UI Press | Mark Silk | Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America

Unsecular Media

Making News of Religion in America

Awards and Recognition:

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 1997.

Holy wars, efforts to legislate biblical morality, sexual and financial misbehavior by ministers, new spiritual movements - these and other controversial religious phenomena make their way more and more frequently into what we read, hear, and see. Unsecular Media is the first comprehensive description and analysis of how the American news media cover religion. A working journalist as well as a historian of religion, Mark Silk explores the inherent tensions between religion and the news media and traces the ups and downs of religious news coverage from Benjamin Franklin to David Koresh. By showing why religion stories read the way they do, he clarifies the place of religion in American society.

"Argues that those who write on, edit and give place to religious themes in American journalism unwittingly favor religion too much. . . . Likely to have a long-term if subtle effect on religious coverage in the secular press."--Martin E. Marty, Christian Century

"Provides a framework for a less judgmental and more pluralistic approach to the coverage of religion in the U.S. Highly recommended."-- Choice

Mark Silk, a staff writer with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reaches religion and the media at Emory University and is a member of the American Academy of Religion's Ad Hoc Committee for the Public Understanding of Religion. He is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America since World War II and coauthor of The American Establishment.

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