Mark Antony: Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him; The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones, So let it be with Caesar … Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Act 3, Scene 2. Should we bury the New York Times today, or praise it for reporting on the resurgence of Calvinism? Mind you, the Times does not have the story wrong, but it’s... Read more
Regular readers will know that I have been arguing, for quite some time now, that it’s hard to believe that anyone would try to write the story of the Baylor Bears football team, and the story of Head Coach Art Briles in particular, without getting into all of that Baptist stuff. How do you not even mention the faith angle woven into the fabric of this particular educational institution? Well, the long-read pros at the ESPN.com feature site, Grantland, clearly... Read more
Here’s a shocker, but not really. More Democrats than Republicans believe in evolution, or so says a survey from the Pew Research Center. Overall, Pew says: …six-in-ten Americans (60%) say that ‘humans and other living things have evolved over time,’ while a third (33%) reject the idea of evolution, saying that ‘humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.’ The share of the general public that says that humans have evolved over... Read more
With but a few exceptions, the “Francis is nicer than Benedict” meme continues to entrance the Anglophone press. It appears that many who were once hostile to the Catholic Church have been encouraged to see in the new pontiff a reflection of their own social and political desires. Some of these assertions about what the pope believes and what he will do as head of the Catholic Church have bordered on the fantastic. In choosing the pope as its “person... Read more
Journalists are rarely true prophets, but they often try to look into the future and see what they want to see — often with the help of long-time sources on one side of an issue who are also anxious to see what they want to see. The sources for these wish-fulfillment stories are real. The quotes are real and almost always valid. The issue addressed in a trial-balloon story of this kind may be timely. However, it is crucial to... Read more
What she said. Last summer, I did a GetReligion post titled “WPost: Virginia law highlights stupidity of home-schooling.” In that post, I characterized as “lousy journalism” the Post’s 2,500-word report on a Virginia religious exemption that allows families to opt entirely out of public education: The Post takes the absolute worst-case scenario — a family that goes the home-schooling route and apparently flubs it — and uses it as the overarching lens through which to view the issue. That’s unfortunate. And biased. And bad journalism.... Read more
Believe it or not, I come not to bury the Great Gray Lady but to praise her. Before pushing the button that dropped the famed crystal ball in New York City’s Times Square to ring in 2014, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued an eleventh-hour ruling that blocked a requirement of the nation’s new health-care law. As The New York Times reports: WASHINGTON — In temporarily blocking enforcement of the part of President Obama’s health care law that requires many employers to provide health... Read more
Here’s a safe prediction for 2014: Look for another year with tough culture wars cases — whether from courthouses in Utah or your local Christian university or parachurch ministry — rolling toward the church-state crossroads at the U.S. Supreme Court. If that’s the case, journalists will continue to face a numbing barrage of stories in which they will be challenged to accurately and fairly report the views of activists on both the religious left and Religious Right. Yeah, right. With... Read more
THE GUY EXPLAINS: Lacking a specific question from a reader, The Guy takes on his own chosen topic — aspects of time’s passage in world religion. The commonly observed times have notably religious origins. Years (e.g. 2014) are counted from an ancient and inaccurate guess on when Jesus Christ was born. Non-Christians often designate years as C.E. (“Common Era”) instead of A.D. (“Anno Domini” meaning “Year of the Lord”). Our Gregorian Calendar is a reform ordered by Pope Gregory XIII... Read more
News stories blending the miraculous with Christmas aren’t difficult to find: families reunited, poor children receiving presents, the homeless fed. A common denominator, though, is usually a denomination, most likely a Christian one. After all, it’s the Christians who connected charity to the whole thing to begin with, right? Well, things apparently are different in Chickasha, Oklahoma. While I fear to step onto the home turf of Sooner GetReligion duo Bobby and Tamie Ross, tread I must. The Chickasha Express-News reported a”Christmas... Read more
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