I’ve done a couple of posts (here and here) on the Boy Scouts of America’s consideration of lifting its ban on openly gay members and adult leaders. The New York Times reported today on a new development: A leak from inside the Boy Scouts of America last month about discussions on possibly ending the group’s national ban on gay members changed the debate itself by creating an impression that change was imminent, according to scouting officials and taped comments from a meeting... Read more
The New York Times has published a letter of reference for the Rev. Joshua DuBois, President Barack Obama’s director of the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Unless I am much mistaken, the theme of “White House Director of Faith-Based Office Is Leaving His Post” is to help the 30-year old Pentecostal minister launch his private sector career following his resignation from his White House post this week. I would be hard pressed to describe the story on page A17... Read more
Let’s face it, the edgy folks at the Westboro Baptist Church are not easy to cover in a fair and accurate manner. You think? However, did I miss something? When did the Westboro people join a liturgical church or pack up and move to Louisiana (or maybe Canada)? What am I talking about? Find yourself a decent online dictionary and look up the word “parish.” You’ll usually find something that reads like this: par·ish … n. 1. a. An administrative... Read more
There is nothing more fun about being a confessional Lutheran than explaining our position on syncretistic worship to those who aren’t. I kid, it’s not fun at all. See, the world embraces syncretism. The general idea is, it goes without saying, that all religions are good and valid and different paths to understanding the same truth. If you don’t ascribe to that notion, you are probably a bad guy. Civil religion has many components but one aspect is that it... Read more
Let’s face it: Most of the mainstream media coverage of the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to delay a vote on possibly accepting gay Scouts and adult leaders was pretty ho-hum. Here’s how The New York Times boiled down Wednesday’s development in a 65-word lede (sorry, I could not resist counting): The Boy Scouts of America, which confirmed last summer its policy barring openly gay people from participation, then said last week that it was reconsidering the ban, announced Wednesday that it... Read more
So, friends and neighbors, if we are going to do some intense navel-gazing here at GetReligion (nine years into this project), then I will assume that it’s fair game to briefly pay some attention to a different set of navels. So a blogger named Baldur Bjarnason decided to do a bit of reflecting on the lessons he learned about online writing during 2012. All of his reflections were worth reading, but I was especially struck by his blunt thoughts on... Read more
I want to talk about media coverage of the man who was convicted today of shooting up the Family Research Council. But let’s first go back to the horrible story about the murderous rampage that one disturbed individual went on in Arizona. The mainstream media narrative, initially, was that a right wing Tea Party supporter acting under the orders of Sarah Palin had assassinated a sitting member of Congress. Precisely none of that was true or even close to true,... Read more
Here’s a proposition for GetReligion readers: The quality of a news article should be measured not by how well it is written, but by how well it is read. The reporter’s task is to provide facts, context, and balanced interpretation of an event. However, if the reader is not able to grasp the meaning or context of a story the work, while being technically proficient, is unsuccessful as journalism. The reader, then, is as important as the writer in the... Read more
If I weren’t so sick I would have already done this but in the days to come, I hope to mark our anniversary by reviewing some of my work over 2012. But if there’s one thing I already know, it’s that I wish we’d focus more on what news isn’t covered as opposed to critiquing what’s there. When you look at some of the reader reflections Bobby solicited in recent days, many are wondering how wise it is to focus... Read more
Every now and then, someone sends your GetReligionistas the URL for a story that is simply too good, too interesting to post right away. The problem is that it’s hard to know what to write, when dealing with one of those stunning long reads that reads like the summary of a 12-hour documentary series, with all of the imagery playing on a big screen in your head. That was certainly the case with the recent Smithsonian piece by Mike Dash... Read more
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