Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Regular GetReligion readers will know that, in the past few months we have been tempted to fly a white flag of surrender as a tragic number of talented religion-beat reporters and columnists have either moved on to other subjects or hit the exit doors of their newsrooms. It’s almost enough to make you click here.
I’ve found it more and more difficult to praise religion reporting found in the Los Angeles Times — more on that soon — but Kevin Baxter gave me great occasion to lay down my arms with his profile of Yuri Foreman. At least, I thought he would.
Earlier in the week I linked to the Washington Post story headlined “‘God gap’ impedes U.S. foreign policy, task force says.” Some readers will be delighted to see that it’s bylined by Godbeat fave David Waters. Here’s the lede:
I’ve long been fascinated by the “new evidence” stories. These are the sensationalized religion stories about how, you know, Jesus walked on an ice floe (not water), that he wasn’t crucified in the manner in which people think, that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier . . . named Pantera, and so on.
Surely, somewhere in America or the world at large there are a few atheist or agnostic women who are active in the La Leche League network that encourages modern women to breastfeed their babies. There must be a few.
Good luck piecing this family tree together. That’s the first thing I thought when I saw this story in The New York Times about Yitta Schwartz, who died last month and left as many as 2,000 living descendants. The next thing I thought was that this story seemed like quite the one-upping of Rachel Krishevsky, who when she died in September was said to have 1,400 descendants.
Throughout the 10 years I’ve lived in Washington, D.C. I’ve made great sport of the freakouts that accompany snow in the region. Unlike these puny mid-Atlantic mortals, I grew up in a part of Oregon where four or more feet of snow in my front yard wasn’t uncommon. My wife, being from Colorado, frequently joined me in scoffing.
As I prepare this morning to go through the indignity that is modern air travel, I can’t help but nod my head in agreement with this article about how new body scanners violate some religious sensibilities. These are the scanners that show your naughty bits to the friendly TSA agents who are trying to detect bombs.
To my amazement, the Baltimore Sun managed to get some newspapers delivered earlier this week — in between the record-shattering snow storms that keep rolling through the Mid-Atlantic region. As I type this, we are in the middle of storm No. 3. and, OMG, the word “snow” is in the Monday forecast.
