Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
On Friday, we looked at some of the media coverage of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ suggestion that some aspects of sharia should be introduced in England. The response to Williams’ comments was so negative that some of the archbishop’s defenders proposed that people had misunderstood his comments. Some of them argued the press was to blame.
Each year, I like to look at what stories the mainstream media publish for Lent. The papers that noted Ash Wednesday, such as the Indianapolis Star, Newsday and the Orange County Register, published brief stories about the imposition of ashes.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams gave an interview to the BBC this week that is sending shockwaves throughout England. Here’s a relevant excerpt from the full interview, in which he advocates that aspects of sharia law be introduced to England:
The January/February issue of Psychology Today features a 5,000 word story, ostensibly on clergymen who lose their faith. While you have to get a copy of the dead tree version to read the whole thing, you can read the first few hundred words here. Having just finished writing a history of atheism for another magazine, I was excited to read the piece.
Los Angeles Times reporter K. Connie Kang had another interesting story on the Godbeat or, in this case, the gods beat. Yes, the Episcopalians are involved.
It must be fun, in a twisted sort of way, to be a religion reporter in those regions where the Anglican Wars are raging. The action just never stops.
Washington Times reporter Julia Duin has written dozens of pieces on the big religion story happening in Virginia — the realignment of 11 Episcopal congregations from the Episcopal Church into the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a missionary branch of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. We’ve read, if not highlighted, her various stories about the incremental updates in the lawsuits the Episcopal Church filed against the departing flocks. Her blog also makes for lively reading, helped along by her writeup of her failed dramatic stakeout of Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola.
Here is another example (click here for previous discussion of a similar case) of a major story from Britain that needs — somehow — to be confirmed at a level great than the voice of one person who wields great authority. Consider the lede in the Telegraph report by Jonathan Wynne-Jones:
