stripped of its official status for requiring that its leaders adhere to the faith, saying it violates school policies against religious discrimination. An arm of the student government recently voted to withdraw recognition of the Tufts Christian Fellowship... Read more
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