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'All the Religion That’s Fit to Print'

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Due to its power and prestige, The New York Times invites criticism; some of it from people of faith who feel the paper fails to give religion its due. But these critics should take note of the Labor Day edition of the Times, which provided plentiful and nuanced coverage of many major religion stories, leading me to suggest that the paper consider temporarily changing its page-one motto to: “All the Religion That’s Fit to Print.”


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How we remember

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One of the threads I rarely see covered in our larger American media outlets is what I’d call a “meta-theme” — the way that religion and politics, an oft-incendiary combo, are twinned in our national history. My colleague Mollie is much more of an expert in this arena than I am, but as a historian’s daughter, I am steeped in the tension between American sacred and secular voices, one that goes back to the Puritans and the Quakers.


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Putting the mental in fundamentalist

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As you would expect, your GetReligionistas have received quite a few breathless emails asking us why this site has had nothing to say about President Barack Hussein Obama’s plans to address the nation’s public-school students about the importance of discipline and education in their lives. Haven’t we noticed all of the protests by parents from sea to shining sea?


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Don't talk to strange preachers

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The arrest of Phillip Garrido last month left a lot of questions unanswered. How had he kept the 11-year-old girl he kidnapped captive for 18 years? How had he fathered two daughters with her and why had his wife agreed to keep the three in a backyard shed? And what was the role of religion in all of this?


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To do: "Sonogram, funeral plans"

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There are two kinds of people in this world who cannot avoid wrestling with the term “theodicy” — clergy (especially hospital chaplains) and reporters who are committed to covering religion news.


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Il cavaliere's cliff-hanger

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I’ve been pondering why it’s important, as we GetReligionistas do from time to time, to venture beyond our shores to either see how American media cover stories in foreign countries, or the diffferent ways in which foreign journalists cover religion through the lens of their own cultures. We love to make merry with the British press and their sometimes outrageous tendency to make a lot out of a very little and for sometimes dancing on the cliff of truth — but do we understand why? It’s not only that the British market is competitive — the way the Brits cover religion says something about English culture.


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