Media

God, magazines, and malpractice

by Dan Kennedy

Maybe it's the Christmas season. Maybe it's the approach of the new millennium (although, as those killjoys at the Boston Globe keep reminding us in an oft-repeated page-two "editor's note," the new millennium won't really arrive for another year). In any case, the national magazines lately have demonstrated an unusual degree of interest in Christianity -- in the Bible, in politics, even in the bedroom. A readers' guide:

* Who was Jesus? The cover of the current Time proclaims JESUS AT 2000. The re-imagining of the Gospels offered within by novelist Reynolds Price, however, only makes it to about AD 30 Excerpted from Price's Three Gospels, which is based on his reading of Mark and John, the narrative offers a stunningly clear and lively telling of the familiar tale of Jesus' birth, life, and death. Unfortunately, Price gums up his achievement with a postscript, exclusive to Time, of a post-crucifixion encounter between Jesus and Judas that is melodramatic rather than revealing. Far better is Price's personal reminiscence of an out-of-body encounter with Jesus when Price was awaiting debilitating radiation treatment for spinal cancer 15 years ago. Skepticism (including mine) cannot diminish the power of Price's revelation.

* Updike's pilgrimage. Last week's New Yorker features an essay by novelist John Updike on "The Future of Faith" that is quirky, disorganized, often tedious, and, at a few points, oddly moving. Updike -- a churchgoing Protestant who doesn't quite believe, yet can't quite admit it -- ponders subjects ranging from art to his childhood in rural Pennsylvania to the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, which blasted Tokyo subways with poison gas several years ago. And he offers this baleful view of the current proliferation of spirituality: "The welter of religious phenomena is not - necessarily comforting to the professor of a specific faith; the very multiplicity and variety suggest that none of it is true, other than manifesting an undoubted human tendency."

* Onward, Christian voters. On a far more mundane level, Franklin Foer, in the current U.S. News & World Report, offers an excellent look at the two born-again presidential front-runners, George W. Bush and Al Gore. Particularly revealing are the unabridged Q&As with both men that appear on the magazine's Web site, especially the long, occasionally cantankerous exchange with Bush. On the teaching of creationism in schools: "I mean, after all, religion has been around a lot longer than Darwinism." On whether Jews can
go to heaven: "I don't get to determine who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. That's not me. Governors don't do that." Makes you appreciate Bill Bradley and John McCain, both of whom have been notably reticent about their beliefs.

* Heavenly sex. Slate this week offers a piece by Mark Oppenheimer on the proliferation of sex-advice guides for evangelical Christians. The article is not as entertaining as one might hope, but it was worth running, if only for this inspired headline: IN THE BIBLICAL SENSE.

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The New York Times led its Tuesday front page with a startling report that as many as 98,000 Americans a year die needlessly because of the mistakes of doctors and other health professionals. So did the Washington Post. And USA Today makes three. Yet, here in Boston, both the Globe and the Herald dumped the story inside, with nary a tease on page one.

Maybe the local editors were jaded. Deadly malpractice isn't exactly news in Boston, one of the medical capitals of the world. Indeed, in 1995 the Globe's health columnist, Betsy Lehman, died of a hospital-prescribed drug overdose (something the Post's article mentioned, but not the Globe's), and the Globe did some splendid reporting on the issue earlier this year.

But Monday's announcement by a branch of the National Academy of Sciences was a development of immense importance. The city's papers should have made that clearer.