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 love the way the Wall Street Journal covers religion. Rather than focus on political-religious stories as so many other media outlets do, the Journal frequently looks at stories about actual religious life. Many readers sent along Alexandra Alter’s fascinating analysis of church discipline:
I was wondering what it would take to get some more mainstream media coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s United Church of Christ pastor. Wright has been mentioned in quite a few opinion columns and tabloid publications recently for his race-based preaching and teaching. But mainstream media coverage has been lacking. So it was nice to see an article by the Baltimore Sun‘s Michael Hill about Wright and the attention he’s been receiving:
It must be fun, in a twisted sort of way, to be a religion reporter in those regions where the Anglican Wars are raging. The action just never stops.
Apparently I’m not the only American with a new little bundle of joy. Bucking the trend in other industrialized nations, we’re experiencing a little baby boomlet, with the most children born since 1961. Some 4.3 million babies arrived in 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If you are interested in Huckabee’s efforts to woo evangelicals, you could do worse than read the latest from the Washington Post‘s Perry Bacon and Juliet Eilperin. In a straightforward account, they explain how Huckabee isn’t just an economic populist, but a religious one, too:
One of the nastiest campaign tricks in recent memory was the Louisiana Democratic Party’s attempt to derail the candidacy of Roman Catholic Bobby Jindal by quoting — out of context — statements he’d written about Protestantism. The thing I remember about the attacks is that Jindal seemed surprisingly theologically literate for a politician. Jindal explained his adult conversion from Hinduism in the New Oxford Review and the Democratic Party quoted some of it to give the impression that Jindal was a bigot. I know it’s Louisiana and all, but that’s cold.
Last week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine had an article analyzing the Mormon religion and arguing for voters choosing a president without regard to his or her religion. “What is it about Mormonism” was written by Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor and adjunct senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations.
Of all the stories readers and friends sent along to me today, the one headlined “Man Sees ‘Mark of the Beast’; Cuts Off, Microwaves Hand” is the most memorable. There’s really no way to get into this so I’m just going to post the entire story:
Washington Times reporter Julia Duin has written dozens of pieces on the big religion story happening in Virginia — the realignment of 11 Episcopal congregations from the Episcopal Church into the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a missionary branch of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. We’ve read, if not highlighted, her various stories about the incremental updates in the lawsuits the Episcopal Church filed against the departing flocks. Her blog also makes for lively reading, helped along by her writeup of her failed dramatic stakeout of Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola.
