Christianity Today Editor Suggests Reuters Sloppy, Clueless on Religion Reporting

August 7th, 2007 2:54 PM

I've been on a roll lately with stories about the media not getting religion, so I might as well get another amen from the choir in the comments threads.

Christianity Today's Ted Olsen explained yesterday at his magazine's "Liveblog" why he doesn't rely on Reuters for that ol' time religion (reporting):

Today's nonsensical headline from Reuters: "New evangelist leader plans to avoid politics"

Reuters still doesn't get the difference between an evangelical, an evangelist, and a pastor. When the story finally does get around to using the word evangelical, it's to explain, "American evangelical Christians, who number 60 million, believe that many of the country's social ills stem from high divorce rates and teenage pregnancies."

Reuters reporters would do well to consult the National Association of Evangelicals' (NAE) statement of faith wherein neither the terms "social ills," "divorce," nor "teenage pregnancies" appear even once. For some reason, it is laden with pesky religious words like "God" and "Christ" and "salvation" and "damnation."

Who knew?