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RealClearReligion Blog

RCP Election Night Live Blog Extravaganza

Posted by Jeremy Lott at Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:35:32

Dear RCR Readers:

Please join us for our live blog on election night, November 2. We will be covering the election, updating you with all the congressional races and providing commentary and analysis as the evening unfolds. We will also discuss the role that American religion played in shaping this historic election.

Our panelists include editors from all six RealClear sites (Religion, World, Science, Sports, Politics, and Markets), as well as journalists and commentators who will be covering the election.

Simply check back here on Nov. 2, starting at 7 p.m. ET. You will be able to make your own comments and observations and share with our audience. We look forward to your participation.

Please Allow Me to Introduce This Site

Posted by Jeremy Lott at Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:16:19

Religion is serious and silly, scandalous and sublime. Religion writing ought to reflect this reality. Too often, it doesn't. That's a problem because religion is vitally important to billions of people the world over. It gives them a way to think about making sense of things, forming families, helping others, and helping themselves.

RealClearReligion.org aims to change this. We want to improve religion writing by highlighting the best of it, by giving interested parties a daily shortlist of news and commentary that they really ought to check out. We will cover religion in itself and religion as it influences those things that we can't avoid: religion and science, religion and culture, religion and commerce, religion and politics.

We understand that even the use of the word "religion" as a catch-all can be dicey. People believe in particular things rather than in generalized "religion" and various sects and denominations disagree, sometimes violently. People even disagree over whether certain beliefs (communism, environmentalism, AA) constitute religions. We will highlight those conflicts here, as well as clashes between belief and a cocky unbelief that is sometimes called the "new" atheism.

This site will present not just both sides but a veritable kaleidoscope of viewpoints, because religion isn't nearly as narrow as partisan politics. However, we cannot claim to be completely unbiased in these matters. How could we? We appropriate as our starting point the final lines from the stage adaptation of Crime and Punishment:

RCR: Do you believe a man can be resurrected?

Raskolnikov: I don't know anymore.

RCR: And do you believe in God?

Raskolnikov: Does it matter?

RCR: It might.