A quick, shallow visit to Mount Athos

Last updated on: October 17, 2012 at 10:58 am By tmatt

Few subjects inspire the whole “National Geographic visits the strange natives” school of Godbeat journalism quicker than monasticism. This is especially true when journalists attempt to write about a place as genuinely strange, in a good sense of the word, and other worldly as Mount Athos, the stunningly beautiful peninsula in northeastern Greece that the Orthodox call “the holy mountain.” The key to writing about Mount Athos is to get all of the facts right, especially when dealing with issues... Read more

Pod people: saying goodbye

Last updated on: October 13, 2012 at 9:49 am By Sarah Pulliam Bailey

Friends of GetReligion, it is time for me to tip my hat and say farewell. It’s been a good ride, three years of working with excellent colleagues. I’ll give one final post with some reflections, but first, in my last podcast, I tried to address a few posts that have encapsulated some of the issues GetReligion regularly addresses. Ultimately, we hope to help reporters understand better how to cover the religion beat, a challenging beat for reporters to cover. Recently,... Read more

Yes, you can ask tough questions of pro-choice candidates

Last updated on: October 12, 2012 at 3:28 pm By mollie

Last night was the only Vice Presidential debate we’ll get in this cycle. Almost all of that debate and attendant media coverage is outside the purview of this blog. But right there at the end, the moderator got into religion. Although the answers the candidates gave were interesting, let’s focus simply on the questions from journalist Martha Raddatz: RADDATZ: I want to — we’re — we’re almost out of time here. RADDATZ: I want to move on, and I want... Read more

Baylor grad pushes app for cheaters?

Last updated on: October 11, 2012 at 4:43 pm By tmatt

A long, long time ago, I was a journalism major at Baylor University, which, as you may know, is the world’s largest Baptist university. Baylor is located in Waco, Texas, which many folks in the Lone Star state like to call “Jerusalem on the Brazos.” It didn’t take long, as a young journalist, to realize that stories linking Baylor to anything having to do with sin and sex were like journalistic catnip in mainstream news newsrooms. Even in the world... Read more

The anti-Semitic focus of French terrorism

Last updated on: October 11, 2012 at 11:58 am By mollie

You may recall media coverage regarding a kosher market in a suburb of Paris that was bombed last month. There’s been a development in the case. Here’s the New York Times piece “French Investigators Find Bomb-Making Materials“: French police officers investigating a group of young Islamic radicals have uncovered bomb-making materials and weapons, the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are clearly and objectively facing an extremely dangerous terrorist cell,” Mr. Molins said in the... Read more

ABC on Jesus the sky pixie

Last updated on: October 11, 2012 at 9:44 am By geoconger

Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live! These words close Vladimir Mayakovsky’s 1924 poem “Vladimir Ilych Lenin“.” Written in the months after Lenin’s death, “VI Lenin” is the greatest of Mayakovsky’s works and the apex of the socialist realist style of poetry that flowered in Russia in the decade after the Revolution. “VI Lenin” is also the template through which some in the press construct the person and works of Jesus Christ For many members of the chattering classes Jesus... Read more

WPost further expands borders of postmodern Catholicism

Last updated on: October 10, 2012 at 2:49 pm By tmatt

For several decades now, people linked to Jewish institutions have debated whether it is possible to be a Jew and, let’s say, a Southern Baptist, or a Buddhist, at the same time. This is even the kind of question that has made it to high courts in Israel. Not that long ago, journalists in the Pacific Northwest were faced with this question: Can one be an Episcopal priest and a Muslim at the same time? It’s hard to say whether... Read more

Man plots to blow up 48 Oklahoma churches

Last updated on: October 10, 2012 at 10:13 am By mollie

Frequently when we read stories about lone wolf terrorist attacks, there’s the specter of mental illness. And this week’s story about a man held in a plot to bomb 48 churches in Oklahoma is no exception. Here’s how the Chicago Tribune put it: By the time Gregory Weiler II was in his late teens, his family said, the Elk Grove Village native was well down a path toward destruction. Both his mother and father had committed suicide before he was... Read more

About that Archbishop Nienstedt conversion quote (updated)

Last updated on: October 9, 2012 at 2:22 pm By tmatt

It’s time for another update from the “framing religion as politics” beat, care of The Star Tribune, up in Minnesota. This latest same-sex marriage story is pretty standard fare — Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt keeps talking about doctrine, the newspaper frames everything as political ambition — except for two paragraphs that raise interesting questions. One of the questions is legal, in a church-state sense, and the other concerns a misquote that should be corrected (that is, if theology means... Read more