Reporter Manya A. Brachear of The Chicago Tribune had a fascinating story on her hands: a young Jewish movement that does not worship God. Brachear’s story began this way:
Jews without God
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School prayer and a young atheist
Chicago Tribune staff reporter Nara Schoenberg had a fairly solid profile last week of an Illinois teenage atheist who is, with her father, legally attacking the state’s “Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act” as a violation of her rights. The teenager, Dawn Sherman, is the focus of the story, and the reporter uses Sherman’s personal story to explain one side of the separation of church and state debate.
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Becoming Bobby Jindal
One of the nastiest campaign tricks in recent memory was the Louisiana Democratic Party’s attempt to derail the candidacy of Roman Catholic Bobby Jindal by quoting — out of context — statements he’d written about Protestantism. The thing I remember about the attacks is that Jindal seemed surprisingly theologically literate for a politician. Jindal explained his adult conversion from Hinduism in the New Oxford Review and the Democratic Party quoted some of it to give the impression that Jindal was a bigot. I know it’s Louisiana and all, but that’s cold.
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What is it about Mormonism?
Last week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine had an article analyzing the Mormon religion and arguing for voters choosing a president without regard to his or her religion. “What is it about Mormonism” was written by Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor and adjunct senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations.
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In praise of Santeria coverage
A recent Miami Herald story on the Afro-Caribbean religious tradition Santeria is receiving high compliments from the Pagan-oriented Wild Hunt blog for avoiding sensationalism. The comments on the blog, which is run by Jason Pitzl-Waters, give a sense for what many misunderstood or less commonly known religious traditions feel when they are portrayed in the media.
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No-go zones in today's multicult Britain?
Here is another example (click here for previous discussion of a similar case) of a major story from Britain that needs — somehow — to be confirmed at a level great than the voice of one person who wields great authority. Consider the lede in the Telegraph report by Jonathan Wynne-Jones:
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Big move for Scientologists in Motown
The headline in Saturday’s Detroit News brought the news that the “controversial” church of Scientology had paid $3.5 million for a prominent downtown building for office and outreach program use. The larger story is that Scientologists in Michigan are moving their headquarters and expanding to meet a greater demand and need for the church’s services.
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Knowing when to hold my peace
The winter issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review features an essay by blogger RJ Eskow (a regular at The Huffington Post) about the challenge of balancing blog-inspired activism with Buddhist disciplines. Both the promise and the limits of Eskow’s vision appear in his lede:
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State of the law in Pakistan
Is it too late to vote, yet again, in the poll to name the most important religion-news stories of 2007?
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