CH-CH-CH-CHECK IT OUT: NEWSWEEK’S “ON FAITH” BLOG

Sometimes we here at God Girl HQ like to shine a spotlight on other folks in the blogosphere doing things that we consider nifty.

Last fall (November, actually) Newsweek and the Washington Post launched a really smart blog called, “On Faith”. The idea of “On Faith” is a simple, but brilliant one: Each week, it asks a religion/spirituality/ethics-related question and calls on some of the brightest lights in the world of religion to answer it. Their roster of respondents is staggeringly impressive, including some of our favorites: Brian McLaren, Diana Eck, Hamza Yusuf, Martin Marty, Ingrid Mattson, Elie Wiesel, Jim Wallis, Desmond Tutu, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Randy Balmer, Jim Wallis, Susan Thistlethwaite, Stephen Prothero and Donna Freitas (to name just a few.)

This week’s question is: “In light of recent high-profile public apologies by Don Imus, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Nifong, the Pope and others, what is the relationship of apology (repentance) to forgiveness?” And the respondents are: Cal Thomas, John Crossan, Richard Mouw, and Nicholas Wright (the Anglican bishop of Durham, UK.)

It’s really heady, smart, interesting stuff. And well worth a long visit at least once a week.

Last week, “On Faith” launched another related blog called “Faithbook” — a forum for college students to talk about religion, spirituality, moral dilemmas, etc.

Here’s how the editors describe it:
Faithbook

Welcome to Faithbook, a new blog dedicated to expanding On Faith’s conversation on religion to a younger, curious and challenging audience: College students.

We’ve enlisted three students to get the blog rolling:

— Elizabeth Tenety, a native of the Long Island area, is a senior majoring in government and theology at Georgetown University. She will be blogging at “Campus Catholic.”

— Hafsa Arain, who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, is a sophomore at DePaul University majoring in English with a minor in religious studies. She will blog under the name “Salaam Chicago.”

— Michael Pomeranz, also from the Chicago area, is a sophomore majoring in religious studies at Yale University. His blog will be called “Lox et Veritas” — a reference to Yale’s motto, Lux et Veritas, which means Light and Truth.

We hope you will find their posts interesting, enlightening and even inspiring. And we hope you responses will be the same.

Newsweek’s religion editor Lisa Miller tells me Faithbook is looking for more smart, savvy, provocative college-aged bloggers to write for the blog. So if you know anybody who fits the bill, please steer them over to http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/faithbook/