[Religion News Service, April 2, 1996] I think I see what the problem is. We admire Mother Teresa, and we despise Leona Helmsley.
This doesn't immediately look like a problem, nor does it look like news. Mother Teresa has earned worldwide admiration of a higher order than the admiration we give to athletes, entertainers or other clever folks.
[Religion News Service, March 19, 1996]
Six lanes go east and six go west, and they go and go; cars pause briefly for the row of stoplights swinging overhead, then plunge forward in a wave. In the midst of the highway is a narrow weedy strip of green, and standing on the strip are two men.
[Religion News Service, February 6, 1996] At the local public elementary school, Christian parents are struggling to get Easter into the pre-Spring break celebrations. Where kids' parties and programs in the past have celebrated daffodils and April showers, parents are urging the school to include depictions of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.
[Christianity Today, July 13, 1998] Pundits and commentators, who normally consider themselves more open-minded than the plodding masses, have been rocked by a discovery in the last six months: when it comes to a president's indiscretions, most people just don't care. “But you're supposed to be outraged,”
[Christianity Today, May 18, 1998]
Twenty-four years ago this month I learned something specific. The specificity of what I learned is what makes it, to many, offensive.
Twenty-four years ago a hitchiking jaunt around Europe brought me one afternoon to a church in Dublin.
[Christianity Today, April 6, 1998]
On the old ”Bob Newhart Show," the one that cast Bob as a psychiatrist, one recurrent character carried meekness to a fault. He was a failure as a door-to-door salesman because he feared knocking on people's doors might disturb them. So he'd wait on the doorstep, hoping they'd happen to open the door.
[Christianity Today, February 9, 1998]
Get a bunch of Christian intellectuals together and pretty soon they'll start in deploring the CBA. The initials stand for the Christian Booksellers Association, the organization that links Christian bookstores across the nation. (Secular bookstores form the American Booksellers Association, or ABA.)
[Christianity Today, September 6, 1999] I didn't go to see “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me;” I went to see the historic theater where it happened to be playing. But when those psychedelic colors started spilling off the screen I couldn't resist. Austin Powers, the ersatz James Bond, is a weenie with a Herman's Hermits haircut
[Christianity Today, March 1, 1999]
A few decades ago a small paperback appeared titled ”Tortured for Christ," by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand. In it Wurmbrand described his experiences of persecution behind the Iron Curtain. He pled with Americans to remember Russian believers suffering for their faith, invisible behind the fog of disinformation.
[Park Ridge Center Bulletin, May-June, 1999]
Issues of medical controversy hit close to home; in fact, they drop a cherry bomb right through the mail slot. Our bodies are our homes: they are where we live. For this reason, discussions relating to medicine can take on a desperate tone. When one person feels another is asserting the right to meddle with his home,
