Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Most media were fairly restrained in covering the weekend’s news that an American Airlines pilot asked Christians to raise their hands and share their faith during a flight from Los Angeles to New York — but some headline-writers had fun with it: “Coffee, Tea or Jesus?” (CBSNews.com), “God only knows what this pilot was thinking” (The Winnipeg Sun) and the inevitable “On a wing — and a Prayer” (Herald Sun, Australia).
Dallas Voice weighs in with a report about Matthew Bass, who says he was forced out of Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary after administrators asked if he was gay.
Katherine Makinney wasn’t looking for a fight about abortion when she began advertising through Google’s AdWords program. She just wanted to promote a series of films, some by her and some by other directors, to receptive audiences, like church youth groups.
Judy Bachrach’s profile of John Ashcroft in the February issue of Vanity Fair (available only in the print edition) is not merely a smear job but a sustained attack on Ashcroft’s faith. The piece is most annoying for its recycling of the absurd rumor that Ashcroft considers calico cats “instruments of the Devil.”
Douglas LeBlanc began covering religion in June 1984 as religion editor of the Morning Advocate in Baton Rouge, La. Since then he has worked as an editor for Compassion International, Episcopalians United (now Anglicans United), and Christianity Today.
