| | | Welcome to the Daily! We’re testing a new weekday format. Let us know what you think by replying to this e-mail, and thank you for your feedback so far. In today’s newsletter: Casey Cep on her new story about American sermons; a Facebook whistle-blower’s testimony; and Oscar Wilde’s dream-inspired, cello-shaped coat. | | | | I preached my first sermon when I was a teen-ager. My home parish was experimenting with something called “Youth Sunday,” in which all the teen-agers were assigned a role for the worship service. I can’t remember if I was asked to deliver the sermon or if I asked to do so, but I do remember that I chose to preach on bedtime prayers, which were one of the most regular rituals in my young life. I asked the congregation to think about why we teach children to pray before going to sleep, and why adults often stop praying then. I suspect that I am the only one who retains any memory of that sermon; I doubt even my parents could summon so much as the subject matter. That’s a common enough experience. Although most Christians will hear a few thousand sermons in their lifetime, not many of those are memorable. Yet more Americans attend church than subscribe to a newspaper, so it feels meaningful to think about what they hear while there. Taking advantage of the technologies that have allowed churches to stream services or post them online, the Pew Research Center has surveyed American preaching over the past few years, studying the length, language, and content of tens of thousands of sermons, by denomination and tradition. Most recently, Pew tracked sermons during the nine Sundays before and the Sunday after last fall’s Presidential election. Even before I wrote my first sermon, I was interested in the genre as a literary form, and, using this new body of materials, it was a pleasure to finally get to write about it that way. —Casey Cep Read “What American Christians Hear at Church,” and more of Casey Cep on religion, including reading the Old Testament while pregnant, what we can learn from a new translation of the Gospels, and why Americans are still uncomfortable with atheism. | | | | From the News Desk | Daily Comment The Facebook Whistle-Blower’s Testimony and the Tech Giant’s Very Bad WeekThe company has weathered bad P.R. in the past. Will a Senate subcommittee hearing prove a bigger challenge? By Sue Halpern | | Daily Comment How Biden Came to Own Trump’s Policy at the BorderThe current Administration can’t seem to let go of the Trump-era Title 42, under which Haitian asylum seekers were deported. By Jonathan Blitzer | | | | |  | Jane Goodall and Andy Borowitz take the virtual stage tonight at The New Yorker Festival. Plus, David Remnick talks with Jon Stewart on Sunday. | | | | Dept. of Delight | - In “The Myth of Oscar Wilde’s Martyrdom,” Clare Bucknell examines various histories of the writer and his trial, in 1895, for “gross indecency.” Vibrant details abound: at Oxford, he acquired “ruby champagne tumblers and green Romanian claret decanters for his student rooms”; for an art opening, he sported “a coat cut to resemble the outline of a cello, whose shape he said had come to him in a dream.”
- The actor Jeff Daniels is back on Broadway, starring in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Sheelah Kolhatkar interviewed him in his Manhattan pied-à-terre, where he played his guitar (“With the blues, you can sound good really fast”), channelled Atticus Finch (“I grew up in a white town, in a white atmosphere with a white education”), and, finally, left to walk his dogs in Central Park (“I hope they poop”).
| | | | Fun & Games Dept. |  Name Drop Play Today’s Quiz The fewer clues you need, the more points you receive. By Liz Maynes-Aminzade |  Daily Shouts Ugh, Dating Is So Hard These Days When you’re an insufferable person with a bland personality. By Meghana Indurti | |  Daily Shouts Dear Pepper: Take a Seat Ah, public transportation. Ah, travel. Ah, restaurants. Ah, friends. By Liana Finck |  Daily Cartoon Thursday, October 7th By Millie von Platen | | | | | - P.S. The cellist Yo-Yo Ma was born on this day in 1955. Last year, Ma and the pianist Emanuel Ax discussed and performed works by Beethoven at The New Yorker Festival. Ma is not only a virtuosic performer—he’s also a keen listener. In David Blum’s Profile of Ma, from 1989, the conductor David Zinman said, “When I have problems, I call him up and unburden myself. I think he would have made a fine psychiatrist.”
| | | | Today’s newsletter was written by Jessie Li. | | | | | | | |
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