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Much of my writing on CNN’s God’s Warriors has focused on the promotion for the series. Many of you readers have agreed that lumping all religious extremists together with a term that implies violence is not very good journalism. While this is very likely a decision of CNN’s marketing department, not the journalists behind the three-part series, it’s still bad journalism.
The second episode of CNN’s God’s Warriors series aired Wednesday night. I wasn’t able to follow the show as closely as on Tuesday night, so I’ll provide some general comments rather than “live blogging” the show. Please give feedback since commentary on television news programs isn’t something we do that often.
As promised, here is a review of the first installment of CNN’s series God’s Warriors hosted by Christiane Amanpour. The topic for tonight is “God’s Jewish Warriors.” I raised the question Monday of whether the series would engage in moral equivalency by lumping together extremists (or God’s warriors) from Christianity, Judaism and Islam. As one reader asked, where are the Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism?
Michael Linton of First Things‘ blog, Public Square, has highlighted an emerging story that touches on a favorite theme of GetReligion’s editors: The intersection of faith and commerce. In “The Malling of Mecca,” Linton describes the construction of Abraj al Bait, which will offer space for 600 retail outlets, hotel rooms and posh apartments, all towering over the holiest site in Islam.
The email is starting to come in asking when GetReligion is going to have something to say about that New York Times Magazine cover story from this past weekend, the massive piece called “The Politics of God” by Mark Lilla. The sad thing about it is that I am three time zones away from my office and involved in some long, long meetings in which a circle of journalists and academics are, during the break times, talking about this piece.
Christiane Amanpour’s CNN series, God’s Warriors, seems to be a well-intended effort at explaining in-depth religious issues prominent in today’s world. Amanpour deserves credit for raising the visibility of international issues. That she has a total of six hours of prime-time television over the course of three days this week to focus on these issues is also a plus.
One of the things we like to do at GetReligion is watch a story develop and jump on it once the momentum has reached a certain level (or that could just be whenever we get around to it). That can work with those multiple-day stories that are likely to make it into the newsweeklies, while other times the stories are built on similar themes over a longer stretch of time.
Who would have thought that a religion story out of Iraq, or the Middle East for that matter, would have something to do with subjects unrelated to headscarves and terrorism?
For years now, I have been arguing that when people in public education face a revolt by conservative Christians or Orthodox Jews, they should play the following mind game.
