Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
For Christians in the West, Easter is not that far away and a strange combination of politicos and professional pew observers inside the DC Beltway are turning up the heat on the Obama family church watch.
Allow me to add my two cents to the Rt. Rev. Doug LeBlanc’s post about the Tyler Perry culture wars, since I’ve had a post lingering in my guilt file on this subject for several weeks.
Benjamin Svetkey, Margeau Watson and Alynda Wheat have written an impressive feature story for the March 20 Entertainment Weekly on what the magazine calls “black America’s secret culture war” surrounding playwright and filmmaker Tyler Perry.
There is some real irony in this week’s apology from HBO regarding their anticipated controversial portrayal of a Mormon temple’s “sacred endowment ceremony” in the amazingly entertaining and insightful Sunday night soap opera Big Love. The show, which features a Utah polygamous family dealing with the challenges if interacting with both the secular world and with their fundamentalist roots, is genuinely known for portraying conservative religious beliefs quite sympathetically. Some would even say that it is (arguably) “one of the most sympathetic portraits” of such beliefs.
I am of the opinion that what drives some media narratives is less overt bias than a love for drama that pits one protagonist against another in competition for the lowest common denominator. But most people don’t live their daily lives on protest lines, or suing one another, or testifying before Congress.
You see, The Dallas Morning News has just finished taking a giant leap back into journalism history in a hellish three-part series built on the kind of serial, storytelling journalism that used to be common in American journalism. I think this is a good thing, when the material fits.
The world’s economic troubles have many journalists writing articles about how the global society is changing as a consequence of the recession. For example, the Atlantic had this cover story on how communities like New York City will benefit from the financial crash (not exactly original or surprising considering the author). The Economist writes about how we may see a return “of economic nationalism.”
This is one of those days when it’s easy to see why The Politico keeps making mainstream media people — a key cog in Democratic Party conversations — so nervous here in Washington, D.C. The new kids inside the Beltway continue to produce stories that stray way outside the borders of the establishment talking points.
The reaction continues to roll in as the mainstream press surfs through the results of the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), the one that points to the rising wave of the post-denominational age in American religion.
