Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I have been on the road all week so I must confess that I am way behind on my Summer of Sex readings, which is that annual wave of mainstream-media coverage of debates in the oldline Protestant denominations about you know what.
You may recall a recent post by Bobby Ross Jr., about a press release that the Associated Press published about the Claremont School of Theology’s plan to start providing theological education for Muslim imams and Jewish rabbis, as well as clergy for United Methodist and other liberal mainline Protestant congregations.
As Bobby “Bible Belt” Ross Jr. noted the other day, this summer’s meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention did all kinds of interesting stuff. I choose to write about the Gulf of Mexico resolution for Scripps Howard, but, frankly, the divorce resolution was just as interesting and I still hope to dig into that one. It is rare to see conservative believers (or liberal believers, for that matter) point the finger of judgment at themselves.
The other day, Cathy Lynn Grossman suggested that some of ironic twists she’s seen in the news come from someone who offers truth claims and then turns out to be hypocritical. You might think another one of those stories is brewing if you read Poynter’s Romenesko blog.
Religion News Service has a story about Southern Baptist chaplains opposing reversal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. An edited version ran in the Washington Post on Saturday. They aren’t terribly different but I’ll be working from the Post version for this post. Here’s how it begins:
So, the Los Angeles Times has published its giant salute to the life and times of John Wooden and, unless I have missed something, the bottom line is that he was an amazingly nice man of sterling integrity and a sense of honor and values that came from the American heartland.
Newsweek/Washington Post‘s “On Faith” religion section has not gone without criticism in these parts. We want newspapers to cover more religion news, and cover it better. The “On Faith” site treats religion as an interesting topic for discussion at a civilized dinner party with mostly liberal guests. Somedays the guests are really interesting and add value to the discussion and other days you wish they’d stop drinking and head on home.
I love the lede on an Associated Press story this week about a California seminary’s plans to train leaders of three different faiths:
What can one say about the Pentecostal slap-fest that is currently going on between Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and his counterpart here in the United States (his counterpart in every form of Anglican power that is meaningful, these days) Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori?
