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What's particularly interesting about this story is that it's apparently being reported only among conservative Christian organizations. As far as Weblog can tell, no major media have picked up on it yet (though, with the Taliban fleeing Kabul and another plane crash in New York City, it's a pretty busy news cycle). This time, the mainstream media are playing catch-up.

Taliban leaves—and takes aid workers along
Breaking news reports from the Associated Press are usually straightforward, but in an update on the eight foreign aid workers being held by the Taliban, Kathy Gannon engages in some excellent prose. "The squalid prison compound that housed eight foreign aid workers, including two American women, was dingy and dank with muddy gray walls," her story begins. "The bathroom was a hole in the ground hidden by tattered pieces of burlap." But the Shelter Now workers haven't been in the compound since September 11—they were taken to a school on the outskirts of Kabul. And last night, as the Taliban fled the capital, they were moved again—this time to Kandahar. "They were very happy, because they thought they would be released," said Abdul Raouf, one of the guards. "We liked them. They were good people. I think they will be OK because the Taliban had treated them very good." Apparently it all happened very quickly. "Suitcases were sitting on steel bunk beds in a concrete block room that housed the six women … Two socks had been left to dry on a hanger dangling from a top bunk."

• Islam has a purity and energy that Christianity has lost | The problem is that Christians suffer from a fatal lack of confidence, and that this is a sign of a wider malaise (David McLaurin, The Daily Telegraph)
• Testing times for a worried minority | Middle Eastern Christians are under pressure to say where their loyalties lie (The Economist)
• Fundamental flaws | America's religious Right and the West's romantic Left now share an Arcadian, pre-modern vision similar to that of Muslim conservatives (Michael Lind, The Observer)

• This is boom time for End Times believers | Who among us has not had such fantasies and fears in recent months? (Elizabeth Nickson, National Post)
• Saint invoked in anthrax scare | St. Rosalie—or Rosalia—has been called upon in previous outbreaks (Religion News Service)
• Finding faith | Terrorist attacks spark religious revival (Las Vegas Sun)
• Churches keep winery in good spirits | The L.A. company's altar wine sales have surged since September 11, amid a rush toward religion. (Los Angeles Times)

• The birth of the myth that men are closer to God | Of course we do not treat women with the brutality of the extremist Muslims who wrap their masculine insecurities in the cloak of Muhammad, but we should realize that male envy of and hostility toward women is also deeply imbedded in other religions, including Judaism and Christianity (Robert S. McElvaine, The Washington Post)
• Church backs lesbian minister | New Zealand Presbyterians "strongly" approve of ordination (The New Zealand Herald)

• Voluntary school prayer OK'd by Texas board | Resolution encourages "voluntary, noncoercive prayer" (Houston Chronicle)
• Put God back in schools? He never left | The First Amendment already allows for plenty of student religious expression during the school day. We don't need school officials telling the kids what that expression should or should not be. (Charles Haynes, Freedom forum)

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November (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45