Conversion
On the Spiritual Perils of Religion Writing: Q&A with Rod Dreher
As a journalist, writing in the first person is still pretty new for me. But starting this site, blogging professionally and generally entering the Web 2.0 world is essential for my professional survival, and reading Romenesko, the blog-stlye round-up of media-industry news, reminds me of that fact daily. On the one hand, it’s freeing to [...]
15Sep2008 | Andrea Useem | 12 comments | Continued“Surprised by God:” On Falling in Love with Religious Law
Danya Ruttenberg’s memoir, Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion, about how she grew from an athiest-Jewish high schooler to an observant-Jewish 30-something rabbi is really fantastic: well-written, engaging, skating that line between the personal and the universal with surprising grace. While reading it, I had to restrain myself from [...]
10Sep2008 | Andrea Useem | 1 comment | Continued“Change or Die:” American Buddhism When Baby-Boomer Converts Are Gone
In the current issue of the quarterly American Buddhist magazine Tricycle, contributing editor and former Zen monk Clark Strand makes a provocative claim: that American Buddhism must “change or die.” American converts to Buddhism have focused on spiritual practice to the exclusion of concerns like creating rituals and passing along the tradition to the next [...]
20Sep2007 | Andrea Useem | 13 comments | ContinuedReligion and the Presidential Candidates: Fun Facts
Question: What does the current field of presidential contenders have in common with the Supreme Court bench? Answer: It is disproportionately Catholic.
Using the handily compiled religious biographies of the presidential candidates (which number 16, if undeclared Fred Thompson is included) from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, ReligionWriter discovered these interesting tidbits.
Six out [...]