Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
In case you have not heard, the U.S. State Department has a new ambassador at-large for international religious liberty. She is the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook and, during her decades of ministry as a Baptist pastor and chaplain, she has had a solid history of activism on a number of interesting public issues.
Which is amazing if you stop and think about all of the important religious events and trends that made it into the headlines this week.
We had an interesting discussion the other day in the comments pages after my post about coverage of the decision by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to approve the ordination of noncelibate gays, lesbians and bisexuals (and potentially cohabitating straights, as well). The discussion focused on the old, old, old Godbeat term “mainline Protestantism.”
What we have here is the kind of commentary on the news that GetReligion tries to avoid, since the purpose of this blog is to offer criticism — positive and negative — of actual religion-news coverage in the mainstream press.
GetReligion, as we frequently remind readers, is not a religion-news site. It’s a weblog about how the mainstream press struggles — with good and bad results — to cover religion news, including hidden or even obvious religious “ghosts” in stories that are not obviously about religion.
Anyone out there in GetReligion reader land today who, for whatever reason, feels the need to get depressed?
If you know anything about the history of high-society journalism inside the Beltway, then you understand that the Washington Post had to publish some kind of Sally Quinn piece about that wedding over on the other side of the Atlantic. I do not know if the resulting piece is journalism or not, but it does offer some insights and information in her first-person, my-feelings-are-the-story style that has helped define much of the foggy content in the “On Faith” project.
As you would expect, quite a few readers have sent emails requesting my opinion of that “60 Minutes” Easter piece the other night about the monks of Mt. Athos. Here’s one from Bob Koch that was delivered with a bit of wit:
Something very sobering and terrible is sinking in for Western journalists who are covering the uprising in the Middle East. They are beginning to wonder if the outcomes of these revolutions will automatically be good or, at least, “good” as defined in terms of civil liberties and human rights as they are promoted at, let’s say, the United Nations.
