British religion writing is superior

I take a different view.

Although many of our greatest colleges were built by religious people I think there's a stronger vein of disinterest or disdain for intellectualism in most American systems of Christianity. The untrained, even uneducated, individual having a direct personal connection to Jesus Christ I believe is much much more important in most forms of American Protestantism and by extension all American Christianity. (As America is, for most of its history, a majority Protestant culture)

Some of this might be true of English Protestantism as well, but I think the sense that you had to deal with the intellectual class seems to have been more important. Also England is much more Anglican than the US, which is a middle-way between Catholic and Protestant.

So to the English Christianity might be intellectually interesting, but basically unimportant. Whereas to an American it might be intellectually uninteresting, but vital to communities and individuals. Particularly the poor and downtrodden.

I am with Geoff. The two things you do not discuss in polite conversation are religion and politics. They are now bundled into one neat package. The religious now use politics to make their religious beliefs into law. Safe within the cocoon, their are many rationalizations, often good ones, about why those beliefs should be made into law. However, it equates religion with politics and the politicians with whom they associate. When faith associates with politics, guess which one gets dragged down?

I also wonder if lack of competition amongst different faiths matters? In places where there is intense competition for believers, remember that old Economist article, the "hot" faiths tend to win out. Those faiths are sometimes a little light on theology and heavy on conversion zeal. You know, "OK, Im saved, now what?"

Steve

Shorter version of above post - could it be just that British newspaper writing - in general - is superior to American newspaper writing?

Yes, but the good religion writing isn't in the trash papers. The good papers are better than the American equivalents, in my op. I am English! Let's not turn this into a nasty American-English thing with quotations from Scripture :)

Perhaps it comes down to the English class system, which Rod's journalism companion was referring to politely with the education comment. If British society is more centralized generally, and has a more defined elite, the religious leaders (or leading thinkers among academic theologians) are drawn from the same well educated elite as the best of government, academic, and journalistic organizations. Technically, many of them ARE in the government via the Established churches. The common news sources of that class will have an expectation of serious coverage.

I know modern Britain is supposed to be less like the Edwardian idea of what outsiders think of as the British class system. J G Ballard was interviewed on NPR once and said it was still baffling to him, an Englishman raised outside of the UK but still within a British expatriate community, so I concede in advance to the British readers that its more complicated than I can state.

If the best American religious coverage was in the NY Times, and was written by Ivy league types covering other Ivy league types we might see the same thing. The key is the audience, journalist, and subject are relatively level in percieved status. Maybe we do, I am neither Ivy league nor NY Times subscribed.

"some among us..." . Sorry.

Our media probably tend to treat religion as ancillary to real life out of a simple realization that it is combined with the not unreasonable assumption that people that take religion seriously probably look for UFOs and werewolves in their spare time.

Don't assume things wk. Although I'm largely of English ancestry I have a slight degree of what might be termed Anglophobia. I've had enough education and experience it's pretty minor, but an immature little part of me still thinks of the English as those annoying people who are overly sarcastic and emotionally closed off. I'm doing my thesis on an English topic partly because I don't speak any foreign language well enough.

The cultures I feel drawn to most is the Chinese. If only my Mandarin was better I could've gotten a job in Taiwan. (Sigh) Although I'm also interested in Ireland, Malta, Iceland, and to a lesser extent the Swiss.

I agree with you. But one has to be reminded that the American press treats everything more superficially than the British press. It's not just a problem with religion, it's virtually universal.

Then again, there's the additional difference that America was originally colonized by religious groups that were considered, back in England, to be crazy nutcases who shouldn't be taken seriously. That's why the left England for settlements in America. So America has always had a mainstream of religion that is not easy to take seriously, either in England or here in the states. It's always had a very vocal, even dominant element that simply is not founded on intellectually rigorous principles of religion, as has been the case in much of Europe. So it's hard to take seriously. The kind of religion that is taken seriously in England, I presume, is not of the evangelical or fundamentalist variety, simply because those people were kicked out and sent packing to America.

In my view, the biggest problem with covering religion in America seriously is that one is expected to take seriously all kinds of religious notions that simply aren't serious to begin with, and have no intellectual weight behind them. So the general solution to that in the media is not to take religion terribly seriously at all, and just let it be everyone's own private matter. That way they don't have to get in the middle of the fracas and say that some religions are not serious, while others are, because the more fringy and intellectually dubious one's religious beliefs are in America, the more likely the person is to take them very, very seriously, and to be offended if others don't reciprocate. The ability to discriminate intellectually about these matters is essentially lobotomized, for fear of offending.

