The Detroit News and Baltimore Sun recently produced two shockingly non-news worthy articles about the role or religion in this 2008 presidential election.
Abortion: A challenging year (continued)
Yes, it is news that the Democrats are fielding a significant number of candidates next Tuesday who are overtly opposed to abortion — and that at least a few have a decent chance of winning.
Letting compassion do the talking
Sometimes a kind woman does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. Jessica Myers of The Dallas Morning News reports:
Abortion: A challenging year
Two recent articles in the New York Times highlight a trend that hasn’t gotten much press attention so far this year: an almost unheard of number of anti-abortion challengers running as Democrats.
Bias, with no faith angle (maybe)
Trust me, I realize that there is no obvious religion angle in the now infamous opinion column by Michael S. Malone that ABC News dared to post on its website.
Palin: evangelical stereotype buster
Religion reporter Ann Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette produced a compelling and original article on the view evangelical women have on Palin as both a role model and a pulverizer of long-standing stereotypes. Rodgers mixes hard data from sources such as polls with softer anecdotes from a wide variety of perspectives that paint a narrative reflecting many of the discussions going on within the broad area of Christian evangelicalism.
Brit Hume on the grace of God (updated)
I do not, as a rule, watch Fox News. I cannot, for example, understand why that network — which has such a strong foothold in red zip codes — has never done a better job covering religion news.
Some evangelical girls get pregnant
Margaret Talbot, writing in the latest New Yorker, has a fascinating piece about evangelical teenagers’ sexual attitudes and practices. It begins by noting that the news of and reaction to Bristol Palin’s pregnancy shocked liberals. They expected evangelical voters to freak out over the news rather than be unfazed by it:
Calvin without predestination?
The New Republic and The Washington Post have paid tribute recently to novelist Marilynne Robinson. Both articles — a 4,100-word essay-review in TNR by Ruth Franklin, a senior editor, and a 2,400-word profile by Post reporter Bob Thompson — are informative and well-written. In one major respect, Thompson understands Robinson with greater precision.
