Scottish Papers Fixate on Religion in Abuse Case

A small note today. Both The Courier and The Times in Scotland have run headlines largely advertising the faith of a couple cleared of abuse charges.

Mormon bishop and midwife from Dundee cleared of abuse charges after five-day trial

Mormon bishop and wife cleared of child assaults

This is no surprise, as our study showed, media outlets are much more likely to use the word “Mormon” in connection with negative news. 

This illustrates the long-felt frustration that Latter-day Saints’ faith is only public in negative circumstances. This frustration perhaps is doubly felt this week, after the recent Washington Post article about influential Latter-day Saint journalist, Jack Anderson, left out his faith entirely except to note that he could not be assassinated by poison, because he didn’t drink.

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Should We Dramatize Jesus’ Life for Television? + Today’s Digest

Our daily rundown of the articles from around the web that we feel our readers would enjoy and appreciate. We hope to highlight the best of what’s around. Public Square Bulletin recommends: Should We Dramatize Jesus’s Life for Television? John Piper – Desiring God This interview posits an interesting question. I think the obvious answer is yes, but I find it significant that the Church’s Bible videos stick strictly with the existing language adding as little as possible to the accounts. What do you think? Most Christian parents are worried about their kids’ spiritual health Ryan Foley – Christian Post As the debate continues to rage around elementary education on sexuality and gender, this poll provides useful context to where Christian parents are coming from. The Antisocial Strain of Sincere Religious Beliefs Is on the Rise Charles McCrary – The New Republic The left-leaning New Republic with a good-faith, but nevertheless troubling approach to religious freedom that frames the free exercise of religion as harmful. But never tries to define this harm, or seek to balance competing harms. This mimics this recent Twitter thread where many of the respondents equated religious freedom with the freedom to discriminate. An Orthodox Theory of Brainworms Lucian Staiano-Daniels – Mere Orthodoxy It’s long been popular to call political extremism a “form of religion,” but these analyses have usually come from Protestant perspectives. Staiano-Daniels explores the idea from an explicitly Orthodox lens. Honoring and Renewing Dr. King’s Other, More Challenging, Dream— 55 Years Later Peter Laarman – Religion Dispatches On the 54th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death, a look back at his Riverside address denouncing the Vietnam war, recognizing the value of each individual person, and decrying the “spiritual death” he saw around him.  

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