Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
It usually happens during Holy Week each year — a new rash of media pieces attempting to undermine miraculous stories about Jesus and his life. Some of them have been very bad, but the media find it difficult to miss this annual rite of passage.
The BBC published a story last week that should have gotten a great deal more coverage than it has. According to the report, the Turkish government has commissioned a team of scholars to revise the Hadith — the collection of thousands of sayings reputed to have come from the Prophet Muhammad.
If you heard that the ultra-hip Washington Post Style section was going to do a feature story about a conservative Christian college located in the heart of Manhattan — in the Empire State Building, for heaven’s sake — you would assume that certain issues would come up and be used in a rather snarky manner.
This past summer I was talking with another religion-beat professional and this nationally known journalist put something into words that I had been feeling, but had not yet articulated. This scribe who will not be named said that on many days she or he felt like he or she was turning into a public-relations person for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The “theodicy” issue seems to come up pretty often at GetReligion, which isn’t surprising since (a) disaster and tragedy are part of this sinful, fallen world and (b) the word “why” remains part of the “who, what, when, where, why and how” journalistic equation.
There’s been an odd little crisis brewing in the high school sports world of Kansas where a religious school refused to allow a referee who happens to be female to call the fouls in a boys’ high school basketball game. The reasons cited at the time by St. Mary’s Academy officials, which is about 25 miles northwest of Topeka, weren’t that clear, but it seemed to have something to do with the fact that they didn’t believe women should have authority over men.
With the recent addition of endowed chairs in Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University and Utah State College, Mormon studies are becoming more popular. Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe wrote about the trend, noting that Harvard is offering a course on “Mormonism and the American Experience” this semester.
Last week, the president of The College of William & Mary resigned abruptly after he found out his contract wasn’t going to be renewed later this year. President Gene Nichol, a former administrator at my alma mater, had been in the news for a couple of decisions he made. One was removing a cross from the campus’ historic Wren Chapel. Another was permitting a traveling show of sex workers to visit the campus. William & Mary is a public university of the Commonwealth of Virginia, it should be noted.
