Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
One of the terms that journalists hear during many continuing education sessions at the Poynter Institute down in Florida is “stakeholder.” Basically, a stakeholder is someone whose life will be directly affected by the accuracy and fairness of a story.
Just so that title doesn’t confuse anyone, let me make clear that we’re talking about two different stories.
If you watch internal church debates, you know that nothing gets people riled up more than just about anything to do with sex: premarital sex, homosexuality, you name it. People feel quite passionately about these issues, enough to part ways with one another. So I laughed out loud when I read a line from a piece published in New York Times about a “quieter battle” being waged within churches over gay marriage and gay ordination.
GetReligion readers who frequent the CNN Belief blog know that it features a wide range of material, from hard news stories to essays by academics. A recent offering falls into this latter category, but I still think GetReligion readers will want to know about it since it focuses on a topic that frequently comes up for discussions on this blog.
The Vatican Insider section of La Stampa reports that there are now more women priests than men priests in the Church of England. This report in Italy’s largest circulation newspaper has been picked up by Catholic newspapers and blogs round the world. It has morphed into reports like that in CathNews New Zealand which states: “A first: Anglican women priests outnumber men in UK.”
Yesterday, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee had a hearing on threats to religious liberty. The Republicans on that committee were trying to make President Obama look bad, because of his recent edict requiring religious groups to provide insurance policies that violate their doctrines. The Democrats on the Committee staged a walkout because some of the panelists who were brought on to discuss questions of religious liberty had male parts.
