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When it comes to Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his views on religion in the public square, I’ve had my own harsh words but I really had trouble with a news article I read earlier this week from the Houston Chronicle.
Well, it’s been about a year and a half since that first meeting in a Thai restaurant in Union Station in which I met with a GetReligion reader named Eric Marrapodi to talk about what seemed, at first, to be a logical, yet still audacious concept. Marrapodi is a CNN pro and he wanted to create a serious religion news and commentary weblog at CNN. Thus, he wanted to pick my brain a bit.
In a way, that recent New York Times essay about the lives of Brother Julian and Brother Adrian Riester — twin Franciscan friars who died, on the same day, at age 92 — seems like the perfect example of a religion story that gets it, that shows faith as a powerful factor in the lives of these intriguing people.
The Burlington Free Press has an interesting story with “Fair Haven’s censorship of valedictorian’s speech on God reflects church-state tensions.” But I’m not sure that headline is accurate of the situation. It is an accurate summary of the story, however. It begins:
Please understand that I am not saying that it is poorly reported and written. I would not be in a position to say that. In fact, I do not believe that.
It’s no secret that GOP leading candidate Mitt Romney is Mormon, and reporters appear so enamored with his faith that they forget to cover the other candidates’ religious affiliations.
A few readers sent along a Detroit Free Press story by religion reporter Niraj Warikoo about the American Catholic Council, a group of reform-minded Catholics that held its first national conference in Detroit this week.
Back in my days as a full-time reporter on the religion beat, I had my share of arguments with editors in which I attempted to convince them that (a) worship attendance is much higher among their readers (and former readers) than among newsroom personnel and (b) that religious people care deeply about seemingly ordinary issues linked to life in their congregations.
