Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
We’ve ranted and raved about the lack of knowledge important Americans like senators and Congressmen have about Islam, but now it’s time to have a fit about how little most Americans know about the religion that is all around them.
I realize that I have been rather hard on the folks at the Baltimore Sun lately, but, you know, it’s the local newspaper that’s in my front yard every morning. It comes with the territory and I really think that this major daily needs a more systematic approach to covering religion news.
It seems like it’s “Let’s try our hand at GetReligion work” week at the Chuck Colson research staff office.
In an interesting discussion on how religion reporters should handle self-identification when it’s contested, reader Chris Bolinger — a former stringer — made this comment:
Question: does anyone other than the good folks behind the Discovery Channel documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus believe the claims that this crypt contained the bones of Jesus Christ? I have yet to see any independent confirmation anywhere, or anyone (other than the filmmakers) expressing a single bit of confidence that any of this could be true.
Anytime a newspaper reporter tries to tackle the subject of philosophy in a serious way, it’s a good thing. Carey Goldberg’s report in The Boston Globe on Harvard professor Marc Hauser’s work to prove that morality is universally hard-wired into the brain is no exception.
Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to become an economics professor. This delusion lasted from early high school until I took enough postgraduate classes to be convinced otherwise. I loved my field of study and I had fantastic professors. One way in which they were helpful was to counsel me to keep my private views on everything from monetary theory to the Coase Conjecture hidden.
Newsweek‘s weekly BeliefWatch section is great. It’s a guaranteed two-column slot in a national magazine that will focus on some unique issue relating the religion. Usually it’s a story that has received little or no coverage elsewhere, and for that the contributors to the section should be commended.
While I was covering the religion beat for The Charlotte Observer long ago, one of my editors stressed that I should not write in a story that a man said that a key moment in his life was when he “walked the aisle” and “accepted Jesus as his personal savior.”
