Ever since discovering the culture war, journalists have honed in on its political impact. Debates on gender, reproduction, health and medicine, or science and education all come down to the same “so what” question: What's the effect on candidates, voting blocs, and exit polls?

Whether or not you buy the culture war narrative is one issue. Admittedly, there's a lot of good research suggesting no such thing exists—or at least not in the way the press reports on it. But don't tell that to news editors and political operatives, both of whom have vested interests in keeping the conflict fresh.

Above and beyond the reality of the culture war frame is the question of analysis. For argument's sake, let's say there are stark differences in how Americans see the world and, in particular, issues of religion, culture and morality. Can those differences be fully understood in terms of politics? More to the point, can they be comprehended by the media's narrow definition of politics as horse race, sports event, or zero-sum game?

Two new books suggest that we've overlooked sex and class. Better make that sex, class and the intersection of sex and class. In Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics, Dagmar Herzog takes a close look at how the religious right's teachings about sexuality have affected American attitudes toward sex and gender. Herzog argues that the religious right made sex more fun for true believers, while working through political channels to repress the rights and activities of most everyone else. 

“My biggest goals were to communicate just how malicious (and by no means moral) the religious right's effects have been,” Herzog told Religion Dispatches. “to show how people's deepest longings and fears around sex and love can so easily be manipulated, to remind Americans how rapid the onslaught has been and how recently we actually had a great deal more self-confidence in defending our sexual privacy and rights.”

The Religious Right's pro-sex stance ensured its success with Christians and from that base, it secularized an anti-sex message to reach a broader audience. Says Herzog: “Repression has now been repackaged as promotion of mental well-being. Suddenly everything is about low self-esteem: homosexuality, abortions, pornography, pre-marital sex.”

Bethany Moreton's To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise is equally smart about gender and politics, but her analysis ties in the economy. Moreton describes how female employees and consumers imbued Wal-Mart with a Christian populist sensibility that helped account for its rapid success. Women employees brought the domestic model of male headship to the workplace, and taught their bosses to be “servant-leaders.” Customers, responsive to the stores' culture of family values and homespun thrift, could shop with confidence: they weren't conspicuous consumers, they were good Christians.

Reporters got a glimpse of this potent mix when Wal-Mart Moms emerged as swing voters in the 2008 election. The swirling mix of gender, politics and economics had served George W. Bush in 2004 but seemed cool to McCain. Although stories tried to catch the motivating passions that could compel these women's votes, most reduced it to buying power. Moreton extends it further: “faith in God and faith in the market grew in tandem, aided by a generous government and an organized, corporate-funded grassroots movement for Christian free enterprise.” In other words, these women were looking for a savvy pol who saw, as they did, a link between religion, government and the market.

The past 35 years have seen remarkable changes in American politics that can't be captured by handicapping candidates or even issues. The lodestar of “family values” –increasingly central to discussions of gender, free enterprise and even international relations—needs examination. Moreton and Herzog have initiated the discussion, now the rest of us need to follow.

Diane Winston

By Andrea Tabor

A Google News search for “Obama Cairo speech reaction” yields nearly 12,000 stories from media outlets around the world.  Nearly a week after the historic address at Cairo University, we've heard reactions from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Vatican, and Rush Limbaugh.

What hasn't been popping up in these stories so often is the reaction from those to whom the speech was actually addressed: the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.  Beyond government officials and Arab TV pundits, we haven't heard much from the everyman of the Muslim world. Surely enough time has passed that the world's leading news organizations could have conducted polls or done profile stories about the people in Muslim nations, and the state of their hearts and minds.

The Dallas Morning News offered up an interesting editorial in the wake of Lebanon's recent elections, in which voters surprisingly voted down Hezbollah and elected a pro-Western majority.  The piece suggested that election results, especially in Lebanon and Iran's upcoming election on Friday, will be the key to judging the success of Obama's speech.  But neither the Dallas Morning News coverage nor a New York Times analysis of the Lebanon election included sound bites with Lebanese citizens, only academics.

