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 nation’s top religion writers looked at the following Washington Post story that ran the other day and his/her head almost exploded after reading the lede.
At the moment, I am up in the mountains of North Carolina, which is one of those places where the occasional Democrat running for higher office will go out of his or her way to put the word “conservative” on the campaign yard signs so that they can try to hang on to the remnant of the good old days down here in the Bible Belt.
I realize that, at this point, the word “meditation” has evolved into a term that is used to describe cool things that cool people do instead of doing uncool things that journalists might think of as prayer. Perhaps we need an entry in the Associated Press Stylebook that states this clearly.
The Byzantine drama linked to the removal of Metropolitan JONAH as the leader of the Orthodox Church in America continues to unfold online, even though there has been little information revealed that has not been the subject of rumors and debates for quite some time.
It goes without saying that I have received quite a bit of email from GetReligion readers, and others, wanting to know my take on last Friday’s resignation, and now the ongoing humiliation, of Metropolitan JONAH of the Orthodox Church in America. In a way, this news was rather shocking, yet not all that shocking because the bitter infighting between the OCA’s old guard and its idealistic young leader has been building for more than a year.
Every now and then, someone — sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left — decides to do a very free-church Protestant thing and start their own new and improved version of one of the ancient Christian churches. Sometimes, these innovators decide to submit themselves to the existing hierarchies, making the decision to officially join either the Catholic or Eastern Orthodox folds (Memory eternal, Father Peter Gillquist). But often, they do not.
As regular GetReligion readers will know, I have — for quite some time now — curious about what the word “Islamist” means when it is used in mainstream news coverage of the Islam, either in lands that are majority Muslim or those that are not. In other words, does “Islamist” mean one thing in Cairo and another thing in Detroit?
One of the most interesting facts about the branch of Orthodoxy to which my home parish belongs is that the Church of Antioch is one member of the family of Eastern churches that has rarely controlled its own culture and, thus, its own destiny.
Regular readers of GetReligion will appreciate this story in today’s Toledo Blade concerning the consecration of an Orthodox bishop. The story entitled “Bulgarian Diocese to install new bishop” by religion beat professional David Yonke is nicely crafted. It balances the news of the consecration of Dr. Alexander Golitzin with just the right amount of human interest. It is a really good local news religion story.
