Archive for September, 2007
« Previous EntriesPledge for Malaria Bednets
Sunday, September 30th, 2007Bishop Janice Huie, President of the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church, pledged $1.5 million for bednets for Cote d’Ivoire when she attended the Clinton Global Initiative this week. Her participation in the Initiative is reported by United Methodist News Service. Participants in the Clinton Global Initiative are asked to make a pledge [...]
Media as Sacred Space
Saturday, September 29th, 2007Thanks to David Frumm for a great line that speaks–media is sacred space. Frumm refers to the words of the late Pope John Paul II that “the use of the techniques and the technologies of contemporary communications is an integral part of its [the church's] mission in the third millenium.”
People are more “present” in media [...]
Verizon and Corporate Censorship
Friday, September 28th, 2007Revised September 28, 6:34 pm
Blogger Art Brodsky recaps the de-regulation history of the Federal Communications Commission. These FCC actions result in the current climate of corporate discretion to determine which groups are allowed access to certain media and what messages will be carried.
Verizon’s reversal of its ban on text messages by the [...]
National Council of Churches Death Watch
Friday, September 28th, 2007The announcement yesterday of wholesale staff cuts at the National Council of Churches writes another sad chapter, perhaps the next to last, in the recent history of this once-proud organization. Even with a strategic plan in place the next meeting of the General Assembly might better be billed the death watch because the layoffs send [...]
SCHIP, Sojourners & Bush
Thursday, September 27th, 2007A letter about a meeting between President Bush and several religious leaders in Austin shortly after his election is featured on SOJOnet, the email newsletter of Sojourners. It’s a revealing account of the President’s desire early on to find ways to combat poverty through faith-based efforts. The threatened veto of SCHIP seems a 180-degree turn, [...]
Hillary’s Religion
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007An interesting discussion of Hillary Clinton’s religious influences is occurring on the web and in the newspapers.
Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President Bush, says Hillary’s well-articulated and genuine faith would serve her well among religious voters turned off by Rudy Guiliani’s pro-choice history. By Gerson’s reckoning, the preponderance of Hillary’s values, based on United Methodism’s [...]
Jena and Bloggers
Monday, September 24th, 2007The Jena protest grew straight from cyberspace, according to blogger Bob Morris at Politics in the Zeros. Morris says it was Black activists who picked up this story of injustice and carried it into national consciousness while white bloggers missed it. Probably the first, real world protest birthed on the Internet, he says.
Morris links to [...]
Creation, Community and Healing
Friday, September 21st, 2007I was thinking about these three words recently when I read a note from a Native American friend. The note itself isn’t important, but the language and suppositions in the note are. Language reflects culture, obviously. And culture reflects how we live our lives.
When Native people speak of Creation, it’s not the language of science [...]
New Religious Media
Thursday, September 20th, 2007An email from David Frumm, formerly religion reporter for the Detroit Free Press, says he’s leaving the Free Press to operate a new website, read the spirit. com, that will offer “creative ideas that have never been been attempted in religious media.”
Beyond this promise, what’s interesting is the assessment of this veteran reporter that we’re [...]
Free Access to New York Times
Monday, September 17th, 2007The New York Times has announced it will stop charging for access to its site at midnight Monday. What’s interesting about this is the Times’ claim it will generate more revenue from ad sales than from online subscriptions.
But even more revealing is the power of search engines to drive users to the site. The Times [...]