I've gone to all of the links cited above, and this problem keeps coming up--religion is treated as another political party.

Now, I know that many religious people are politically active, but it seems like the gist of both your article and David Smydra's post was that religious writings in newspapers tended to treat religion at arm's length. My question is whether treating religion as political gets any closer to spirituality--at least that's how I view the opposite of 'arm's length', talking about the spiritual experience.

I'm not saying that this is easy, as it could very well lend itself to a front page story about your next door neighbor's dream two nights ago.

My question is can the newspapers do it any differently? What does it matter if one Palestinian cleric says, using a scriptural basis, that Hamas' present tactics are wrong, or that they will someday change? Or, if you write about weekly sermons in Vermont, is that news or is it preaching? Or, for the sake of equal time, a Jew in South Carolina finds a unique interpretation of a psalm that changes his or her life?

Or, here's another scenario. It seems like the place I read the most about religion, religious people, is in the sports pages. Years ago Reggie White spoke of a miracle that occurred during halftime, his injured arm (to the best of my recollection), miraculously healed and he could play the second half. Years later I read another article about that incident, this time it was reported that he took so many drugs to reduce swelling that he nearly overdosed. Kurt Warner thanked Jesus for every victory, saying his life is a testament to Jesus. Then his career tanked after a hand injury (the headline in the local free newspaper was Jesus Pissed Off at Warner). So what's the paper to do? If there's any topic, sphere, in the world where, as a general rule, things are not what they seem to be, it's in the area of religion. You can see how an editor would or should view all of this with extreme skepticism.

So I'm just asking, how is a well written article about religion supposed to be? It is even within a newspaper's purview?