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There’s been a surprisingly low level of news coverage on a trial judge’s ruling that “sectarian prayers” on the floor of Indiana’s House (the lower level of its General Assembly) violated the “constitutional separation of church and state.” Most recently, an appeals court tossed the case on procedural grounds, but didn’t look at the merits of the case because the plaintiffs didn’t have standing.
The Economist has organized a near-miracle: A debate about religion that doesn’t involve Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. There’s more happy news: The Economist is offering 10 free tickets to readers of GetReligion.
Catholic social thought is all the rage these days. Or so says Michael Gerson, in his never-ceases-to-annoy-me Washington Post column. I think Terry is going to look into the column and some of the recent media coverage of Gerson. But here’s just a snippet in which he argues that Catholic social teaching is battling for the soul of the Republican Party:
Our friends at Beliefnet.com (we are linked through Blog Heaven) have this strange little blog/graphic device going right now called the “God-o-Meter,” which they are insisting is pronounced “Gah-DOM-meter.”
The Chicago Tribune had a potentially tremendous story to tell Sunday about a witch school setting up shop in Rossville, Ill., a small, economically struggling town in the heartland. The perspective of the story — about Wiccans trying to fit into a Bible Belt community — is what first jumped out at me.
This is one of those GetReligion topics that I struggle not to write about day after day after day. I’m talking about the role of religion in the Iraq disaster.
The other day, I raised a question or two — as I tend to do — about a Los Angeles Times story on an interfaith gathering of scholars to address scriptures that appear to “assert the superiority of one belief system over others.”
OK, we’ve waited long enough. Nearly a week after the news from EthicsDaily.com that Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, described Mormonism as “the fourth Abrahamic faith,” little has been said of this rather significant statement.
Last week religion reporter David Crumm was featured in our 5Q+1 series. He said that aging is the most important religion story the mainstream media just do not get. Gary Stern of The Journal News had a fantastic story that Crumm may want to check out. He followed a local hospice worker as she attended to the spiritual needs of the dying. Here’s how it begins:
