Roger Olson is an evangelical scholar who serves as Professor of Theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University. Recently he blogged about a troubling trend: news reports that don’t put their stories in context. Olson focuses on a prominent evangelical pastor in Texas who stated that Evangelicals must not vote for Presidential candidates who are Mormon, because Mormonism is a cult. Many of the reports failed to include details about how others characterize Mormonism. These same reports also failed to mention that no one person speaks on behalf of all Evangelicals.
So What?
In our pluralistic culture, it cannot be assumed that most consumers of news reports are religiously literate. By failing to provide any additional information, news sources are, in essence, putting forth even the most fringe groups within a religious tradition as mainstream.
What religious news stories have you encountered in recent months that would be confusing or misleading to any consumer who was not familiar with that religion’s broader history and theology?