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I’ve always felt plenty of guilt — I blame my Catholic and Jewish roots — for not feeling more persecuted for my Christian beliefs in the United States. But in many corners of the world Christians get all the persecution they can handle.
We’ve discussed a bit of the European media’s coverage of various Roman Catholic sex scandals. The German press has been working on stories dealing with Pope Benedict XVI’s time there as a diocesan bishop, during which one child-molesting priest was transferred. The news has been terribly sad to read. And the New York Times has also gotten into the fray with some hard-hitting coverage. Here’s Laurie Goodstein’s recent story questioning whether then-Cardinal Ratzinger failed to act with one troublesome case involving untold numbers of deaf children in the scandal-plagued Milwaukee diocese.
There was some unsurprising but sobering news from the folks over at Pew this week. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life analyzed more than 68,700 stories from 2009 and determined that religion stories accounted for 0.8 percent of the total news coverage from last year. That’s down a smidge from 2008′s 1.0 percent. By comparison, news about health care comprised 11 percent. Education and immigration, on the other hand, are about where religion coverage is.
Saudi Arabia isn’t high on anybody’s list for a religious freedom award. But last year there were some hopeful signs for religious liberty advocates when the king dismissed the chief of the religious police and a cleric who had condoned killing owners of television networks that broadcast immoral content. He had also appointed a female deputy minister and changed the makeup of a body of religious scholars — who issue fatwas — to give more moderate Sunnis representation.
Pawel must have never imagined those words would mean something special to him. He was a Neo-Nazi skinhead, and The New York Times used his story to illustrate a most unique portion of the Jewish revival in post-Communist Poland:
In his thought-provoking essay “Reclaiming St. Patrick’s Day,” Christianity Today‘s Ted Olsen talks about how Christians could emphasize the day by highlighting issues related to the great saint (e.g. fighting human trafficking, celebrating multi-ethnic communities and incarnational ministry). Here’s how it begins:
Last week, Sarah looked at media coverage of Jihad Jane, the Pennsylvania woman who was arrested in a terrorism plot case. And now we learn of Jihad Jamie, another American woman involved in the same alleged plot. The early coverage of Jane left unanswered major questions about how she converted to Islam. Let’s look at the coverage of Jamie Paulin-Ramirez.
Yes, your GetReligionistas did see that highly provocative piece in USA Today by Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher, the essay that began with this double-deck statement:
Last week, I was pretty hard on a New York Times report about the latest round of quote, “ethnic,” unquote violence in Nigeria. This story was very light on the details when it came to describing the role that religion plays in a nation that is, literally, divided by faith.
