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David Brooks’ Sept. 8 New York Times column hailed the arrival of National Affairs, a new quarterly magazine that seeks to occupy the same area of the public square vacated by The Public Interest (which closed in 2005): “the bloody crossroads where social science and public policy meet matters of morality, culture and virtue.”
As my colleague Mollie recently commented, journalists often write stories that analyze happenings in a particular context: winning and losing. Who is climbing up the greasy pole and who is sliding down? Because some find this aspect of a writer’s art fascinating (the closer they live to D.C. or state capitols or New York City, the stronger the temptation to obsess) they sometimes ignore theologicals or doctrinal perspectives in favor of the current catfight.
I feel a bit like a sandbagger when I critique religion stories reported by network and cable news. Fish in a barrel. It’s just one step above criticizing the editorial strength of a college newspaper — and a rung below the college paper I worked for.
President Barack Obama will be speaking to both houses of Congress tonight about his efforts at reforming health care. It is news to no one that the five pieces of legislation currently under consideration aren’t being cheered by all Americans. In fact, while many people might agree that health care could use some reforming, they’re not agreeing about many of the particulars about how to do that.
Do you oppose same-sex marriage? If so, the Washington Post thinks there’s a good chance that you’re insane.
Due to its power and prestige, The New York Times invites criticism; some of it from people of faith who feel the paper fails to give religion its due. But these critics should take note of the Labor Day edition of the Times, which provided plentiful and nuanced coverage of many major religion stories, leading me to suggest that the paper consider temporarily changing its page-one motto to: “All the Religion That’s Fit to Print.”
One of the threads I rarely see covered in our larger American media outlets is what I’d call a “meta-theme” — the way that religion and politics, an oft-incendiary combo, are twinned in our national history. My colleague Mollie is much more of an expert in this arena than I am, but as a historian’s daughter, I am steeped in the tension between American sacred and secular voices, one that goes back to the Puritans and the Quakers.
There are two kinds of people in this world who cannot avoid wrestling with the term “theodicy” — clergy (especially hospital chaplains) and reporters who are committed to covering religion news.
