Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
From time to time, we receive emails from people concerned about a lack of mainstream media coverage of the persecution of the ancient churches inside Iraq, an already tragic situation that is getting worse as Iraq begins to fly apart into competing Islamic states, or tribes, or whatever. This is, of course, part of a wider story in the region — as I learned during my recent visit to Istanbul.
The intersection of religion and dress is most fascinating to me. I grew up with a mother who was far and away the most fashionable pastor’s wife I knew. And then I also had acquaintances and neighbors involved in the Christian modesty movement, which required women to wear large pieces of fabric that covered them extensively.
Tammy Faye Messner was anything but subtle and nuanced, at least in most of her public appearances, so to hope for nuance in her obituaries may be too much to ask. Still, I’ve yet to find a story about her life and death that comes even close to capturing the spirit of this remarkably strong woman.
An Associated Press story on Muslims worldwide rejecting violence against civilians provides a great lead-in to the latest Newsweek cover story on Islam in America. Based on a survey by the Pew Research Center, the AP article tells us that Muslims are “increasingly” rejecting suicide bombings, and support for Osama bin Laden is collapsing.
I’ve been gone for nearly a week to the rain-drenched Texas Hill Country and, during that time, I received all kinds of email about that remarkable page-one essay by William Lobdell of the Los Angeles Times about how his work on the religion beat knocked the foundations out from under his Christian faith. Click here for the quick post I wrote about that essay during my travels.
Reporters have not surprisingly played up the religious aspect of Turkey’s elections this past weekend. While religion has no doubt played a significant part in bringing the country to early elections and will be a big factor in voters’ decision-making, there are other aspects of the story that reporters risk missing if religion is all they focus on.
I know this is old news, but a reader sent along another recent story about Pope Benedict XVI saying that non-Roman Catholics are outside the true church. I know we covered this already, but the media treatment of this story has been so horrific that it merits another post. For this week’s installment, let’s look at Steve Maynard’s piece in the Tacoma News Tribune. First the subhead:
David Crumm, the Detroit Free Press religion writer, had the enviable task of coordinating a rather significant open-source religion journalism project that involved “forty strangers in a virtual room” talking about their faith.
