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My brother went to the Air Force Academy, which also happened to be a few miles from where my family lived in Colorado. We loved going to football games, but my father (a pastor) cringed each time they began the pre-game ceremonies with a prayer. Mostly that was because the clergy always prayed for an Air Force victory. He felt this was grossly inappropriate and trivialized prayer.
It’s not the first time I’ve written about The New York Times not getting it. Sadly, this is not the first time the NYT has missed it (remember the Holocaust).
A dear friend of mine got married a few weeks ago in a service at a traditional Episcopal sanctuary. She’s not Episcopalian but she didn’t want to get married at her own church. That’s because her congregation meets for worship in a movie theater.
Political events in the Muslim world have taken a decidedly extremist turn. As we’ve said repeatedly on this site, those in the Western world must understand the Islamic world if a Clash of Civilizations is to be avoided. Some would say this is inevitable, but I would prefer the optimistic viewpoint and hold that this clash is avoidable.
As much as we here at GetReligion like to prod mainstream local newspapers to do a better job of covering religion news, we really should pause, every now and then, to discuss an even bigger problem. Hardly anyone in television news, national or local, has created a religion beat.
One of the more interesting aspects of the controversy about Muslim cartoons is the decision of the vast majority of news outlets here in the States not to publish them.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, to all of the GetReligion readers out there who sent me comments and emails last night about a hilarious correction linked to a Newsweek story by reporter Susannah Meadows entitled “Cut, Thrust and Christ: Why evangelicals are mastering the art of college debate.”
Yes, Kanye West posed as Jesus Christ on the cover of Rolling Stone. And, like he’s a Pat Robertson-in-training, the grandstanding worked. Media outlets splashed the news everywhere. So it was nice to see the way Rashod Ollison analyzed young Kanye for the Baltimore Sun:
I’ve been puzzling over a trend I’ve noticed recently among some Christian groups and their leaders: a hesitancy to speak to members of the media regarding their message and an inability to express that message succinctly and effectively. As a believer, I struggle with expressing my faith to others, so I don’t want to go off judging those in leadership positions. But as we’ve said before on this blog, religious leaders could use a bit of GetJournalism, just as us media folks could use a bit of GetReligion.
