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Today is Holy Saturday and, for Orthodox Christians around the world, the great feast of Pascha is only hours away. The key is to get some rest, between the many long and stunningly beautiful services.
You can find maps showing the leading church bodies per county in the United States and the state of South Carolina divided into four regions, according to the preferred style of condiment used on barbecued food. But the most recent map caught my eye, which you can see right here.
The other day I wrote about mainstream media coverage of a religion story involving my church body, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. I wrote about the cancellation of the LCMS’ only nationally-syndicated radio program (“Issues, Etc.”) and sudden firing of its host and producer in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal last month. I also attended a worship service in St. Louis to pray for the men who were fired, ate some bratwurst at the fundraising dinner following the service and took part in a demonstration the next day at church headquarters.
The Associated Press’ Eric Gorski wrote a ton of stories about the pope’s visit. One dealt with the relationship Benedict XVI has with American youth.
Religion reporters covering atheism should approach the subject as straightforward as any other group of individuals who believe in similar ideas about God, an afterlife, the reason for evilness in the world, and the need for community and morality. To assume that atheists come down on the same side of all those issues would be to engage in gross stereotyping and fail to give significant depth to covering a complex minority in the United States.
I had an intriguing GetReligion-related experience last week. A religion reporter wrote about a news story that I’m personally involved in. As a reporter, it is always interesting to watch another reporter in action. But when you actually care about the story involved, everything is taken to a new level.
Last week we discussed the need for reporters to distinguish between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In the comments, reader Michael Nielsen — a Mormon social psychologist — pointed us toward an op-ed he wrote for the Salt Lake Tribune that argued for improved information about the relationship of polygamy to the LDS church:
The papal visit is over, which means that we have only one major media ritual left to survive — a final wave of “what it all meant” features. It’s hard not to note that these stories will serve as logical bookends to those “what his visit will mean” features that ran just over a week ago. Please know that I am not knocking these journalistic rites. After all, I plan to write a wrap-up column myself, this week.
While papal coverage dominated religion news last week, the saga involving the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints continued. I’m still digging through all the recent updates and analyses, but I wonder what readers think of this headline:
