Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Nova: Origins host Neil deGrasse Tyson is an agnostic and, according to People magazine in 2000, “the Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive,” Ellen Gray reports in the Philadelphia Daily News.
Missed the first bit of MTV’s latest installment of Choose or Lose: “Sex, Votes, & Higher Power” Wednesday night, but I caught most of it. I must admit, the segment dealing with abortion wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared. Host Christina Aguilera, wearing a pink button down sweater over a not-too-short (for her) periwinkle blue dress and less makeup than usual, interviewed two girls who got pregnant out of wedlock.
Alex Johnson of MSNBC writes: “George Bush has not said directly that he was ever born again. He has often said he was pointed on the path to God after a discussion with evangelist Billy Graham in 1985. . . . There is a second story about how Bush started on the road to salvation, one that is more in line with the common narrative.”
Before we move on to some serious news articles about the conflict in the worldwide Anglican Communion, let us first pay a brief visit to the community announcement columns of the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Got to my Saturday copy of the Vancouver Sun too late, I’m afraid, to be able to provide a working link to Peter McKnight’s column for nonsubscribers. (If you feel like signing up, here’s the front page; knock yourself out.) The title of the op-ed, in what appears to be 36-point font, is “The problem with faith in politics.” Directly above the column is an illustration: a silhouette of George W. Bush speaking from a podium, punctuating his points with a large wooden cross that he holds in his left hand. The piece has not one but two epigraphs: quotes from Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes on the importance of an open mind.
Charlie Madigan, senior correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, coins the phrase “Jesus-baiting” to introduce his report from the dreaded Bob Jones University, which he calls “the shiny, big brass buckle on the Bible belt.”
In the final chaotic moments of the frat-classic “Animal House,” a well-endowed young woman with very little on is catapulted from a parade float and just happens to fly through the open window of a young boy who is secretly reading “Playboy,” landing safely on his bed. Stunned by this miracle, the boy looks to the heavens and says, “Thank you, God.”
Figured I’d find out what the Kiwis were up to on the religion front, so I pointed my Mozilla browser at the New Zealand Herald. It turns out the paper has a ton of information on the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to be directed by the country’s own Andrew Adamson, and filmed in New Zealand and the Czech Republic.
Here are two tidbits — something old, something new — from the weeklies that arrive at my snail-mail address.
