Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
A move to create publicly funded schools that are secular in name, but offer education in Islamic, Jewish and Catholic culture raises complicated questions — ones that don’t seem to have gotten an overwhelming amount of attention in the mainstream media.
Newsweek recently published a one-page story about Ted Haggard that showed a remarkable sympathy for the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals. The story, reported by Tony Dokoupil and drawing heavily from the new HBO documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard, was especially uncritical about Haggard’s claim of being mistreated by New Life Church, the Colorado Springs church he founded and built into an evangelical powerhouse:
By this time, the professionals in the mainstream press are starting to settle down, which means that the unrepentant shivers that ran up their legs, into their spins and into the depths of their souls are starting to fade just a bit. Soon, most scribes will get down to the hard business of criticizing the new administration — from the cultural left.
This has been a week like no other in Washington. Following the deluge of visitors for the inauguration of President Barack Obama, another deluge of visitors crashed the mall yesterday for the 36th annual March for Life. I was able to attend both events.
When I got to my office this morning here on Capitol Hill, I picked up the Washington Post and started looking for its story on the annual March for Life, which usually brings somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 people to the city to mark the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. There are times when the advance story makes the Metro front, but most of the time you look for something short inside the paper somewhere.
Would George Washington have recognized the prayers, or the service, held yesterday at Washington’s National Cathedral?
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So many religion stories this week, so little time. I wish there were more stories parsing the prayers of Bishop Gene Robinson and the Rev. Joseph Lowery, but it seems that almost all of the interest is with the Rev. Rick Warren. The variance in scrutiny is odd, to say the least.
If anyone needs any evidence that inaugurations are for the most part all about pomp and circumstance, see The Chicago Tribune‘s home page the day after the big event. The top of the “most read list” was an article about who made Michelle Obama’s dresses. Just below the front page’s top news story (“Obama freezes top-pay, adds ethic rules”) were two columns of articles — the first titled “fashion” and the second titled “The reaction.”
