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Who turned on the religion news fire hose? It's not Easter or Christmas—in fact, it's summer vacation season—but we're seeing religion news coverage on an almost unmanageable scale. We'd like to blame war in the Middle East or "social policy" votes in Congress, but the reality is that coverage is remarkably broad: hence our 59 categories below. The breadth makes it hard, but we'll still try to narrow it down to …

1. Beyond the headlines in the Lebanon-Israel War
Woe to the religion reporter—or just the bewildered churchgoer—looking for "Christian reaction" to the Israel-Lebanon conflict. Since Lebanon has the Middle East's largest population of Christians, you might think there'd be a trove of possibilities. But mainstream news coverage so far has been minimal, and the items from outside the mainstream media aren't terribly helpful. Respectable organizations on both the Left and the Right are offering little analysis or answers, instead just begging and hoping for "all sides" to cool off. Among the statements: Middle East Council of Churches, World Council of Churches, Pope Benedict XVI.

No statement yet from groups like the World Evangelical Alliance, the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.K. Evangelical Alliance, Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding, or other such umbrella bodies.

Evangelical umbrella bodies might be silent, but specific groups and personalities are quite sure they know the cause and solution of the Middle East's problems. One theme: Israel's only fault is that it didn't strike harder and earlier. A (thankfully) less common theme: Blame the gays (The news said Lebanese, dude, not lesbian).

There's an interesting statement circulating from Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant church leaders in Jerusalem, but there seems to be some important variations. One version begins, "The Israeli violence and aggression of this present moment is without proportion or justification." Another version drops the word "Israeli."

Mainstream media coverage of the Christian angle in the conflict focuses (with good cause) on the Maronite church. Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Nasrallah Sfeir, the Maronite Patriarch of Lebanon, telling him "the international community has to help you."

What does the patriarch want help with? Enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which called for Syria to withdraw its forces and involvement in Lebanon, and for "the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias" (i.e. Hezbollah). At his meeting with Rice, Patriarch Sfeir seemed—as many of us do—at a loss for a solution.

The world says the Resolution 1559 will it be applied. But it is not up to the Lebanese Government to apply it. It is so weak to do so. There is another way to apply this, but I do not know how. But our interest is that all the citizens will be equal (inaudible). When some are having arms and the others have not there is no equality and I've said this a long time that -- how to apply this I don't know. [Through a dialogue] perhaps, some other -- some pressure to …

Sfeir, coincidentally, has been on a long-planned, month-long tour of the U.S. since July 2. As for Christians still in Lebanon, there have been a few meager scraps of information. The Swiss media reports that foreigners are flocking to Christian churches to await evacuation. The hawkish Israeli site Debka.com—sometimes way ahead of mainstream news reports, sometimes way off in its facts—reports that rockets are being launched from Christian villages due to "Israel's reluctance to attack Christian targets. … [Hezbollah] is using Lebanese Christians as human shields for its attacks and their towns and villages as supply centers to pump ordnance to the launch teams in forward positions."

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July (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50