Let’s be clear about the whole “fundamentalist” thing.
Phoebe Snow, RIP
I was sad to see on Twitter the other day that Poly Styrene had died. I’d been a big fan of her music. Not much later, I read that Phoebe Snow had died. I’d kept up with news about Poly but realized that I hadn’t heard what was going on with Snow in a few years. I came across the CBS morning news video embedded here on Roger Ebert’s blog at the Sun-Times. It’s several years old but it was full of detail and I was sobbing by the end. If you’re at all a fan, you will be well served to check it out.
Ancient marches in Damascus (updated)
Something very sobering and terrible is sinking in for Western journalists who are covering the uprising in the Middle East. They are beginning to wonder if the outcomes of these revolutions will automatically be good or, at least, “good” as defined in terms of civil liberties and human rights as they are promoted at, let’s say, the United Nations.
When French fundamentalists attack
The photographic image accompanying this post is not the work of Andres Serrano with which newspaper readers would almost certainly be familiar. However, I cannot seem to convince myself that I need to put a copy of that infamous work of modern religious or anti-religious art on this website on Good Friday. Sue me.
Fun, fun, fun ... at Ghanaian funerals
If everyone reading this GetReligion post could be very quiet, we’re going to explore a New York Times feature on Ghanaian immigrant funerals in the Big Apple. I ask you to pipe it down because the Ghanaians are partying like it’s — well, like someone is dead — and we sure wouldn’t want to interrupt the dancing, laughing and drinking with something so benign as discussion of spirituality and/or religion.
A 'Catholic' flight from Mexican altars?
Back in 2006 when the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life rolled out its massive “Spirit and Power” survey — a 10-nation survey of modern Pentecostalism — many of the most stunning statistics in its pages were linked to the rising number of Pentecostal Christians who could be found in Catholic pews and the stunningly high numbers of believers who had left the Church of Rome altogether.
Another bomb; same song in Pakistan
A long, long time ago — pre-Internet, for heaven’s sake — I had a long conversation with Bill Moyers, then of CBS, about why the mainstream press has so much trouble covering religion. This was one of those occasions in which he used a striking image to describe this problem — that far too many reporters and editors are “tone deaf” to the music of religion.
Fewer children? Then fewer nuns ...
Time for a quick dip into my GetReligion guilt file to look at a Religion New Service story that intrigued several readers who felt slapped by the headline it inspired at USA Today, which was, “Parents discourage daughters who would be nuns.”
Uncovering ghosts in girl's death by lashing
It’s encouraging to see news outlets continuing to cover the death of a 14-year-old girl who was accused of adultery and sentenced to 101 lashes.
