Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk

Another Blog To Enjoy!!!

jgordon1 — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:10:11 +0000

Thank you for visiting Religion and Public Life. This blog is no longer being updated. Please enjoy the archives. Here are some other blogs you may also enjoy:

The Ayn Rand Republicans

Mark Silk — Tue, 24 May 2011 23:13:30 +0000

I confess to feeling a little bit queasy about the American Values Network's new video hoisting Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and other GOP luminaries on the petard of Ayn Rand and her atheistic philosophy of objectivism. Take a look. Yes, it's delicious. But what's the precise point? In his email announcement, AVN executive director Eric Sapp puts it this way: Republican leaders are praising Ayn Rand and...

Read the full post here »

The post The Ayn Rand Republicans appeared first on Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk.

Whither evangelicals?

Mark Silk — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:19:56 +0000

I'm fully prepared to believe that Mitch Daniels' family proved to be the unleapable hurdle in his abortive run-up to the GOP presidential race. Imagine yourself as wife Cheri, having split for the coast to marry on old flame, your husband and young daughters left behind in Boone County, Indiana, and then returned to the nest four years later, going head-to-head with the most assiduously maternal First...

Read the full post here »

The post Whither evangelicals? appeared first on Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk.

No more “social conservatives”

Mark Silk — Fri, 20 May 2011 12:25:11 +0000

With the presidential election cycle getting up to speed, it's time for reporters and yakkers like me to stop writing about "social conservatives" as if they were an identifiable segment of the voting population. I say this as someone who has happily been using the term since late 2008, when it looked like the religious right was at least organizationally in eclipse, and that the GOP was engaged in a struggle...

Read the full post here »

The post No more “social conservatives” appeared first on Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk.

So clerical celibacy was not the problem?

Mark Silk — Thu, 19 May 2011 13:50:34 +0000

Those on the Catholic left are not very happy that the Jay Report declines in no uncertain terms to blame clerical celibacy for the sexual abuse crisis. As the report puts it: Factors that remained consistent over this time period, such as celibacy, do not explain the sexual abuse "crisis." Celibacy has been constant in the Catholic Church since the eleventh century...

Read the full post here »

The post So clerical celibacy was not the problem? appeared first on Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk.

Gay priests are not the problem

Mark Silk — Wed, 18 May 2011 10:56:19 +0000

That's the big news out of the John Jay College Final Report on the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, due out at 2 p.m. today, according to David Gibson's scoop for RNS last night (followed swiftly by NYT's Laurie Goodstein, who also scored a copy). To wit: [T]he researchers found no statistical...

Read the full post here »

The post Gay priests are not the problem appeared first on Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk.

Bishops behaving badly

Mark Silk — Tue, 17 May 2011 12:56:50 +0000

No doubt about it, the Vatican's latest missive has laid an egg. Styled as an encyclical to assist national bishops conferences in developing guidelines for dealing with clergy accused of sexual abuse, the letter utterly ignores what everybody outside the Church hierarchy ...

Read the full post here »

The post Bishops behaving badly appeared first on Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk.

Signs of the Times

Mark Silk — Mon, 16 May 2011 13:13:35 +0000

Now that we have entered the final week of the Harold Camping-certified End Times, it behooves us to consider the signs. Here goes.

* Osama (the false Antichrist) Bin Laden killed by Barack H. (not the false Antichrist) Obama.

* Forces of Repression (viz. Gog and Magog) at work all over Middle East.

* House of Representatives kills off Medicare. (Who needs it?)

* Head of IMF (aka Root of all...

Read the full post here »

The post Signs of the Times appeared first on Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk.

Praying for Huckabee

Mark Silk — Sat, 14 May 2011 21:10:54 +0000

It turns out that, in deciding whether he's going to tell Fox viewers tonight that he's actually running for president in 1012, Mike Huckabee is not only praying on it, but also asking us to do the same. Which is pretty cool, when you think of it--and not just because the Huck-a-Pray form will...

Read the full post here »

The post Praying for Huckabee appeared first on Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk.

Does DOMA nix same-sex military weddings?

Mark Silk — Wed, 11 May 2011 14:47:20 +0000

Let's suppose that a gay submariner based in New London falls in love with, oh, a local cop, and the two decide to get married. They go down to the city Read the full post here »

The post Does DOMA nix same-sex military weddings? appeared first on Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk.