It was a 21st-century morality tale that exemplifies what social media can do. A young Iowa man holds up a sign during an ESPN-televised game, asking for beer money. Donations pour in. The young man makes a donation to a children’s hospital. Anheuser Bush jumps in with a sponsorship. Then a newspaper reporter finds old tweets the young man made when he was 16. The story runs, outrage ensures, the beer company cancels its sponsorship. Then people find old, just-as-boneheaded tweets by the reporter. Outrage ensues. The reporter ends up fired. Now the reporter is telling his side of things, and I can’t say I’m entirely convinced. See “Twitter hates me. The Des Moines Register fired me. Here’s what really happened” at the Columbia Journalism Review.
The recent Amazonian Synod held by the Catholic Church in Rome embraced some revolutionary (for the church) ideas, including the possibility of married priests in certain geographies. Controversy erupted over certain images of gods being placed in a church, then stolen, then replaced, and finally missing from the closing ceremonies. Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative also looks at the old Enlightenment image the synod embraced, that of “the noble savage.”
Jeff Bilbro at Front Porch Republic takes a look at a famous story told by Wendell Berry, about a story that stopped being told. At first, the story has elements of some of Mark Twain’s humorous writing, But then it becomes something of a moral fable. See “Two Great Interruptions.”
One of the most moving things I read this past week had to do with a boy coming home from school, and his grandfather sees the sadness in the boy’s face. As you read “Peyton’s Saunter” by Doug Spurling, you understand once again what divorce leaves in its wake.
More Good Reads
Writing and Literature
Author: Are You Doing These Marketing Activities? – Sarah Bolme at Marketing Christian Books.
Poetry
Mysterium Tremendum – Peter Venable at the Society of Classical Poets.
A Visit to Stonehenge – Jan Sizemore at Facebook Poetry Society.
A Portable Paradise – Roger Robinson via The Guardian (poem of the month).
A Villanelle and Video – Joseph Charles MacKenzie at the Society of Classical Poets.
Owls – Nicholas Friedman at Literary Matters.
Sometimes autumn – Kathleen Everett at The Course of Our Seasons.
Faith
Centuries of blood and faith: Why many Christians in Middle East look to Russia for help – Terry Mattingly at Get Religion.
How Can Christians Bring Something Greater to Politics? – John Pletcher at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.
Final Words to my Faithful Flock in South Africa – Clint Archer at The Cripplegate.
Who Could Ever Be a Saint? – Seth Lewis.
British Stuff
The Queen’s Speech and the Principle of Subsidiarity – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.
Eyewitness to History: The Battle of Culloden – Kimberley Jordan Reeman at English Historical Fiction Authors.
News Media
Christianity and Freedom of the Press – Zak Schmoll at Entering the Public Square.
How Syndicated Columns, Comics and Stories Forever Changed the News Media – Julia Guarneri at Smithsonian Magazine.
American Stuff
Ancestors of Two Twentieth-Century Hollywood Influences Clash in Antietam’s Cornfield – Kevin Pawlak at Emerging Civil War.
Did Christianity Profoundly Influence the Founding of America? – David Hall via Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition.
Life and Culture
Death of a Critic – Samuel D. James at Letters & Liturgy.
Japan in 8K 60fps
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