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In the summer of 2006, Father Martyn Minns of Truro Episcopal Church outside Washington, D.C., became Bishop Martyn Minns of the Convocation for Anglicans in North America, a missionary effort of the gigantic Anglican Church of Nigeria. That would be three years ago.
So I was wandering around the internet, as one does, and came across a couple of stories involving curious goings on at a couple of grave sites. Some of the stories were really poorly written.
Last week my son and I saw the Galileo/Medici exhibit at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute Science Museum. The information about Galileo’s trial didn’t go below the surface or delineate the church’s efforts to move beyond it, which was too bad.
In a week in which the homepages of the heavy media hitters have been drenched in Michael Jackson coverage, there has, believe it or not, been other news. President Obama met with Russian leaders Medvedev and Putin and negotiated agreements of import to the United States. U.S. troops died in Afghanistan implementing new U.S. strategy. And oh, by the way, Pope Benedict XVI issued a new 144-page encyclical, “Charity in Truth,” or “Caritas in Veritate.”
As a rule, your GetReligionistas focus our attention on the mistakes that mainstream journalists make, or the holy holes that they leave in stories, when they fail to “get religion.” We also like to praise news organizations when they get it right, but whenever we do that readers don’t leave many comments. So, you know, we have to focus on the negative.
The Iran story has faded from the headlines in recent weeks, in large part because the Obama White House has not worked to keep it in the headlines, perhaps knowing that “America” and “Satan” are terms that tend to flow together in the minds of millions of Iranians.
As you would imagine, I have — since my return from Bangalore and New Delhi — been especially sensitive to news reports with India datelines. At the same time, I am always interested in coverage of human rights issues, especially those linked to religious freedom and the rights of minority groups. Call me an old-fashioned liberal.
On Monday President Nicolas Sarkozy told French lawmakers that he supports banning women’s Islamic full-body veils like burqas and niqabs in public. Tuesday the Parliament voted to establish a commission to study whether women in France would be allowed to wear these garments.
