There’s this New York Times feature called “Room for Debate.” The name alone, and its presence on the opinion pages, led me to believe that maybe there would be, I don’t know, a debate between the featured participants. The topic yesterday was “same-sex families,” the hook a new movie about a lesbian couple and their children. But there was no debate that I saw. Featured opinions ranged from those of Dan Savage to those of an Evergreen College professor. It was just a given that society should have no qualms about same-sex parenting. The end. The ruling class marches on.
Got news? Supreme prayer files
It’s difficult to understand why only FOX News Radio and World Net Daily thought this was news. I gave it a few days to incubate. To no avail.
Homey church
Believe it or not, not all evangelicals attend a megachurch. In fact, if you check out this top graph from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, you’ll see that 59 percent of churches nationwide have an attendance of seven to 99 people.
Murdoch meets Oprah, kills Beliefnet?
Today is a big day in the ongoing story about the status of Beliefnet.com and what that says about the world of mainstream religion news and commentary.
A cut and paste fail
Whenever I come across a particularly puffy story, I might say it reads like a press release. But a reader sent in a story that really was just a slightly modified press release.
Totally secular right to die
A billboard campaign orchestrated by a right-to-die group remains alive and well, but it already has gone straight to heaven.
No ghost in this sex-ed story!
Let’s face it. There are hot-button topics in the American public square that, in even in the context of our increasingly post-Christian culture, are going to raise religion flags.
Burying the Wright stuff?
Remember the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright? It’s been a few years since the White House campaign, so let’s review. Wright was President Obama’s pastor who made controversial remarks in his sermons, such as suggesting the U.S. should be damned. Obama gave a speech on race and religion and eventually broke ties with Wright during the 2008 campaign.
Faith and the 'One and Done' tradition
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why so many mainstream journalists do not want to write about the practical implications of the choices made by liberal religious believers and even those of skeptics. While coverage of religious conservatives (much of it inaccurate or simply simplistic) consumes oceans of ink, the fine details of the lives of liberal believers are rarely examined.
