After calling out the New York Times for misreporting several stories, I’m tempted to say the newspaper got religion in one of its latest reports on the collapse of Iraq under the blows of Islamic militants. The report is not flawless, as we’ll see. But it gets maybe a silver medal. It opens with the blend of faith and ferocity we’ve already come to expect from ISIS, the militant army known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: ERBIL,... Read more
MADDIE ASKS: How much of … eastern and western religions have had an influence on the [atheistic Chinese Communist] Party’s ideology? THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS: Not much, on the surface, but there’s obvious affinity with Confucianism that the Communist authorities don’t admit. However — Is Confucianism a “religion” or a mere humanistic philosophy, since it lacks defined gods and supernaturalism? Dr. G. Wright Doyle, director of the scholarly Global China Center, is currently in China researching Maddie’s issue and has... Read more
Let’s flash back for a moment to the press coverage of the dramatic fall of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. I want to start with a topic that is pretty far from the obvious religion-news angles (covered here by our own Jim Davis and at The Federalist by GetReligion alum M.Z. Hemingway) and then work my way back in that direction. So hang in there with me. We will start with political theory, by looking at a passionate Forbes essay... Read more
There’s a healthy dose of religion news on the front page of today’s Los Angeles Times. “God is their fitness co-pilot,” proclaims the print headline on this Column One feature. The online version goes with “Cross training” (get it?). Believe it or not, there’s no mention of that Northwestern University study from a few years ago that prompted Time magazine to report “Why Going to Church Can Make You Fat” and USA Today to suggest “The devil may be in the... Read more
It’s Father’s Day (and I need a nap after the special lunch my wife made), so I’m going to forgo a normal GetReligion critique. Instead, I’m going to point you toward a touching feature about a father of 10, via the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in Georgia: Psalm 127 says a man with many children is like having a quiver full of arrows. The Rev. Andy Merritt and his wife, Kathy, have taken that passage seriously — producing 10 children in their... Read more
I realize that I have written two GetReligion posts (here and then here) about the mainstream press coverage of the life and faith of the late actress Ann B. Davis, who was a friend of mine from my days on the religion beat in Denver. However, I continue to hear from readers who find it amazing that so many journalists spent so much ink on reports about Davis, yet didn’t seem all that interested in her actual life, other than... Read more
Reader beware. A story that is too good to be true is often that, not true. An article in the Huffington Post reporting that a British judge compelled a 13-year-old to undergo an abortion sparked outrage on pro-life blogs and news sites this week. Unfortunately the key claim of the story — what moved this from a tragedy to an outrage — was false. The Huffington Post ran a story on June 9 entitled “High Court Orders 13-Year-Old Girl To Have... Read more
At this point in the growing Iraq crisis, I think it is safe to say that European journalists, in comparison with their American counterparts, are much more comfortable putting the words “caliphate,” “sharia” and “decapitated” at the top of their news reports. Soon to come, bold references to the fate of “apostates” and perhaps even “Christians.” Consider this sprawling headline in The Daily Mail: ISIS butchers leave ‘roads lined with decapitated police and soldiers’: Battle for Baghdad looms as thousands... Read more
There’s analysis, and there’s hack ‘n’ slash. When blindsided by the come-from-behind election of David Brat over Virginia’s longtime congressman Eric Cantor, many mainstream media fell back on the latter. Often with dull, rusty blades. Brat is a (gasp) fiscal conservative, some pundits said. He’s an (gasp #2) evangelical, said others. And a Calvinist. And a Catholic. And still others insinuated that he’s a closet anti-Semite, or his supporters are, or something. Let’s take the last first. In the otherwise... Read more
A burp or a yawn? Either might signal an exiting demon. So say Larry and Marion Pollard, the subjects of a 4,400-word D Magazine profile with the provocative title “The Exorcists Next Door.” When Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher proclaimed the piece a must-read, we knew we needed to check it out. Let’s start at the top: The trees and rolling hills lend a warm, suburban vibe to Marion and Larry Pollard’s West Arlington neighborhood. Shouts of children from a nearby... Read more
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