How the Other Half Worships

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 19, 2006 in Church | 0 comments

You’ve probably seen them as you drive around San Diego. What used to be a flooring store in North Park is now a Spanish-language church. A house in eastern San Diego is now being used for Muslim prayers. A former corner market in Barrio Logan has been turned into a Pentecostal tabernacle. With land scarce and construction costs high, houses of worship are seeking sanctuary in inner-city storefronts, vacated movie theaters and strip malls ‚Äì here and across the nation. Camilo Jose Vergara has noticed it, too. The New York photographer spent the last three decades taking his camera to some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, documenting places few outsiders ever visit.

Over the years, he began spotting storefront churches, particularly in blighted urban areas. In many cases, the pastors were cab drivers and retired transit workers with little or no formal religious training.

Vergara, author of the book “The New American Ghetto,” saw these churches as part of the story he’s been trying to tell with his photography about the lives of the poor. After four years of Sundays spent in churches from the Bronx to Detroit to Los Angeles, he has published a book of photos called “How the Other Half Worships.”

Full Story: How the Other Half Worships

Jesus, What a Cover!

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 17, 2006 in Culture | 0 comments

According to Mother Jones, magazines that feature Jesus on their covers see their issue sales jump by as much as 45 percent. (Putting the Bible front and center can boost sales as much as 51 percent.) In the past couple of years, magazines such as Wired and Popular Mechanics have tried to cash in on this miracle of marketing, but the most persistent devotees are Time and Newsweek, which have spent the last decade competing over who can squeeze Jesus on the front most often.

Article: Jesus, What a Cover!

This issue of Mother Jones examines the influence, practices and beliefs of the Christians (specifically the subset who are termed the Religious Right).

Who Gives A $%&t? – Americans spend $8 billion on Christmas decorations, almost twice what the United States spends on aid to Africa.

A Generation’s Identity in their Pain

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 17, 2006 in Culture | 1 comment

The existential experiment has changed a generation raised by it’s meaninglessness. I find great sorrow that the thinkers and artists who came up this epistimoligical dispair ended up shaping a generation who did not choose the sorrow. But nonetheless, we now have a generation whose identity is found in their pain. These are the singers who brought emo (and screamo), the film makers who created Garden State and a culture of emotional blogging exhibitionist hoping to connect with something. So after we’ve screamed into our infinite abyss at best we have an impasse but most often I see a generation whose identity is this pain.

Just go to live journal and you’ll find a million posts like this:
Admit it. You had fun. You cried, you laughed, you seethed with anger. But now that the nemesis is banned, there will be no more tears or laughs. No more joyous romps in the courtyard.
Without evil there cant be good…so it must be good to be evil sometimes.

i’m just a f*#$ed up girl looking for some peace of mind.

I could quote a million more….

Publisher-activist Jim Holman

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 17, 2006 in Church Technology, Culture, Sheep&Goats | 0 comments

This week’s World Magazine includes an article on my former boss (when I wrote a weekly column at the San Diego Reader), Roe v. Wade: Counterculture clash. The article details Holman’s activism for the pro-life movement while he publishes a “urban alternative” weekly.

A city councilman, who is also an ordained minister running on a morality platform, accepts campaign contributions from a strip-club owner.

2003: A rising-star mayor moonlights as a slumlord, pocketing millions while evicting impoverished tenants who complain.

2005: A prestigious hospital chain tests a synthetic blood substitute only on trauma victims too ill to consent in poor and minority neighborhoods.

Those are among the sidewalk-pounding investigative reports that appear in the archives of the San Diego Reader, the kind of urban alternative weekly found in free stacks in bohemian coffeehouses and other bastions of cool. You might expect the publisher of such tough expos?©s on religious hypocrisy and social injustice to be a card-carrying liberal, take his political cues from George Soros, or at least wear Birkenstocks to work.

Instead, Jim Holman is a bit of a square peg in the alternative-weekly universe, a devout Catholic of libertarian leanings with Horace Greeley newsman instincts coursing through a persona that seems two parts Renaissance man and one part Mr. Rogers.

Mr. Holman’s name became news in 2005 when he became the major financial backer of Proposition 73, a California ballot measure that would have required abortionists to notify parents before performing abortions on minor girls. Discreetly wealthy and passionately pro-life, Mr. Holman helped brainstorm the initiative and contributed $1.2 million to pay for signature gathering, media, and grassroots outreach. While the governor’s reform package weathered a brutal media storm, Prop 73 was unrelated to it and enjoyed winning poll numbers as late as November. But on Election Day, it failed, dragged down in Mr. Schwarzenegger’s political undertow.

Read Full Article: Roe v. Wade: Counterculture clash

New Technology Trends for 2006

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Jan 17, 2006 in Church Technology, Ekklesia, General Technology | 1 comment

I’m a sucker for technology. I love every 2.0 and processor upgrade out there. If you’re like me here’s a couple resources:

- 15 Tech Concepts You’ll Need To Know In 2006
- Introducing XUL – The ‘Net’s Biggest Secret (just when you got tired of hearing about AJAX, get ready for a wave of XUL stuff.)

Try a live demo of a XUL application.