There's been a lot of interesting news in the world of labor and in religion and politics lately. In case you're paying no attention at all to the Super Bowl tonight, some of this might prove interesting:
- The New York Times reports that the writers' strike may be nearing its end. The writers conceded their desire to represent animation and reality TV workers, but appear to have won concessions on royalties for content distributed on the Internet. The agreement now goes to the guild's governing boards, and then to the writers themselves.
- Last week was the celebration of the New Baptist Covenant, a group convened by Pres. Carter and composed of about 30 different Baptist denominations. The meeting's theme was unity, especially along racial and ethnic lines, and it appears that the meeting did indeed include a diverse cross-section of Baptists. While the group is expressly apolitical, it focuses on themes of social justice and peace, a notable divergence from the Southern Baptist Convention's focus on a conservative orthodoxy revolving mostly around sexuality. The SBC did not formally participate in the meeting, although individual SBC members were free to attend.
- Pastor Dan notes that the SBC is losing membership and is having trouble attracting younger folks, putting to rest the notion that only liberal denominations have those kinds of problems. Membership appears to be slipping away towards Pentecostal churches and non-denominational churches. (Full disclosure: my wife is a once-a-week front pager at Street Prophets.)
- Via Zack Exley, the Barna Group this week reported the results of a poll which show that born again voters no longer favor Republicans. This is a group which voted for Bush over Gore by a 57-42 margin, and for Bush over Kerry by a 62-38 margin. They now favor a generic Democrat over a generic Republican by a 40-29 margin. On the other hand, evangelical voters would vote for a generic Republican over a generic Democrat by a 45-11 margin, with 40% undecided. Evangelicals remain extremely conservative, with 72% self-identifying as conservative, 24% identifying as moderate, and 2% identifying as liberal.
Well, it's mostly religion news, but I thought the writers' strike news was pretty interesting too. So, is there anything interesting on TV tonight?
Total time spend: 00:24:05
