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 of the time, when I encounter a religious reference in a mainstream news story I can figure out what it is doing there. However, I hit something the other day in Newsweek that really puzzled me and it still does.
About a month ago I had lunch with tmatt, who gave me solid arguments for why the Harry Potter series were loaded with Christian themes and messages. I didn’t need much convincing since the arguments that the books were bringing children into the occult sounded a lot like the ones people used against C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and those are some of the best books ever written.
While visiting the blog of Episcopal priest Joseph Howard I came across a link to a new journalism and religion site. Funded by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative, the site has blogs, links to a Second Life community, and other features. Here’s how it’s described:
When I first read Eric Gorski’s piece on evangelicals and art last week, I thought it was another home run for one of my favorite religion reporters. But I’m always praising Gorski — and Stephanie Simon of the Los Angeles Times, among others — and I thought it might be best to let the piece pass. But so many GetReligion readers — from a wide religious spectrum — have commented favorably on the article that I want to make sure we highlight it.
Lorenza Muñoz of the Los Angeles Times provides a serviceable and evenhanded report on FoxFaith and its effort to exploit the market proven by The Passion of the Christ and by Tyler Perry‘s several films.
A significant news morsel buried in the middle of a ho-hum article about a meeting with President Bush in the Savannah Morning News deserves attention. In an interview with author Bruce Feiler, Larry Peterson went with the metro news headline stating that local boy makes good and meets with leader of the free world.
If you type the word “evangelicals” into Google Images, the art attached to the top of this post is the very first thing that turns up. This tells us quite a bit about how most Americans now define the vague word “evangelical.”
“Stories like this annoy me,” a Lutheran pastor wrote when he notified us of the following Chicago Sun-Times piece. Written by veteran religion reporter Susan Hogan/Albach, it’s about how the Metropolitan Chicago bishop-elect of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America views his denomination’s celibacy requirement for gay and lesbian clergy. The Lutheran clergy and GetReligion reader is a pastor in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which does not ordain gay clergy. Though both Lutheran groups are large (and I’m a member of the LCMS), only the larger ELCA is mentioned in the story.
