Religious Illiteracy At WaPo (Again!)

by Michael Sean Winters

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In this free country of ours, everyone is permitted to be as literate about religion as they wish, and they are entitled to remain in complete and utter darkness about religious doctrines. But, you would think that a religion writer for one of America's leading newspapers might be at least a little familiar with one of the central intellectual issues facing religion in the modern age, how believers do and do not grapple with science, and specifically, the theory of evolution.
But, you would think wrong. Julia Duin at the Washington Post reduces all religion to a fundamentalist caricature. Mark Silk at BeliefNet provides the takedown.
I have a question for the editors at the Post. Would they permit such shoddy reporting on any other topic? Could a science reporter know so little about her field? Or a sports reporter? We have come a long way since Dayton, Tennessee, but Duin's caricatures of religion are little different from those offered by Mencken back then. At least Mencken was funny. Duin's column is merely pathetic.

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