Thursday, July 4, 2013

Not since the 1870s has the NYT shown any serious interest in lectionaries

So I was thinking (stupidly), what are the odds that the religion section of the New York Times might review Year D or Greater Attention? (OK, I'll give you a few minutes to laugh and then stop. ... No, really, please stop.) Having searched their database going back to 1851, I found a whopping ten (10) articles in which the word "lectionary" appears, i.e., over the course of 162 years. Five (5) — a full half — of these articles date from the 1870s, four (4) from the early 1980s, and one (1) from 1970. In other words, not a single article ever mentions the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), though one will have mentioned the introduction of the Roman Lectionary, and a handful the Common Lectionary. The results from a search of the NYT Review of Books since 1981 is even more underwhelming. So, needless to say, when it comes to the likelihood they would be interested in reviewing a proposed expansion of the RCL and some attendant liturgical elements, ... I'm not holding my breath.

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