Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
It appears to be abortion week at GetReligion, so I don’t feel too bad about this shameless plug. Several weeks back, an editor from Beliefnet (host of Blog Heaven) approached me about a project that her website had in mind. There was this new book called Freakonomics, maybe I’d heard of it . . .
It’s hard to know where to start with this AFP piece on a phantom “left turn” in “America’s pulpits,” so let’s just take it from the top. The article begins by saying that “America’s moderate and progressive evangelists,” long “outgunned” by the “mighty ‘religious right,’” have finally demanded a cut of the political action.
In all the hubbub over Justice O’Connor’s retirement, the resurgence of the Plame affair, and the usual raucous Canada Day celebrations, I’ll venture to guess that most readers of GetReligion (including literate woodpeckers) have not heard of the latest controversy on female ordination in the Catholic Church.
This is going to be a tough one. My assignment is to give some comment on Jeff Sharlet’s “here come the virgins” piece from the last issue of Rolling Stone, and I suddenly wish that magazine hadn’t taken this blog’s advice.
Readers of a more traditionalist bent must have winced when they read the subhed of The Economist‘s “Special report” on the future of religious activism in the United States:
On Tuesday, my friend George Neumayr, executive editor of The American Spectator, was a talking head on NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. The subject: funding for PBS and NPR. Neumayr argued a) that the publicly-funded stations are dripping with liberal bias; and b) that Congress should discontinue the subsidy. The letters continue to pour in to the Spectator. For George-Neumayr-go-to-hell letters, look here. Anti-PBS (and PBS viewers) letters here. Neumayr breaks out the f word here. Outraged Media Matters coverage here. Picture of a woodpecker here.
Well, it looks like my gentle prodding about Romania has paid off in the form of a new Matt Welch column. Welch (pictured) begins:
Egypt will not be the first predominantly Muslim country to conduct stem-cell research. Iranian scientists developed human embryonic stem-cell lines in 2003 with the approval of Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader . . . Singapore, where Muslims have a slight majority, has also produced embryonic stem-cell lines. And nonembryonic stem-cell research is conducted in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia . . .
The most interesting bit from the recent Romanian crucifixion horror story, to me, was the clash between religious Romanians and the press. We’ll join the story midstream and then circle back for more details and analysis. I know this is a long excerpt, but please try to slog through:
