Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
What do you know? If you travel north of the border, you’ll find that Canadians who are interested in mainstream media coverage of religion news are talking about many of the same subjects as folks down here in the United States.
The New York Times has an interesting piece by Geraldine Fabrikant about a collector building a collection of ancient Bibles. With the goal of establishing a museum dedicated to the Bible, the family behind the Hobby Lobby chain of stores is on a bit of a spending spree. They’ve “bought illuminated, or decorated, manuscripts, Torahs, papyri and other works worth $20 million to $40 million from auction houses, dealers, private collectors and institutions, some of which may be selling because of financial pressure.”
If you care about college athletics at all and, especially if you have any ties that bind you to the Southwest, then one of the big stories of the day is the almost certain breakup up of the Big 12 Conference.
I love the lede on an Associated Press story this week about a California seminary’s plans to train leaders of three different faiths:
Yesterday I highlighted a New York Times article on psychological screening of seminary candidates. I actually thought the article accomplished a lot and I enjoyed reading it. And I dinged it for failing to explain — and include quotes defending — the Vatican position on accepting homosexual candidates.
An editor recently asked me to write about some issues related to the Roman Catholic sex abuse problem. I had a wonderful time interviewing over one dozen experts. They spoke from a variety of perspectives — people extremely upset with particular church policies and doctrines and people who thought the problems arose out of failure to adhere to church doctrine.
The other day we had a lively comments-page discussion of whether it is acceptable for Catholic schools to ask the parents of students to either affirm or, harder yet, live by the central teachings of the Catholic faith.
All faith-based schools are voluntary associations and, in terms of the ancient or modern doctrines they advocate, it really doesn’t matter if they are liberal schools or traditional schools.
In my time as religion editor of The Oklahoman, a pastor of a large Baptist church wrote a book condemning Islam. After I reported on the book, I got a tip that the pastor had plagiarized large sections of the text and faked endorsements from syndicated columnist Cal Thomas and evangelist Franklin Graham. My investigation confirmed that the pastor — who claimed to be a leading expert on Islam — really was not.
