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April 17, 2007

Volume 124, Issue #8
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Features

Feature

Hypothetical fraud: Behind the firing of David Iglesias

The Justice Department has made stamping out fraud by individual voters a priority. Since the 2002 launch of its Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative, 86 individuals had been convicted of ballot fraud, the department boasted in a press release last year. Federal prosecutor David Iglesias of New Mexico, one of the eight U.S. attorneys recently fired by the Bush administration, had twice been invited to be a trainer at the Justice Department’s annual symposium on voter fraud because he created a task force to investigate allegations of fraud in the 2004 election season.

by Meg Murphy-Sweeney
Feature

Newsworthy: Bill Moyers on journalism and democracy

Throughout his career in print and broadcast journalism, Bill Moyers has blended a passionate interest in the workings of politics with a strong interest in religion. He is perhaps best known for the many interviews and reports he has produced and narrated for the Public Broadcasting System, including the “Faith and Reason” series in 2006. He has received over 30 Emmy awards for his documentary work and was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Feature

Nothing doing: Staring off into space

I always assumed that people who lived in prehistoric times had it rough. Bad housing, no toothbrushes, scratchy clothes and no protection from wild animals or marauding bands of thieves. I imagined a person from the ancient world working all day just to gather some edible roots and maybe kill a weasel to eat, only to be killed himself by a hungry saber-toothed cat or someone who wanted his campsite and the weasel dinner.

by Gordon Atkinson
Cover Story

Stolen goods: Tempted to plagiarize

A student in one of my preaching courses was struggling terribly. The sermons he preached in class were plodding, disorganized and weakly supported exegetically and theologically. He was aware that he was not meeting expectations, and was frustrated and embarrassed. But then, in his final opportunity to redeem himself in the course, he surprised us all by preaching a stunning sermon, profound and lyrical. It was good—too good.
by Thomas G. Long
Film

Comic-book violence

The famous battle of Thermopylae, which took place in 480 BC between a massive Persian force led by the King Xerxes and a small band of Greeks headed by 300 Spartans and led by the popular King Leonidas is the subject of 300. Thermopylae (“Hot Gates”) was a narrow pass near a hot springs. The Greeks’ plan was not to defeat the Persians but to delay them long enough to be able to mobilize a larger army for a later battle. They succeeded, and defeated the Persians a year later at the Battle of Plataea.

By John Petrakis

Books

Creation conversation

Dear Ed: Thank you for your book addressed to a “Southern Baptist pastor.” As a Baptist pastor on the western edge of the South (and...
By Kyle Childress

The Way That Leads There

There is much to celebrate in this important new book by one of the finest moral theologians writing today...
reviewed by Jason Byassee

American Fascists

Your fundamentalist grandmother is unwittingly abetting a tyrannical conspiracy....
reviewed by Todd Shy

Departments

Editor's Desk

Repeat performance: Pastoral plagiarism

Tom Long, one of the preachers I’m tempted to steal from, points out in this issue that stealing sermons is an old phenomenon but easier to do today given the thousands of sermons...
by John Buchanan
From the Editors

Courage in Zimbabwe: Christians resisting nonviolently

The activities of courageous Christians in Zimbabwe could be chapters in a new, politicized version of the book of Acts....
Faith Matters

Punch lines: Habits of friendship and community

Laughter was a hallmark of my family’s life as I grew up....
by L. Gregory Jones
Impressions

Rice's mission: Making demands on Israel too

When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to the Middle East in late March, she took along a plan to provide both Israeli and Palestinian leaders with “a political horizon.” The plan, says Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, dep...
by James M. Wall
M.E.M.O.

