Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
If great religion journalism is going to survive, it is going to be because of the writing and not because of the pictures, graphics, videos or even blogs. That was driven home to me today when I read Andrew Rice’s masterful piece in the New York Times Magazine on the Redeemed Christian Church of God, one of the African missionary churches that the Times says is transforming Western Christianity.
I will not see the dead-tree-pulp edition of the Washington Post Sunday edition until tomorrow, since it is delivered at my office on Capitol Hill.
Every year I steel myself for the onslaught of Holy Week stories the mainstream media love. You know the ones — media pieces attempting to undermine miraculous stories about Jesus and his life. Some of them have been very bad. But this year those attacks have not been limited to Holy Week. Hurrah.
The one-year anniversary of the removal of 400-plus children from West Texas ranch operated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a tremendous reminder of the valuable asset newspapers are in providing substantive coverage of issues and events that require lengthy and rigorous review of records and in-depth investigation.
This is an ultra-busy time of the year for people whose lives revolve around ancient religious traditions. I mention this, because your GetReligionistas are impacted in a major way.
Five years ago, GetReligion launched amid some of the fiercer battles involving Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. We joined those battles ourselves (mostly in February 2004), and our onetime colleague Jeremy Lott revisits media coverage of Passion in the book Blind Spot. You may want to click here for the classic New Yorker piece, “The Jesus War.”
Former British Prime-Minister Tony Blair and the British press do seem to be a match made…well, somewhere. The Catholic convert has been outraging conservatives ever since he left Downing Street in 2007. In a fascinating symbiosis between Blair and the press, he natters on about religion, which gains him publicity for himself and his foundation, and the media outlets publish his utterances, focusing on his many controversial statements (and perhaps attracting more readers).
On my way to church tonight, a media friend living in another country called me to tell me she couldn’t believe what she just saw on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. She said it was so dismissive of Christian prayer that she almost wondered if she’d misheard.
We’ve remarked before how the media usually tell religious news stories when those stories interact with the true passion of the media: politics. This story, from the New York Times, is no exception. The whole hook is how a small religious sect is working the political system for survival. The Saddam Hussein years were hard for many groups who perished or suffered under his notorious oppression. But the post-Saddam Hussein years have been difficult in particular for non-Muslim groups. It’s an important story that hasn’t been covered as much as should be. So I was glad to see this story about the Yazidi, (who are definitely faring better post-Saddam):
