Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The International Herald Tribune, which is the global edition of the New York Times, has this absolutely fascinating story about a Muslim woman whose father, brother and husband have all been involved with Islamic terrorism. Written by Souad Mekhennet, it’s headlined “Stuck Between 2 Sides of Islam.” Here’s the lede:
I was a GetReligion fan before I ever began contributing here. And I’d been interested in media criticism for years.
A week or so ago, Archbishop Charles Chaput gave a speech at a special World Youth Day session for young pilgrims on the theme of religious freedom. Part of the discussion was about media coverage of issues about which the church has a say. Chaput, recently moved from Denver to Philadelphia, is a media-friendly archbishop who isn’t afraid to call out what he considers poor journalistic performances.
I’m in New York City right now. The party I’d planned for the weekend was canceled and my friends and I spent all day yesterday getting ready for Irene to strike. I taped up windows, bought provisions, moved things away from windows, filled up bathtubs, you name it. And while the storm did pass us by without too much damage, we did have to flee where we were staying last night when the ceiling began caving in because of water.
When I read Bill Keller’s bizarre piece in the New York Times yesterday morning, where he proposes a loaded religious quiz for potential candidates, I actually gasped. Considering I’ve been reading dozens of religion stories a day for years, it’s hard to surprise me. I’m not saying I haven’t heard these types of comments uttered against religious believers, be they Pagan or Mormon or Catholic. And there’s even a counter-Jihad movement that says similar things to what Keller has said, only about Muslims.
On August 21, Vice President Joe Biden was giving remarks on U.S. China relations to people gathered at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. Here’s a portion of what he said:
We sometimes reference our guilt files and my guilt file is reaching epic levels so I’m going to try to unload three recent stories into one post. I’m grouping them together under what I’ll call The Wild Hunt banner — they’re all stories that would or could be covered over at that blog that deals with Pagan and Heathen communities. The Wild Hunt, for what it’s worth, is now appearing over at Patheos so it’s interesting to see how Patheos is landing various bloggers across the religious spectrum.
It’s been well over a week since the New York Times published a provocative piece where women are interviewed who, after using fertility drugs and procedures, become pregnant with twins and decide to undergo “selective reduction” for lifestyle reasons. That’s a euphemism for the killing in utero of one perfectly healthy twin in a pregnancy. It’s an unbelievably difficult read if you’re of the mind that ending these lives is a major human rights crisis. But I can’t help but think it’s a difficult read even if you support the right of people to abort any child for any reason at any time in the pregnancy. I wanted to write about it all week but found it too difficult to broach.
Frank Schaeffer has, as The Economist once put it, “made a career out of criticising his evangelical parents Francis and Edith Schaeffer.” While I and my people were not influenced by the Schaeffers, they’ve had a tremendous influence upon some of my favorite people (including GetReligion’s Douglas LeBlanc). They founded a Christian retreat center in Switzerland where many people transferred from fundamentalism to evangelicalism or to greater engagement with the culture, including secular culture. They are known for their apologetics and influence on a wide swath of people including everyone from Jesus People organizer Jack Sparks to musicians Larry Norman and Mark Heard. To say those parents were very well regarded among evangelicals, even by their evangelical critics, is an understatement.
