It is midweek. Reverend Jeremiah Wright has spoken and every national news outlet has gone to Code Red.

The fallout from the pastor’s triptych of fulmination (Moyers/NAACP/NPC) has whipped the punditry up into a frenzy. The pollsters are re-tabulating. The Super Delegates are posturing and re-positioning. The operatives are shouting their talking points. The moderators are appealing for calm.

Footage of Wright doing his (not un-amusing) “But-Black-Folks- Do-It-Like-This!” routine is being looped endlessly. As is the image of a tense Obama standing on a runway and looking like his head is about to explode.

And then, almost as an afterthought, the major news divisions all feel obliged to show a clip of Hillary Clinton.

It has a dreamlike quality to it.

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Music is a well known path for crossing wide cultural divides. Music speaks without words. It can epitomize a mood as well as a culture. And it can stir up emotions and preconceptions. There’s a fascinating venture afoot in Fes, Morocco, to use those very qualities to bridge divides between the Muslim world and western cultures and faiths. The idea is that people can, through their love of music, explore new realms and appreciate the world’s wonderful diversity. But even more, the hope is that with emotions roused through music and art, people will open their minds as well as their hearts to new ideas.

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I would like to make a few observations about last night’s primaries, in particular the themes and images struck by the candidates in their respective victory speeches. But first, permit me one unsolicited--and unoriginal--observation: Oh Good Lord what a friggin' mess the Democrat nominating process is!

Between pledged delegates and Super Delegates and the popular vote and secretive caucuses and Florida and Michigan, I confess to being utterly dumbfounded as to: a) whom the totality of Democratic voters (as opposed to, for example, Republican voters who gleefully participated in primary day festivities) actually favor, and, b) whether the whole convoluted process can in any way, shape, or form yield the most electable candidate.

But let’s get to the imagery and oratory, shall we?

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"What do the American people think of Ayatollah Khomeini?” an Iranian TV reporter asked me on my first visit to Tehran in 1999. For a moment I was stumped. If I answered truthfully, I would have to say that the vast majority of Americans had never heard of Khomeini. But Iranian hardliners might easily exploit this observation. And so I simply suggested that most Americans didn’t follow international politics—this was the task of a foreign policy elite whose opinions on Iran were as divided as ever.

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The global food crisis came like a tsunami, with amazing speed and stealth. Development institutions everywhere are scrambling to face the urgent problems and questions that come in its wake.

There’s the immediate problem: How to find funds to buy enough food to meet steep increases in demand to feed hungry people here and now.

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This week a group of scholars and theologians released the “Evangelical Manifesto” at the National Press Club. It is a thoughtful, ambitious, if somewhat uneven, treatise and I wonder if the decision to premiere the document in Washington D.C. was necessarily a wise one.

It might have received a more serious reading (which it deserved) had it been unveiled at Wheaton or Taylor, or some other Evangelical college of distinction. After all, a doctrinally freighted statement like, “All too often we have been seduced by the shaping power of the modern world, exchanging a costly grace for convenience,” is not the type of claim that most journalists are equipped to assess without calling their contacts at the local seminary.

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Having had the weekend to further reflect on the Evangelical Manifesto, I am happy (and relieved) to report that I still concur with my initial assessment. After a few more perusals, however, three new observations come to mind.

To begin with the document might have been more aptly entitled “The Evangelical Intellectuals’ Manifesto.” It’s a thoughtful and challenging piece, full of self-criticism and open-ended questions. In this respect it brings to the fore a side of this culture which most non-Evangelicals never knew existed.

Televangelists, Megachurches, Jesus Campers, scandal-plagued pastors, and bestselling authors peddling low-wattage Christological pulp—those are things that most non-Evangelicals knew existed.

But beneath that all (or above that all) can be discerned a not inconsiderable network of serious Evangelical theologians, institutions of higher education, discussion groups, artists, cultivated laypersons, and so forth.

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Evangelical Pastor John Hagee has issued a written apology to Catholics. Bill Donahue has accepted the apology and decreed the case “closed.” “Whatever problems we had before,” announced the president of the Catholic League, “are now history.”

Under most circumstances only those devoted to the promulgation of ecumenical good will would pay any attention to this. But many people are paying attention to this. And they are not brimming with ecumenical good will.

That’s because the whole Hagee affair can be filed under the burgeoning category: “Affiliations With Religious Figures That May Have Catastrophic Ramifications Come Election Day.” Hagee, as is well known, endorsed McCain in late February. Within hours of his endorsement, news of the Televangelist’s anti-Catholic sentiments made national headlines.

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