Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
If you have followed this blog from Day 1, then you are almost certainly familiar with the work of Dr. Paul Marshall of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House. As I mentioned during my recent visit to England, Marshall is also one of my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life.
Michael Crowley’s New Republic cover story on how powerful Republican conservatives have taken over the Washington suburb of McLean, Va., is a fun read. From a journalistic perspective, it makes no pretense of political balance. Liberal elitism has merit and rich yuppie conservatives are bad. But if you can put that aside, you can treat yourself to an interesting look at how conservative, sometimes evangelical, Republican politics has changed a sleepy suburban community.
That’s a cliche, I know, but that’s how I felt when reader Josh Carlton sent me a link for a Rolling Stone photo essay titled “Young and Pious: A Rock & Roll Story.” Then it offered a read-out that told you what you needed to know: “Photojournalist Stephanie Keith goes inside the Christian rock subculture and finds sexy girls, hardcore bands and the strange marriage of rock and rapture.”
Laurie Goodstein has a fascinating article in The New York Times about Zoroastrians. Their ancient and formerly sizable religion is facing a crisis of dwindling numbers. These followers of the prophet Zarathustra — and devotees of the divine being Ahura Mazda — are worried about the survival of their Persian religion.
This weekend, while many Americans were wrapping up their last summer vacations, another American was seen on an Al Qaeda propaganda video. The video, featuring ex-Californian Adam Gadahn, warned Americans to convert to Islam before it’s too late.
WashingtonPost.com has a handy religion section that grabs stories from just about everywhere. From India to Dupont Circle to national politics, religion stories are appropriately all across the board. It’s no surprise that two very long stories dealing with Muslims in the Washington area (published on Monday and Tuesday) landed there. But unfortunately they are less about God and theology and more about life and culture.
The bad news is that we know almost nothing concrete about what happened during the discussions between Pope Benedict XVI and his former students this past weekend — those talks about evolution and philosophy. We have clips and snips from here and there, with the spin being that Intelligent Design was not on the agenda. What was on the agenda? Well, precisely the kinds of philosophical concerns that are at the heart of the ongoing debates inside the Vatican about clashing evolutionary theories (plural).
Christopher Goffard of the Los Angeles Times has told the pathos-laden story of conflicts between pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa and his namesake son, pastor of Capo Beach Calvary.
The other day I received a blunt, fiery, angry email. It was from an anti-Semite who was mad at me for writing a Scripps Howard News Service column in which I quoted several Orthodox Jews discussing the meaning of repentance and forgiveness in Judaism and, in particular, why they thought that Mel Gibson — if he is a serious Catholic believer of one form or another — was going to need to do more than seek out a few good photo opportunities on a holy day or two.
