Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
There are many bright lights on the religion beat but for consistency, you just can’t beat the Public Broadcasting Service’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. The journalists there produce a great show week after week. Readers of this blog would be remiss to not check it out.
How often do you see scripture appropriately quoted in a front-page news article? I was hoping I would see something like this in one of the mid-sized American newspapers before the Christmas season was over. To my pleasant surprise, my own local paper, The Indianapolis Star, on Christmas Day gave its readers an informative, meaningful and insightful news article on how the Christmas holiday season and the current economic downturn is affecting people spiritually.
It’s almost difficult to believe the size and scope of the scandal wrought by Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff. I knew the story had a religion angle because I follow the excellent work of religion reporter Brad Greenberg at the Jewish Journal‘s God Blog. I learned early on from him that Madoff is Jewish and worked with a significant number of Jewish investors and charities.
My high school, started by an Anglican canon and a Jewish atheist, started life blocks from Plymouth Congregational Church, former church of the 19th-century rock star abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher. The same neighborhood houses the Watchtower, ground zero for Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, more recently is home to the roughly 10,000-member Brooklyn Tabernacle.
Considering that the religion beat seems to be suffering with the rest of the media industry, it’s always nice to see a paper take steps to improve its religion coverage and marketing of same.
Planned Parenthood of Indiana has been in the national news lately. The abortion provider’s offering of holiday gift certificates in $25 increments has received the most attention. However, the more important story has the organization appearing to have given council to someone on how to break the state’s law on reporting child sex-abuse.
It’s easy to guess that the financial crisis sweeping the country will affect the bottom line for many, if not most, religious groups.
Earlier this month in the midst of election craziness, The Detroit News took what could have been a simple crime story about a rash of church robberies and interlaced the article with theological themes, historical trends and even sociological explanations.
