In his latest Century column, global Christianity
expert Philip Jenkins discusses the persecution and hardship faced
by Christians in the Middle East in the last hundred years (subscription
required).
The debt-ceiling fight has been the dominant story out of
Washington for weeks, and for the most part the White House hasn't looked too
good. But in the last few days, the administration has taken some serious steps
forward on other fronts.
It's official: Congress passed a debt-ceiling deal, and the president signed it. While this is certainly preferable to the
country defaulting on its obligations, it's not an
inspiring piece of legislation.
Sarah Posner is not impressed by the latest
faith-based-coalition effort to prevent lawmakers in Washington from
sacrificing the nation's poor on the altar of deficit hawkery.
Mary Brown took to HuffPost Religion recently to highlight a Lilly-funded study that asked
laypeople what they want out of sermons. In short, it appears we want the
following:
In his combative response to President Obama's speech
last night, House Speaker John Boehner offered an uncommonly crystalized
rendition of an all too common bit of GOP nonsense.
The debt-ceiling fight is about politics, not policy. But
count on the news media to conflate the two—in service of the trope that everyone just needs to meet in the middle of wherever they
are right now.
A new Century editorial argues that unemployment, not the budget deficit,
is the most urgent economic problem facing the U.S. We need to deal with the
deficit at some point, but first we need to get people back to work by
stimulating the economy.
