Peter Steinfels, the co-director of the Fordham Center for Religion and Culture, has a fun post on the Commenweal website that “predicts” the big religion stories in 2008.
After the caucus results came in, it was natural to assume that reporters would tell us about the Democratic Party’s commitment to religion. So what did reporters tell us? Well, the major papers told us . . . nothing.
Art by Dennis Di Vicenzo
On View: Epiphany by Frank Logue. Infrared film, toned gelatin silver print. As seen in: A New Light : Collects of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany,
On View: Epiphany Times Three by Kathrin Burleson. Watercolor, 2007, 8″ x 10″ . As seen in: Feasts for the Eyes, an exhibition of Episcopal
Joel Osteen is the pastor of Houston’s Lakewood Church, which may well be the largest congregation in the country. Even beyond his own congregation, he is well known for his postive message of the Gospel — a message that many call the Prosperity Gospel. Chris Lehmann review Osteen’s latest book, Become a Better You, and is not at all impressed.
There was a great deal of reaction to the results of the Iowa Caucus last Thursday. Among the more interesting comments, however, was by Diana Butler Bass, who notes that Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee come from the two very different “poles of Protestantism.”
A colleague of mine noticed several years ago one of those marvelous phrases of multiple meaning strewn throughout our scriptures, the familiar reference to the magi who, “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, . . . left for their own country by another road.”
“I went to bed on Sept. 10th an American, and on Sept. 11th, I became a Muslim in people’s minds,” says Imran Hafiz, a high school sophomore in Phoenix. He was only in fourth grade back then, but that shift in perceptions affected Imran directly. A few days later, his pals at school told him he couldn’t play soccer with them anymore, “because you’re a Taliban.”
In an article headlined, “Clergy accused of bias in crisis,” The Sunday Nation of Nairobi reports “pastors from various churches said it was shameful that foreign clerics, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, have had to come to reconcile Kenyan leaders as local bishops kept mum or took sides.”