At first it seemed to be a sign of the times, another harbinger of the dwindling resources of American journalism abroad.  But then I started seeing photo galleries, like this one from the New York Times, of Muslims from Beirut to Baghdad watching the speech on flat screen TV's in restaurants and hookah bars.  But no interviews, no quotes in the captions.  And the article that went with the photo gallery quoted only politicians and academics, some of them American.

The Los Angeles Times' Amro Hassan wrote from Cairo, “Talking to politicians, analysts, religious figures and citizens, both before and after the speech, I could sense that Obama has become an accepted figure among most Egyptians.”  (At least he mentioned the “citizens.”)

But allowing politicians, analysts and religious figures to speak for the Islamic world does nothing to open the doors of mutual communication and understanding between Americans and Muslims abroad.

Of course, out of the 12,000 pieces written, a few organizations did come through with traditional man-on-the-street reaction. With its 24-hour news cycle, CNN correspondents filed stories from cafes in Jerusalem and the streets of Kabul on the day of the speech itself.  The Wall Street Journal also offered coffee shop reactions from Cairo itself. 

But in an age of Twitter and real-time reactions to almost everything, the overall lack of dialogue with Muslims is surprising.  CNN did one of its usual iReport roundups with reaction from the blogosphere and video uploads from Muslims responding to the speech from Riyadh to Montreal.  These brief glimpses of reaction were what President Obama himself hoped to gain by streaming the speech live on whitehouse.gov and linking to the White House's Facebook page where people around the world could post their reaction.  The BBC took advantage of social media and found the real story that was lurking there.  By really digging into the Twitter dialogue, they discovered substantive, significant tweets from around the Arab world, not just a few random sound bites to fill air time.

Of course, traditional news organizations are still exploring ways to effectively incorporate new tools like Facebook and Twitter into their coverage, but for a story that crucially hinged on the opinions of average Muslim citizens, it seems for the most part to have been a missed opportunity.

By Jennifer Hahn

It's been a few months since Barack Obama announced his new Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In a surprise move, the president took back his campaign pledge to wipe out a Bush-era policy allowing religious groups receiving federal money to discriminate in hiring based on religion. Instead, Obama said he would allow the Justice Department, with the guidance of his new advisory panel on faith issues, to make decisions on possible hiring discrimination on a case-by-case basis.

At the time, the media made a tepid attempt to point out potential constitutional issues with faith-based hiring. Some went so far as to throw in a quote from the ACLU. But for the most part reporters let this potentially major decision slip by without using their Fourth Estate powers to challenge it.

It's one thing to mention potential constitutional issues in a story on faith-based initiatives, and most outlets get points for at least doing this. But what was needed, and is still needed, is an explanation of just what these constitutional issues are. Many people view Obama as a Democratic knight in shining armor, fighting to save us all from the first-amendment-violating excesses of the Bush administration.  But as reporters we cannot be lured into a stupor by Obama's abundant liberal charisma. It's time to ask the President some tough questions about his plans for the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership–specifically by bringing up the exact constitutional issues at stake.

Here's a primer on what our founding documents and subsequent legal interpretations tell us about faith-based hiring's legality in our democracy. It wouldn't hurt to bring a few of these points up next time you're interviewing proponents of faith-based initiatives, perhaps the President himself (if you're so lucky): 

The First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Over the years, the “establishment clause” has been interpreted to uphold the Jeffersonian idea of a “wall of separation between church and state.”

In 1947, in Everson v. Board of Education of the Township of Ewing, the Court ruled that schools' boards cannot reimburse parents for the cost of busing their children to Catholic schools. “No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion,” the justices wrote in their interpretation of the First Amendment.

In 1964 the landmark Civil Rights Act passed, prohibiting American organizations from discriminating in hiring based on race, sex, religion, etc. But in 1972 an exemption was made for jobs that were “religiously significant,” so that if a church wanted to hire a pastor, for instance, they could choose one with their particular beliefs. To this day, however, no one is certain whether or not religious groups that receive federal money can discriminate in hiring without violating the constitution.

