Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
One of the things that unites readers and reporters is that we are writing or reading news because we’re curious about the world around us. USA Today runs a story about something quite common — the celebration of Mother’s Day — and yet I found it interesting because it satiates some of that curiosity I have about Mother’s Day.
In what can only be called a stunning defeat for those who still considered him a Muslim, President Barack Obama yesterday confirmed that he is, in fact, a perfectly ordinary liberal Protestant Christian.
The general consensus in the press this morning was that the North Carolina marriage amendment vote was all about religion. This is certainly the theme that emerges in some of the stories and photographs featured in The Politico email round-up.
I have three questions, after reading the latest New York Times news report about why President Barack Obama is hurting his chances in the upcoming election with his ongoing reticence to let his beliefs on marriage completely evolve into agreement with, well, the great Gray Lady herself.
Back in the days when I was a full-time religion reporter (soon after the cooling of the earth’s crust), the annual event that pulled the most religion writers into the same zip code was the annual slugfest between the left and right wings of the Southern Baptist Convention. This was especially true in the years before the conservatives firmly took control, back when one hold-up-your-red-cards vote to name a convention president could literally determine who appointed the trustees that ran the whole shooting match.
I’ve been kind of bummed out with news recently. With all the bloodshed in Nigeria (read this excellent Associated Press report about a pastor who was killed by Muslim extremists as he prepared communion) the bombing in Kabul right after President Obama signed a pact in Afghanistan, what the Chinese government is doing to the family and friends of Chen Guangcheng and all the torture in North Korea, sometimes the news is just hard to handle.
A story with a strong religious element showed up today in The Baltimore Sun business pages, of all places. This is precisely where this religion-news story should have been, methinks, but this does not mean that the editorial team needed to leave out a few highly relevant religious facts.
Please consider this post the strangest possible sequel to my recent posts on the need for journalists to be more precise when using terms such as “Islamist.”
So what is the mainstream press to do with President Barack Obama’s refusal — so far — to take a clear stance on gay-rights issues, especially same-sex marriage?
