Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Last weekend, I was out in Southern California (just as the winds started to pick up) and had a chance to read the Los Angeles Times every day on dead tree pulp, rather than trying to find my way through the digital version online. That means you have a chance to pick through all of the pages of the physical newspaper and look for ghosts. Sure enough, there are lots of them. Feel those guilt pangs?
As a college teacher, I really care about trends in all of the schools that send me students — schools both public and private.
Ann Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is a prolific religion writer. Using the hook of a seminar scheduled at a Roman Catholic seminary, Rodgers looks at the pain endured by religious adherents suffering from infertility.
Last week I expressed my disappointment in Paul Elie’s essay for The Atlantic on various efforts to claim the mantle of Reinhold Niebuhr. Wilfred McClay — who was one target of Elie’s essay and a friend of this blog before this blog even existed (i.e., a friend of mine through email) — dropped me a note to express his dismay about Elie’s treatment of his remarks.
In the Oct. 8 New Republic, Alan Wolfe of Boston College reviews Head and Heart: American Christianities, the latest book by Garry Wills. The argument of Head and Heart, as condensed by Wolfe, should gladden the heart of anyone who has night sweats because of the Religious Right:
Did you catch this story about abortion rates worldwide? It’s based on a new study done by researchers with the Guttmacher Institute (Planned Parenthood’s research arm) and the World Health Institute that was published in The Lancet.
It would be hard to imagine a news story that would offend a higher percentage of people in modern mainstream newsrooms than the trend, on Southern Baptist seminary campuses, to create “homemaking” classes to help women learn how to serve their husbands and the church as pastors’ wives.
Little mention of religion appears in the coverage by The New York Times of a lawsuit filed by three former Oral Roberts University professors. According to the article, the professors are alleging “financial, political and personal irregularities” by Richard Roberts, the president of the Christian liberal arts university in Tulsa, Okla.
Paul Elie’s latest essay for The Atlantic, a 6,400-word report on the variety of political thinkers who cite the late Reinhold Niebuhr as their hero, starts off strong but spends too much time waist-deep in the big muddy of debates about the Iraq War.
