Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The BBC’s Heaven & Earth show found in a recent poll that one third of all Christians in the United Kingdom think that the media portray them in a way that amounts to discrimination.
Like any journalist who has worked for an opinion journal, Andrew Sullivan is entitled to some favorite themes. One of his favorites for the past few years is the insidious threat of what he calls Christianism, or theoconservatism. In his 7,400-word New Republic takedown of Dinesh D’Souza’s latest book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, that theme is so prevalent that it calls to mind one of those outrageously large American flags favored by car dealerships (at least in the Deep South), popping defiantly in the wind.
Recently we’ve discussed the penchant of reporters to talk politics in religion stories. A good example of that reliance comes the New York Times‘ Linda “I am the Alpha and Omega of all things factual” Greenhouse. Published in Sunday’s paper, she anticipated Monday’s Supreme Court hearing on a free speech case.
My hometown newspaper, The Indianapolis Star, did just about everything wrong in a recent article on the local FBI office’s decision to bring in an author to talk to its anti-terrorism task force.
By now, it should be pretty clear that the word “evangelical” is so vague that it is almost meaningless — unless a careful reporter places it in context and gives the reader some clue as to its application in a particular story.
Like many other apartment renters in the world, I spend a great deal of time coveting other people’s houses. Or homeownership in general. So this local religion story out of Detroit caught my eye. Reporter Doug Guthrie of The Detroit News wrote about a $3.65 million parsonage bought for a pastor, Ben Gibert, by his church.
Some of you have written to me to express your dismay about the mainstream media’s coverage of the new theological document released by that complex, bookish fellow named Pope Benedict XVI. In particular, I realize that you are upset about the focus taken in the first few paragraphs in the story published by the only newspaper that really matters, The New York Times.
If anyone is hoping that the loud relationship between politics and personal faith is merely a freakish and temporal effect of George W. Bush’s presidency, simply observing the candidates and reporters warm up this year should dispense with that fanciful wish.
What in the world was the Apostle Paul thinking in 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 when he told Christians to eliminate all divisions and “be perfectly united in mind and thought”?
