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Having a personal history with the Mormon church, I think I’m more aware than most that the church is controversial. There are certainly elements of the church’s theology and history that feed that perception, but the fact remains that much of the news coverage of the church has a whiff of sensationalism.
Every Holy Week, GetReligion must examine the slew of sensationalist religion stories that crop up. I don’t know why everyone in the fourth estate thinks this is the ideal time to uncork that story they think is going to finally blow the lid off this Christianity fad, but that’s the way it is.
There may be hundreds of millions of Buddhists in the world, but pick up an American newspaper and you’re much more likely to read about Uma Thurman than her father.
There’s an Associated Press story today that is equal parts interesting and frustrating. The set-up for “Texas church bans child’s photograph of Passion,” is certainly intriguing:
It was my experience growing up LDS that Mormons have always been eager to point out successful Mormon celebrities where they could. The blog Waters of Mormon explains this phenomenon well:
Back in December, I had some passing words of praise for Matt Labash. I will make the obligatory disclosure that I’m friendly with him, but I don’t think that in any biases me when I say he’s easily one of the best magazine writers in the country. Just go ahead buy the recently released collection of his work and thank me later.
Throughout the 10 years I’ve lived in Washington, D.C. I’ve made great sport of the freakouts that accompany snow in the region. Unlike these puny mid-Atlantic mortals, I grew up in a part of Oregon where four or more feet of snow in my front yard wasn’t uncommon. My wife, being from Colorado, frequently joined me in scoffing.
In conjunction with yesterday’s annual prayer breakfast in Washington D.C., everybody’s got politics and religion on their mind. Or perhaps more appropriately, the religion of our politicians. The Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut saw it as a fitting occasion to reexamine the religiosity of the President. The headline on the piece, “Obama’s spirituality is largely private, but it’s influential, advisers say” seemed to appropriately reflect the complexity of the issue, so I had high hopes for the story.
