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Friends and neighbors, the whole media world continues to buzz with news (me too, of course) about the “Nones,” that growing coalition of religiously unaffiliated voters that showed up big time in that recent survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Every now and then, when I a traveling, I discover another layer of torn-out articles for GetReligion review buried deep inside some pocket of my shoulder bag. It’s sort of like the analog, portable version of the gigantic digital tmatt “folder of guilt” in my email program that I open up from time to time.
Few subjects inspire the whole “National Geographic visits the strange natives” school of Godbeat journalism quicker than monasticism.
Anyone who has followed the tensions between gay-rights activists and the Boy Scouts knows that this is a rather tense and highly politicized situation, with obvious freedom-of-association implications for groups on the cultural left and right.
GetReligion readers, near and far, please pause and ponder the bizarre circumstances that were required to put me and Bobby “I like baseball in 100-degree-plus weather” Ross, Jr., in the same location — a pub near the Religion Newswriters Association meetings near the Beltway — on the night when his beloved Texas Rangers (who just couldn’t do their duty against the Oakland A’s) face my Baltimore Orioles, who are back in the playoffs after, what, 50 years?
When it comes to the nuts and bolts of journalism, the task that terrifies my students the most is attempting to paraphrase the complicated words of experts into prose that can be understood by the proverbial average American sitting at his or her breakfast table with a cup of coffee.
The myth of the “Catholic voter” lives on and on and for perfectly logical reasons, even though use of this term adds next to nothing of our understanding of public life in America today.
I have been out of the country for several days, which means it’s time to back up a bit and look at a Los Angeles Times story that inspired varying opinions from GetReligion readers. This story was especially interesting, since it is rare to get email from conservative Catholics who think that a major newspaper may have gone a bit too easy on a conservative bishop.
One of the mantras of GetReligion is that journalists should give people of faith the opportunity to explain â in their own words â what they believe.
