Raise your hand if you think that religious conservatives play a major role in the power structure of the Republican Party today.
Is Rush the new Pat Robertson?
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The Fairness Doctrine and religious broadcasters
Perhaps this reveals too much about my sailor-like vocabulary, but you have to like a religion story that begins with the F-word. The Tennessean religion reporter Bob Smietana began his story on the National Religious Broadcasters Convention this week as follows:
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A faith dispute goes public
The Akron Beacon Journal published quite a story Sunday that touches on issues with which many families struggle, but so rarely do they spill out into the public square. In this case, a family’s personal controversy over the child’s decision to join a non-denominational Christian group known as the Xenos Christian Fellowship created a story that the newspaper could not ignore.
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The word "United" makes a difference
If you look in the Associated Press Stylebook, the entry for the Churches of Christ starts like this:
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The politicization of pancakes
When the California Secretary of State released the latest report on donors to Proposition 8 related campaigns, I was a bit surprised at the lack of coverage. But then stories started rolling in. The latest filing shows that gay marriage supporters raised $43.3 million while Prop. 8 supporters raised $39.9 million. It was already known to be an expensive campaign, but those numbers are pretty impressive. People care about this issue, it seems.
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"Abortion reduction" gets some ink
Remember when President Bill Clinton said he wanted abortion to be safe, legal and rare? Remember how he was pro-lifers’ favorite president? Oh wait, that’s right, the “safe, legal and rare” formulation isn’t a pro-life mantra but a pro-choice mantra. And Bill Clinton fit perfectly in the pro-choice camp.
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Back into a church-state minefield
As strange as it sounds, the coverage of President Barack Obama’s new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has me yearning for the clarity of the Bill Clinton years.
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Mollie's year in review
For our fifth anniversary, we’re picking our top five posts from the last year. So I’ve reviewed all of my posts, a fruitful exercise that reminds me I’m still partial to stories about doctrine, the liturgical calendar and unlikely stories of how faith changes religious adherents. Even though these are my favorite topics to write about, they rarely elicit as much feedback as political posts. I normally dislike writing about politics but this last year was a huge exception.
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Missionaries feel hellish lash of criticism
In 1989 ABC became the first major American TV network to hire a full-time religion correspondent, and that worthy experiment did not spread far — except for CNN’s hiring of Delia Gallagher and then John Allen Jr. as Vatican correspondents. Even so, religion makes cameo appearances in certain corners of network TV, such as ABC’s Nightline, which runs a regular feature called Faith Matters.
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