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A Southern friend in a cassock and collar sent along this thought for the day, by way of Garrison Keillor and his Writer’s Almanac out in Public Radio land. You can listen to this online, of course:
So I was talking to my wonderful mom last night and she mentioned an article about the Episcopal Church she read in “the newspaper” that had a notable error. I asked her which paper (Denver has two papers and they also subscribe to or receive other local papers) and she didn’t remember. Neither did she remember what day it ran or who wrote it. I asked her if she remembered that I write about the problems mainstream media reporters have with writing about religion. She did and said she meant to mention it to me earlier. So this is just a reminder to my mom and all other readers that we love it when you point out good and bad articles you read or segments you watch or listen to. Within a few hours or days at most.
Harvard religion professor Diana Eck’s New Religious America: How A “Christian Country” Has Now Become The World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation looks at how changing immigration laws have shaped the country. She tells stories about Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists.
We’ve ranted and raved about the lack of knowledge important Americans like senators and Congressmen have about Islam, but now it’s time to have a fit about how little most Americans know about the religion that is all around them.
The original headline said: “Friends, we hear you and we know that the body-text font size in the new design is too small and it will be fixed very soon (tmatt said, writing this in a headline so that the text will be large enough for all of you to read, wink, wink).” I removed it to make the “recent posts” feature shorter, etc. etc. So now we begin the text of the post with:
I was going to ask young master Daniel Pulliam to write about this very GetReligion-oriented article over at the evangelical flagship Christianity Today, but then had second thoughts.
I realize that I have been rather hard on the folks at the Baltimore Sun lately, but, you know, it’s the local newspaper that’s in my front yard every morning. It comes with the territory and I really think that this major daily needs a more systematic approach to covering religion news.
The Washington Post had a fascinating piece in Sunday’s paper about how the number of couples with children in America is dropping. Giving himself plenty of room for analysis from the smart people at the Brookings Institution and other places, reporter Blaine Harden tracks an under-reported story that is changing the face of America.
In the aftermath of the Jesus tomb story, it looks like most Christians still believe in what the Bible says about Jesus Christ and few are the worse for the controversy. GetReligion reader Stephen A. urged us yesterday to comment on the actual showing of The Lost Tomb of Jesus Saturday night, and I regret to say that I missed the show. Fortunately, others did see it, but overall I was generally disappointed in the lack of media attention to the film’s premiere.