In their 1971 ruling in Lemon v. Kurtzman, the court decided that the government cannot provide salary subsidies to teachers at religious schools, even when they are only teaching secular subjects. This decision challenges the widely held (and reported) belief that government funded faith-based initiatives steer clear of constitutional issues as long as the money goes only to secular activities. The ruling resulted in the “The Lemon Test” for whether or not a law regarding religion passes constitutional muster. The court established three guidelines: 1) the law must have a secular purpose; 2) Its main effect cannot be to advance or inhibit religions; and 3) It cannot “foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.”

While I understand that reporters working on deadline do not always have the time to research constitutional issues in depth, I see no reason why we can't dial a constitutional scholar to ask how these initiatives might violate the most fundamental laws of this country. Our failure to do so marks a profound lapse in the media's role as watchdog. Before Obama goes any further with his Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, let's ask him some tough, well-researched, questions about the constitution. We're naïve, and professionally derelict, if we believe that because he's a Democrat Obama will automatically protect the separation of church and state.  

As an exasperated Susan Jacoby pointed out in a February New York Times editorial:

“It is truly dismaying that amid all the discussion about President Obama's version of faith-based community initiatives, there has been such widespread reluctance to question the basics assumption that government can spend money on religiously based enterprises without violating the First Amendment.” 

Jennifer Hahn is currently completing her master's degree in specialized journalism at USC. In the fall, she will begin pursuing her doctorate in religious studies at UCSB.

By Andrea Tabor

Eighth grade teachers and newsroom editors rejoice: one more reason not to trust Wikipedia.  According to the site's Arbitration Committee, Wikipedia was infiltrated by employees of the Church of Scientology, who deleted unfavorable postings and manipulated information on their pages to present the controversial religion in a more favorable light.

In response, the Committee has banned all Wikipedia postings from certain Scientology-owned IP addresses in a move to preserve the site's “neutrality.”  The free Internet encyclopedia routinely bans spammers and miscreants from polluting its pages, and has even been known to block companies who post good PR about their own products.  But this move was unprecedented in both its scope and its high profile.

Of course, bloggers—mostly tech bloggers—are stirring up a lively debate.  But few religion writers have joined the discussion.  There is much for them to say.  The controversy hearkens back to a similar problem Google encountered several years ago when anti-Semitic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) resulted in a slew of hate-speech when one Googled the term “Jew.”  Rather than take down the offending material, Google offered up an explanation of the search results, saying that, “The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results.”  They estimate today that, “the great majority of searches on Google for 'Jew' are by people who have heard about this issue and want to see the results for themselves.”

Wikipedia has a similar tool at their disposal for such instances, the NPOV dispute flag.  This warning pops up on entries like “Scientology—controversies” informing readers that the Neutral Point of View of the article is in question.  Rather than use this tool to allow readers to freely access all the information posted on Wikipedia, just as Google retains its offending search results, Wikipedia has made the editorial decision that certain practitioners of Scientology are unfit to contribute to a page about their own religion. Is this the Internet equivalent of writing a story on Islam without interviewing a single Muslim?

One of the world's premier Scientology scholars, Dr. Stephen Kent at the University of Alberta explained, “Scientologists consider critical material about the organization to be what they call 'entheta,' and the organization's policy is to remove entheta from the environment. The issue for Scientologists is not accuracy but rather negativity, and the group works tirelessly on its public relations presentation. The organization has fought a losing battle to keep 'entheta' off of the Internet.”

Wikipedia's Arbitration Council voted 10-0 to ban the offending IP addresses.  But it seems that Scientology's adherents are so motivated to manipulate the pages that the ban may not actually hinder their efforts.

The precedent set by Wikipedia's decision will be a difficult one to maintain. Certainly the Church of Scientology is a flashpoint in American culture, but there will undoubtedly be religious controversies on the Wikipages of other faiths. (Remember when somebody posted a picture of Star Wars' Emperor Palpatine on the Pope's page?)

