Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Michael Linton of First Things‘ blog, Public Square, has highlighted an emerging story that touches on a favorite theme of GetReligion’s editors: The intersection of faith and commerce. In “The Malling of Mecca,” Linton describes the construction of Abraj al Bait, which will offer space for 600 retail outlets, hotel rooms and posh apartments, all towering over the holiest site in Islam.
Michael Paulson of The Boston Globe has written one of the most poignant feature stories about the Episcopal Church’s sexuality debate that I have seen in more than 15 years of writing about the topic. In writing about two brothers who are priests, Paulson reveals their deep division on sexuality (“Bill Murdoch calls homosexual activity a sin, while Brian Murdoch calls it a gift”) and persuades the brothers to talk about how they have remained close.
It’s not front-page news that Billy Graham has enjoyed varying degrees of access to every president since Harry Truman. The latest issue of Time, which publishes excerpts from the new book The Preacher and the Presidents by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, reports some interesting new details:
My GetReligion guilt file is not as thick as Metropolitan Mattingly’s, unless you count stories on which I wish my insights (or opinions) gave me a strong enough motivation to blog.
The New York Times’ Peter Steinfels has done an excellent job of assessing why many culture-loving Christians respected the films of Ingmar Bergman and of Michelangelo Antonioni, his counterpart in lost Christian faith. This segment is especially good at explaining their two very different non-faith journeys:
Lorenza Muñoz of the Los Angeles Times provides a serviceable and evenhanded report on FoxFaith and its effort to exploit the market proven by The Passion of the Christ and by Tyler Perry‘s several films.
Tammy Faye Messner was anything but subtle and nuanced, at least in most of her public appearances, so to hope for nuance in her obituaries may be too much to ask. Still, I’ve yet to find a story about her life and death that comes even close to capturing the spirit of this remarkably strong woman.
There’s something about Christopher Hitchens that makes him a less grating personality than some of the other celebrity atheists of the moment.
Sharon Waxman of The New York Times had quite a story during the weekend: Porn star rediscovers God, expresses ambivalence about the past 30 years of his life and begins a ministry to other porn stars that he plans to transform into ordained ministry within the Episcopal Church.
