It seems that hardly a day has passed since Christmas that we haven't had to wade through stories of the entanglement of religion in the American Presidential process. For as long as I can remember there have been tensions between the officially athiest government on the Chinese mainland and the people and religious leadership of Tibet---that struggle from China's claim of ownership of Tibet.
Enter the modern Olympics, which, since its inception has always managed to include some significant component of religio-political turmoil. From Jesse Owens and the 1936 Berlin Olympics, with its headon confrontation over Nazi Arianism to the Cold War boycotts which affected the games in Moscow and Los Angeles, we come to the Beijing Olympics of 2008 and the odyssey of the Olympic Torch.
It's unlikely that separating religious interests and politics will ever be fully realized, especially not when we have the quadrennial political, er--religious, er--Olympic, games to arouse nationalistic and athletic fervor.
There were rumors earlier this week that there's a new song being sung on the West Coast, "I left my torch in San Francisco," but this morning's headlines seem to suggest that it did actually make its way out of town.
Closer to home, the UCC ran a full-page ad in the New York Times a week ago, as an attempt to clarify the denomination's perspectives on church polity and conduct. There's another ad running in USA Today this weekend on the call for a national dialog on race. I'm not suggesting that you buy a copy to see the ads---I don't buy either of these papers but that's because I don't buy papers which don't have a comics page---but keep your eyes and ears peeled for any mention of the ads in the media.
Use these links if you want to see the ads without buying the papers. You'll need Adobe Reader to view the PDF files, though.
CLICK HERE to see the NY Times Ad.
CLICK HERE to see the USA Today Ad.
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