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There has been a slew of coverage of Miss California’s statements that she does not support gay marriage laws and her belief that her comments resulted in a missed chance at being crowned Miss USA. For a summary of the in depth, extensive coverage of the incident, and to make sure I don’t misconstrue any of the critical details of this factually sensitive story, here is a summary from the Associated Press:
Anyone who respects good religion coverage in the mainstream media has to shed a tear for the fast-disappearing City Section of the New York Times, which is down to eight pages today and will soon vanish both on paper and on line. The heart of the section, which circulates only in the New York area, are the Neighborhood Reports that cover events, people and places not normally covered in a big city newspaper.
One must really think through this article from the San Francisco Chronicle about some students, disciplined for praying in a college faculty’s office, being permitted to sue the college for violating their free speech rights. The story’s problem, and this may not be the newspaper’s fault, is that there seems to be little to no explanation for why the college attempted to punish the students in the first place.
In the wake of some give-and-take about what constitutes a religious and what a secular perspective on the recent post about the ‘death’ of conservative Christianity, I was much taken by a brief BBC Newshour story a few days on, of all things, ghosts. Did you know that, according to a recent Theos poll, almost four in ten Britons believe in ghosts? Five out of ten believe in heaven, and, and seven out of ten believe in the human soul. Apparently the belief in ghosts has actually grown over the past four decades.
Five years ago, GetReligion launched amid some of the fiercer battles involving Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. We joined those battles ourselves (mostly in February 2004), and our onetime colleague Jeremy Lott revisits media coverage of Passion in the book Blind Spot. You may want to click here for the classic New Yorker piece, “The Jesus War.”
Former British Prime-Minister Tony Blair and the British press do seem to be a match made…well, somewhere. The Catholic convert has been outraging conservatives ever since he left Downing Street in 2007. In a fascinating symbiosis between Blair and the press, he natters on about religion, which gains him publicity for himself and his foundation, and the media outlets publish his utterances, focusing on his many controversial statements (and perhaps attracting more readers).
Many of you know that Newsweek editor Jon Meacham has written books on topics as diverse as the friendship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the faith of the founding Fathers, and the nation’s seventh President, Andrew Jackson. In the YouTube clip above, he’s discoursing in a Gettsburg College lecture about faith and President Abraham Lincoln.
There’s something quentessentially American about Elizabeth Gilbert’s winsome 2006 quest memoir Eat, Pray Love. The bestselling book, which details Gilbert’s trek through Italy, India and Indonesia, has many ingredients U.S. audiences seem to love: the search for spiritual enlightenment, healing, lasting love, and a great dinner.
