Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
There are many bright lights on the religion beat but for consistency, you just can’t beat the Public Broadcasting Service’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. The journalists there produce a great show week after week. Readers of this blog would be remiss to not check it out.
Remember that truly bizarre passage in the Washington Post story about the massacre in Mumbai, the one that pondered the deep mystery of why the terrorists targeted Orthodox Jews and, well, other people who identified with the wrong world religions?
What we have here is the first positive review of “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion” that grasps the mission of the book, yet rejects our — or to be specific, my — proposal to address the problem. To cut to the chase, Herb Denenberg’s review in The Bulletin (Philadelphia’s Family Newspaper) argues that reporters in the mainstream media are so blind, dumb and biased that it is time — you guessed it — to kill off the idealistic concept of an “American model of the press” and move on to alternative, niche publications.
Michelle Boorstein of The Washington Post wrote an exceptional front-page story on Tuesday about the uncertain future of the Church of the Saviour, which the Rev. Gordon and Mary Cosby founded 60 years ago. Cosby preached his final sermon — at age 91 — on December 28.
Home to the denomination’s “mother church,” the city of Boston is ground zero for a small but influential American denomination. The Christian Science Church and its nineteenth-century founder Mary Baker Eddy continue to merit press attention, particularly in an American society that increasingly targets the link between mental and physical health.
Oh the constant joy it must bring to be a religious person associated with President-elect Barack Obama. With Baptist minister Rick Warren being sued by atheists over the use of the Lord’s name in an inauguration prayer, Obama’s old home church appears to be breathing a sigh of relief now that the election is over and Obama has officially moved to Washington, D.C.
The Epiphany of our Lord — Epiphany for short — is the liturgical festival observed on January 6. The oldest Christmas festival, and originally the most important, It is still the climax of the Christmas season in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, where it is celebrated as Theophany. Epiphany as a season of the Lutheran liturgical calendar lasts until the beginning of Lent and encompasses four to nine Sundays, depending on the date of Easter.
Remember that strange story a few years back about all of those Brits who wanted to write “Jedi knight” or something like that in the official census form slot for “religion”?
Yes, it’s easy to criticize the work of an editorial intern, even one who is a Fulbright scholar and has a master’s degree. Still, where was a decent copy editor at The Nation when Drew Haxby wrote about the sexuality debate within Anglicanism? For that matter, why should any copy editor have to deal with so much stilted writing?
