Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Some of you out there on the religion beat may remember the name Christian Smith. He is the sociologist who taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who, among some scribes, is best known for writing an infamous Books & Culture essay, “Religiously Ignorant Journalists.”
Indiana media were attentive to the prayer opening the legislative body’s proceedings this week (earlier coverage). The ACLU and others had protested what they considered sectarian prayers at the opening of General Assembly sessions. They successfully sued in 2005, barring prayers in the Statehouse that used the name Jesus Christ or endorsed any single religion. That decision was tossed out on procedural grounds earlier this year, but that didn’t mean the case was over.
Yesterday media outlets announced the news of a breakthrough in stem-cell research. The details were published in the prestigious journals Science and Cell (PDF).
Five years ago, political scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio wrote a fascinating story about the media’s failure to cover the rise to power of “secularists” in the Democratic Party. Bolce and De Maio studied The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times between 1990 and 2000. While the papers ran 682 stories about the GOP and evangelical or fundamentalist Christians between 1990 and 2000, they ran only 43 stories identifying secularists with the Democratic Party.
Two stories in Wednesday’s Washington Post were placed in interesting ways. On the front page there is a straight political poll-based story bringing the world the news that former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee exists and could just possibly win in Iowa. On the front of the Style section is a piece telling us, in a rather pushy way, that Republicans in Iowa are still searching for a savior.
Here’s a quick memo to the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference and the Assemblies of God and the Democratic Party and lots of other people.
Stories about interfaith issues are tricky these days, particularly when they involve conflict. Down in Austin, Texas, a Baptist church’s rejection of an interfaith Thanksgiving service because of the involvement of Muslims has sparked an intense discussion of the holiday and how people and organizations of different faiths are supposed to interact with each other in today’s society.
Peggy Fletcher Stack has been all over a story coming out of Utah, where she reports on religion for The Salt Lake Tribune. A week and a half ago, she wrote about an interesting change being made by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
Let’s take a break from the Anglican wars for a moment, shall we (even though the battles keep raging on)?
