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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here, to read more posts by them click here. In the post below they look at Obama’s success in South Carolina.

In winning the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary, Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama carried virtually every demographic group. (more…)

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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here, to read more posts by them click here. In the article below Domke and Coe look ahead to the South Carolina primaries.

From the Motor City in Michigan to Sin City in Nevada, the 2008 presidential campaign is going national. But with all respect to voters in these states, the road to the White House—and for American politics generally—in the next few weeks goes through South Carolina. That’s because the Palmetto state is ground zero in today’s religious politics. (more…)

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Gerald M. Oppenheimer and Ronald Bayer are the authors of Shattered Dreams?: An Oral History of the South African AIDS Epidemic which uses interviews to tell the story of how physicians and nurses in South Africa struggled to ride the tiger of the world’s most catastrophic AIDS epidemic. They wrote such a compelling piece for World AIDS Day that I thought it would be nice to delve deeper into their book. The excerpt below looks at how doctors responded to the AIDS epidemic in South Africa.

Coming to AIDS (more…)

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Saturday is World Aids Day. We asked authors Gerald M. Oppenheimer and Ronald Bayer to help us commemorate this important holiday, to help us remember why AIDS research, awareness and education is so very important to our society. Oppenheimer and Bayer are the authors of Shattered Dreams: An Oral History of the South African AIDS Epidemic which uses interviews to tell the story of how physicians and nurses in South Africa struggled to ride the tiger of the world’s most catastrophic AIDS epidemic. In the original article below they reflect on the progress made and work still to be accomplished.

Once again it is almost World AIDS Day and in cities and communities around the world, there will be commemorations marking the date, December 1. But this year may be different. Some will begin to say, as they did in the United States, “Enough!” Too much energy, too many resources, have been devoted to an epidemic whose dimensions may have been exaggerated. They will point to a recent report from the United Nations suggesting that the global burden of HIV have been overestimated. Instead of the approximately 39 million people, as the world body previously reported, it is now thought that the numbers are closer to 33 million individuals. The number of newly infected, said the report, is declining where it is not leveling off. Seizing on these numbers, we will be urged to breathe a collective sigh of relief. (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

“From the north so dear to southern climes” is an awkward prose rendition of a line occurring in a lyric titled “Clouds” by the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov. In 1840 he was exiled to the Caucasus, where Russia tried to “pacify” the Chechens (!). Lermontov improvised “Clouds” at a small farewell party in St. Petersburg, and I have chosen it to introduce the discussion of the words north and south (check out the discussion of east and west here). The juxtaposition of the hands will become clear later. (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

All over the world when people decide to name cardinal points, they look at the sky. Terms used for orientation should therefore be immediately transparent: we expect them to mean “toward sunrise,” “toward sunset,” “related to a certain constellation,” “in the direction of a certain wind,” and so forth. And indeed, Latin oriens “east” is akin to oriri “to rise,” while occidens “west” is a cognate of occidere “to fall down.” Speakers of Latin did not need an etymologist to interpret those words (such specialists existed even then, for example, Varro, the most famous of them all): sunrise and sunset tell their own story. But of the English words—east, west, north, and south—only the first reveals its past to the initiated. The other three are so opaque that after centuries of guessing their origin remains a matter of dispute. (more…)

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Yesterday we posted Part One of an email dialogue between Miranda Hassett and Philip Jenkins, authors respectively of Anglican Communion in Crisis (Princeton University Press) and God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis. Today they continue the conversation.

Email 3 and 4

Philip Jenkins with answers by Miranda Hassett.

Philip Jenkins: On your point about how I am read, I have remarked a few times in the past few years that I am a professor not a prophet! But, conservatives were dead right to take two things from my work, namely the demographic shift, and the tilt towards orthodoxy among many global South churches. If they found that message from me and credited me with that knowledge, well and good, and equally if they found hope and comfort. However, I would say again that the demographic shift is critical news (and definitely good news) for all shades of Christians, not just traditionalists. (more…)

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Today’s post requires a lengthier introduction than we normally provide here. I apologize for being verbose but I wanted to make sure you all understood just how exciting the following exchange is. It is the first, of hopefully many, collaborations with another publishing house (Princeton University Press).Way back when, at the end of June, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article entitled “2 Books Analyze the Alliances Between Conservative Christians and African Churches,” comparing the work of Miranda Hassett and Philip Jenkins. After reading the article we thought it would be great to get Hassett and Jenkins together in a virtual interview. We put them in touch with each other, and allowed each to ask the other questions. The fascinating results are below. Be sure to come back tomorrow for part two!

(more…)

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