Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
As any regular reader knows, your GetReligionistas are rather picky when it comes to how journalists use the imperfect words that describe various religious groups in American and around the world. There’s that “fundamentalist” clause in the Associated Press Stylebook, for starters. We are not postmodern journalists. Maybe it’s the religious history major in me.
Another chapter in the story of President-elect Barack Obama was written last night, and snippets are emerging about that section regarding the role faith played in that chapter. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has already updated their “Religious Biography” of Obama.
Hearty congratulations to supporters of President-elect Barack Obama (including the mainstream media, heh!) and supporters of all winners in the many democratic contests people across our country weighed in on. And condolences to those who didn’t fare so well.
Over at Beliefnet.com, our friend Steve Waldman has been — it seems — up all night. Here is his very insightful look at the “Pew gap” factors, which offers an early analysis of the shape of the new religious left-secular left coalition that was formed last night.
As we head into the election-day coverage, let’s all flash back to the story line of the 2000 and 2004 elections that was supposed to fade, seriously, in this election. I refer, of course, to The Pew Gap.
Yesterday, I made a quick reference to a religion story that has not dominated campaign coverage, to the say the least. That story is Roman Catholic bishops speaking out in defense of their church’s teaching in response to statements from pro-choice Catholic politicians and in response to statements from pro-choice candidates in general. Now there have been articles, most notably after the comments made by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Joe Biden. But I had no idea just how widespread the phenomenon was.
Of the many articles written about the death late Sunday of Barack Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, nothing expressed Christian hope quite so well as these pithy words from blogger Andrew Sullivan:
