Features
Charms of an ideologue: Jerry Falwell at Duke
"Did you ever meet Jerry Falwell?” someone asked me the day Falwell died. “Meet him? Jerry nearly got me fired,” I responded.
This was true. During Falwell’s days at the Moral Majority a student dared me to ask Falwell to speak at Duke. Never thinking that the famous, busy man would come, I invited him. A couple days later I received a gracious acceptance. I had underestimated Jerry’s love of publicity and a good fight.
Access denied: The problem with voter ID laws
Signs of design: Is there purpose in evolution?
Because I am a biologist, evolution is at the core of virtually everything I think about. Like most of my colleagues, I’ve kept an eye on the emerging “intelligent design” movement. Unlike most of my colleagues, however, I don’t see ID as a threat to biology, public education or the ideals of the republic. To the contrary, what worries me more is the way that many of my colleagues have responded to the challenge.
Sound alternatives
Rickie Lee Jones broke into the music business in 1979 with the jazz-pop novelty hit “Chuck E’s in Love,” and she has been a maddening enigma ever since. At best she’s inconsistent, at worst she’s the embodiment of the tortured artist: all tantrum and attitude with little worthy fruit to show. So when Jones embarked on an album framed by gospel cinemascapes, you could feel music critics circling like Pharisee vultures. What business does Jones have tackling scripture?
Fishing for answers
Alfred Hitchcock said that the literary form that most resembles a movie is not the novel but the short story, since it is designed to be digested in one sitting. But the dilemma for moviemakers who adapt short stories is that they almost always need to beef up or expand the story so it can fill 90 minutes or more. (Novels, on the other hand, usually need to be trimmed or compressed for film.)
Books
Politics of charity
Johann Sebastian Bach
God at Work
The Scandalous God
BookMarks
Departments
Listening globally: New ways of being the church
Nature's God: The crucial point for Christians
Call-in confessions: Youthful indiscretions
Gaza turmoil: U.S. choosing sides again
Life cycles: The mainline lives on
News
NCC's Edgar will head Common Cause: National group addresses election reform, other issues
Pope acknowledges colonial-era abuses: After criticism for minimizing injustices
Democrats to cut off abstinence-only funds: Program called "colossal failure"
Evangelical society president quits, returns to Catholicism: Beckwith returns to the faith of his youth
Poll says most Muslims assimilated, moderate: Socially conservative, politically liberal
Putin helps end long Russian church rift: Exile church returns to the fold
People
Century Marks
Silent retreat: Brian Doyle, sometime contributor to the Christian Century, reports that his sister, who lives in a monastery, once went on a summer-long silent retreat. He asked her what her first words were when she broke her silence. She grinned and said “Pass the butter,” and when he complied, she laughed: those actually were her first words after the retreat. He also asked her if it had been hard to remain silent. At first it was, she said, but then it had become a prayer (U.S. Catholic, June).