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This is a few days late, but we need to look at that Los Angeles Times “End Times” story. I’m not sure if the problem with the story is that it is disorganized or that the reporter just doesn’t get the topic about which he is writing.
As some of you have noticed, we are currently having some technical difficulties. This has required us to turn off the comments sections of the blog. Our tech friends at Gospelcom.net hope to have matters straightened out by Monday or thereabouts. So we’ll take today off and, maybe, swing back into action late Sunday with comments about religion coverage in the weekend editions.
In the end, it was the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that made the biggest news on the front lines of the liturgical culture wars this week. However, it should be noted that the most important action taken by the oldline Presbyterians was to adopt precisely the option that the Episcopalians have been using for quite some time now.
Should the public know and understand the belief system of the world’s most despicable terrorist? Aren’t some ideas just too disturbing for academic study or general dissemination?
Earlier this year, inspired by a laugh-out-loud correction in Newsweek, I wrote what I hoped was a funny column for Scripps Howard asking why so many newsrooms seem to be a few tacos short of a combination platter when it comes to getting basic religion facts right. Then people started sending me other corrections that were just as funny and that led to a second column — built on the now-infamous “crow’s ear” mistake in the International Herald Tribune coverage of the funeral of Pope John Paul II.
Compared to the Womb story, this next Presbyterian Assembly story may not seem terribly exciting. But it is spicy in its own way. The Denver Post‘s Eric Gorski is one of my favorite religion reporters. He takes the time to understand and accurately convey the theology of complex stories’ various players. Well, Gorski had a different kind of story worth noting in Wednesday morning’s Post.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a little column for Scripps Howard about a little movie called Facing the Giants that seems to have started a little controversy. I have given up trying to predict when people are going to react to a column. You know?
My family’s roots are in East Texas and I love old stories about small towns in the great Piney Woods region. One of my favorites concerns a radio announcer in Huntsville, back in the era when stations used to play sermons on the air during the church hours on Sunday morning and evening. The sermons were so old that they were on records instead of tapes.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., does not seem to be running for president in 2008. That doesn’t mean he will not do so, just that he is not laying the necessary framework to make a run at the Democratic nomination. He’s certainly soaking up the praise and good favor of his colleagues as major media outlets continue the drumbeat promoting the nation’s only African American senator.
