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One of the big questions that religion writers discuss when they are in private and speak freely is this one: Are we supposed to challenge people when they claim that they have had some kind of unique, supernatural spiritual experience? Do we, somehow, try to dig into the details and challenge this kind of account?
If you are following the events in Turkey, you may be having trouble following all of the religious labels. Again.
Here’s a quick follow-up note on that post I offered about the disputed quotes between former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Ed Young of the giant Second Baptist Church in Houston.
Remember that little discussion of “theodicy” that we had last weekend? This is actual a topic that journalists, as a rule, do not mind digging into from time to time. They enjoy putting God in the dock whenever there is a great tragedy, especially natural disasters.
The Clinton era has, so far, produced more than its share of he said-she said, or she said-he said or even he said-he said stories. It does not seem that this will end anytime soon, which puts journalists in an interesting position.
The story starts in a church, with a minister trying to figure out how to step into the pulpit and tell his congregation about a great, and seemingly senseless, tragedy in the congregation. Four people were dead and the worshippers were going to ask, “Why?”
The new folks here inside the Beltway — that would be The Politico — had a very important story the other day about a reality that will almost certainly help shape the GOP race for the White House in 2011 and 2012 (that is, if you assume that the Clintons have enough stuff on Barack Obama to force him into the VP slot and that the story plays out from there with a GOP loss).
As regular GetReligion readers know, in my day job I am the director of the Washington Journalism Center, which is one of the semester-length student programs associated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. One of the schools that has been most active in our journalism-education work here has been Union University in Jackson, Tenn.
You have to be pretty interested in the state of religion reporting to claim the domain name ReligionWriter.com and open up shop. That’s what freelancer Andrea Useem did.
