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We need some kind of special award here at GetReligion to salute really fine news stories about religion that still fall one or two facts short of being, you know, just right. It’s frustrating, you know. The story is really enjoyable and then — bzzzzzzz.
Last week, Terry wrote about the curious absence of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops in stories about health care reform. I looked at some of the media coverage describing abortion as an obstacle to passing reform.
As I noted in my Monday post about the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, there’s other news going on in the Anglican world — the rapid move to put openly gay bishop candidates on slates in Los Angeles and Minnesota. Here’s the scoop from the CNN.com website. (A minor problem with this story: I’m not aware of any “aligned Anglican Church in Canada.” Although that national body is headed in roughly the same direction).
Maybe the most unnecessarily talked about story of the past few days, particularly in that corner of the world I dwell in known as the Jewish twitterverse, has been Madonna’s first-person piece for Israel’s largest daily newspaper, Yediot Achronot. In “I Found an Answer,” the Material Girl offered a testimonial about how she found God, got religion and awakened her spiritual soul through Kabbalah.
One of the bigger religion stories yesterday was the killing last weekend of seven Christians by Muslim Pakistanis. Many more were wounded in attacks on the Christian community of Gojra. Here’s how the New York Times began its story on the attack, headlined “Hate Engulfs Christians in Pakistan“:
Andy Doyle, who became bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas in June, recently granted a substantial interview to Evan Smith of Texas Monthly (free registration required). The conversation rolled along fairly well until Smith raised the delicate question of the Episcopal Church’s decades-long discussion of human sexuality:
There is much to praise in that recent A1 feature in the Washington Post about the Franciscan friars who decided, as a spiritual discipline, to go for a very long walk. If you want to get into the mood to read it, click through this nice slide show of photos that ran with the online version of reporter William Wan’s story.
So — why did the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester not get the required consents from Episcopal bishops and diocesan standing committees to become bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan?
The Los Angeles Times has a daily front page feature under the name “Column One.” The column is for “interesting” news and is designed to give people surprising or provocative information.