Re: America was originally colonized by religious groups that were considered, back in England, to be crazy nutcases who shouldn't be taken seriously.

That isn't really true. Back in the 1600s Englishmen didn't think that the Quakers, Puritans or Roman Catholics were "crazy nutcases". Rather they considered them heretics, and in the case of the Puritans and Catholics, politically dangerous heretics. Modern Britain may be very light on religion, but 17th century Britain still took religion, and theology, quite seriously.

Re: It's always had a very vocal, even dominant element that simply is not founded on intellectually rigorous principles of religion, as has been the case in much of Europe.

The Puritans at least were quite intelletually rigorous. See: Cotton Mather for an example. In fact, much of New England's culture to this day is Puritanism without God. It may be hard to appreciate today, but in 1th century terms the Puritans were the liberals of their age, which again explains New England (and for that matter the Netherlands, another bastion of 17th century Calvinism).

Jon, it's certainly a matter of opinion and semantics, whether you think of them as heretics or as nutcases. The English saw them as not worthy of being taken seriously as theology. They took them seriously as a social and political threat, however, which is why they suppressed and sent them to America. It's true, some Puritans did try to establish an intellectually rigorous system, but it collapsed in the process, suggesting it just couldn't hold anything like that together except by authoritarianism, which led to its downfall and end. In either case, no Puritans remain in the US, and if you like to call secularist New England, where I grew up, some kind of modern Puritan society, I can only say I can't even begin to take that notion seriously, which returns us to the problem at hand - the lack of serious intellectual conversation about religion in America, because you get all kinds of just plain kooky notions wanting to be taken seriously, when they simply don't merit serious consideration. Serious intellectual discussion is rather hard-assed, and does not treat foolishness lightly, even when it comes to matters of religion. But religion in this country wants almost everything to be taken seriously, put on the same level, as if intellectual discussion is some kind of democracy where all ideas are equal, and all religious views carry the same weight. It's why it never gets off the ground in the larger public arena.

Rod,
I'm with Extollager. Have you actually read a decent sampling of religious journalism in the UK? It's pretty shameful. In the Catholic world, the Tablet sets new lows on a regular basis. Ruth Gledhill is erratic at best, even when she's not parroting BBC tripe. Then, when you mix in the tabloids (Nazi to Papa Ratzi, etc.) and the Beeb, you have a religious reporting scene that's abysmal.
That said, I think Geoff G. is on to something in his initial post (though it's somewhat off-topic) in that the lack of secular interest in religion and the weakness of religion generally in the UK means that a lot of the polarities that US people experience (e.g., o you're a religious believer, then you must be some sort of young-earth creationist, etc.) aren't there. I dealt with historians of religion in Britain on a regular basis and coming from the US it was very refreshing to encounter them.

Rod, I agree “up to a point,” as the foreign editor in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop used to say…

When they’re good, British papers can be very good on religion. The ones that take faith seriously look at its many facets. They’re as ready to write about biblical archeology as clerical sex abuse scandals with the same interest in discovering and explaining the issue and saying why it’s important. These media treat religion with respect but without taboos. Maybe the fact that religion plays almost no part in British politics, in contrast to its more prominent role in U.S. public life, opens up a space for intelligent discussion about it.

But when they’re bad, British papers can be very bad on religion. The ones that don’t take faith seriously simply hold up its excesses for ridicule. Minor points can be trumped up and major issues played down to feed their stereotypes about a particular religion. There are no taboos, for sure, but no respect either. The fact that there are about a dozen papers on London newsstands every day competing for readers may mean that some that don’t go upmarket (like those mentioned above) feel there’s no place to go but down.

While this range of quality stands out in religion coverage, it reflects a wider trend that differentiates the U.K. from the U.S. press. Most British papers take a clear stand both on their editorial pages and in their coverage. This colors what they cover and how they cover it. So reporting on politics, economics, culture and anything else can vary widely depending on the paper. Just take a look at their coverage of the European Union, which can range from pragmatically positive to hysterically negative.

It would be convenient to say the quality papers cover religion well and the tabloids don’t, but it’s not that easy (especially since some quality papers now come out in tabloid format). There are some trends, but there can also be good and bad coverage side by side. The same paper can print a well-researched and informative article right next to one simply whipped up by copying dodgy material from other sources.