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• Kim Man-bok, director of Korea's National Intelligence Service, has been making rare public appearances after the hostages' release. He refuses to say whether a ransom was paid, saying such discussion is inappropriate. "It will be known later. I will speak at an appropriate time," he said.
  
  

3. After beating, Juanita Bynum files for divorce
Weapons of Power preacher Juanita Bynum says she will intentionally be the "new face of domestic violence" after her beating by her husband, Bishop Thomas W. Weeks, last month. She told TBN's "Praise the Lord" show that she won't speak negatively about Weeks. "Nobody could give me enough money," she said. "As long as he's my husband I won't break that covenant." Apparently he won't be her husband much longer: Bynum filed for divorce last week, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A spokesman for Weeks, who was charged with felony, aggravated assault, and other charges, says he still hopes the couple can reconcile.

Lakeland Ledger columnist Cary McMullen notes that the divorce is a bit different from the week's other high-profile Pentecostal divorce, that of Randy and Paula White. He wrote:

In the case of the Whites, as far as I could tell, there was not even any discussion about trying to justify the divorce on biblical or any other grounds. Randy White manfully took the blame for the marriage's failure, but no one mentioned that the biblical standard of adultery is the only justifiable grounds for divorce.

And if the comments posted on my blog in response to entries about the Whites and Bynum are any indication, their followers are staunchly supporting them. I have seen comments such as, "Nobody's perfect," "Before talking about her sins, you better look at your own," and "Don't judge, lest you be judged."

But the Whites and Bynum are celebrities, and that is a big difference. Celebrity pastors, especially if they have an independent ministry, tend to get a break. If you're a pastor of a small-town church, you're not going to find as much sympathy.

4. Spinning Mother Teresa's spiritual anguish
The pious response to Mother Teresa's letters about her spiritual emptiness, "is that these sentiments humanize the distant saint, showing that even the great have their struggles," Michael Gerson wrote in The Washington Post. "But this underestimates the rawness and intensity of the letters themselves, which are in fact disturbing. … This is clearly not an intellectual skepticism, a normal crisis of faith. It is a profound sense of abandonment."

If it's not a normal crisis of faith, said Los Angeles Times in an editorial, at least it's not a solitary one. "Mother Teresa's agonies of doubt place her in the mainstream of Judeo-Christian belief. Almost from the beginning, those who worshiped God worried that he had deserted them. In the Hebrew Bible, the psalmist cries: 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' — a sentiment echoed by the dying Jesus in the New Testament."

The Los Angeles Times editorial is very good, and theologically accurate. The New York Times doesn't do as well. Teresa's anguish "is a welcome reminder that saints, too, are only human, and that stories of dauntless piety tend to be false," it said in an editorial. "Dead for 10 years, she is poised to reach those who can at last recognize, in her, something of their own doubting, conflicted selves."

Still, the New York Times editorial pages does a lot better than Katha Pollitt in The Nation. Not that it's a surprise, but Pollitt seems desperate to dethrone Christopher Hitchens as Teresa contrarian. "Mother Teresa herself didn't let her lifelong dark night of the soul get in the way of her extreme religious orthodoxy," she laments. "I think her example … says, if you have doubts, keep quiet, don't use them to question dogma, challenge authority, open yourself up to new ways of thinking. Just keep kissing the rod. If Mother Teresa wasn't such a big humanitarian icon, we might think there was something a bit masochistic in her devotion to a God who made her so miserable."

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September (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51