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For the past day or so, I have been reading the coverage of the somewhat surprising election of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. At this point, I have to admit that I am confused about the various labels that I am reading.
Once again, a major mainstream news organization has decided to report on the fine folks of Oklahoma voting to ban Sharia law in my home state.
We’ve had quite a bit of very serious content lately about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and in lands nearby. The massacre in the cathedral in Iraq set off an important wave of new coverage.
As you would expect, there was a wave — totally justified — of press coverage of the major speech that was delivered by President Barack Obama during his return to Jakarta, Indonesia, a city that he called home as a child. To read the speech text, click here.
In the past decade or so, the mainstream press has offered waves of news features that have attempted to explain the state of mind in our nation’s growing Islamic population. The need for these stories is obvious, although most of them end up presenting a single, unified Muslim community that does not in fact exist.
A few months ago, we discussed Confucianism’s comeback in China. Now the New York Times magazine considers the rise of Taoism as part of a broader religious revival in the Communist country. Ian Johnson’s article seems pretty thorough, but it also feels a little light on China’s tense relationship with religion.
Anyone who has read GetReligion for any time at all knows that our goal is to offer criticism — positive and negative — of mainstream news coverage of religion events and trends. The key word is “news.”
With that whole election thing over (yeah, right), so I suddenly feel a need to turn to Something Completely Different. Thus, it’s time to visit the tmatt folder of GetReligion guilt.
