Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
We’ve previously looked at media coverage of the rather public dispute between Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., and Bishop Thomas Tobin. Last week I suggested that reporters at least explain the Catholic understanding of scandal as it relates to the case. And this week, I noted the confusion many reporters have between banning a communicant and suggesting he refrain from taking communion.
I was having a private conversation the other day, soon after the Fort Hood massacre, with a specialist in issues of religious freedom and, in particular, Jihadist persecution of moderate Muslims and various religious minorities in predominately Muslim lands.
We’ve had quite a few readers submit stories dealing with Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s (D-R.I.) ongoing public battle with Bishop Thomas Tobin. The latest news arose from from this report of the Providence Journal headlined “Kennedy: Barred from Communion.” Here’s the beginning:
Anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to the “Twilight” explosion in pop culture knows that author Stephenie Meyer is a somewhat unorthodox Mormon believer who isn’t exactly shy about letting symbols and themes from her faith, uh, bleed over into her vampire kingdom.
The Washington Post has a story alleging that Major Nidal Hasan had stepped up his communications with a radical, American-born Muslim cleric in Yemen in the months before he killed 13 people at Ft. Hood. An FBI-led task force had obtained the emails between late 2008 and June 2009 but they were not forwarded to the military, for some reason. Some were sent to the FBI’s headquarters but they apparently weren’t considered terribly worrisome:
Why, oh why, must all religion stories be told through the prism of politics? It really gets tiring. For instance, there was this Washington Post piece last Sunday about how Pat Robertson had said something intemperate (I know! Stop the presses!) about Islam that reflected poorly on Virginia Governor-elect Bob McDonnell. Robertson hadn't made the comments with McDonnell or at a McDonnell event or in McDonnell campaign literature or anything like that. But he was a big donor to McDonnell's campaign and McDonnell attended a graduate school affiliated with Robertson and so the Post argued that he might have to respond to the remarks.
The story was published in another context, which is that the Post worked hard during the campaign to tarnish McDonnell, a Republican, as a particularly bad social conservative. Unfortunately for them, he won in an 18-point landslide over his Democratic opponent. But if the Post is going to start paying attention to the controversial affiliations of politicians, it's a good thing for everyone.
Okay, so CNN now picks up the story and we get this update, headlined "McDonnell won't disavow Robertson's Islam remarks":
Virginia Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell on Wednesday would not disavow Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson's recent claim that Islam is not a religion, but "a violent political system."
So McDonnell agrees with Robertson? Or, at the very least, doesn't disagree with him that Islam is not a religion but a violent political system? Well, not exactly. Here are the final two paragraphs of the story:
What would you do if you were the pastor of an ordinary evangelical church and a member of your flock suddenly became the most controversial person on this planet?
I realize that it’s a bit strange to discuss a news story from the New York Post on this here weblog. That urban tabloid isn’t exactly the kind of institution that one associates with nuanced writing about a complex news topic like religion, let alone the fine points of liturgy.
Who says there are no second acts in American religion? Ted Haggard, the former mega-pastor and evangelical leader who fell from grace in a 2006 gay sex scandal, launched his new church last week with a gathering of 100+ people at his home, located a stone’s throw from his former New Life Church.
