Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Back in June, I took issue with a Time cover story by Nancy Gibbs that included this sentence: “It is as though Bush can’t allow the possibility that the enemy is motivated by its understanding of God’s will lest his critics note that he believes the same of himself.”
It’s political convention time again and, once again, it is time to offer kudos to two of the best sites in terms of the religious language and symbolism of this media event. As with the Democrats, the yin and the yang of Republican God-talk is being served up by Beliefnet Editor-in-Chief Steven Waldman and Christianity Today blog maestro Ted Olsen.
Chris “The Cosmopolitan,” one of GetReligion’s most frequent voices of dissent, has now delivered a “God’s Official Party” quote.
Bill Clinton can be eloquent in the pulpit, as he was in the Memphis Speech in 1993 (excerpts here). Like so many politicians, however, Clinton is not above using a weighty moment to attempt some score-settling, as in his remarks yesterday at The Riverside Church.
Hang on. I don’t say he “deserved” it. I do say that he should have expected it, and was foolish to have thought that he could get involved in secular politics at his level and not have it come out. His hubris, as much as the act itself, brought about this act of self-immolation. As someone famous said recently, you can’t be naive if you want to play in that sandbox.
William Saletan is one of the great contrarian journalists of our time, and last week in Slate he cut through the thick growth of hype surrounding stem-cell research. In his address to the Democratic National Convention, Ron Reagan cast the debate in much the same light as the early post-Roe debate about abortion: enlightened science in favor of such research, mere religious humbuggery in opposition to it.
Over the weekend, I ran into an amazing pair of articles on the Newsweek home page that really left me pondering this question: Has anyone in that newsroom ever heard of people like Martin Marty and James Davison Hunter?
Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times has highlighted some of the lingering awkwardness as the Kerry campaign begins challenging Republicans’ strength among regular churchgoers. That initiative has led Kerry to talk more about his faith, even while saying he does not wear his faith on his sleeve — unlike, say, a certain Texan who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
