red and blue churches, and the press
Interesting post at GetReligion:
http://www.getreligion.org/?p=2018
And on a related note, here’s a snippet from an email that was sent to me today by a reporter:
A pastor is married for years, has children, runs a successful church, advances in his denomination/sector of Christianity, and then “finds himself” and abandons wife and children for a live-in situation with another man. His reward? Consecration as a bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church of America and wide-ranging media praise. LATimes, I believe, had a nice kiss-up interview with Gene Robinson just this week.
Another pastor apparently is married for years, has children, builds and runs a a successful church, advances in his denomination/sector of Christianity, fights temptation and loses, stays with his family, and when the dam breaks, is crucified in the press as his reward.
Whatever else you may think of these stories, there’s really no question that most reporters think only one of these stories involves moral failure. How does that affect the coverage?
Excellent, and interesting, comparison.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Wow, that was a slap in the face. Ouch.
November 6th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
OTOH, what about your own principal of holding people who espouse certain beliefs (progressives) to a higher standard than those who do not (capitalists)? This guy apparently also made statements in public to the effect that he did not sin, and portrayed the activity he’s accused of engaging in as an “abomination” and so on.
November 16th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Valid point, and I do hold him to a higher standard.
However, all of us fail to live up to our own moral standards, so I can’t crucify him for having honestly (I assume) believed in something, then failed at it.
The fact that he’s trying to fix his marriage speaks in his defense. Every day is another opportunity to either sin or attempt to live righteously, and he seems to be trying the latter now.
The media seems to take the reverse approach: the fact that he holds beliefs in the first place is the problem, and the fact that he’s trying to make his marriage work, whereas Gene Robinson chooses, each and every day, to remain seperated from his wife.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
“when the dam breaks”?
Very “Life at the Bottom”– passive voice. As if the actor had no role in his acts.
I’ve done some pretty stupid things, but none of them “just happened”
I would apply that to both pastors– the guy who “found himself” in another relationship can’t ignore the fact that it meant his previous family lost a husband and father.