Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Writing about religion really is a landmine. Definitions are difficult to come by, even for groups such as evangelicals. Much of this blog is devoted to exploring the questions about how to identify groups and treat their claims respectfully.
I love reading Marc Ambinder and the rest of the folks over at the Atlantic, but one of his latest posts is just unbelievably wrong. I’ll go ahead and post the whole thing:
Lura Groen is a graduate of one of the seminaries that trains pastors for service in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. But because she refuses to adhere to a chastity requirement, she is not on the approved roster of the ELCA. But a Houston congregation called Groen, a lesbian who is bisexual, to be their pastor anyway.
So we all know the accepted consensus on abstinence programs: They don’t work. Right? A few months ago, the CDC issued a really shoddy survey claiming that one in four teenage girls had a sexually transmitted disease. The relative standard error was so high (greater than 30 percent) as to render the survey useless.
Some tragic news is coming out of Tennessee. Yesterday, a man armed with a shotgun walked into a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville yesterday and killed two people and shot seven others. Whenever something senseless like this happens, the media rush to determine why. Early reports from Knoxville had neighbors suspecting anti-Christian animus:
Whenever we write about stories involving Roman Catholic Womenpriests, we get a ton of reader feedback. Part of that is because much of the coverage has been so weak over the years. But part of it is because the issues surrounding the group get at the heart of what animates many believers — authority, Scripture, social issues, personal determination. It’s all very interesting stuff.
I wish we could cover Stephen Colbert and the Colbert Report more but I guess he’s not officially mainstream media.
When I moved to Washington over ten years ago, the population demographics were noticeably different than they are now. Many of my older black neighbors and their families have moved to the suburbs in the ensuing years, their homes replaced by younger white couples. A Wall Street Journal “Page One” feature by Conor Dougherty last week picked up on the trend in DC and other major cities and looked at what the changes mean to the culture.
Like everyone else in the world, I love me some Chris Rock. Of his many memorable lines, this one from his “Never Scared” routine — as recounted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer — is one of my favorites:
