Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Let me join the Rt. Rev. LeBlanc in praising the 1,400-word essay by Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times that used the word “fundamentalism” 15 times without veering into the cheap-shot territory that earns reporters a note in our Creeping Fundamentalism files. Let all the people say, “amen,” or “bravo,” or whatever.
In one of the most illuminating passages in his autobiography, Here I Stand, retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong recalls the strict environment of his childhood:
The Washington Post has published a follow-up to its two-article series on Michael Shackelford, a gay teenager living in the very red locale of Sand Springs, eight miles west of Tulsa. When the Post concluded its second article on Sept. 26, Shackelford had decided he would feel more at home by joining his older sister in Las Vegas.
Even as disaffected American liberals consider moving to Canada in the wake of the last week’s elections, many Canadian journalists are trying to figure out what the heck happened. Some of the early attempts at deciphering the results are not promising.
As you may have noticed, your friends here at GetReligion.org rarely, if ever, comment on op-ed columns. We’d need to open an entire second site if we started chasing religion into the editorial pages.
After being booed during her Saturday night performance and ejected from the Aladdin hotel and casino, Linda Ronstadt is on the fast track to reverential treatment in the entertainment media. Now that she’s been subjected to the cruelties of a Las Vegas crowd — which typically doesn’t travel to the neon oasis to hear odes to filmmaker Michael Moore’s patriotism — it’s best not to predict what Ronstadt will have to say about these lumpen Americans.
In a video game called Waco Resurrection, a player steps into the mind of the would-be messiah David Koresh and gains energy from — well, of course, from Bibles that rain from the sky and spray bullets. The same Bibles can transform federal agents into Branch Davidians.
An essay by the Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser in Monday’s Guardian begins on a promising enough note: he criticizes BBC2 host Nick Page for describing Prime Minister Tony Blair as a Christian fundamentalist.
During the church season of Easter, some modern minds naturally turn to a quixotic crusade: How to rid religions of all that is supernatural and embarrassing to moderns.
