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In Wednesday’s Lenten post, I noted that Slate‘s Andrew Santella wrote an interesting article about the revival of Lenten practices among Protestants. I chided him for throwing all Protestants together, from those that have marked Lenten penitence since the beginning with those evangelicals that are rediscovering the practices of the church.
Another cartoon controversy involving religion has popped up in the news. This time it involves an American educational institution (Radford University in Virginia) and a student-run Internet magazine (Whim). There’s been no talk of censorship, according to administration officials, despite some protests from students. Another installment of the cartoon tilted “Christ On Campus” is supposed to be launched Friday by sophomore Christian Keesee.
Late yesterday afternoon, I received a call from Godbeat veteran Alan Cooperman of the Washington Post, who was working on an update about the status of the National Religious Broadcasters and the Rev. Pat Robertson. I don’t think it would hurt to say that he wanted to know if I would talk about some of the things that have been said about the czar of The 700 Club on this website, which I assume means this post, this one and especially this one.
Back in the early 1990s, the leaders of the Freedom Forum think tank put together a team to study a nagging question: Why do mainstream newsrooms have so much trouble covering religion news? The result was a study titled “Bridging the Gap” (full text here) that, essentially, argued that the situation was pretty complex, but that the biggest problem was that most journalists simply didn’t know enough about religion.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the traditional beginning of Lent for the Western Christian church. According to an ancient rite, ashes — made by mixing the burnt palm fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebrations with a bit of olive oil — are placed on the foreheads of worshipers as a reminder of their depraved nature and dependence on God for forgiveness. During Lent, purple paraments drape the altars of liturgical churches and Glorias and Alleluias are omitted from the liturgy. These changes are meant to focus the worshiper on the penitential nature of the season. For their part, some worshipers traditionally mark the season by fasting from meat and alcohol, as well as spending more time in prayer and reflection.
Give me your first guess. What publication would devote nine months to report on a super-secret, cult-like group that claims millions of adherents along with some of Hollywood’s most famous people, namely Tom Cruise?
You can tell that because, in reporter Michael Luo’s “Preaching the Word and Quoting the Voice” story, the New York Times stresses that the leader of the city’s Redeemer Presbyterian is not like those other evangelicals. Then the story tells the reader this again and again and again and again. (By the way, what does that headline mean? I’m lost.)
I’ve noticed a shift in the cartoon coverage and in many bloggers’ attitudes toward the image-inspired violence and arguments over whether the images should have been published by media organizations. This shift has been driven largely by events on the ground that are just too huge to ignore, particularly as the “Furor Over Cartoons Pits Muslim Against Muslim,” as a New York Times headline writer phrased it Tuesday.
For those interested in a GetReligion flashback, today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page includes a review of the new book Fired! by actress Annabelle Gurwitch. The book sounds interesting, especially its list of 21 synonymns that people in power use in this sensitive age in place of the blunt words “You’re fired.”
