Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Occasionally a piece sits for a week or two before one of us realizes it needs to be addressed. Straight from that guilt file folder, we have a New York Times front-page article on pastors who struggle to find jobs because they are single.
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the professionals who run many crucial mainstream newsrooms seem to be throwing up their hands, editorially speaking, when it comes to accurately describing the cracks and divisions inside the complex world of Islam?
Before I made my recent trip to Israel, as an Act for Israel media fellow, I was excited to learn more about how religion informs politics in the region. Many of my friends and acquaintances cautioned me that religion doesn’t play as big a role as one might think. I now realize that all they meant was that the story is much more complicated than just about religious differences.
In this day of tight budgets and a shrinking supply of space in major newspapers, it says something when the editors of the Washington Post devote a giant chunk of A1 turf to a story about a church controversy. This was certainly the case with the recent story that ran under the headline, “Vienna Presbyterian Church seeks forgiveness, redemption in wake of abuse scandal.”
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:
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.
In the most recent Crossroads podcast, host Todd Wilken and I discuss media coverage of the Koran burning, changing funeral practices and Confession.
