Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Newsweek‘s weekly BeliefWatch section is great. It’s a guaranteed two-column slot in a national magazine that will focus on some unique issue relating the religion. Usually it’s a story that has received little or no coverage elsewhere, and for that the contributors to the section should be commended.
While I was covering the religion beat for The Charlotte Observer long ago, one of my editors stressed that I should not write in a story that a man said that a key moment in his life was when he “walked the aisle” and “accepted Jesus as his personal savior.”
Yesterday I noted media coverage of the anti-religious rhetoric of two bloggers hired by John Edwards for his presidential campaign. The extreme anti-religious rhetoric was highlighted by political conservatives who are Christian.
The last time we tuned in the Southern Methodist University soap opera involving the George W. Bush presidential library, we were seeing lots of people claim that, for the faculty, this was an issue of academic freedom and, for a vocal chorus of Methodist clergy, it was a fight over W’s sins against “Methodist values” in foreign policy and a hot cultural issue or two.
The smart folks over at Harvard University came out with their report on how to overhaul the general education curriculum, more commonly known as the core curriculum. As expected, the requirement asking students to study religion as a particular subject was dropped.
An interesting story has been brewing out of the John Edwards campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. He hired a couple of bloggers to run outreach to the liberal blogosphere. And their credentials were so good that it kind of backfired on him.
The British continue to be haunted by reports of terrorist plots. However, there was an important twist in one of the recent stories and, ever since, I have been watching to see if journalists will dig into a crucial detail.
Disgraced pastor Ted Haggard is in the news again. A few days ago his email to members of New Life Church was released to the media. Eric Gorski wrote up the story for The Denver Post:
