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Religion and Public Life With Mark Silk

“Once again,” stated the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins “an activist federal judge is using the military to advance a liberal social agenda, disregarding the views of all four military service chiefs and the constitutional role of Congress.” But not the views of the Commander in Chief, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of…

Of course Bibi Netanyahu’s offer to stop settlement construction if the Palestinian leadership “will say unequivocally to its people that it recognizes Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people,” was designed to be rejected. And the Palestinian leadership immediately went ahead and rejected it. What would have been smart would have been to accept…

The, ah, irrepressible GOP candidate for governor of New York, Carl Paladino, managed to stick his foot in it by assuming the anti-gay posture in a speech to Orthodox Jewish leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (part of the GOP base in the Empire State). As the NYT reports: “I just think my children and your children…

The latest Pew survey on attitudes about same-sex marriage shows a more striking shift than indicated by the Pew Forum’s headline: “Support for Same-Sex Marriage Edges Upward.” Yes, support edged up four percentage points over last year, from 38 percent to 42 percent. And opposition edged down five points, from 53 percent to 48 percent.…

The big news from yesterday’s survey from the Public Religion Research Institute is that the conventional wisdom on the Tea Party is wrong: It’s not a libertarian movement distinct from the religious right and unconnected to the Republican Party. This really should come as no surprise to those with eyes to see (surveys) and ears…

A couple of months ago, trying to come up with a situation parallel to the “Ground Zero mosque,” I imagined: An irenic Jewish group proposes building a community center devoted to peace and understanding a couple of blocks from the Cave of the Patriarchs, where on February 25, 1994, the Orthodox Jewish zealot Baruch Goldstein…

In response to my post suggesting that bishops appoint ombudsmen to independently monitor their actions, Andrew Barga writes, “[I]nstead of a critique, your “modest proposal” is an attempt to deflect or parry the issues raised by Chaput. As a member of the reading public, I would be interested in an actual answer to his challenges.”…

Progressive religious folks will be on hand for tomorrow’s One Nation Working Together rally in Washington, putting their faith-based shoulders to the wheel in the Schultzian hope of changing the national script. And here’s hoping it all works out. But what I’d really like to see is a coalition of the Mainstream Religious (MSR) sign…

Joanna Brooks’ fine essay on Elder Marlin Jensen’s apology for…well, we’ll get to that…at a meeting of 90 members of the Oakland, CA stake (diocese) points to ongoing uncertainty about the role of the LDS Church in public life these days. Jensen’s a lovely guy (I’ve had dinner with him a couple of times), and…

I spent yesterday participating in a symposium at the Newseum in Washington marking both the roll-out of the new Pew survey of religious literacy and the upcoming God in America series on PBS. The not so subliminal message: Watch the series and become less religiously illiterate. Actually, the Pew findings, which received so nice a…
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