Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Every reader of GetReligion should hurry over to the Columbia Journalism Review and read Tim Townsend’s comprehensive essay about the religion beat titled “Love Thy Neighbor.” I can think of no better window into the world of journalism in general and religion reporting in particular than this article.
It’s a saying that I have heard repeated time and time again by people who study China or work there on issues of human rights: Anything that you want to say about religion in China is true, somewhere in China.
No question about it, this is the picture of the day. Here’s the lede from the New York Times, taking the details right down to the one that will have tongues wagging a bit inside the Beltway:
Long-time GetReligion readers may remember that I have been, and remain, very confused about the meaning of the term “emerging church” and how it relates to that other confusing term “evangelical.” There was even a time, two years ago or thereabouts, when GetReligion.org was named one of the top weblogs linked to the “emerging church” movement. That struck me as most strange. It still does.
It really is impossible to stress too often that there isn’t one “Catholic vote” in American politics, right now. When people talk about Catholics being the ultimate “swing vote” factor — especially in tight races in the Midwest — they are actually talking about Catholics in the middle of a spectrum of doctrine and practice.
News reporters are starting to step up to the challenge of exploring the complicated issue of why a person joins a church. A pair of articles published this week explore both sides of the coin that is a person’s decision to attend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Hear me, people, I am very familiar with the competing truth claims connected with the great barbeque churches of the American Southeast.
Pick a survey, any survey, and it’s easy to see that the moral status of homosexual behavior remains one of the most divisive issues in American public life.
Sometimes media coverage of issues involving religion is so bad that there is just not much left for us to say at GetReligion that hasn’t already been said. Case in point is the media stumbling in an attempt to cover the resignation of Wheaton College professor Kent Gramm.
