Thursday digest

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New today (and yesterday) from the Century:

• Rodney Clapp asks where you pray:
  "Prayer is not something we do first and foremost on our own. We pray with other Christians." (subscription required)
• Will Willimon reviews Wes Granberg-Michaelson's memoir: "What do you get when you take an attractive, intelligent kid born into a
  loving, happy, Midwestern family and relinquish him for baptism,
  telling him he is now "engaged to profess Christ"? (subscription required)
• Amy Frykholm on fracking: "I am struck by the idea of intentionally shaking
  our own foundations in the name of our intractable addiction to fossil fuels. I
  find myself thinking in psalmic terms, like Psalm 46: 'The nations are in an
  uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.'"
• I highlight some troubling survey findings about racism: "I've certainly been
  turned down for many jobs over the years, some at places where I know my white
  face and so-Anglo-he-probably-has-a-castle name didn't help my chances. But
  I've never been pulled over for no reason, followed around by staff at a store
  or stopped on the street and asked to prove that I'm a U.S. citizen."
• Adam Copeland questions the latest "young adults are amoral" book: "I refuse to blame young adults themselves
  for not having been given the resources to take on moral questions —
  it’s not their fault that faith communities, schools, and parents failed
  them."
• William Vance Trollinger reviews Claude Fischer's social history of the U.S.: "Sociologist Claude Fischer is unhappy with historians' failure to provide a
  grand narrative of American history." (subscription required)
• I question an L.A. Times story about evangelical political mobilization: "Tom Hamburger
  and Matea Gold don't do enough to prove their now-more-than-ever hook, but it's still an important story to follow as we slog through yet
  another election season."
• A poem about Jesus' death, by Luci Shaw

Links from elsewhere:

• Turns out pastors are super happy.
• Rick Perry is good on television.
• A great Ayn Rand review from the Onion's funny-but-not-joking division, the A.V. Club.
• Elizabeth Warren's Red Sox flub points to the disconnect between political symbol and what's supposedly symbolized.