Jacques Berlinerblau is AWOL: Why?

Jacques Berlinerblau used to be an incisive secular commentator on the American political scene. He made me proud to be a fellow SBL member and Hebrew Bible scholar. Here is the archive of his columns for the Berkley Center at Georgetown University. It appears, however, that Berlinerblau has lost his mojo. I wish he would get it back. It would be great to see him comment on the role of religion in setting the stage for and confronting the catastrophe in Haiti. Or on faith and politics through the prism of the National Prayer Breakfast. Where are you, Jacques? For readers who have never read Berlinerblau, here is a vintage March 2008 excerpt:

Admit it, Secular America. If Mike Huckabee had said something like this on the campaign trail you’d be locking and loading faster than you could hum John Lennon’s lyric “Imagine all the people, Living life in peace”:

And during the course of that sermon, I was introduced to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed and that if I placed my trust in Christ, He could set me on the path to eternal life.

And you’d probably be thinking again of applying for Canadian citizenship -- just ‘fess up: you were scouting properties in northern Manitoba back around Thanksgiving 2004 -- if the former governor of Arkansas declaimed:

And whenever I hear stories about Americans who feel like no one’s looking out for them, like they’ve been left behind, I’m reminded that God has a plan for his people. . . . But it’s a plan He’s left to us to fulfill.

But these are not Huck's words. They were, in fact, pronounced by Sen. Barack Obama. He delivered these remarks this past Friday to about 150 Latino Evangelical and Catholic clerics at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

These pious musings have not aroused as much as a peep of protest from nonbelievers and Church-State separatists. . . . This absence of outrage goes a long way in demonstrating how thoroughly secularism in this country is entwined with, and supportive of, political liberalism. For years, the received (albeit flawed) wisdom held that a secularist was a liberal and vice versa. But as the 2008 campaign has shown, Democrats with presidential aspirations are strenuously trying to decouple that association.

Comments

[Jacques Berlinerblau]

Hey there:

I appreciate the kind words. Not totally AWOL--I have been doing stuff like this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/02/09/VI2010020901289.html

Working on a new book too. So, I just stopped blogging, basically.

Drop me a line at GU as I lost your original email.

Jacques

[JohnFH]

I'll do that, Jacques. Thanks for stopping by and bringing us up to date.