Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
GetReligion is well into its sixth year and, every now and then, I am reminded how much the writing that I do here has changed me in my work as a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, a task that I’ve been at for about 23 years.
A few years ago, I attended a worship service at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. I went so that I could witness the congregation’s interfaith Eucharistic prayer. The sermon text was Mark 7 and the priest told us that it showed how Jesus was xenophobic, racist and sexist.
Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput addressed the Religion Newswriters Association conference in Denver yesterday where he both inspired and challenged. Religion reporters, he said, are not normal. “They are amphibians who live in two worlds and can honor both.”
Have you heard the old joke about the Sunday School teacher trying to convince her students that it was not the Red Sea but the Sea of Reeds that the Israelites crossed? She explains that Moses hadn’t miraculously parted the water to enable the crossing. Rather, the sea was actually very shallow — only a couple of inches or feet deep, in fact. So while God did rescue his people, he didn’t use supernatural means.
Here at GetReligion, we depend on faithful readers to help us spot religion ghosts in news stories across the nation.
This week the U.S. Senate voted against taking up a major military bill that would have allowed the repeal of President Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. That’s the policy that keeps the military from doing anything to find out if members are homosexual while also keeping openly gay or lesbian people from serving in the military.
Surely it’s a comment on the state of things in Washington, D.C., that the mainstream press considered it a big story that President Barack Obama decided to go to church. I mean, he went to church out in public, as opposed to attending a private service at Camp David.
From my growing guilt file, one story keeps popping up. The Portland Press Herald in Maine ran a story on September 11 about a local observance of the end of Ramadan. The story ran on the top of the front page, I believe, and had a large photo with it.