Much of Wikipedia's success hinges on the free flow of information, self-policing content, and constant revisionism. As it strives to achieve the ever-elusive 'Neutral Point of View,' the site may be undermining its own strengths.

Sonia Sotomayor, our president's pick for the U.S. Supreme Court seat recently vacated by Justice David Souter, has the blogosphere abuzz. Is she a Roman Catholic? Is she a practicing Catholic? What kind of Catholic is she? And what might this mean for the Supreme Court?

Underlying many of these posts is ongoing anxiety over the fate of Roe v. Wade. But for those seeking answers, Sotomayor's rulings don't provide much help. Moreover they're not exactly what one might expect from a judge tagged as a “moderate-liberal.” In one instance, Sotomayor upheld a ban on federal funds going to overseas abortion providers, and in another case she decided in favor of pro-life protesters who alleged Connecticut police used excessive force against them. But she's never had a case on the constitutionality of abortion law.

Abortion remains the hot button issue for some Americans (how hot and for how many is hard to know), but there are other avenues to explore in the weeks leading up to the confirmation hearings. For starters, what do we know about Sotomayor's stance on First Amendment issues? According to the Associated Baptist Press, Sotomayor has had very few cases involving the First Amendment religion clauses so it's hard to tell what she thinks. When I asked Prof. Howard Gillman, a USC colleague who studies political science and Constitutional Law, what might be looming on the free exercise/establishment front, he didn't foresee much. But he added that this might be the very moment that the Religious Right, seeking to gain traction after recent setbacks, might push new litigation.

No doubt, Sotomayor's opinions on free speech, free press, and the role of religion in public life have been shaped by her experience of  family, culture and ethnicity. She herself has said as much, noting that she routinely checks and re-checks her assumptions and predispositions to avoid bias. It's a familiar balancing act for journalists who similarly offset their unique perspective with the standards of objectivity. Not surprisingly, observers from similar backgrounds see success where others perceive partiality. As Dan Kennedy reports conservatives are already claiming that Sotomayor's race and gender may “unduly influence” her legal decisions.  Oops, did I miss the news flash that the other eight justices have become disembodied brains, floating free of racial and gender encumbrances? Anyone who ever wondered what “hegemony” means, this is it in a nutshell: the assumption that one's own bias should be imposed on the rest of us.

For those asking if we really need a sixth Catholic on the bench, this is key: each justice's approach is as much a product of gender, class, ethnicity, education and intellectual rigor as it is a result of religious training, which is why I'd wager that Sotomayor is a different kind of Catholic than those already on the Court. In the weeks ahead, Americans will learn more about the experiences that shaped Sotomayor's understanding of ethics, values and meaning and that may, in turn, shape our laws.

Diane Winston

By Andrea Tabor

After years of sex abuse scandals among Catholic clergy, perhaps the most shocking reports surfaced this week.  According to a 9-year-long study, Irish clergy reportedly abused thousands of schoolchildren over a 60 year period.  The abuse was not only sexual and emotional, but physical as well.  The report details multiple beatings, scaldings, and other violent acts carried out by both priests and nuns.

Although stories like the one that broke Wednesday have surfaced from almost every corner of the world and have been extensively covered in the press, it is important that this latest and most serious instance of abuse be given the special attention and reporting it deserves.

Recently, in a specialized reporting on religion class, a Los Angeles Times religion reporter told students that the hardest part of covering his beat was the strained relationship he had with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  Undoubtedly, talking with bishops and Archdiocesan officials will be harder now than ever before.  The Catholic Church is a much more complex institution than it was before the scandals broke, and many churches, including those in Ireland, are already under immense strain from sex abuse cases brought in 2002.

Perhaps the key to getting the most out of the story will be to highlight the differences between the abuses in Ireland and those that took place in the U.S.  Since the initial scandal, the Church has worked hard to change its image and put new programs in place such as the Los Angeles Archdiocese's “Safeguard the Children” program.  The new allegations are an opportunity to judge how the Vatican has, or hasn't, changed its attitudes and practices since then.

