Religion Dispatches
In Monterrey, where Jenni had just performed what was to be her final concert, fans processed the streets carrying candles and images of her, just as in the religious processions that have occurred throughout Latin America since the arrival of the Spanish over five hundred years ago. From Mexico to California, shrines in her honor have surfaced in neighborhoods and lawns.
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Without the framing device of community, without any context in which to shape the interpretation of the events, such images become simply sensational, the prick of pain without the moral payoff.
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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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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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At the end of the day, ministry without meaningful engagement is merely a form of advertising.
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’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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What happens in the Middle East isn’t always about us.
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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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“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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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.
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