Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
If you are going to read the latest New York Times piece on candidate Rick Santorum and the “Catholic vote,” your first task is to keep reading — past the headline, the one that simply says: “Santorum Fails to Capture Catholic Vote.”
It didn’t take me very long, after I arrived in Charlotte, N.C., to get a bit frustrated with the leaders of that city’s powerful African-American churches.
In the lead-up to Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to Mexico, news reports were oddly obsessed with a sort of popularity contest between the current and preceding pope. We kept joking about the secret “enthusiasm meters” reporters must be consulting to come up with stories such as this one from December:
The Guardian has a really interesting story (“Cross and bed found in Anglo-Saxon grave shed new light on ‘dark ages’“) about how Cambridge archaeologists are thrilled by their recent discovery of a 7th century grave with body of young woman on a bed with an ornate gold cross:
An article from the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times has left me perplexed. On one level the story entitled “Punk riffs take on God and Putin” is a silly piece of journalism.
Anyone who has followed American politics since, oh, roughly 1973, knows that one of most consistent patterns, election after election, is this: The more people attend worship services, the more likely they are to vote for candidates who are moral and cultural conservatives. This is a clear pattern among white voters and if you are looking for conservative voters among African-American and Latino voters, you are most likely to find them — as a vocal minority — in their churches.
It is impossible to cover sports without, somehow, studying sports. It’s impossible to cover business without — formally or informally — studying business. Ditto for politics, the arts, science, etc., etc.