The Irish Times has consistently produced excellent coverage of the report (even before it was released).  On Thursday the paper reminded its readers that when the Church paid out €128 million to victims in 2002, they were granted indemnity from future lawsuits, to prevent the Church from going bankrupt.  In light of the new abuse cases, legislators and outraged victims are doing everything they can to have that overturned.  This begs a new examination of the financial solvency of the Catholic Church worldwide, and especially in Ireland.

Another interesting caveat: the accused Christian Brothers, who ran many of the boarding schools where abuse took place, fought to have the names of abusive clergy kept out of the report.  They succeeded, with a court ruling that some of the clergy members were dead and could not defend themselves.  That, too, is being fought and investigated further.  (The U.S. and British press seem to have caught that angle.)

When the original sex abuse story broke, Church officials were quick to point out abuses in other religious sects including Jehovah's Witnesses and even Boy Scouts.  They argued that they were being unfairly singled out.  In this case, the abuses appear to have been hidden by not just clergy, but also government education officials who funded the schools.  Now, the press is placing burden on both church and state, and the result is less defensive finger-pointing from Catholic officials.

Unfortunately, writing about Catholic clergy abuse has become the religion reporter's equivalent of a fire or police beat story—routine.  But this time the story is much more serious, and could mean that one of the world's most devoutly Catholic nations finds its church in ruins, both financially and in terms of morale.  The effects could ripple across the globe, as many churches around the world are run by clergy born in Ireland.  Journalists must identify the angles that highlight the gravity of this issue, so that they can promote real dialogue and change.
    
 

Reporters are told to follow the money but we rarely do—unless we already have a good idea where it's gone. On the religion beat that means covering the church treasurer who embezzled the pension fund, the prominent pastor living a little too large, or the TV ministry that doesn't smell right.

But in the current economic climate, smaller stories are more apt to show the human cost of the recession. They also underscore that religious institutions, like their secular counterparts, live and die by the market. Tending to Sunday school, shut-ins and sermons are part of the clergy's job description but so is minding the infrastructure, health insurance, and church brand.

“Small business owners have to do it all themselves. I may not do everything, but what I do would surprise even my parishioners. I have mopped floors, painted walls, unclogged toilets, shingled roofs, repaired boilers, killed bugs, cut grass, chopped weeds and so on and so forth. If it has to get done I get it done. Ask the owner of a small retail shop who cleans. I doubt you will find many who can afford maid service. Ask the owner of small auto repair shop whose desk the buck stops on. In my church the buck stops on my pulpit. This is not the only similarity between us.”

That's the Rev. William Whitehead on the similarities between small churches and small businesses. His thoughtful piece that reminds readers that ministry may begin with a calling but ends with a spread sheet. If the numbers don't add up—translation: bodies into pews and cash in collection plates—the boss man (or woman) will be told to move on.

Of course, that's assuming a well-meaning reverend can find a pulpit.  According to anecdotal evidence, reports the New York Times, job listings are down for evangelical and mainstream Protestant clergy as well as for rabbis. We've all heard about the shortage of Catholic vocations but here's a new twist: “a contracting national economy has led congregations across the religious spectrum to cut or downsize clergy positions, hire part-time lay people instead and delay filling vacancies.” (Hmm—any bets on whether the Roman Catholic Church sees an opportunity here?)

The article neglects to say what happens when churches and synagogues lay off workers. In Virginia, many may find themselves on the wrong side of the unemployment line. Notes the Virginian-Pilot,”God may provide, but the state may not when it comes to unemployment benefits” for religious workers. Tax exemption for religious organizations also allows religious groups to skip paying unemployment taxes. With 20 percent of US churches reporting that they laid off staff in the past year, that's bad news for Virginia church workers as well as those in states with similar laws.

News outlets have been quick to show how religious groups adopt marketing strategies to brand their identities and repurpose their missions. That's the sexy side of the money story. But William Whitehead reminds us there's another way of seeing connections between retail and religion: small churches and small businesses are both the largest category of their respective kinds in the U.S.—and both are hurting.

