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I live in the same neighborhood as the U.S. Capitol where we will inaugurate Barack Obama as our next president. You would not believe the chaos — some real, some manufactured — as we head into this Tuesday. There are massive parking restrictions, road closures and bridge closures not to mention restrictions on what even pedestrians can carry within the security perimeter.
In recent years I have had quite a few opportunities, during seminars with the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life, to talk with journalists from some very interesting and very tense corners of the world. Most of the time, we have focused on issues where the freedom of the press intersects with freedom of religion. At some point, free speech is free speech — whether one is a journalist, an evangelist or a political activist.
The New York Times Magazine has wandered into the testosterone-heavy world of Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church and emerged with a feature story that mostly does justice to both Driscoll and his critics. The coverage is by Molly Worthen, who has also written a previous New York Times Magazine story on classical Christian education and a feature about L’Abri Fellowship for Christianity Today. She is no stranger to the subcultures of evangelical Protestantism.
As we’ve seen in press coverage over the past couple of months, the 50 billion dollar fraud allegedly perpetrated by financier Bernard Madoff has sparked debate and some soul-searching about Jewish identity in the Jewish community.
The Washington Post ran one of those stories the other day that was so sad, so heavy with fact and detail, that at the end of it you just wanted to sigh or cry or scream and throw something at a wall.
Two basic kinds of stories have been written about the retirement of Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy. The first are about Dungy’s results on the gridiron, his record-setting 10 straight playoff seasons, and six in-a-row seasons of 12-plus wins. The second story is about Dungy’s faith and his personal impact on the world around him.
Remember when President-elect Barack Obama picked the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver an invocation and all hell broke loose? The rioting and the pillaging and swastika-painting and what not? I couldn’t begin to quantify how many stories I’ve read on the pick and its response in the gay community.
Trust me. There are times when your GetReligionistas get tired of writing posts that criticize the same publications for making the same errors, time after time. Meanwhile, we know that readers may also tire of hearing us praise some of the same skilled, talented professionals who know what they are doing on the religion beat.
