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The carving of India and the subcontinent into tense, clashing nations is, literally, the greatest tragedy of the 20th century that hardly anyone in America knows about. It was a nightmare so hellish that some of its images and stories are simply not mentioned. The denial is that deep.
Yesterday I poked fun at the shoddy journalism that marked coverage of the Vatican’s supposed reissue of seven deadly sins. Most of the papers responsible for the bad reporting were British. Which, considering the different standards and approach of the British media, isn’t the most surprising thing in the world.
The news out of England is that the House of Lords has, in a landslide, voted to do away with Britain’s common — but almost completely irrelevant — law making blasphemy a crime.
As you might expect, I would like to make a few comments about “The Bishop’s Daughter,” the buzz-provoking piece in The New Yorker by the poet Honor Moore about the double life lived by her father, the Rt. Rev. Paul Moore Jr., the trailblazing liberal leader of the Diocese of New York from 1972-89.
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.
Last week I wrote about the noticeable lack of coverage of a recent Presbyterian Church (USA) ruling on issues surrounding homosexuality. The denomination has a few hundred thousand more members than The Episcopal Church but gets far less coverage. I asked why. Readers provided a number of interesting answers.
Much of the mainstream media coverage of the controversies in the Anglican Communion have focused on The Episcopal Church. Canada’s Globe and Mail looked at how things are playing out in another part of North America. Robert Matas wrote a story on Friday about a parish in Vancouver deciding to align with Anglicans in South America. He took the novel and welcome angle of determining why the parish had made its decision. For his lede, he told readers about the Bible study that parishioners at St. John’s Shaughnessy Church had taken part in prior to voting to request oversight from Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Anglican Province of Southern Cone:
On Friday, we looked at some of the media coverage of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ suggestion that some aspects of sharia should be formally introduced in England. On Monday, we looked at some of the responses Williams’ speech has engendered.
A couple of weeks ago, I highlighted K. Connie Kang’s story in the Los Angeles Times about an interfaith worship service hosted by the Los Angeles Episcopal Diocese. She wrote a detailed report that included the observation that Hindus had been invited to take communion during the service.
