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Martin Luther said the meaning of the eighth commandment (Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor) is that we “should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.”
Bob Jones University is probably best known at this point for the 2000 presidential campaign controversy involving its ban on interracial dating. After then-candidate George W. Bush spoke there, he was criticized, and the ban was lifted on CNN’s Larry King Live show by the university’s then-president Bob Jones III.
The new post by the Rt. Rev. Douglas LeBlanc about the Obama family, National Episcopal Cathedral and the theological musings by the seeker-friendly agnostic Sally Quinn reminded me of something I have been meaning to do for some time now.
I am so sick of looking at the shoddy coverage of non-Roman Catholic priests who are female. But since it’s our job here to root out shoddy coverage, let’s look at this piece and then pray that the coverage improves. The latest one is from KSDK in St. Louis. The headline is: “St. Louis woman becomes world’s first Catholic priest to give birth.”
The theological term is “theodicy,” and, as I have said before, this concept is woven into many religion-news stories for at least two good reasons.
For the second week in a row, the Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has devoted her column to the problem of media bias. I always get a kick out of how the media treats problems in the media industry relative to problems in other industries. All of that investigative journalism, take-no-prisoners attitude and hard-hitting reporting suddenly disappears and we get limp and timid copy.
Long, long ago, in a discussion of mainstream media coverage of trends in Iran, Bill Moyers told me that most journalists are “tone deaf to the music of religion.” He has used that same image in other settings.
Earlier this month in the midst of election craziness, The Detroit News took what could have been a simple crime story about a rash of church robberies and interlaced the article with theological themes, historical trends and even sociological explanations.
Remember the media narrative from the 2004 election? To explain how the country could have possibly elected George W. Bush for a second term, we were told that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls. Never mind that it wasn’t true. Bush got more evangelical voters than Republicans traditionally had, but he got more of all sorts of groups.
