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The following bit of local news may not be the best evidence of a declining newspaper industry, or the media’s overall challenges in covering religion, but I must say a word about The Indianapolis Star‘s decisions to cut the short prayer on page A2 next to the chuckle and horoscope and then bring it back a couple of weeks later.
It’s hard to write about a minister without talking about what the man believes, in terms of the Christian faith. At the same time, I imagine that it’s hard for folks at the edgy Style section of the Washington Post to write about faith issues, period, especially when dealing with a Civil Rights Movement giant who is now in the orbit of President-elect Barack Obama.
The fate of embryos and treatments to screen them for disease made news in England last week — but few apparent ripples over here.
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.
Veteran journalist Charles Sennott appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today to promote GlobalPost, which strives to be a less expensive alternative source for global news coverage (compared to the more comprehensive Associated Press). Sennott mentioned that every correspondent for GlobalPost will carry a Flip camcorder. This video report by Greg Warner shows how well the concept can work.
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.