Diane Winston

by Andrea Tabor

Carrie Prejean and Donald Trump appear to have ridden off into the California sunset, finally marking the end to an abysmal news cycle of leaked photos, Youtube rants, and a former beauty queen's resignation.  While many newsrooms across the country are probably feeling relieved that the story has died down, it seems that they all missed an opportunity here.

We kept waiting for someone to write a serious, insightful story with a focus on religion (specifically Prejean's Southern Baptist faith) and politics.  But it seems that most major papers tossed the story into their blogs, perhaps afraid to devote serious attention to it.  The proprietary blogs of The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post took the fluffy angle.  The sleaze, the breast implant controversy, the blurred out cheesecake pics—it was all there on prominent news websites, in a watered-down version of the coverage on gossip sites like Yahoo!'s OMG and TMZ.

In an age of niche journalism, these prestigious papers should leave the gossip to the bloggers that cover it best, like TMZ or Perez Hilton.  Instead of trying to compete, they should have found the newsworthy angle and covered it as journalists with an appreciation for the religion angle.

Whether or not the wind blew Prejean's vest open on a California cliff is not the most important question.  Rather, newspapers should have explored what exactly occurred between Prejean and the National Organization for Marriage.  Did this Christian group urge Prejean to eschew her contractual obligations to the Miss California organization?  Did they screen her phone calls and make her unavailable, as Miss California officials alleged?  These questions were left to the he-said-she-said of interviews and press conferences.

In the long term, what will Prejean's association with Christian groups amount to, and how do religious leaders feel it could help—or hurt—their cause?  If Focus on the Family or the National Organization for Marriage is going to poise Prejean as their newest face, how might that impact average Christians and Christian communities?  Surely there are a few Southern Baptists who don't approve of her notoriety.  Where are they? Why haven't they been interviewed?

Also of interest is the constitutional angle.  Thus far, the political angle on Prejean's story has been former pageant queen Sarah Palin rushing to her aid, or opinion pieces musing about Barack Obama's shared view on same-sex marriage.   The often-incendiary Keith Olbermann took a more productive and interesting angle, questioning Prejean's flawed logic that the First Amendment should have protected her from public scrutiny.

Instead of dealing with this issue as the serious religious and political news story it could have been, major news organizations have chosen to take the easy way out.  (Or worse, make Prejean into an anchor herself, as the cable news show Fox & Friends is reportedly doing.)  With Prejean's 15 minutes nearly up, it may be too late to see any worthwhile reporting on this one.

For months now, news outlets have stirred the conflict over Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama. (The prestigious Roman Catholic university asked the President to deliver its commencement address.) Numerous stories have examined what this means for the Catholic vote, the pro-life movement's political clout and Obama's popularity. I've looked for an angle that would tell me something I didn't already know or, at least, go beyond the “he said/she said” debate over abortion and the President's standing.  But with the ceremony only days away, it seems my quest is in vain.

AP has a decent summation of the disagreement, but like most other examples, it doesn't move the discussion forward. To engage the topic more fully, I turned to the Catholic press. Coverage there echoes the secular media's focus on abortion. But instead of simply seeing abortion as a facet of “horse-race” politics, the issue signifies what's truly important for contemporary Catholics and their church. Joseph Bottum, the editor of First Things, writing in The Weekly Standard calls the tumult a “struggle over Catholic culture” and questions the university's tone deaf decision to invite a politician who holds positions antithetical to Church tenets.

“It is a horrifying fact, in many ways,” writes Bottum, ” that Roe v. Wade has done more to provide our Catholic identity than any other event of the last 50 years. Still, for many American Catholics, the Church is a refuge and bulwark against an ambient culture that erodes morality and undermines families, Catholic culture is their counterculture, their means of upholding the dignity of the human person and the integrity of the family—and in that context, the centrality of abortion for American Catholic culture seems much less arbitrary than it first appeared.”

