Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
No wonder millions of young, biblically conservative young people no longer want to be known as “evangelicals.” You have to keep asking the question that your GetReligionistas have been asking since the dawn of blogging: What in the world does “evangelical” mean, anyway?The Washington Post ran yet another piece this week that perfectly illustrates that “evangelical” is quickly becoming the new “fundamentalist.”
What do you think of the media coverage of the latest religious news being made by and around Sen. Barack Obama?
Now that the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that Texas officials were wrong to remove more than 450 children from a FLDS ranch, journalists should be focusing on what is next in the legal process. The idea being portrayed in some news accounts that this case is over and the FLDS group will be left alone should be set aside because allegations and evidence of forced underage marriages and impregnated minors don’t just disappear.
Readers of GetReligion are familiar with that mainstream media holiday tradition of releasing news stories that are supposed to shake the foundations of Christianity. Easters over the last few years have featured stories that Jesus walked on an ice floe (not water), that he wasn’t crucified in the manner in which people think, that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier named Pantera, not Joseph, and that Jesus didn’t die on the cross so much as pass out after being doped up.
I should go on the record and admit that, in the long run, I think it’s about time for a divorce between the British government and the Anglican establishment, as a simple nod to the reality on the ground.
We have covered more than a few of the mainstream media stories declaring that female priests are being ordained in the Roman Catholic Church. Since the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t ordain females, we usually have a few nits to pick with the coverage.
As faithful GR readers may know, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. My perception of the local media was that it mostly ignored the region’s Catholics bishops, though not liberal theologians or dissidents. I read long features on the theology of Matthew Fox and top-of-the-fold stories about lay Catholics’ alleged opposition to Church teaching. But I can’t ever remember reading a quote-heavy, profile about the local ordinary.
Several years ago, I wrote a Scripps Howard News Service column about one of the more obscure disputes linked to the death, or death by starvation, of Terri Schiavo — whether or not her body should be cremated, against strong opposition of her devout Roman Catholic family.
While the news media has been focused on the sensational story of a breakaway Mormon fundamentalist denomination and its practice of polygamous marriage and allegations of child abuse, National Public Radio produced a solid two-part series this week on another significant religious tradition in the United States that allows for polygamy.
