Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen stories about Muslim rules prohibiting interest payments. Usually these stories are in a non-US context and deal with Muslim banking in general. But this wonderful Associated Press story looked at the issue in a distinctly American context:
The Hindu American Foundation is very upset with the New York Times because of its ongoing coverage of anti-Christian violence in the Orissa State in eastern India, leading to a series of three letters calling for coverage that focuses more attention on the role of Christian missionaries in that region.
Californians will vote next month on whether only marriages involving one man and one woman should be recognized. Proponents of the measure have argued in television advertisements that children will be taught about same-sex marriage in public schools and that they will be taught that same-sex marriage is equivalent to traditional marriage.
In the Oct. 20 edition of Newsweek, longtime film critic David Ansen criticizes director Oliver Stone for not showing greater depth in his depiction of George W. Bush. Fair enough, until one stumbles across this double-barrel shotgun blast of boorish stereotyping:
You know something interesting is taking place on a campus when your student newspaper ends up being quoted in the New York Times. When your school is the world’s largest Baptist university, you just know that this is rarely going to be good news.
Songwriter Graham Kendrick has managed to land in the book 50 People Who Buggered-Up Britain by Quentin Letts, a parliamentary sketch writer for the Daily Mail.
Once upon a time, there were these ordinary people in the great state of Texas called "Democrats." They (I should say "we") were pretty much like everyone else in what was and is a pretty conservative state. There were political differences, but the divide wasn't as great as the differences between tenured political science faculty members at the University of Texas and the ordinary man or woman on a Texas sidewalk. Democrats even went to church, at pretty much the same rate as everyone else. Then along came Woodstock and Roe v. Wade and all kinds of things, pretty much handing the state to God's Own Party.
However, there have always been a few Democrats who managed to retain their old cultural values -- which is a pretty good thing to do when you are running for office in a place like West Texas. For a long time these Democrats have been called "Blue Dog Democrats" and, lo and behold, these culturally conservative Democrats (think pro-Democrats who cling to God and guns) even played a role in the Democratic Party surge in 2006.
So what in the world is a "Blue Dog Democrat," precisely? Click here to go to a website celebrating this strange political breed. It claims, in part:
Blue Dogs represent the values of Middle America. Blue Dogs are moderate and conservative Democrats that do not support abortion, gay marriages or gun control. There are other issues. Primarily, securing the border to stop the flow of drugs into the United States and the hemorrhage of manufacturing jobs leaving the United States for other countries.
But why "Blue Dog"? That site explains that when "dogs are not let into the house, they stay outside in the cold and turn blue." That's the explanation I have heard in the past.
Which brings us to a Washington Post story with the timely headline, "Looking Ahead, Obama Builds Ties With 'Blue Dogs.' " The top of the story explains:
So what do you do if you’re a religion reporter during the post-season of Major League Baseball? If you’re the Boston Globe‘s Michael Paulson, you write a fantastic feature combining baseball and religion:
Earlier today I was pondering the differences between the 2008 presidential election and the 2000 presidential election. Religion and religious issues were a big deal in 2000. Also different in 2000 was the fact that the nation’s economy wasn’t completely tanking, and the country wasn’t involved in two major wars thousands of miles from home. In 2004, the country was at war, but the economy was relatively stable, at least it appeared to be. Again, religion was a significant part of the national conversation, particularly after the election.
