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Around three in the afternoon on July 2, three cable news networks simultaneously played and replayed a video of Michael Jackson’s last rehearsal taken two days before his death. California was effectively bankrupt, issuing IOU’s for the first...
As if fractured Somalia were not divided enough, a report this week says Islamic groups are realigning for renewed fighting. Somalia disintegrated 15 years ago when a corrupt government fell. Clan fighting plunged the country into anarchy and it’s...
Institutions are necessary, desirable and, for all their faults and foibles, valuable. Here’s why. They can mobilize and when they do they achieve scale. They enhance capacity. They empower. In the case of religious institutions, they are expressions...
Institutions. We don’t like them or trust them. Sometimes we want to bring them down a notch or two. They’re cumbersome, territorial, political and dysfunctional. They’re always behind the times. It’s easy to dislike them.
Writing...
Can the U.S. move from a culture of instant gratification to deferred gratification? The question was inspired by a program on NPR this morning. From the car radio I went into a meeting where the same thing was being talked about.
There’s a lot...
The worker from Eduador spoke of his family back home as he stood in the Home Depot parking lot in Washington, D.C. last week. His brow wrinkled and his voice broke. He’s a long way from home and his existence here is day-to-day precarious.
As I...
The more often you attend church the more likely you are to approve torture. As startling as it sounds, if we are to believe the latest Pew research on religious attitudes, that’s the case.
This is just breath-taking. That a religious community...
Athiests are coming out of the closet. And in South Carolina, no less; a place noted for the strength of its religious and political values, strongly conservative and deeply held. That’s the gist of the NY Times piece on "emerging" athiests...
Rock Singer and humanitarian activist Bono asks about the state of our souls in this time of great change.
In a Sunday op-ed he recounts Easter worship on an unnamed island and discusses the need for new beginnings. He writes affectingly about his search...
The Taliban have exploited class differences to gain control over the Swat Valley in Pakistan. The Dalit people, known as the "untouchables" in India’s caste-based social system, are throwing off oppressive discrimination to claim liberation...
Referring back to the earlier discussion about a Post-Christian America, I found this commentary by Judith Warner relevant. Giving her first-person views of a mixed religious childhood, she quotes Charles Darwin who said if the brain is impressed early...
The loss of the political agenda of the religious right and Christian dominionists is not a marker for the demise of Christianity in the U.S.
Writer Jon Meacham apparently felt the need to clarify further the point of his cover story in Newsweek which...
As the economy continues downward, attention narrows and becomes more local. Much of what I’ve been reading lately treats the financial crisis as a U.S. issue. In doing research recently I looked at several statements about the crisis by religious...
As I travel, I continue to be impressed with the global reach of television evangelists based in the U.S. propounding the gospel of wealth. I also reflect upon the cultural context in which these evangelists bring their messages. More often than not the...
An economist on Marketplace this morning referred to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s worldview as a familiar frame of reference for both presidential candidates. Niebuhr’s view of ethically ambivalent individuals yearning for perfectibility...
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