The Wall Street Journal had a fascinating feature from Afghanistan last September headlined “A Chaplain and an Atheist Go to War.” The top of the story:
The Army's evangelical atheists?
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A 'Catholic' flight from Mexican altars?
Back in 2006 when the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life rolled out its massive “Spirit and Power” survey — a 10-nation survey of modern Pentecostalism — many of the most stunning statistics in its pages were linked to the rising number of Pentecostal Christians who could be found in Catholic pews and the stunningly high numbers of believers who had left the Church of Rome altogether.
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Pod People: Burning Korans, killing people
In the most recent Crossroads podcast, host Todd Wilken and I discuss media coverage of the Koran burning, changing funeral practices and Confession.
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Death by megaphone in Afghanistan
There he is again. In prime news territory in the New York Times, which offered Terry Jones another chance to speak for himself (while also, interestingly enough, stripping him of “the Rev.” in a violation of Associated Press style on clergy titles).
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Surprise! Jews pick Lutheran college
What makes a story newsworthy? Impact, relevance and timeliness are at the top of the list. But editors also love novelty.
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The unrepentant Terry Jones
Over a week ago, we discussed the relative lack of coverage of a burning of a Koran some days earlier in Florida. The overwhelming response from readers to that post was that they hadn’t even heard about the burning. It was interesting to compare the non-stop, over-the-top coverage from last fall with the more appropriate and restrained coverage in recent weeks.
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Ghosts in Texas rape coverage
Coverage of the 11-year-old girl’s repeated gang rapes in Texas continued this week as 19 boys and men have been charged. Court records suggest that the assaults happened on at least four dates between September and November.
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Another bomb; same song in Pakistan
A long, long time ago — pre-Internet, for heaven’s sake — I had a long conversation with Bill Moyers, then of CBS, about why the mainstream press has so much trouble covering religion. This was one of those occasions in which he used a striking image to describe this problem — that far too many reporters and editors are “tone deaf” to the music of religion.
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Putting the fun in funerals
It probably will not surprise you that I’m about to highlight a story about funerals. As the child of a pastor and an active member of my current congregation, I love such stories. I know that funerals are a huge deal in the life of the church. Funerals get covered in the mainstream media fairly frequently. The deceased has to be unbelievably famous in order to get that coverage, but they are covered. But the typical funeral, the typical gathering of family and friends, is less likely to receive coverage — particularly from the perspective of the survivors.
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