NPR, SCL, etc.

Following a few weeks of relative media quiet, I was lucky enough (blessed, even) to be asked to talk about The Unlikely Disciple on NPR’s “All Things Considered” last week.

The highlight of my trip to NPR’s New York bureau was writing my name in the official NPR guestbook.  I scribbled my signature, looked at the line above mine, and saw “T. Morrison” in large, loopy letters.

“Is that…?” I asked the receptionist.

“Toni Morrison?” he said.  “Yeah.  She was in the studio right before you.”

Luckily, I came down from lit-geek euphoria (and the anxiety of having to follow a Nobel laureate) in time to have a relatively smooth interview with charming Weekend ATC host Jacki Lyden, which you can listen to here.

A few other book-related items of note:

• Jon Acuff, founder of the hugely popular Stuff Christians Like blog, is giving away five copies of The Unlikely Disciple on his site.  The giveaway ends TOMORROW, so enter now!  If you’ve never been to SCL before, go to the full roundup and poke around – there’s some hilarious stuff.  (i.e. #90: “The Tankini”)
• A great review came in this week from The Christian Manifesto, a well-written Christian culture blog.  Check it out here.
• Not much of substance has happened on the Liberty College Democrats front, it seems – the Dems are still revising their group’s constitution to meet some (or all) of the requirements set forth in last week’s meetings, and Chancellor Falwell is still demanding a public apology for certain statements made by members of the club.  A sad situation all around.
• Nathan Schneider, a Brown grad and writer who blogs at The Row Boat (among other places), has written an extremely good review-essay on my book.  His piece, titled “Undercover at Falwell’s Liberty University, Finding Common Ground,” seeks to explain why, after so many years of galvanized culture warring, the American public seems to be taking a conciliatory turn and seeking to build bridges rather than tear them down.  The whole thing is available at Religion Dispatches, and here’s an excerpt:

Throughout Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and into his administration, he has tried to work his words around the culture wars. He speaks of “abortion reduction” rather than “choice” or “life.” A supposedly new-and-improved faith-based initiatives office stands at the center of the domestic agenda. We press on in Afghanistan and Iraq, even as the president heads to Muslim countries in search of dialogue. Meanwhile, Newsweek has proclaimed “The End of Christian America”; with the Bush administration gone and churchgoing on the decline, perhaps the great, religion-infused culture wars of recent decades are over.

…We no longer need (since we are all “we” now) to muckrake and expose the other. Now, the necessary work is understanding, compromise, and shared humanity.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 8:30 pm .