Since comments on this blog aren’t syndicated, I wanted to post an excellent comment just posted by Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer, a terrific weblog on religion and the press. Jeff responds to my recent post on the undercovered stories the UN wants to see more coverage on – he adds his list of religion stories he’d like to see better covered:
1. The looming possibility of a fundamentalist takeover of the Methodist church, one of the largest in the U.S.
2. The political role of leftist evangelicals, a much larger group than the press reports.
3. Sufism in Pakistan. Does anyone in the media even know there’s sufism in Pakistan? That it is, in fact, the dominant brand of Islam there? And that Pakistani fundamentalism is radically different than that of, say, Muqtada al-Sadr?
4. The rise of Paganism (a term I use neutrally). Media and academics want to dismiss this as a teenage phase (as if teenage religious experience wasn’t relevant). In fact, it’s a massive working class, rural religious movement.
5. Jewish messianism. No, not Jews for Jesus — Chabad, and its influence on non-Orthodox Jews.
I’d love to see experts in other fields pick up this meme and offer their five most important undercovered stories – please feel to chime in on the comments or on your own blog if this idea interests you.