Photo of a Dying Man: The Journalist’s Job
We rely on a journalist to just stand by—it’s a practical act of witness: while you report the story you stand in the presence, neither blinking nor stepping up.
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Should the Post Have Published Photo of Subway Victim?: Two Opinions
Is it simply a part of the conflicted role of the journalist or does the photo’s work as cultural catharsis ignore the specific agony of the victim’s loved ones?
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Pope Follows Himself in Twitter Echo Chamber
At the end of the day, ministry without meaningful engagement is merely a form of advertising.
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Religion Scholars Convene, Have Nowhere to Sit
’Tis the season to be jolly? Well, not if you attended the annual AAR-SBL national meeting in Chicago’s McCormick Place. If the experience of others was like mine, those of us with some years on the scene came away deeply dissatisfied.
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From Confusion to Kardashian: Misreading the Middle East
What happens in the Middle East isn’t always about us.
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Wal-Mart Faces a New Round of Historic Strikes… But Why Now?
Arkansas’ evangelical culture enabled Wal-Mart to grow without its employees having any power to negotiate for better working conditions. But as it grew to become the world’s largest retailer, it expanded into urban and other areas with markedly different cultures—a transformation that looks to be changing the balance of power.
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A Superhuman Spirituality: Ang Lee’s Life of Pi
“I have a story that will make you believe in God,” an elderly man tells the narrator of Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi (2001). This is the opening of a very tall tale, one that’s designed to chasten the reader’s skepticism.
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Church Uses Facebook for Sacramental Scrutiny at its Peril
While the Catholic Church has certainly gone out of its way to encourage the use of social media to spread the gospel, it’s unlikely it intended the creepy surveillance that recently took place in a Minnesota parish.
Read MoreJames Bond as Christ Figure?
No, not Bond, but…
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Denzel’s Profane Preaching: A Religious Movie for the Rest of Us
Flight, like most of the other religiously-themed scripts to which Washington agrees to lend his star power, is no Kirk Cameron morality play. As in The Book of Eli, in which Washington played a post-apocalyptic loner who creates a trail of gore during a violent spiritual pursuit of the lone remaining copy of the Bible, the celluloid preaching in Flight is rated R. In addition to the early lingering shots of full-frontal and rear nudity, the film provides a steady stream of f-bombs, and from nearly start to finish it is awash in booze.
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