Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I’ll say this for Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury: He communicates directly and accessibly when speaking with broadcast journalists. Indeed, people who care deeply about the conflicts of the Anglican Communion might wish that Williams would grant a monthly one-hour interview to BBC Radio 5′s Simon Mayo.
Readers of GetReligion are familiar with that mainstream media holiday tradition of releasing news stories that are supposed to shake the foundations of Christianity. Easters over the last few years have featured stories that Jesus walked on an ice floe (not water), that he wasn’t crucified in the manner in which people think, that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier named Pantera, not Joseph, and that Jesus didn’t die on the cross so much as pass out after being doped up.
In a cover story for the Dec. 3 Time, Jeffrey Kluger quickly jumps into a collective voice, oddly crediting humanity as a whole for the most noble behavior while also blaming it for the worst horrors. As early as the second paragraph, he’s revealing a tone of scientism that weaves throughout the piece:
Michigan State University’s student newspaper, The State News, had a solid feature story a couple of weeks ago by Petra Canan that takes a fresh and personal look at the local Christian Science congregation. Apologies for not mentioning this sooner, but it is important not to let this one slip by.
Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., resigned over the long holiday weekend over a series of allegations of misspending the institution’s funds to support expensive shopping trips and trips to the sunny seas of the Caribbean. Only a handful of news agencies have picked up the story, but a few are worth highlighting.
Yesterday media outlets announced the news of a breakthrough in stem-cell research. The details were published in the prestigious journals Science and Cell (PDF).
Peggy Fletcher Stack has been all over a story coming out of Utah, where she reports on religion for The Salt Lake Tribune. A week and a half ago, she wrote about an interesting change being made by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
I read with particular interest a Houston Chronicle article on Tuesday about the growing number of “Christian-based” law schools sprouting across the country. The story hooks onto a new law school opening in Louisiana called the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law. The school is supposed to open in 2009 and is named after a lawyer active in the Southern Baptist Convention.
The Divine Mrs. M.Z. Hemingway has, through the ages, written more than her share of posts on this blog about the women who are holding ordination rites and then proclaiming that they are now Roman Catholic priests.
