Preach, Brother Leitch, Preach!

Last updated on: May 11, 2013 at 3:36 pm By mollie

Please check out this column from my favorite sportswriter Will Leitch. (And I’m not just saying that because he’s a die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fan like myself.) His latest piece for Sports on Earth, headlined “Thank God for Homers,” takes on the curious way that some other sportswriters handle Josh Hamilton’s religious utterances. It’s basically a public service announcement to sports writers. But it works as a PSA for all writers, particularly those of us from different religious cultures than... Read more

Asking the Boy Scout questions that matter the most

Last updated on: May 10, 2013 at 11:02 am By tmatt

If you know anything about the politics of gay rights, you know that there is absolutely nothing that the Boy Scouts of American can do right now that will not lead to major divisions in their organization. The key force that will cause a future split is, of course, the deep divide among mainstream religious groups on the moral status of homosexual behavior. There is no safe ground for the Boy Scouts, none whatsoever. It’s very clear where American public... Read more

Innumeracy on the Godbeat

Last updated on: May 9, 2013 at 4:06 pm By Joe Carter

In the summer of 1992, toy-company Mattel was criticized when their new Teen Talk Barbie included in her list of stock phrases, “Math class is tough!” The company offered to replace the doll for disgruntled customers, but they could have saved both time and money by simply rebranding the dolls as Journalist Barbie. The fact that math class was tough is the reason many of us (major exception is math whiz M.Z. Hemingway) ended up in the media, working with... Read more

Let’s revisit Benghazi and the 1st Amendment

Last updated on: May 10, 2013 at 9:33 am By mollie

If you didn’t get a chance to watch the Benghazi whistleblowers testify before Congress yesterday, you should. Part of what made it so interesting was how dramatically their testimony contradicted the official line received and published by the media in previous months. It was also just a good lesson in how bureaucracy works and how competing interests can impede the search for truth or justice. You may recall that “What difference, at this point, does it make?” was a main... Read more

Surprised by sin – African clerical celibacy

Last updated on: May 10, 2013 at 6:38 am By geoconger

Bishop: “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones” Curate: “Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!” “True Humility” by George du Maurier, in Punch, 1895. There is much to praise in the Los Angeles Times article “Uganda priest ostracized for publicizing sexual abuse”. The May 4 article addresses the question of sexual misconduct by Roman Catholic clergy in Africa – – child abuse and violations of the vow of celibacy. And it... Read more

O ye gods! WPost blazes trail in AP heresy (updated)

Last updated on: May 9, 2013 at 1:13 pm By tmatt

A reading, according to the Stylebook of the Associated Press. Let us attend. gods and goddesses Capitalize God in references to the deity of all monotheistic religions. Capitalize all noun references to the deity: God the Father, Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, etc. … Lowercase gods and goddesses in reference to the deities of polytheistic religions. Lowercase god, gods and goddesses in references to false gods: He made money his god. That is a pretty clear set of guidelines, methinks. Thus,... Read more

God’s role in Mark Sanford’s redemption story

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 3:30 pm By Bobby Ross Jr.

God — and South Carolina voters — decided Tuesday to give disgraced former Gov. Mark Sanford a second chance. At least that’s the impression left by news coverage of the state’s most famous adulterer, who won back his old seat in Congress with 54 percent of the vote. The war-size headline on the front page of The State in Columbia, S.C.: SANFORD WINS REDEMPTION The Associated Press used a similar headline: MARK SANFORD REDEEMS CAREER, HEADING TO CONGRESS God figured heavily... Read more

Media continues to ‘Gosnell’ abortion coverage. Why?

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 12:51 pm By mollie

This blog played a bit of a role in highlighting Gosnelling, the media practice of ignoring or downplaying politically inconvenient abortion news (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). It wasn’t great prior to that incident, but the mainstream media has an even worse credibility problem when it comes to reporting on abortion news. So I’d hoped we’d see some efforts to improve it. And we are. There has been,... Read more

Hey! So who is calling the new pope ‘unorthodox’?

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 9:45 am By tmatt

So, a faithful GetReligion reader was working his way through a story printed by The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., when a most unorthodox turn of phrase reared up and slapped him in his Catholic face. The story focused on the fact that the sudden death of the local Catholic shepherd, Bishop Joseph McFadden, was going to provide Pope Francis his first opportunity to oversee the full process of selecting a new diocesan leader. The outcome would offer the experts another... Read more

So, what do Southern Baptists have to do to get some ink?

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 5:14 am By Joe Carter

A couple of years ago the Southern Baptist Convention explored the option of changing their name to better reflect the national and international nature of the denomination. I thought at the time that it might be helpful to change the name to the “The Episcopal Church” so that the national news media would finally acknowledge the massive SBC’s existence. Well, tmatt once offered some helpful theories for explaining why Episcopalians get so much ink by the elite press, but I’ve... Read more