The Washington Post ran a piece from Religion News Service with the headline:
News Corp. discovers the atonement is child abuse
Did you know the atonement was a form of divine child abuse? Spend some time in the more recherche corners of academic theology and you will come across this theory. The 1989 essay “For God So Loved the World?” by feminist liberation theologians Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker popularized the phrase that has since filtered down to the popular press.
Calm down about the Vatican and James Bond Skyfall
It was three years ago that I read a really interesting story in the Christian Science Monitor about why the Vatican’s “famously staid semi-official mouthpiece” was suddenly doing movie reviews. The reporter explained that Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the paper to discuss cultural issues.
Here I stand: Martin Luther on film
So while the rest of you are focused on Halloween, we Lutherans are busy celebrating Reformation Day. To be sure, some churches moved their celebrations to earlier in the month or last Sunday, but my congregation is keeping it real with services at 7:00 PM tonight.
Pod people: Theodicy, pinnochios and the war on women
Last week was not one of the best for the mainstream media. I just wrote a lengthy screed about how awful the coverage, or the lack thereof, was about an Indiana Senate candidate, the administration’s handling of a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists in Libya and a so-called “war on women.” You know which one didn’t receive much coverage from most outlets and which ones did. And you can hear me talk about it on this week’s Crossroads podcast.
Media embarrassingly ill-equipped to cover rape, theodicy
The whole point of this website, since day one, has been to help mainstream journalists “get religion.” So I guess I should not be utterly disgusted and disappointed by so many reporters’ coverage of the big Richard Mourdock-theodicy kerfuffle right now. Instead I should view this as a great teaching opportunity.
The Sun mourns death of a liberal priest
It’s a question that journalists debate from time to time in major newsrooms: To what degree are obituaries news stories?
Galling MSM abortion extremism double standards
There are so many stories related to the media’s poor coverage of abortion that I couldn’t begin to catch up. I’ve wanted to write about what it means that the media always refer to abortion in “restrictive” rather than “protective” language. See, for example, here and here.
AP knows what the Pope really thinks
I was at a meeting of a journalism fellowship program I’m part of this weekend. We heard from Sam Feist, CNN’s DC bureau chief.