[Sojourners, April 2006]
On a November evening a couple of weeks after the 2004 election, the regular monthly meeting of Orthodox Young Adults was held at my house. These 20 or 30 college students and young professionals are Eastern Orthodox Christians living in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area.
[National Review Online, March 17, 2006] There's something exhilarating about watching a clever liar in full, resplendent flight. Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhardt) has what he cheerfully describes as a “challenging” job: he represents the interests of the tobacco industry in a world that generally considers the product reprehensible.
[National Review Online, March 10, 2006]
You'd have to have an extraordinary amount of confidence in a film to give it a title like “Failure to Launch.” It's a target as big as a barn. And I'm left wondering what made the folks behind this film so sure that it was guaranteed boffo. It's got the elements a standard romantic comedy requires: two hot stars, their oddball friends,
[Christianity Today, March 2006]Selected for Best American Spiritual Writing, 2007
If you hang around with Christians, you find that the same topic keeps coming up in conversation: their worries about “the culture.” Christians talk about sex and violence in popular entertainment. They talk about bias in news reporting. They talk about how their views are ignored or misrepresented. “The culture” appears to be an aggressive challenge to “the church,” and Christians keep worrying over what to do about it.
(National Review Online, March 1, 2006)
1. What is “the Great Canon of St. Andrew” and what’s so great about it?
This complex poem (actually a chanted hymn) was written in the early 700’s, and it picked up the adjective “Great” for two reasons: it’s extra-long (about 250 verses), and it’s majestic. The Great Canon was written by St. Andrew
[National Review Online, February 14, 2006]
For a feature titled “Men We Love”
In a life blessed by many strong and honorable men, worthy of love, the one I'd like to celebrate here is an 80-year-old priest. In 1948, at the age of 22, Father George Calciu was arrested and held
Beliefnet Film Awards, 2006
Cinderella Man
What's so inspirational about James J. Braddock, the “Cinderella Man”? Audiences have already given plenty of love
George, the curious little monkey, had a precarious start: his parents, Margaret and H.A. Rey, bicycled out of Paris just hours before the Germans arrived, with the preliminary watercolors and story text in their backpacks. Margaret, a Bauhaus-trained artist, was a sharp cookie and blazingly direct, capable of blurting to her publisher: “You always wear a hat. Is there something wrong with your head?” (The reply was, “Nothing that a hat can hide.”)
[National Review Online, January 27, 2006]
The best line in “Nanny McPhee” is not actually spoken; it's merely exhaled through Emma Thompson's prodigious nose, a quietly observant “Hmmm.”
You may not remember Thompson's nose being particularly notable in such arched-pinky movies as “Howard's End,” “The Remains of the Day,” and various Shakespeare and Jane Austen productions. But here it is bulbous and red,
[Review of Faith & International Affairs, Winter 2005-2006]
In “Paradise Now,” a new movie from director Hany Abu-Assad, there's a moment when the character Khaled (Ali Suliman) does a good imitation of a Wild West gunslinger. He faces a corner and then spins back out on one foot, turning toward his pals with a “quick draw” gesture and a grin.
The joke is that he has just had a set of explosives strapped to his chest.