Over at Commonweal, the issue is less about abortion per se than the absence of civility. A recent editorial notes that the Notre Dame's critics “are loath to credit the institution with any but the basest motives.” In fact, university officials did acknowledge their differences with the President's positions, but the invitation was to honor his accomplishments that do reflect Catholic values.

“The church is not simply the prolife movement,” write the editors,” and to the extent that every interaction between the church and our political system is held hostage to the demands of the most confrontational elements of that movement, the church's social message, including its message about abortion, will be marginalized and ineffectual.”

Both essays illustrate how the story could be contextualized in the mainstream media. Bottum's anxieties about Catholic identity, just like Commonweal's concerns for civil discourse, mirror societal questions about religion's public role following two-plus decades of polarizing culture wars.

Those same culture wars—and some of their regional battlefields, take a surprise hit in a geography mapping project conducted by students at Kansas State University. Using federal statistics as rough approximations for the seven deadly sins (e.g. cases of sexually transmitted diseases stand in for lust, theft rates for envy and violent crime for wrath), the young researchers found surprisingly large pockets of sin in the so-called Bible Belt.

(Reporter Nicole Neroulias provides this caveat: “But most experts, including the researchers themselves, advise people not to take the study too seriously as a reliable measure of saintliness to wickedness, given the difficulty of finding ways to accurately quantify each sin.”)

I'm wondering, too, how those sins would go down at the recently reopened Church of Universal Love and Music. Shuttered for almost four years, the nondenominational fellowship rocks again this weekend. The church, organized more than 20 years ago, holds concerts at its founder's 147-acre property near Pittsburgh. But after neighbors' complained about traffic and noise, “services” gave way to lengthy zoning disputes.   

Unhappy neighbors say music alone does not make a church, but the weekend's lineup includes a Sunday sermon and attendees have been warned not to forego unchurch-like behavior, such as getting naked or taking drugs. The Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported this as little more than a brief. But I'm hoping for more details once the band strikes up.

Diane Winston

Two articles on religion on television? Hmm—must be a trend. First, Variety reports that the Eppes men are going to synagogue. Dorky but cute, Numb3rs' crime-fighting father and sons give new meaning to the term mensch. After five seasons of studiously avoiding the J-word, they're now into mitzvas, matzahs and meaning. Not so at Kings, NBC's pop culture take on the biblical story of David and Saul. Featuring a family more conniving than kvelling, Kings pleased neither critics nor viewers. But Biblical scholars found merit in the show's dark and melodramatic characters.

I flagged these pieces because of my own interest in religion on television. Maybe I watch too much, but TV, that most intimate of electronic media (no not my computer, too much writing and reading), is my solace and refuge. I want to know what happens to Sarah Connor and I've grown fond of Echo. And lest you think I am a sci-fi geek, I confess—I cried when the Chief apologized to Meredith and I wish Jack Bauer would get cured already. (Those shakes aren't helping his love life.)

Happily, I found a way to channel my addiction into a socially acceptable outlet. I've complexified, problematized and operationalized my passion. You can judge the results yourself. This week “Small Screen, Big Picture: Television and Lived Religion” is out –and its 15 essays, from a wide range of scholars and academic perspectives, explore how religion, spirituality and ethics are embedded, emplotted and embodied in popular television programs.

Yes there's some fancy footwork in the book (“watching television is a link in the chain of sacred storytelling”) and some Big Ideas (reading post 9/11 TV as a window into America's troubled psyche). But if you want to know why we need heroes, how abortion fares on primetime, whether Lost skews Buddhist or Christian, and what a lawless Western town says about community—then this is the book to read.

Academics focus on TV's negative effects while journalists fixate on the ratings' “horse race,” but  SSBP treats television as a virtual meeting place where citizens across racial, religious, and regional divides find instruction and inspiration. TV's storylines—addressing terror and torture, lust and love, murder and mortality—explore who we are and would like to be, the building blocks of religious speculation.

But don't take my word for it. Check out the struggle between Silas and David when Kings comes back this summer or tune in Friday night to see what those Eppes boys are up to.

 
Diane Winston