Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
In the past decade or so, the mainstream press has offered waves of news features that have attempted to explain the state of mind in our nation’s growing Islamic population. The need for these stories is obvious, although most of them end up presenting a single, unified Muslim community that does not in fact exist.
Sometimes we note stories about natural disasters or other catastrophes that are bizarre for how obviously they avoid discussion of religion.
As I watched CNN’s Election Night coverage last week, my GetReligion antenna immediately shot up when I heard the first part of Florida Sen.-elect Marco Rubio’s victory speech:
With the election finally over, I’m slowly emerging from the bunker at my newspaper in Washington, D.C. I work for an editorial page, and while I don’t strictly cover politics, obviously it has dominated the news for the last few months. I’ve been wanting to discuss something here for a while, but I’m just now getting around to it.
Don’t you just love the religion beat? I have never understood the complaint that religion news is boring territory. It seems like every time I turn around this beat serves of some new and fascinating twist, often with either joyful or distressing overtones.
A few months ago, we discussed Confucianism’s comeback in China. Now the New York Times magazine considers the rise of Taoism as part of a broader religious revival in the Communist country. Ian Johnson’s article seems pretty thorough, but it also feels a little light on China’s tense relationship with religion.
Remember a few months ago when every other religion story was about the mosque to be built in Manhattan near Ground Zero? What happened with that whole thing?
As I mentioned the other day, the Mattinglys of Ferndale, MD, received waves of really strange robo telephone calls before the election — since one adult in the house is a registered Republican and the other is a Democrat. We got ‘em all, folks.
Last month a conflict erupted between Catholics and Jews, and it has gotten a good deal of attention in publications focusing on those community. But it still seems to be a complete non-issue for the mainstream media.
