Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
In all my years on the Godbeat, I have never covered a vague “religious festival.” All of the one’s that I have covered — especially when linked to ancient traditions in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other major faiths — have very precise titles, rituals and purposes.
I’ll admit right up front that my eyebrows arched way up when I saw that my local newspaper — that would be the Baltimore Sun — had published an A1 news feature on efforts by the Southern Baptist Convention to plant a circle of new churches in and around this unique urban environment that some call Charm City.
Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon has a really interesting article in this coming Sunday’s New York Times magazine. The article, which has been online for days now, is just an interview — but the subject is Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
There has been no shortage of news stories about the anticipated religious overtones of Michael Jackson’s funeral later today at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. (The New York Daily News reported yesterday that the family had stalemated on what religion meant most to MJ, so the service would be God free.)
It’s time to take a trip deep, deep into the tmatt folder of GetReligion guilt. You see, with the Iran explosion and a bunch of other major news, I don’t think we made a single reference to coverage of the Southern Baptist Convention meetings in Louisville.
It will take time for mainstream reporters to find the thread that connects the young Michael Jackson, going door to door as a Jehovah’s Witness missionary, to the otherwordly middle-aged man who, after two decades of personal crisis, allegedly converted to Islam, like his brother Jermaine.
One of the doctrines of this weblog is that to understand how ordinary people live their lives, journalists need to “get religion.” You don’t have to force faith into these stories. In most cases, it’s already there.
As the mainstream media devote significant coverage to the shooting of a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum by an 88-year-old white supremacist, we’re seeing attempts to define his motivation and categorize his thinking. He is a white supremacist mostly known for his hatred toward Jews and blacks. He is in the sector of white supremacists who are anti-Christian. He’s a “birther” — one of those people who believe that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. But he’s also a “truther” — one of those people who believe that former President George W. Bush planned the September 11 terrorist attacks. He was imprisoned for trying to kidnap board members of the Federal Reserve. There are many other interesting tidbits — he had allegedly targeted the conservative Weekly Standard offices, is a socialist, a eugenicist, etc.
I keep wondering why people who seem so interested in killing Jews also deny that they were killed in the Holocaust. The latest example is this 88-year-old white supremacist who killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The Associated Press‘ Brett Zongker and Calvin Woodward had a thorough story with information about the crime:
