Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
About a year ago, a coalition of pro-life groups began a global effort to lower the percentage of unborn children who are aborted because they have been diagnosed as having Down syndrome. That statistic is believed to be about 90 percent, in large part because of parental fear the burden of raising a flawed or imperfect child.
The August cover story for Christianity Today, a magazine I write a column for (here’s the latest) has been making a bit of a splash. Mark Regnerus’ “The Case for Early Marriage” discusses how the chastity advocates forgot to mention that waiting until you’re old to get married might not be the most effective strategy for abstaining from sex until you’re married.
Although often restrained by their position from writing stories that reveal serious denominational problems, or using quotes that reveal dissenting viewpoints, in-house religious journalists are often a big resource for journalists covering religion stories.
Regular readers may have noticed at some of your GetReligionistas are big sports fans, which includes the National Football League in several cases. This continues to be the case even though young master Daniel Pulliam is inactive, while serving as editor of a law review.
Josh Levin, senior editor of Slate, wrote an epic series this week on the theme “The End of America.” The series begins here, and rolls on in eight segments and about 23,000 words. That’s not counting Slate’s embedded notes and thousands more words in The Fray. Slate also offered discussions on Facebook and Twitter, so the most obsessive readers easily could have devoted an entire week to debating Levin’s reporting.
We’ve been critical of some of the coverage of health care legislation in recent weeks. But here’s a straightforward Associated Press piece that does a solid job of laying out the issues. From the beginning of the article:
The Los Angeles Times has a daily front page feature under the name “Column One.” The column is for “interesting” news and is designed to give people surprising or provocative information.
While it may surprise GetReligion readers who reside in some parts of the United States, there are thousands of evangelical Christians — millions, globally — who worship in United Methodist pews week after week. That is certainly true down in the Southeastern corner of the Sunbelt, where there seems to be a United Methodist congregation in every small town and in almost every zip code.
What is the biggest religion story in the news today? Why, that would be the tale of the seven-year-old boy who stole his parents car and drove off in an attempt to avoid church. I was going to rip on how overplayed this story was until I watched the video above. The ending is comedy gold. (And, to be clear, the headline above is in complete jest.)
