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When the firestorm erupted over Brit Hume’s suggested that Tiger Woods receive the forgiveness and redemption offered by the Christian faith, I hoped we’d see some more substantive coverage rather than just the religiously sub-literate offerings of the histrionic. We’ve seen a few good stories about Buddhist beliefs and I was also appreciative of Lisa Miller’s post explaining evangelical Christianity to her Newsweek audience:
First came the news that the Boston Globe‘s award-winning religion reporter Michael Paulson had been promoted to city editor. Jen Peter, the Globe‘s previous city editor, was recently upped to metro editor and her first act was to promote Paulson. This is great news for him, but a loss for religion reporting. When Paulson hinted at this in his most recent Articles of Faith blog post, he mentioned that the Globe would find a new religion reporter if he were to leave the beat. We’ll keep you updated.
Pulling off the sports hat trick this week. Monday it was Tim Tebow’s eyeblack, Thursday was LeBron James and the Ten Commandments. Today we’ve got a profile of the Detroit Tigers former Voice of God:
Mary Daly, who died Sunday Jan. 3 at age 81, was “a Positively Revolting Hag.” At least that’s what she called herself on the back cover of her 1987 book, Webster’s First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, which defined “hag” as: “a Witch, Fury, Harpy who haunts the Hedges/Boundaries of patriarchy, frightening fools and summoning Weird Wandering Women into the Wild.”
Anyone who has, for the past 20 years or so, followed the joys and sorrows of Eastern Orthodoxy in the United States knows that at least two important trends can be seen, all at the same time.
When I was in college, I participated in a weekend training program at the Los Angeles Times. I remember very little from that experience. But I starkly recall one of the paper’s sportswriters effusing that sportswriters were special because they were writers and not reporters.
If you have ever lived in, or near, Washington, D.C., you know that there are only two things that our nation’s capital talks about in the fall and early winter.
Grading religion writers involves evaluating their work on stories both simple and complex. I always offer extra credit to those enterprising and creative journalists who seek out important stories that transcend today’s headlines. That’s why TIME’s David Van Biema gets a gold star for his 2,400-word piece, “The Color of Faith.”
Fox News analyst Brit Hume has taken some major hits over his advice to Tiger Woods that he embrace Christianity if he wants redemption. I’ve embedded the clip here. In a society that is deeply uncomfortable with any substantive discussion of religious differences, that Hume favorably compared Christianity to Buddhism is downright shocking. Now, I’m sure that there are readers here who think Hume admirably showed concern for Woods’ soul and readers who think he’s an anti-Buddhist bigot (and many other views). But I think the whole brouhaha is most interesting for the media freak out over response to his words.
