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I frequently mention how much I appreciate interesting stories about day-to-day religious life. A few weeks ago we looked at that great New York Times piece about how different religious adherents live out their faith in their residential choices.
Part of me is hoping we get a good sex scandal next week so we can move off of all-Park51-coverage all the time. On the other hand, now is not a bad time to be on the Godbeat, eh? We have all the excitement right now. There are great opportunities for all sorts of angles. Paul Vitello at the New York Times simply asked a bunch of different New York City Muslims how they feel about the controversy. The result was very well-executed and really fascinating. It’s not heavy on religion so much as accommodation and compromise, but I actually think that’s a better way to handle those very important issues.
Have you heard the news? President Obama is a Muslim after all. I couldn’t believe it, but he must be. I mean, 18 percent of Americans couldn’t be wrong. I can only assume that, two years after I thought this “story” had been laid to rest, that some reputable media outlet finally exposed Obama for the closet Muslim (not that there’s anything wrong with that) that nearly one in five Americans think he is.
The two-thirds of Americans who oppose the Cordoba House might argue that theirs is a fairly understandable reaction against an ill-advised project. Some, such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, say that their opposition is part of a concerted effort that needs to be investigated.
Funeral services were held today for Denis Dillon, the long-serving district attorney for Nassau County in New York and a man whose Catholic faith influenced his politics. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times promptly covered his death, mostly highlighting his high-profile prosecutions.
We’ve had an interesting conversation going on in a recent comment thread about how the media cover Islam and Christianity. Some people have speculated that political correctness or moral relativism harms some media coverage. I wonder if it might just be some problems with history. A GetReligion reader sent in this CNN article cheerily headlined “Muslims in Spain campaign to worship alongside Christians.”
When a large religious group sets aside entire month for fasting, you can imagine there will be physical implications for people who might need to eat, like pregnant women and athletes.
Louisville Courier-Journal religion writer Peter Smith always does a nice job of covering national stories at the local level or showing the broader significance of local stories. For years he has covered the lawsuit against the Vatican (we’ve discussed NPR coverage here) by a once-local man who said he was sexually abused by a Louisville priest in 1928.
When I have time, I browse the Newseum’s front-page images from major newspapers across the nation. It’s interesting to see how different papers play various stories, and from time to time, I run across stories that make perfect GetReligion fodder.
