My husband has been known to say that life on a church staff feels like it has all the makings of a great TV reality show.  I usually take that kind of comment as evidence that my husband has a good sense of humor.  Some people, though, have come up with an even zanier idea and turned it into an actual program.

According to an article in the Reuters news service that is winging its way around the blogosphere this week, the Turkish television station Kanal T is preparing “to launch a gameshow where spiritual guides from the four faiths [Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism] will seek to convert a group of non-believers.”  The article mentions that there has been considerable resistance to this idea:

But religious authorities in Muslim but secular Turkey are not amused by the twist on the popular reality game show format and the Religious Affairs Directorate is refusing…

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

Very high on the list of things REALLY important to people part of the Christian Right is proselytizing. And very high on their potential targets for people who need to hear their message is people in the Muslim world. So one wonders had their leaders really thought out their position on Obama. Was it really a smart thing to try to paint him as a closet Muslim. To me that was a bit of cutting off one’s nose to spite the face. Had the Christian right even considered the enormous proselytizing opportunity that the reality of Obama offered them? Here is a man with the name of Barak Hussien Obama. His father was Muslim and his step father was also Muslim, giving him a strong Muslim influence early in his life. And yet today he is smart, successful, extremely well liked and a practicing Christian of over 20 years and…