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A significant news morsel buried in the middle of a ho-hum article about a meeting with President Bush in the Savannah Morning News deserves attention. In an interview with author Bruce Feiler, Larry Peterson went with the metro news headline stating that local boy makes good and meets with leader of the free world.
“Stories like this annoy me,” a Lutheran pastor wrote when he notified us of the following Chicago Sun-Times piece. Written by veteran religion reporter Susan Hogan/Albach, it’s about how the Metropolitan Chicago bishop-elect of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America views his denomination’s celibacy requirement for gay and lesbian clergy. The Lutheran clergy and GetReligion reader is a pastor in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which does not ordain gay clergy. Though both Lutheran groups are large (and I’m a member of the LCMS), only the larger ELCA is mentioned in the story.
From time to time, we receive emails from people concerned about a lack of mainstream media coverage of the persecution of the ancient churches inside Iraq, an already tragic situation that is getting worse as Iraq begins to fly apart into competing Islamic states, or tribes, or whatever. This is, of course, part of a wider story in the region — as I learned during my recent visit to Istanbul.
The intersection of religion and dress is most fascinating to me. I grew up with a mother who was far and away the most fashionable pastor’s wife I knew. And then I also had acquaintances and neighbors involved in the Christian modesty movement, which required women to wear large pieces of fabric that covered them extensively.
An Associated Press story on Muslims worldwide rejecting violence against civilians provides a great lead-in to the latest Newsweek cover story on Islam in America. Based on a survey by the Pew Research Center, the AP article tells us that Muslims are “increasingly” rejecting suicide bombings, and support for Osama bin Laden is collapsing.
Reporters have not surprisingly played up the religious aspect of Turkey’s elections this past weekend. While religion has no doubt played a significant part in bringing the country to early elections and will be a big factor in voters’ decision-making, there are other aspects of the story that reporters risk missing if religion is all they focus on.
The big political news in the Democratic Party is that Hillary continues to hang on to the loyalty of a majority of the party’s voters.
