Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Many theories have been tossed around for why Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling avoided discussing religion and her books. One of the more popular theories was that she didn’t want to be typecast or shunned for any personal views that could affect books sales.
As part of a Los Angeles Times series on homelessness, faith and values reporter Stephanie Simon spent some time in Denver looking at a government program that involves a Democratic mayor and a challenge to the area’s churches, synagogues and mosques to work with the 600 or so homeless families in the community in a mentorship program begun two years ago.
There’s a big religion story going on in Baltimore right now and it centers on what most evangelical or even fundamentalist Protestants would call a “revival meeting.”
I am sure that all of you GetReligion readers were caught up in the Hollywood excitement about the release of the latest film from one of the most daring and independent (and profitable) filmmakers of these times. What? You weren’t racing to the local multiplex to check out Why Did I Get Married? After all of that buildup in the mainstream press, like the screaming reviews and ads for Michael Clayton?
The mainstream press is just getting started when it comes to covering the splinters that are almost certainly going to take place inside American evangelicalism in the months between now and the election. The key to all of this is that some people think it’s really amazing to discover (a) that evangelicalism (whatever that means) is not a monolithic movement and, duh, (b) that Protestants who have every right to decide (thus saith one interpretation of Sola Scriptura) what the Bible means are going to reach different conclusions on some hot doctrinal and social issues.
In the Oct. 8 New Republic, Alan Wolfe of Boston College reviews Head and Heart: American Christianities, the latest book by Garry Wills. The argument of Head and Heart, as condensed by Wolfe, should gladden the heart of anyone who has night sweats because of the Religious Right:
It would be hard to imagine a news story that would offend a higher percentage of people in modern mainstream newsrooms than the trend, on Southern Baptist seminary campuses, to create “homemaking” classes to help women learn how to serve their husbands and the church as pastors’ wives.
Little mention of religion appears in the coverage by The New York Times of a lawsuit filed by three former Oral Roberts University professors. According to the article, the professors are alleging “financial, political and personal irregularities” by Richard Roberts, the president of the Christian liberal arts university in Tulsa, Okla.
In a Web-only interview with the Rev. Joel Hunter (pictured), Newsweek‘s Eve Conant introduces a new 44-page study, “Come Let Us Reason Together,” that tries to define common ground for evangelicals and progressives. Such projects are not new. Perhaps the best-known previous effort was called the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice.
