Not a day goes by, it seems to me, without some newspaper of magazine article that somehow touches upon the moral, ethical, spiritual or religious zeitgeist. So, over the Easter weekend I clipped random stories. Here's but a taste of those clippings — they are a snapshot of our times, they contradict each other, they support each other, they paint a portrait of the world in which we live. I present them without comment. However, I invite you to comment on them. What do you make of it all? Send your comments, or clippings, to my attention and perhaps they too will form a time capsule.
- The growing presence in the past two decades of people of other world faiths — notably Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism — has added important vitality to the Canadian religious scene. Evangelicals are flourishing. The Protestant mainline is finally showing signs of awakening from a 40-year slumber. – Reg Bibby, The Globe and Mail, April 17
- Of all the threats that our messy world faces, nuclear weaponry ranks right up there. Combine the bomb with anti-Semitism and you've got a combination that should make any reasonable person recoil. No wonder human rights activist Elie Weisel … pulled no punches when describing Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as “pathologically sick.” – Irshad Manji, The Globe and Mail, April 17
- Of the 814 Canadians polled by Ipsos, 30 described themselves as agnostic. Four of these agnostics, however, professed a positive belief in the Resurrection, and three actually agreed with the statement, “I feel it is very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians.” It's possible that the four didn't know what agnostic meant but liked the sound of it and that the three were Straussians. Or maybe all seven were just having a little joke, like the one self-described atheist who expressed agreement with “the world will end in the Battle of Armageddon.” – Colbycosh.com, April 15
- The Irish band U2 has given Britain its favourite song lyric, according to a survey released by music channel VH1. The line, “One life, with each other, sisters, brothers” from the song One topped the poll. Runner-up was the downbeat, “So you go and you stand on your own, and you go home, and you cry, and you want to die” from The Smiths' How Soon Is Now. – AP story, The Toronto Star, April 17
- The Christian Peacemaker Teams are so ideologically bound and so convinced they are right that they fail to see their “mission” as a perversion of Jesus's teaching. I may be wrong but I'm convinced the gentle, loving Jesus, Loney and his group profess to follow, would want no part of [the situation in Iraq]. Furthermore, where were the CPT when Saddam Hussein was gassing thousands of Kurds? – Letter to the Editor, The Toronto Star, April 17
- Margaret Wente says that she enjoys being a cultural Christian. I'm not sure what she means by this. We are a pitiful lot indeed if we count ourselves in the camp of Christians and yet do not hold the bedrock belief of the Christian faith — that Christ died, was buried and rose from the dead. – Letter to the Editor, The Globe and Mail, April 17
- In a world that seems to have gone delirious with religion what a relief to hear Margaret Wente say, “I also believe that all claims made about the life of Jesus are about as reliable as claims made about the existence of the Easter Bunny.” Indeed, when one reads enough history, it becomes obvious that a literal interpretation of the New Testament is naively diabolical. – Letter to the Editor, The Globe and Mail, April 17
- The seminary was introducing podcasts that would address pop-culture phenomena like The Da Vinci Code from a Christian point of view, and Ross's team had put together a press release. “Putting God in the Pod,” was its headline. [Riggs read it and] grimaced. “The title of putting God somewhere — it implies that he's not everywhere,” he said. Hudson thought about it. “Can we take out 'putting'? And then it's just God in the Pod, and it acknowledges he's already there?” Ross said he believed that would take care of the problem. … The final decision was to headline the release “Putting the Message of God in the Pod.” – The New York Times Magazine, April 16
