Discussion of "high-profile public apologies" reminds me of a species of non-apology particularly common of late among big-name politicians and other prominent people. It goes like this: "If anyone was offended," the big-name says, "then I apologize to them."

Leaving aside the offense to basic grammar, the key word to note here is "if." Its implication is clear: the speaker really can't imagine how anyone could be so idiotic/petty/politically correct as to misunderstand the humor/earthiness/wonderful honesty of whatever it was that the speaker said. That "if" throws the burden of proving the ill-intent of the statement in question right back onto whomever it was who complain in the first place. There's certainly no repentence here, and not even an actual apology.

So what gives?

Continue »

Reading through some of my fellow panelists' entries, I see some would bury Jerry Falwell, while others would praise him.

I will do neither, but rather note that one of his accomplishments (and I mean that word neutrally) was his ability to raise his public profile through his keen understanding of the needs of the news media. If Falwell became the public face of the religious right, it was in part because he returned reporters' phone calls ahead of deadline, sat through countless interviews and was always blunt, succinct and consistent--thus, eminently quotable. Of course, it didn't hurt that by the time he really came to national attention (the night of the 1980 election, as I recall), he had already built a very large local church, launched a broadcasting operation and deeply involved himself in political activity.

Continue »

When I first read the question, my immediate response was, "Yes, sure..." I was thinking of my beloved wife and sons, the friends and colleagues whom I admire and from whom I learn, the students with whom I feel privileged to interact. For those individuals, for my being able to live with and among them, I feel unreservedly grateful.

But there's a wider context to one's life, isn't there? And somehow the word satisfied just doesn't really work there. For one thing, you can't reach middle-age without coming to a certain realism about how the world works. Not when you've had friends die, both from "natural" causes and by means to which we would never apply that adjective. Not after illness has struck very close within one's family.

Continue »

I notice that several of the panelists have praised Christopher Hitchens's writing, if not his conviction. And to be sure, the current question, which borrows his phrasing, seems to have inspired some of the most interesting theological reflection I've yet seen from the esteemed panel.

But like Bishop Wright, I too have a problem with the use of the term "man-made" (aside from its being a rather antique, gendered locution). As Wright writes, in this context it does sound "somewhat sneering." Hitchens means to use it as a perjorative... religion is, as he says, phony, un-divine because there is no divine. But to speak of human creativity implies no single value: it may result in the utilitarian (i.e., the plumbing under my sink), the abominable (Auschwitz) or the exhalted (anything by Beethoven).

Continue »