If you look forward to my careening around, I apologize. My day job and some other things have kept me off the keyboard. I can’t promise to do better at least for a few weeks.
Poet and editor of Poetry magazine, Christian Wiman, has a religious sensibility and background, and so was a good interview subject for Image #76.
He left a “conservative” church but longs for religious community:
For a few years my wife and I did discover and join a genuine religious community … led by a charismatic minister with whom we became close friends. But then the minister went on to bigger things and the church quickly withered. That’s one problem with Protestantism (a paradoxical one given its origins): so much depends on the central figure ….
I have friends and family members who attend very conservative Protestant churches and enjoy a strong sense of community there. I envy them, but I can’t stomach some of the theology and feel that the animus against homosexuality is evil. (The people I know aren’t evil — hate the sin but love the sinner! — but evil has entered the institutions that have made this a a means of solidarity.) ….
(Emphasis added) Making hatred of a sin a means of solidarity (can you say “Westboro Baptist“?) does seem skewed, although the distinction between sin and sinner might explain how nicely Brandon Ambrosino was treated upon coming out at Liberty University.
But such skewing is not a Christian or pseudo-Christian exclusive. Look who’s on the hate list of People for the American Way. It seems to be the American way, and perhaps the common lot of all humanity, to find solidarity in not being “the Other.”
USA Today’s founder Allen Neuharth has died. “He ‘reinvented news,’ publisher says.” May God have mercy on him anyway.
In related news, our local newspaper is selling its downtown building:
Gary Suisman, president and publisher, made the announcement Friday.
He said the change is a sign of progress and that the media group will be looking for another space downtown.
“We want to invest in reporters and ad solutions,” Suisman said. “Not bricks and mortar.”
…
“As our business continues to evolve, our real estate needs have changed as well,” the publisher said.
I can be pretty harsh with the news media, but I don’t envy the job managing a news business in “the internet age,” and I don’t think our political polarization is unrelated to the echo chambers of the web.
Publishing a major newspaper today must feel a bit like it felt to be a Latin Cardinal during the Reformation. Your singularly authoritative role is disappearing, and in its stead there arises a cacophony of voices, many of them more than a bit unhinged, drawing off your faithful.
* * * * *
“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 