May 16, 2008
Journalist scrutinises religion beat amid spiritual 'intolerance'
The theological and political divisions within the US religious
landscape have made the once-quiet "religion beat" one of the most
interesting, if intense, journalistic assignments in the United States
today, writes a prominent award-winning re****ter who covers religion.
"As a re****ter covering religion at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the
last four years, I've been a witness to attitudes and language on my
beat that would make veteran political re****ters cringe," writes Tim
Townsend in a reflection in the May/June issue of the New York-based
Columbia Journalism Review, a magazine that examines trends and
critiques performance within the US journalistic community.
Townsend says that re****ters who cover the "fractured, volatile, weighty
world of religion" need to be equally respectful of all beliefs. But he
also says journalists who cover religion "also need to weigh that broad
respect for belief against a larger truth".
"If a particular tenet of a particular faith has the potential to
influence the public discourse outside the walls of the church,
synagogue, or mosque, re****ters are responsible for holding it up to the
same scrutiny as any other idea tossed into the public square for
debate," Townsend says.
Townsend was named 2005 religion re****ter of the year by the Religion
Newswriters Association, a professional grouping of US journalists who
cover religion. He noted that a blog he wrote for the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch newspaper "became such a target for corrosive, hateful
comments that I was forced to shut it down".
As one example of the divisions, Townsend quotes Kevin Eckstrom, the
editor of the Wa****ngton-based news agency Religion News Service about
the current divisions within the US Episcopal (Anglican) Church on the
issue of ***uality:
"The chasm is so deep that neither side trusts the other or is willing
to give it the benefit of the doubt on anything," Eckstrom said. "The
traditionalists feel their way of life is being taken away from them by
the tyranny of the majority, while the progressives think a bigoted
minority is holding the Holy Spirit hostage. [And] even those fights
aren't about ***, or even theology, but about power, and who gets to
make the decisions that will tie the hands of everyone else."
Townsend's article, "Love Thy Neighbour: The Religion Beat in an Age of
Intolerance" suggests that the divisions of the US religious landscape
can be traced at least as far back as the Bible itself, which contains
quite differing views of Jesus' ministry.
As depicted in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is both seen as peacemaker
("Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth ... Blessed are
the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God") and as
stirrer of discontent ("Do not think that I have come to bring peace to
the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword").
"If even Jesus could be divisive, what can be expected of the sinners
who call themselves his followers?" Townsend writes.
"And how about his contem****ary American disciples, who s****t anonymous
Internet handles and spend their days trolling blogs dedicated to the
disparagement of other faiths? What about those who insist that Jesus
himself have a stronger voice in the US Congress?"
Townsend finds a strong historical basis for such divisions within US
Christianity, noting that spiritual polarisation is nothing new.
"Intolerance might as well have been the motto of the Puritans,
separatists who crossed the Atlantic in 1630, fleeing religious
persecution," he argues. Puritan leader John Winthrop, Townsend writes,
told his fellow Christian pilgrims they "were not voyaging to New
England to set up a democracy. The idea was to found New Jerusalem, a
Christian government that would complete an unfinished reformation."
He adds, "The United States is a young nation, and maybe it's not so
strange that these impulses toward exceptionalism and religious
intolerance — paired as perfectly as a cold Budweiser [beer] and a Ball
Park Frank [hot dog] — have passed so easily down sixteen generations
from our Puritan ancestors. By now, they seem encoded into our
red-white-and-blue DNA."
Tim Townsend's article:
http://www.cjr.org/review/love_thy_neighbor.php?page=1
--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
(20,000 articles 4000 humor)
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