Great column:Religion reporter quits his beat, and his church, and explains why.

...or take every single one of them, dump them, and start all over from scratch. Creating a new one is adding more strawberries to an already filled bowl.

 

Would he center that religion in Pittsburgh?

 

And hockey and unicorns would be involved.

 

Re: Great column:Religion reporter quits his beat, and his church, and explains

He already did that... in Palmyra.

 

Great, now I'm hungry.

 

Re: Great column:Religion reporter quits his beat, and his church, and explains

Very well written column because he does not over generalize but sticks to facts that he has personally observed.

 

He'd be pretty upset by those who have perverted a peaceful philosophy into justification for bigotry and prejudice.

 

The point that atheists should cover religion is an interesting one. And one I can't argue against. If someone has a strong faith, the nature of many religions (do I need to list any?) is to say "we're right, they're wrong, and also they suck and are screwed when the world ends!" Would a hard-core Catholic be seen by readers as paying proper attention to Mormon issues? Would a Jew be seen by readers as giving proper respect when covering Muslim issues?

Just as it's easy for moronic readers to say "He went to (rival school!!!!) he can't cover (my favorite college!!!!!) honestly!" the potential for someone who has espoused their own faith and beliefs in print (or who has been seen at regular services for a certain denomination) to have readers questioning them is clearly there. Having someone who is detached faith-wise but an excellent journalist and storyteller might be the ideal, since today readers have more access to our personal information than ever before.

As for the column . . . . . it was indeed long, but religion is extremely important to many people. If the religion columnist at a major newspaper has lost his faith, a piece detailing his doubts would be not only therapeutic, but also potentially valuable for readers who perhaps have questions of their own. I know for me personally, I am a lapsed Catholic, for reasons of the priest scandal (though Cardinal Mahony's apology would lead me to attend mass in Los Angeles). His column really touched on a few things I know I think about regarding religion and humanity's tendency to treat each other like garbage in its name.

 

I agree, but you need to at least be knowledgeable and curious.

 

This is a topic I'll get into deeper, but I don't have the time to do anything other than make weiner jokes on other threads, so it'll have to wait.

I will say, in reference to F_B's earlier statement about an atheist potentially being better suited to cover religion than a believer of a specific faith, that I disagree. I think it would be a lot harder for someone who believes that no god exists to take seriously the issues brought about by people who believe in a higher power or powers than it would for someone who believes in the existence of a god/gods, even if part of their job involves fair coverage of faith systems to which they don't subscribe.

In other words: I have more faith in the Florida grad covering the Florida-FSU football game than I would the person who thinks football is stupid and wrong. Which makes me sound very disdainful of atheists, but I can't think of the polite way to put it. Because believing that a god or gods do not exist is kind of part and parcel to atheism, so it stands to reason that they'd see a Catholic-Protestant schism as a fight for the soul of the Easter Bunny or Santa or some myth. It'd be hard for them to look at that as a serious fight and not much ado about a pretend figure. Not that they would be consciously dismissive, just that it'd be a tough bout of cognitive dissonance.

 

It's kind of a tricky matter. We are objective. Political writer can't favor one party over the other. You may be interested in politics but you cannot be active.

So if you have a devout Mormon or a evangelical Christian or Jew or Muslim as your religion writer, would he/she be fair to other religions?

I think an atheist/agnostic could be a religion writer as long as he/she isn't disdainful of religion.