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What we have here is an interesting New York Times feature story about a dead or dying community, one of those rust-belt towns in which — this is a fact — the economic realities of this age are giving people less and less to live for.
Religion News Service has an interesting trend piece, via The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., on growing acceptance of autistic children in church.
Maybe it’s because I wasn’t into the royal wedding as much as my colleague Sarah here, but I ended up being absolutely delighted by it. I happened to be up for work and had the wedding on in the background. At first I wasn’t paying attention to anything but the dress, which was gorgeous. But I was also delighted by it because I can’t stand that way that brides are barely dressed on their wedding day. I have no idea how that trend got going, and I’m all for ladies looking their best, but the strapless, cleavage-baring look has had a lengthy run and I’m tired of it.
As a rule, I am not a fan of those little mini-opinion features that editors have started attaching to online news stories in order to gain an extra click or two for the website’s daily statistics. However, I thought that the following question offered an important insight into a Washington Post story that focuses on one of the most symbolic and emotional issues facing Islam today in the Western world.
Trust me. It is rare for your GetReligionistas to receive email from readers complimenting mainstream news stories about Catholic sex scandals. However, this Mercury News piece about the fall of Father Michael Manning — leader of the Wordnet television ministry — was hailed by several readers as exceptionally balanced and fair.
It probably will not surprise you that I’m about to highlight a story about funerals. As the child of a pastor and an active member of my current congregation, I love such stories. I know that funerals are a huge deal in the life of the church. Funerals get covered in the mainstream media fairly frequently. The deceased has to be unbelievably famous in order to get that coverage, but they are covered. But the typical funeral, the typical gathering of family and friends, is less likely to receive coverage — particularly from the perspective of the survivors.
Time for a quick dip into my GetReligion guilt file to look at a Religion New Service story that intrigued several readers who felt slapped by the headline it inspired at USA Today, which was, “Parents discourage daughters who would be nuns.”
The way this story from the Los Angeles Times opens, it gives the impression that the Shiva Sisters are like the Jewish mourning version of Batman & Robin.
In the early 2000s, in my time as religion editor of The Oklahoman, Oklahoma’s then-Gov. Frank Keating always made for an interesting interview.
