For three months now, members of my parish just south of Baltimore have been praying for the release of some of our sisters in the faith in Syria, along with two kidnapped bishops. Thus, I was thankful when the news spread recently that they had been released. I was also glad to see that their release was covered by The New York Times. It felt like a nod of respect for an oppressed minority religious group in a suffering land.... Read more
“Journalism is the first rough draft of history,” according to a famous quote by publisher Philip Graham of the Washington Post. If so, shouldn’t journalists have a sense of history? Especially when the history stretches over centuries? Like when Reuters reports on a recent conference of Orthodox patriarchs. It starts out OK, then degrades quickly: Patriarchs of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians ended a rare summit in Istanbul on Sunday calling for a peaceful end to the crisis in... Read more
Good Episcopalian that I am, I am ready to believe the worst about the Catholic Church. Perhaps it was my upbringing, the culture in which I was formed, the schools where I was educated, my crowd. But accusations hurled against the Catholic Church of corruption, cruelty, mendacity — of being downright un-American –stick in the back of my mind. “Why not?” I was also reared in Philadelphia and as a boy worshiped at the altar of the Eagles and Phillies.... Read more
Sherman, please set the controls of the GetReligion WABAC (pronounced “wayback”) machine for the year 1980. Our destination is Denver, because it’s time for another episode of Improbable United Methodist History. Yes, it was in 1980 — note that this was one-third of a century ago — that Bishop Melvin Wheatley, Jr., of the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church announced (wait for it) that he was openly rejecting his church’s teaching that homosexual acts were “incompatible... Read more
Maybe you’ve noticed, but your normally friendly GetReligionistas get grumpy when newspapers write one-sided stories. We might even go so far as to use terms such as “advocacy journalism.” Three times in the last few weeks — here, here and here — we raised a stink over The Dallas Morning News’ inability to find anyone to quote concerning the United Methodists’ stance on homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching.” Well, a major story on that same topic broke Monday in The... Read more
I often ding mainstream media for lapses on religious doctrine. I also criticize them for ignorance of legalities that deal with religion. The story of Mark Zmuda, the gay administrator who was fired from a Catholic school, gives me a twofer. The Seattle-based educator says Eastside Catholic School didn’t tell him not to marry his partner. He also accuses the Archdiocese of Seattle of pressuring the school to run him out. Says TV station King 5: Mark Zmuda filed a... Read more
Long ago, I was talking to an inner-city pastor (a priest, actually) in Denver who made a very interesting, insightful and depressing observation about his work. One thing that African-American clergy in major cities have to live with is the reality that — as a rule — there are only three things they can do that will ever be seen as newsworthy by their local news media. They can: (1) Make a political statement of some kind. Everyone knows that... Read more
ELIZABETH ASKS: Isn’t it possible for the Pope to be Jewish? And if the Catholic Church someday elected a Jewish pope would that most likely help or harm Catholic-Jewish relations? THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS: Timely topic one year after the breakthrough election of the first Western Hemisphere pope, Francis of Argentina, who succeeded the first two non-Italian popes in centuries. The questioner notes a bit by Jay Leno, late of “The Tonight Show,” who told passersby the new pope was... Read more
From way down under, the North Island of New Zealand to be precise, comes a charming example of how to botch a story on the Anglican Communion. Reporters please note … while they may dress alike and their liturgy may sound alike, and they even have similar job titles … the Anglican Communion is not an English speaking version of the Catholic Church. Sure there are Anglicans who prattle on about being Catholic and take umbrage at the suggestion they... Read more
“Why does the press soft pedal links between terrorism and Islam?” was the question under discussion in this week’s edition of Crossroads, a Get Religion podcast produced in conjunction with Lutheran Public Radio’s Issues Etc host Todd Wilken. “I don’t know why, but it does” — pretty well sums up the show. Last week’s Kunming terror attack, which left 29 dead and almost 150 injured, was our point of entry into the debate. In the media coverage of the Kunming... Read more
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