{"id":7596,"date":"2004-03-31T09:19:24","date_gmt":"2004-03-31T09:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/god_and_howard_stern.html"},"modified":"2004-03-31T09:19:24","modified_gmt":"2004-03-31T09:19:24","slug":"god_and_howard_stern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/god_and_howard_stern.html","title":{"rendered":"God and Howard Stern"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let them both be, says an op-ed in the WSJ<\/a><\/p>\n

So, where’s the middle ground? Where do we go and how to we get there?<\/p>\n

We can’t take the decisions from the people and leave it in the hands of a few judges, moralists, atheists and the pious ultraconservative religious. We can’t let Mel Gibson (and his father) alone define the pain of faith (without the love). It must fall into the murky morass of free choice, allowing parents and children to battle it out from generation to generation.<\/p>\n

We have so many cultural outlets that if you want opera, rock music or bare-breasted, gun-toting women, you can seek it out–or switch channels. As for our children, their guidance remains the domain of vigilant and caring parents. <\/p>\n

As we try to change the geo-political landscape to bring freedom to people suffering under dictatorships, let’s remember that a land of freedom means just that. So leave the “under God” phrase be (it didn’t hurt me to refuse to recite it, in fact it made me feel special), let Howard Stern be himself, and relish in the fact that with lots of love, forbearance, guidance and a little luck, our society–and our children–will be fine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let them both be, says an op-ed in the WSJ So, where’s the middle ground? Where do we go and how to we get there? We can’t take the decisions from the people and leave it in the hands of a few judges, moralists, atheists and the pious ultraconservative religious. We can’t let Mel Gibson…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGod and Howard Stern - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/god_and_howard_stern.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God and Howard Stern - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Let them both be, says an op-ed in the WSJ So, where’s the middle ground? Where do we go and how to we get there? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}