People Gets God

It's official. God is "hot " once more. Even People is in on the act, with a cover story on the religious beliefs of the stars, and this excerpt from a letter on Anti Semitism that Kirk Douglas sent to Mel Gibson.


It's funny, but People did a better job with religion than Time did with this mediocre piece on Rick Warren and his "Purpose Driven Life".

Now here's a guy whose book (15 million hardcover copies) is running circles around the Da Vinci Code (6.8 million, almost all paperback), a guy who along with Bill Hybels of Willowcreek is re-writing Evangelical Christian worship and practice and all he gets in few inside pages?

And there's no real critique--we get a couple of "he's marketing too much" complaints, but no hard analysis of the book or of why so many people are buying it.

The piece really has some real clunkers. After noting that Warren, for all his success, is living a modest lifestyle, there's this comparison:

Mindful of the checkered history of high-profile evangelists, Warren and his wife seem determined to be the anti — Jim and Tammy Faye.

Wouldn't the more appropriate comparison be Joyce Meyers, whose lavish lifestyle was the subject of a special report in the St. Louis Post Dispath.

Couldn't they have gotten David Van Biema or Nancy Gibbs to do a meaty piece on Warren?