Oh, all those religious calendar features! But here’s a good bet for Good Friday

From Get Religion-

News scribes face the perennial task of devising features pegged to major dates on religious calendars.

Due to the somber and difficult theme, perhaps the most challenging is Good Friday – Great and Holy Friday for Orthodoxy, whose date of April 14 coincides with other Christians’ in 2017. One rarely sees a fresh, first-class media article about the day Christ died.

Relief is on the way this year, thanks to “The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ” by Fleming Rutledge, proclaimed the “2017 Book of the Year” by Christianity Today magazine and newly reissued in paperback by Eerdmans. Sample chapter headings: “The Godlessness of the Cross.” “The Question of Justice.” “Condemned into Redemption.”

More here-

https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2017/3/20/oh-those-religious-calendar-features-but-heres-a-good-bet-for-good-friday

Covering up a cross is not the most offensive thing about Coronation Street

What, I think, is a letter to the editor about the cross cover-up on a British Soap Opera. From the Mirror. My original post is here-

http://3riversepiscopal.blogspot.com/2009/01/its-lovely-church-shame-about-cross-say.html

It is now almost socially unacceptable, explains Jeremy Vine, to say you believe in God. He is, of course, talking about this from a professional standpoint. In his private life the Radio 2 and Panorama host is a practising Christian but feels to discuss his beliefs on air would be "destructive".

Presumably Coronation Street producers were thinking along the same lines when they covered up a cross so it didn't feature in Molly and Tyrone's wedding scenes - despite the fact the couple were marrying in an Anglican church. You know, those establishments where the image of Christ dying on a cross is symbolic of the Christian faith. Corrie now say they made a mistake. But whatever possessed them to do it?

If they're afraid of offending viewers could they please tone down the ludicrously far-fetched sexual shenanigans between barmaid Bev and Lloyd. That's what I call an unholy alliance.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/sue-carroll/2009/01/20/covering-up-a-cross-is-not-the-most-offensive-thing-about-coronation-street-115875-21055156/

It’s a lovely church, shame about the cross, say TV crew

Coronation Street is a British Soap Opera. From the London Times and maybe a candidate for the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" Department.

When millions of viewers tuned into Tyrone and Molly’s wedding on Coronation Street this week, they probably did not notice anything amiss with the beautiful 14th-century church. The rector was not among them.

It was not the absurd storyline that so incensed the Rev James Milnes, of St Mary’s Church, Nether Alderley, Cheshire. Nor was it the ornate horse-drawn carriage, the dry-ice machine used to create atmosphere or even the harpist in the nave.

The clergyman was furious that the show’s producers had decided to hide the solid brass cross that formed the centrepiece of the altar for fear that it would cause offence to viewers.

Denouncing the decision to hide the cross behind a garish candelabra and artificial flowers, Mr Milnes wrote in his monthly parish magazine that Granada Television had “emptied the church of the very thing that makes it a church”.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article5512289.ece