November (Web-only) 2000

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Gucci, Gap, and God's own
Mainline Protestant churches want you to know what they stand for, and the answer is not simply Christ. After years of communal blending denominations want to be recognized for their traditional religious identities. They want their members and the public to be more aware of their history and their beliefs—to put it in crass, commercial terms (as The Wall Street Journal did when it first printed this story), they want consumers to recognize their brand identity. Different denominations are attacking this dilemma in different ways: Presbyterians are offering Sunday-school courses that teach denominational theology, Lutherans have launched "Project Identity," and as we mentioned in Weblog last week, Methodists are launching a $20 million ad campaign to teach America what Methodism means. There is a lot of rich church heritage to claim, so hopefully these campaigns will go much deeper than slogans, logos, and stereotypes.

Boy Scouts fire homosexual leader A leading California Scouting official has been dismissed after revealing he is a homosexual. Leonard Lanzi was fired a week after he told the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors "I am gay" at a meeting to cut support for the Scouts because they exclude homosexuals. Lanzi, the executive director of the Los Padres Council of the Boy Scouts of America, is the most prominent Scouting official to lose his position since last June when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Boy Scouts of America's right to exclude homosexuals. Santa Barbara County's Human Relations Commission is proposing that the county end financial support for the Boy Scouts based on local anti-discrimination laws. Other cities have taken similar stances since the Supreme ...