Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
For the last 23 years, John Foley was the main communications official at the Vatican. His department coordinated media relations for Pope John Paul II’s funeral and the election of Pope Benedict XVI. He also oversaw all film, television and photographic work at the Vatican. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York.
The Washington Post has not, I am happy to report, been ignoring the role of religion in the Republican race for the White House. I mean — duh — the Monday edition contained two — count ‘em, two — different stories by reporter Perry Bacon Jr., about the current fortunes of Mike Huckabee and the role of religion in all of that.
The Kansas City Star had a great story a couple of weeks ago out of its Washington, D.C., bureau about a couple of million federal dollars that went to an inner-city religious ministry by means of the infamous earmarking system on Capitol Hill.
If you know nothing about ayahuasca, you should read Gina Piccalo’s lengthy and detailed piece about it in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Ayahuasca is a shamanistic therapy that uses psychotropic plants native to the Amazon. If you are looking for any updates on its legality or any new angles on its use, the article probably won’t help you much.
I would like to say it’s because I’m a sleep-deprived new mom, but the fact is that I have always had a lousy memory. So when we decided to celebrate our 4th anniversary by remembering five of our favorite posts at GetReligion, I had to dig through our archives and review every post I’ve written.
At its best, Get Religion is akin to what the Greenville Delta-Democrat Times was in the post-war white South: a rare publication that questions the establishment’s assumptions and reveals its sins of omission and commission.
Keeping with the spirit of celebrating GetReligion’s fourth anniversary, I am sharing a handful of my favorite blog posts. I am sure there are others out there that dealt with more substantial issues or generated more comments, but for one reason or another these are a few of my choice posts.
Four years ago today, the Rt. Rev. Doug LeBlanc clicked a mouse and created an experimental little weblog about religion and the news. We decided to call it GetReligion, but were not sure that the name would stick.
Did you hear the one about the Super Bowl fans who crashed at the monastery? This is no joke. But it is an amusing, if unserious, story in the The New York Times.
