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Religion and Public Life With Mark Silk

With Ed Koch and the Daily News joining in the chorus of opprobrium, the executive committee of the City University of New York Board of Trustees had no choice but to move with undignified speed to reverse its ill-considered decision to refuse to let the John Jay College of Criminal Justice award an honorary degree…

Among contemporary progressive religious organizations that have sought to exercise the prophetic office, the foremost is Sojourners, Jim Wallis’ evangelical ministry-cum-magazine that for 40 years has styled itself as speaking truth to power. If it’s government programs for the poor, health care, and immigrants, Sojourners has been for it. If it’s government war-making and international…

There’s been a certain amount of distress about the celebrating Americans did at news of the death of Osama Bin Laden, not least on the part of scrupulous Christians mindful of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5: You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love…

It’s clear that the Beltway punditocracy really doesn’t want the Republican presidential primary to come down to Romney v. Huckabee. Been there, done that. C’mon GOP, give us some new meat to get our hooks into! Nonetheless, that’s how the race is shaping up in the post-Osama era. Indeed, the latest Q-poll suggests that Romney…

A couple of days ago, while the crème de la crème of the Catholic blogosphere was in Rome being whipped into a froth of self-appreciation by Vatican officials, far away in the Outback, Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba was getting sacked for daring to suggest that clerical celibacy and women’s ordination ought to be open…

Does the killing of Osama Bin Laden mean the end of the Great Islamist Jihad? Over at ReligionDispatches, Mark Juergensmeyer surmises that the jihadi revolution may indeed be over, but more thanks to the peaceful protests of Tahrir Square than to the well-executed hit on the compound in Abbottabad. It’s a happy thought, and if…

It’s possible that Indiana guv Mitch Daniels is a few inches farther away from running for the GOP presidential nomination after last night’s take-out of Osama Bin Laden, but here’s what the New York Times had from him in yesterday’s paper: “I’m getting letters from all over the damn country, and some of them are…

In the Great Ecclesiastical Bake-Off of 2011 between the Royal Wedding and the Papal Beatification, the historian in me can only say that it’s terrific to see Westminster Abbey and St. Peter’s Basilica elbowing each other for pride of place in the public eye. And don’t the two look fabulous! Both events have been arranged…

The latest issue of Religion in the News is now online, with a veritable cornucopia of piquant pemmican. The cover story is Andrew Walsh’s definitive recapitulation of the past year’s Islamophobic extravaganza, accompanied by an excursus on America as Christian Nation. And for the word on Shariphobia, check out Marc D. Stern’s examination of what…

I suspect it’s only a matter of time before there are atheist chaplains in the U.S. military, and a good thing too. The justification for chaplains in the first place is that serving in the military restricts your First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. The government therefore has an obligation to make…
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