Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
It’s one thing to rip a routine or bad story. It’s another to criticize an excellent story with one flaw. The exercise can seem, and perhaps often is, pedantic. So if the criticism is to be convincing, it better be valid.
When I was a kid, my best friend broke his arm sliding into second base in a Babe Ruth baseball game on a Sunday afternoon. We teased him that his injury was a result of playing baseball on a Sunday.
Churches throughout the country have been given permission by the great and mighty National Football League to use their big screens during next year’s Super Bowl. The concession seems to come after pressure exerted by some national lawmakers (think anti-trust exemption and federal control over the airways) backed up by big newspaper stories.
There’s been an odd little crisis brewing in the high school sports world of Kansas where a religious school refused to allow a referee who happens to be female to call the fouls in a boys’ high school basketball game. The reasons cited at the time by St. Mary’s Academy officials, which is about 25 miles northwest of Topeka, weren’t that clear, but it seemed to have something to do with the fact that they didn’t believe women should have authority over men.
In the 1963 film “The Great Escape,” it’s obvious how the Allied prisoners escaped from a German prisoner camp: they built an underground tunnel. In a Washington Post story of the same name, it’s not at all clear how as a teenager NBA All-Star Caron Butler escaped from his drug-infested neighborhood.
Anybody remember the post-Super Bowl interview with New York Giants wide receiver David Tyree? That was the man who, just after making that amazing catch with his helmet and hands allowing the Giants to win the Super Bowl, thanked God on national television just for the chance to be out there.
I wish I knew where I heard the statistic claiming that 85 percent of the growing churches in America have added large-screen video technology to their worship centers (the large rooms that once were called “sanctuaries”). As a religion columnist, I receive so many letters and emails making so many claims and it’s hard to keep track of it all.
As you would imagine, I have received a fair amount of email lately about ESPN anchor Dana Jacobson’s profane performance at the Atlantic City, N.J., roast for Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, better known as the “Mike and Mike in the Morning” duo. This story continues to bubble on the back burner.
You really can’t write about major league baseball player Josh Hamilton without focusing on the faith aspect of his story. Even the reporters writing about him admit this in their articles.
