Today's Fresh Blogs...

• Seeing beyond Tammy Faye’s mascara

  Published: July 25, 2007, 8:22 pm

  Tags: People, Radio Tv, Evangelicals

  Tammy Faye Messner was anything but subtle and nuanced, at least in most of her public appearances, so to hope for nuance in her obituaries may be too much to ask. Still, I’ve yet to find a story about her life and death that comes even close to capturing the spirit of this remarkably strong woman. In the late 1980s, after the scandals at

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Open source religion reporting works

  Published: July 23, 2007, 4:12 pm

  Tags: Web Tech, Journalism, Religion, People, Evangelicals, Judaism, Islam

  David Crumm, the Detroit Free Press religion writer, had the enviable task of coordinating a rather significant open-source religion journalism project that involved “forty strangers in a virtual room” talking about their faith. Wired News, a collaborator in the project, carried a summary story on July 12 that was part of a larger open

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Hillary and her female issues

  Published: July 23, 2007, 11:36 am

  Tags: Politics, Social Issues, Evangelicals, Mainline

  The big political news in the Democratic Party is that Hillary continues to hang on to the loyalty of a majority of the party’s voters. However, there are old dark clouds on the horizon when it comes to the public at large. The best-known candidate in the world continues to have very high negative ratings. That led to this interesting

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Dark night of a reporter’s soul

  Published: July 21, 2007, 11:02 pm

  Tags: Catholicism, Evangelicals, First Person, Sex

  The editors of the Los Angeles Times made an interesting decision when they decided to give page-one play to religion reporter William Lobdell’s soul-searching essay, “Religion beat became a test of faith — A reporter looks at how the stories he covered affected him and his spiritual journey.” That headline is actually

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Dungy: a story of consistent faith

  Published: July 21, 2007, 11:12 am

  Tags: Journalism, Sports, Evangelicals

  How do you tell a story that’s essentially been told over and over again? That is the trouble for reporters who are assigned to write about the release of a book by Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy, who is as consistent as anyone when it comes to expressing the important things in his life. You can’t have an interview or even a

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• North Texas church forges ties with Vietnam

  Published: July 26, 2007, 1:24 pm

  Tags: Evangelicals, Politics

  Under pastor Bob Roberts Jr., NorthWay Church in Keller - a Southern Baptist congregation - has been sending groups to the northern part of Vietnam for more than a decade, to help in clinics and orphanages, and to install water filtration systems. The groups can't hand out religious literature, or initiate conversations about their faith. But

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• James Dobson no Harry Potter fan

  Published: July 27, 2007, 1:15 pm

  Tags: Evangelicals

  The Focus on the Family founder has reservations about the series, and doesn't like it when a newspaper writes otherwise. Click here for a report from EthicsDaily.Com.

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• A fulltime foreign missionary advises those coming for a week or two

  Published: July 27, 2007, 1:44 pm

  Tags: Evangelicals

  Interesting piece here from a missionary in Brazil about how short-term missions volunteers can avoid messing up. Thanks to sbcoutpost.com for flagging this.

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Here some stand

  Published: July 27, 2007, 3:53 pm

  Tags: Politics, Social Issues, Godbeat, Anglicanism, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Judaism, Islam, Sex, Mainline

  “Stories like this annoy me,” a Lutheran pastor wrote when he notified us of the following Chicago Sun-Times piece. Written by veteran religion reporter Susan Hogan/Albach, it’s about how the Metropolitan Chicago bishop-elect of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America views his denomination’s celibacy requirement for gay

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Conservative blogger lambastes 'rock star' preachers

  Published: July 28, 2007, 11:12 am

  Tags: Around America, Evangelicals

  J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, complains on his blog about "the deadly virus of celebrity Christianity." Some high-profile preachers, he writes, "demand rock star treatment" and would be scorned by St. Paul if he were to encounter them. Grady tells the story of an unidentified friend in Texas who tried to book a famous preacher (also

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Please define “evangelical” (yet again)

  Published: July 30, 2007, 10:18 am

  Tags: Godbeat, Academia, Creeping Fundamentalism, World, Evangelicals, Judaism

  you type the word “evangelicals” into Google Images, the art attached to the top of this post is the very first thing that turns up. This tells us quite a bit about how most Americans now define the vague word “evangelical.” Even Wikipedia is better than this strictly political image and — horrors — you can

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Evangelical contingent questions unquestioning support of Israel

  Published: July 30, 2007, 12:33 pm

  Tags: Evangelicals, Middle East

  Some evangelicals aren't happy with how close evangelicals led by San Antonio pastor John Hagee are to the Israeli government. EthicsDaily.Com has one story on this. The New York Times has another.

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• “Well, duh!” headline of the day

  Published: July 30, 2007, 9:28 pm

  Tags: Politics, Journalism, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Mainline

  did you hear that Southern Evangelicals have become more politically active? There’s this thing out there called the Religious Right! Really! Art: It’s a two-fer. Back by popular demand. Bookmark to:

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Expound on that news nugget

  Published: July 31, 2007, 12:03 am

  Tags: Politics, Journalism, Religion, World Religions, World, Evangelicals

  A significant news morsel buried in the middle of a ho-hum article about a meeting with President Bush in the Savannah Morning News deserves attention. In an interview with author Bruce Feiler, Larry Peterson went with the metro news headline stating that local boy makes good and meets with leader of the free world. Eleven paragraphs into the

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0

• Gimme some truth

  Published: July 31, 2007, 5:04 am

  Tags: Film, Pop Culture, Music, Evangelicals

  Lorenza Muñoz of the Los Angeles Times provides a serviceable and evenhanded report on FoxFaith and its effort to exploit the market first proven by The Passion of the Christ. There’s one refreshing difference in FoxFaith’s collaboration with producer Jeff Clanagan: Making more films for African American and Latino audiences.

  Comments (0)   Blog link Rating: 0