Pitching dreams: Prosperity thinking

When I was nine years old I dreamed of being Bobby Feller. I forget about that dream for long stretches, but then something comes back to remind me of it. Recently that something was Tyler Kepner’s profile of Feller in the March 7 New York Times. I learned that at age 88 Feller still suits up every day, and that he is often called a hero because of his World War II service. He responds to this term by saying, "Heroes don’t come home; survivors come home." What good did that baseball dream do? For one thing, it's a bracing alternative to the dream talk that afflicts us now.
by Martin E. Marty

News

Protestant groups ask African Union to step into Zimbabwe crisis: Ever-worsening government suppression

Two global groupings of Protestant churches have urged the African Union to intervene in the crisis in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe’s government has cracked down on opposition protests as the country faces economic collapse....

Income gap in Russia endangers stability, church forum says: Poverty in a resource-rich country

Russia has climbed to No. 3 in the world in its number of billionaires, but a Moscow meeting of religious leaders, academics and public officials said the gap between rich and poor threatens the unity of the world’s biggest country....

Briefly noted

The Roman Catholic Church will investigate a life-saving miracle attributed to the late Pope John Paul I, bringing the pontiff who served only 33 days in 1978 one step closer to possible sainthood....

People

Christianity Today International, the publisher of evangelical magazines and online periodicals, has named a new editor-in-chief....
Century Marks

Century Marks

Party politics and piety: Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report is skeptical that Democrats can win over evangelical voters by using the right language. The Democrats had minimal impact on white evangelical voters in 2006, Rothenberg says. White evangelicals are more likely to change the Republican Party than to change parties (Roll Call, March 22).

Methodist merger not in view: Smaller denominations won't be "swallowed up"

Bishops from six U.S. Methodist denominations have pledged to work together on common social-justice goals. But they quashed the notion that a merger or union is likely....

Episcopal bishops nix foreign oversight: A declaration of independence

Episcopal bishops have brushed off an attempt to give overseas Anglicans a role in governing the Episcopal Church, saying such a move would be “injurious” and could lead to a permanent division of the U.S. church....

Disagreement on same-sex relations riles Lutheran body: Heated debate in Lutheran World Federation

Blessings for people living in same-sex relationships triggered heated debate at a meeting last month of the main governing body of the Lutheran World Federation in the southern Swedish city of Lund....

U.S. bishops condemn Maguire's stance on abortion, gay marriage: Theologian claims Catholics can dissent

The U.S. Catholic bishops have denounced as “irresponsible” and “false teaching” a Catholic theologian’s claim that Catholics are able to dissent from the hierarchy’s opposition to contraceptives, same-sex marriage and abortion. Daniel C....

Jewish seminary opens door to gay students: "In keeping with Jewish tradition of pluralism"

Openly gay students who want to serve as rabbis or cantors in Conservative Judaism are now welcome at the Jewish Theological Seminary, school officials said in New York....

Book culls from decade of spiritual thinking on PBS program: The Life of Meaning

A new book based on interviews from the PBS program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly finds a spiritual hunger beneath the secular veneer of modern culture, with many searching for something beyond the material world....

Proctor & Gamble wins 'Satan' suit: Judgment against Amway distributors

For those needing any more reasons to discount the decades-old rumor that one of America’s largest and oldest consumer products companies is in league with Satan, a federal jury recently provided about 19 million of them....

Lectionary

What about Dorcas?: Acts 9:36-43

I was looking through a high school yearbook recently, a dangerous thing to do when 40 years have passed. I got lost staring at the silly hairstyles, the photos of teachers who are long since gone, the friend in the senior play whose name is now etched on the Vietnam memorial. It was a time of turmoil and strife in the nation. Racial tensions, assassinations and war were tearing the country apart. But you would never know that from my yearbook’s carefree and hopeful class photos.
by Jon Walton

Dreaming in Joppa: Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148

Many Christians can name the hour and the place of their salvation. For me it was answering not one but two altar calls at Billy Graham crusades in the 1960s. For Reinhold Niebuhr, who was asked if he could name the time and place of his salvation, it was “2,000 years ago on a dusty hill named Golgotha outside Jerusalem’s wall.”
by Jon Walton

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