Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
It would be hard to imagine anything more controversial, in the American of 2012, than the concept that certain sinful lifestyle behaviors can lead to people being condemned by God to spend eternity in hell. For starters, this would mean that the word “sin” can be applied to behaviors other than those judged intolerant by the editorial page board at The New York Times.
I have a friend who once worked for Time (actually, several people fit under that umbrella) who once made a very interesting observation about the state of foreign news in that newsweekly, which was once famous for its excellent, sweeping coverage of world affairs.
I was taping the Crossroads podcast earlier and host Todd Wilken asked me something about why reporters were mishandling the news that Senate candidate Richard Mourdock believes even a human life conceived in rape can be a âgift from God.” I was kind of at a loss. I reject the idea, advanced by some critics, that it’s just partisan bias or an attempt to help President Barack Obama in the final days of his campaign. But the coverage was so over-the-top, it was hard to defend at all.
Seventy years after the Holocaust, Germany has constructed the first monument honoring the half million gypsies murdered in the Holocaust.
Remember when pickles, buttered buns and fried chicken filets were all we could talk about over the summer?
For starters, as a culturally conservative Democrat who loved his years in Tennessee (and plans to return to the Volunteer state someday), let me be the first to say that reading a Washington Post Style section piece about the anti-U.S. Senate campaign of Mark Clayton was kind of a guilty pleasure. It was like sort of like watching a figure-eight track stock car race in slow motion.
The whole point of this website, since day one, has been to help mainstream journalists “get religion.” So I guess I should not be utterly disgusted and disappointed by so many reporters’ coverage of the big Richard Mourdock-theodicy kerfuffle right now. Instead I should view this as a great teaching opportunity.
It’s a question that journalists debate from time to time in major newsrooms: To what degree are obituaries news stories?
“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,”a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong.Â
