Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Whoa! Is it just me, or did everyone click on Google News this a.m. and find the following section available in the main page? If this change has somehow been made in the Google template, the timing could not be better.
The Dallas Morning News has a fun book-related feature up today called “Grace Lands: Professor hits the road in search of religious kitsch, and finds true faith along the way.” The book is called Roadside Religion and it’s about a mainline Protestant attempting to dissect the strange people who live in strange lands dominated by traditional forms of faith, which means that, in many ways, it has the exact same journalistic point of view as the entire Dallas Morning News, especially its nationally known religion section.
Gene Robinson, the bishop of the Episcopal Church’s Diocese of New Hampshire, said at his consecration that the church could not buy the sort of publicity that his election and approval had attracted.
Toward the end of the 2004 presidential election, I grew more curious about John Kerry’s habit of clasping his hands together and bowing to his audience. I’d seen the gesture before, mostly among Episcopal women who would say “Namaste” (which, they said, means “The God [or god] in me bows to the God in you”).
Despite its patronizing “Well, duh” headline — “What’s Their Real Problem With Gay Marriage? (It’s the Gay Part)” — Russell Shorto’s 8,000-word essay for The New York Times Magazine strives to understand conservatives who oppose gay marriage. But just as these conservatives speak of gay couples as exotic and baffling people, Shorto treats the conservatives with a sense of bewilderment.
I think it was Elvis Costello who once, when asked if he believed in miracles, thought about it and said something to this effect: Well, I have seen Al Green. That is a start, if you want to find the holy grail of R&B. But what about the Rev. Al Green?
Our blog missed the fuss earlier this month when an adviser to Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said this in National Review magazine: “He’s been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly.” National Review and The Weekly Standard both recently published cover stories about Romney. Though National Review‘s standing ovation gained more attention, The Weekly Standard‘s profile, by publisher Terry Eastland, represents the better work.
Young master Jeremy Lott is on to something important with his post yesterday about trying to find a natural niche for religion within Google News. This whole task is not easy and, yes, it is closely related to the overarching purpose of this blog and our search for religion “ghosts” between the lines of many news stories in the MSM.
Today’s Washington Post is so full of religion stories and religion haunted stories that I hardly know where to begin — from abortion rulings to the latest Koran crime update, from a reporter taking a Bible Belt trip through her past in a vanishing Virginia town to yet another stunning Catholic clergy abuse lawsuit settlement. This does not even include the religion page.
