Okay, not a real beat farmer — but Rainn Wilson, the actor who plays the wonderful Dwight Schrute on “The Office,” had an interesting op-ed on CNN.com. It begins with Wilson explaining that he’s not joking, and then he provides an introduction to Baha’i. He says that Baha’i began in Iran in the mid-19th century and that Baha’is believe there is only one God and one religion. All the world’s divine teachers bring the same message and Baha’u'llah refreshed it for the current day and age, he says. He talks about the historic persecution of Baha’is by Muslim authorities in Iran. And then he gets to the newsier part:
Getting to the point a bit too quickly
A reader pointed us to a curious interview that runs in the upcoming Newsweek. Newsweek is, of course, the magazine that used to be a weekly about news (thus, one assumes, the name) but is currently attempting to complete a transformation into a liberal opinion magazine. Or is it?
On pitying the archbishop
Paul Elie, an editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, has written a lengthy and sometimes well-informed profile of Rowan Williams for the March issue of The Atlantic.
My Saudi Valentine
I wondered whether we’d end up looking at any Valentine’s Day stories here at GetReligion. While rooted in Christian history, the day is not featured on the actual liturgical calendar. But the most interesting mention of Valentine’s Day came in a story about how the king of Saudi Arabia shook up the religious establishment there.
Limiting speech in the U.K.
News coverage in this country tends to focus almost exclusively on American happenings. A review of the Religion Newswriters Association’s top 10 stories from 2008 confirms this.
Issues behind the collar
How do you write a story about the declining number of young priests without asking about, well, you know what? And while we’re at it, you know, the other big elephant in the living room, too?
The Nazi who fled into Islam?
It has taken me some time to get a handle on that recent New York Times feature that ran with the headline, “Uncovering Lost Path of the Most Wanted Nazi” by Souad Mekhennet and Nicholas Kulish.
And the healing has begun
I would like to extend warm congratulations to guardian.co.uk, which responded to a tedious bus-slogan campaign in the most appropriate way: Launching a Web-based challenge for readers to write new counter-slogans.
Missionaries feel hellish lash of criticism
In 1989 ABC became the first major American TV network to hire a full-time religion correspondent, and that worthy experiment did not spread far — except for CNN’s hiring of Delia Gallagher and then John Allen Jr. as Vatican correspondents. Even so, religion makes cameo appearances in certain corners of network TV, such as ABC’s Nightline, which runs a regular feature called Faith Matters.
