I’m frequently pondering what makes news and what doesn’t. Take a gander at this Google News page for information about Pastor Saeed Abedini. It’s not that you can’t find plenty of news about this Iranian-born American Christian pastor who is currently imprisoned in Iran. It’s just intriguing where that news is. Abedini has been held in Iran since the summer of 2012 and imprisoned since September. Just a few weeks ago, he was reportedly sentenced to eight years in prison... Read more
The Media Research Center found this clip but I thought readers here might get a kick out of it, too. You really need to watch the exchange to get the full effect but here’s how one side posted the relevant passage from an interview of one of the Carnival cruise passengers who recently disembarked: NBC News’s Mark Potter (Reporting during the Ed Show on MSNBC) JENKINS: No, but one thing I do want to say that really made a huge... Read more
So many details will sound terribly familiar. At the heart of the news story is a powerful religious patriarch, surrounded by disciples who view him with a reverence that helps support an iron-clad climate of silence and secrecy. In this case, however, the leader is Joshu Sasaki Roshi, one of the most famous Zen Buddhist monks in the world and a teacher who has had a tremendous impact in American elite culture. Now, it is being alleged (and in some... Read more
Gentle readers, one cannot make some of this stuff up. So, everyone knows that Pope Benedict XVI is elderly and has physical ailments. So how tired and elderly is this man? Read the following passage from The Washington Post carefully. The story offers details from his dramatic final dramatic Mass, as pope, at St. Peter’s Basilica. Wait for it. The pope has cited his failing body and mind to explain his decision, and … he appeared fragile, if determined, while... Read more
Last month, we covered the perennial problem of why the March for Life gets the coverage it does (or doesn’t get the coverage it doesn’t get). And various journalists responded that, well, the March for Life isn’t big news, particularly after 40 years, and that the crowds aren’t that big of a deal when compared to a weekend of sporting events. One comment, for instance: If pretty much the same people do the same thing year after year after year,... Read more
The Tampa Bay Times broke big news on its front page the other day. According to the Florida newspaper, there are 100 million evangelicals in the United States. Amazingly, all of them have decided to support immigration reform. Who knew evangelicals were so like-minded and all willing to follow the same unnamed leaders? But I digress. Again. Let’s start at the top of the story, which also ran in the Miami Herald: WASHINGTON — I was a stranger and you invited... Read more
This week’s celebration of Ash Wednesday has prompted several stories built around the theme of “ashes to go” — a recent phenomena of liturgical Protestant church ministers — (I’ve seen reports of Methodist, Episcopal and Lutheran clergy involved) imposing ashes on the foreheads of individuals in public places outside of the confines of worship. (Yes, “imposing” is the correct verb to describe the act of a cleric daubing an ash covered thumb on the forehead of a penitent. The rite... Read more
On one level, I cannot believe that the folks at Religion News Service thought to get involved in doing a serious survey about the religious ghosts in Valentine’s Day sex. However, I am glad that they did. Honest. Stranger yet, it’s pretty obvious to me that the RNS team needs to do some more digging into stories that might spin out of this research — especially the stories linked to two of the most important niches in the religious landscape... Read more
Yesterday morning a Lutheran friend sent me an email joking that he was “off Team Turkson” on account of Turkson campaigning for the job of pope. That would be Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson. Now, I realize just how unseemly it is for a churchman to campaign for any job but this may be an unfair reading of an interview Turkson gave in the Telegraph. Some media outlet called The Week pretty much just recycled someone else’s work into... Read more
Having apparently exhausted discussion of one octogenarian, The Huffington Post appears to have turned its attention to a second aged religious leader this week and published a hit piece on Pat Robertson. “Pat Robertson Claims Islam Is ‘Demonic’ And ‘Not A Religion’ But An Economic System” is a lazy, badly written story. What it reports is not news, and the tone it uses to report this non-news story is unprofessional. Let me say at the outset that I am not... Read more
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