May 20, 2008

The presumptive Republican nominee for president, Arizona senator John McCain, has for 15 years attended North Phoenix Baptist Church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The pastor of the church for that same period has been Dan Yeary. A graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Yeary, 69, has spent most of his ministry in large, urban congregations. His ministry includes work in television and radio as well as leading his 7,000-member church.

On the campaign trail, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have spoken of their backgrounds in community organizing. Clinton refers to formative experiences knocking on doors in south Texas when she ran the state Democratic Party’s 1972 voter registration drive. Barack Obama worked as a community organizer for two years on Chicago’s South Side after finishing his bachelor’s degree and before entering Harvard Law School. While both cite organizing experience as formative, they have drawn from it slightly different lessons.

“In hope we were saved” (Spe salvi facti sumus). Pope Benedict’s encyclical Spe salvi, released in late 2007, begins with this quote from Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:24). Benedict goes on immediately to speak of redemption: “According to the Christian faith, “redemption”—salvation—is not simply a given.

New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, largely inhabited by poor African-American residents, looks not much different now from when the floodwaters receded. You have to wonder how Washington would have reacted if Katrina had hit a wealthy, white gated community.

David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels begins with the discordant sounds of a small-town high school band practicing on a football field under gray skies. It ends with the angry cry of a heartbroken grandmother calling to her dog from a back porch. In between, we become acquainted with intertwining tales of lust and romance, each at different stages of development or demise, which illustrate how glorious and painful declarations of love can be.

Darwinists are communists. And Nazis. They hate our freedom. And—this might be worst of all—they are New Atheists. Or so suggests the film Expelled, Ben Stein’s comedic documentary about scientists who have lost their jobs for questioning the Darwinian consensus. Stein is an actor best known for his role as the hapless teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (“Anyone? Anyone?”) and for his role in a game show called Win Ben Stein’s Money.