By starving themselves slowly the hunger striker makes public the very private act of dying and their suffering becomes a source of strength eliciting strong emotions among supporters and observers.
Each new technology gives rise to a leader (or demagogue) who "gets" the new technology before anyone else. Kennedy understood television. What Trump understands, better than any other politician, is both television, a relatively old medium, and Twitter -- an entirely new medium.
Since religious people are in the business of hope, some believers like myself think this decline might just be the best thing that ever happened to organized religion. Though painful and confusing, the time we are entering offers opportunities for renewal.
As South Carolina's Capitol grounds and other jurisdictions decide the fate of their most prominent emblems of past oppression and contemporary reaction, Stone Mountain guarantees that at least one Confederate icon will loom over the South's largest city for as long into the future as mankind can foresee.
The book is called "Fool's Talk," written by the Oxford-educated cultural scholar and author, Os Guinness. And if Twain and Chesterton were writers who marshaled wit and paradox in commending wisdom, Guinness richly mines many a classic vein of wisdom, and wit, to help Christians in our time discern what it means to be winsome, and compelling, in commending faith.