A Champaign megachurch is drawing in families with an indoor playspace, prompting Brenda to question the line between faith and marketing.
Posts by Brenda Koenig:
Obama’s Smoke and Mirrors Closet
Obama’s appointment of Chicago machine politician Arnie Duncan is a sign that all is not gold in the new administration.
Hope for the Dead Days
“So little of what could happen does happen.” –Salvador Dali In the next room, my kids are listening to a book on CD about the “dead days of winter” – those days between Christmas and …
Champaign-Urbana’s Ballet Boys
Competitive, hierarchical, physically demanding, time-consuming and under-recognized by the masses, it is a “sport” unlike any other. The demands are great, and rewards often few and far-between: a mention on the third page of a …
Secrets in the Land of Lincoln
At first, Illinois seems to have no secrets. Everything is out in the open: the cell phone towers on the horizon of factory farm fields, the cinder blocks at the shallow bottom of an I-57 …
Champaign Unit 4 School Board Censors Curriculum
The Champaign Unit 4 school board set a dangerous precedent last week by voting to censor the book The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini from the sophomore honors English curriculum. Certainly, the passage in question, …
Barn Dance Fever
You are walking up a country lane. A bonfire crackles. Kids are rolling down a hill and racing into the woods. You smell dry leaves, smoke and pecan pie. And now, just as you discern …
A Real Soccer Mom
I admit it. I’m a soccer mom. But not the kind you are thinking of: not a mom who loves to watch her kids play soccer, driving them around town in a minivan for that …
The New Champaign Public Library, Inc.
The Champaign Public Library has in its circulation exactly two copies of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian masterpiece Fahrenheit 451, a novel about book censorship, authoritarian rule and the negative influence technology can have on humanity. One …