From Steve Gushee at the Palm Beach Post via CT: A Weeeeeeeee Bit overboard there fellow. I agree the Christian artistic community isn’t up to the job, but the rest of this is nonsense: There are fans, and then there are fans. Steve Gushee, religion writer for the Palm Beach Post and Cox News Service is apparently a superfan of Bruce Springsteen. “The Boss is an unlikely candidate for sainthood in most religious traditions,” Gushee writes. “Still, [his latest album] The Rising is a profound faith statement regarding Sept. 11 that no religious group has equaled.Thank God, someone is doing the church’s job.” The church, according to Cox, “offered little to soothe the angst felt almost universally after the catastrophes at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on that Pennsylvania farmland.” He faults Catholics for being too distracted by the pedophilia scandal and says “Prominent Protestant leaders” such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Franklin Graham “have behaved disgracefully[offering] recrimination and accusation in place of reconciliation and hope.Springsteen, on the other hand, sings of prayer, resurrection and new life.” Finally someone dares to speak the truth!!! Knock Falwell, Robertson, Graham, and some Catholic bishops off the list, and absolutely no Christian leaders have said anything healing about 9/11. No one has provided any direction or hope from the ruins of the World Trade Center. Dude, give us a break.

And the Capitalistic takeover of Christianity gains speed, as Chevrolet sponsors MWS and Third Day tour.