Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Did you read about the American who was caught in Pakistan attempting to hunt down Osama bin Laden? As soon as I heard the man was from my home state of Colorado, I became more interested in the details. Dr. Scott Faulkner spoke in defense of his brother, the 52-year-old Gary Brooks Faulkner, to Denver NBC affiliate 9News:
The Pew Research Center examined the recent coverage of the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. They analyzed U.S. newspapers, websites, network television programs, cable television programs and other media and found that it was the most intense coverage the church had received since 2002, when coverage of the American scandal flared up.
If you pay close attention to the coverage of Islam in the mainstream press, you may have noticed that there are three major themes:
That’s some bad timing on Time‘s current cover story, pictured here and previously discussed by tmatt. Pope Benedict XVI delivered the concluding homily at the Vatican’s big celebration marking the Year of the Priest. And while he had many interesting things to say, it’s pretty clear that media outlets are all running with and highlighting the section of the homily in which he begged forgiveness for the sex abuse scandals that have been in the news recently.
The San Francisco Chronicle had a story out of its Washington bureau that shows the importance of checking information you get from a press conference. Apparently the progressive Center for American Progress had an event about the fight for gay rights in Uganda. The event featured New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson and a former Anglican bishop of Uganda named Christopher Senyonjo. (In years past, his name was frequently spelled Ssenyonjo.)
Guilt is a heavy burden sometimes. Every now and then, I tear a long article out of a mainstream magazine or journal that clearly deserves comment and put it in the front pocket of the shoulder bag that I carry while commuting. The longer and more complex the article — or the more horrible its contents — the more likely it is to linger in the bag, caught in layers of guilt that get harder and harder to crack.
A couple of weeks ago, The Observer (U.K.) ran a brief editorial arguing that the Anglican Church “must not be complicit in gay persecution in Africa.” The editorial began with the doctrinal statement “Homosexuality is not a sin or a crime.” Normally we don’t concern ourselves too much with the house editorials but this one is different.
What can one say about the Pentecostal slap-fest that is currently going on between Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and his counterpart here in the United States (his counterpart in every form of Anglican power that is meaningful, these days) Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori?
