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It is hard to spend eight hours jammed into those tiny, tiny seats that Virgin Atlantic uses in its economy class without talking to the person next to you. Yesterday, flying from London, I was seated next to an articulate Internet professional from Pakistan who was raised in Germany and now works on many projects here in America.
Frequently we discuss the troubles that mainstream media have with covering traditional religious thought. But religious outliers, while gathering senationalist news coverage, also suffer from poor media coverage. That’s why I was glad to see Arizona Daily Star reporter Stephanie Innes’ look at the Church of Cognizance, a group that advocates the use of marijuana. Reader Charlie Lehardy sent the story along.
As Terry has noted, the Archibishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently proposed a two-tier system of church membership in the Anglican Communion — the idea being that full and partial membership could save the Communion from schism. Anglican bishops in Nigeria responded this week. The Church of Nigeria is Africa’s largest Anglican church, with an estimated 17.5 million members, according to the BBC:
I’m holed up in an airport hotel in London and frantically trying to catch up on email. That’s why I am a bit late to this story.
OK, it’s old news already that Keith Richards plays guitar on the album My Soul Is a Witness. Frank Lockwood of the Lexington Herald-Leader wrote the most playful story about the skeletal rock star’s gospel turn:
At noon today, I was in a church in north Oxford taking part in our Oxford Centre seminar on blasphemy, freedom of the press and the digital age. It was a natural place to hear the bells chime in the stone steeple high overhead, while also hearing other church bells in the surrounding neighborhood.
Religion has been a consistent undercurrent, if not a prevalent theme, in the coverage of the one-year anniversary of the 7/7 terrorist attacks on London. The problem was readily identified in the media as a group of radicals within the Muslim community that had to be rooted out. Not only would it require a tougher law enforcement role, but it would also require Muslims getting tougher about identifying terrorists within their communities.
The latest issue of Newsweek has a story on the ordination of females. Writers Holly Rossi and Lilit Marcus, who I believe are bloggers at the excellent Beliefnet, wrote the story for the mainstream publication. They ask what the election of Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as the head of the Episcopal Church means for women seeking a similar path. If they were blogging, the bias of the piece would be just fine. But I’m not sure if they quite have the impartiality necessary for a mainstream news magazine. Let’s see what we think about their tone:
