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Forgiveness, redemption and transformation stories tend to fascinate us. Often those themes don’t appear out of thin air, though. Sometimes there’s a life-changing moment, perhaps a conversion or decision. The Associated Press has a fascinating piece on a reformed skinhead who endured years of agony to remove tattoos, a story that touches on race, belief, family, recovery and more.
Just yesterday, I praised a member of the Washington Post team for weaving valid religious content into the obituary of a former Washington, D.C., police official whose life led him from trailblazing work as an advocate of racial equality into a remarkable final act as a Catholic monk and priest. The story showed unusual grace in portraying the themes that were woven through the life of the man who died as Father James Murray.
Yesterday we looked at the Washington Post‘s “fact check” about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s support of eugenics. In that fact check, Sanger’s distasteful views were contextualized and she was put forth as a “racial pioneer.” What’s more, the person who mentioned her racism was labeled not just a liar but the worst kind of liar.
Back in my reporting days, there was no assignment that I feared more than writing a simple obituary. I know many other reporters who feel the same way.
Get ready GetReligion readers for a new round of righteous indignation, moral cowardice and sloppy reporting about Islam. There will be a cartoon of Mohammad — quelle horreur — on the cover of the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo. The magazine is set for distribution on newsstands today, 2 Nov 2011.
We’ve been living under the “fact check” era at newspapers for three or four years now. I tend to agree with the Wall Street Journal‘s James Taranto when he writes:
“Stop the presses!” I joked three months ago when I critiqued a USA Today story on the years-old practice of churches renting public school facilities on Sundays.
As the old saying goes, if you want to blow up a church all you really need to do is change the hymnal. You could say that, and much more, about efforts to change the texts at the heart of life in all liturgical churches.
On Sunday, my congregation celebrated the Reformation rather gloriously. As one might expect for the day one commemorates the good news of the salvation of all sinners by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone, our pastor preached an amazing sermon. The organist pulled out all the stops. We even did the German Mass, which includes many, many hymns. But we didn’t sing “Salvation Unto Us Has Come.” And this disappointed me.
