I listen to NPR all the time. I love NPR. They are accused of being liberal and there is a bit of a leftward lean but they tend to be much more moderate then anything else. Also, I like the fact that they don’t spend only 5 sentences on a news story. They try to dig into it a little and let you know what’s going on. Often they will bring in two different perspectives and let us hear from them.
The one topic that they most often bother me about is religion. Not just Christianity, but religion in general. Whenever someone they are speaking to is strongly religious, they always seem to somehow imply that there is a reason for it other than sincere belief. The one I’ve picked up on more often than not is when they imply that some personal trauma has lead to the individual’s deep religious belief. In other word, the person has a crutch. Another motive they seem to insinuate is that religious convictions are held for sociological reasons. For example, a person opposes abortion on religious grounds because they have an agenda for women. NPR will usually repeat that what the person believes, that is that life begins at conception, but somewhere along the way, the commentary will imply that there are other reasons as well.
What really bothers me is the personal trauma one. People only turn to religion in response to crisis, they seem to think. But we don’t always or necessarily often. I didn’t respond to the gospel because of a crisis. My life was going pretty well at the time. I had just gotten married, was doing well at work, I was happy. I responded to the gospel, well, I’m not sure why. I had heard it often enough growing up and never really got it. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t respond to it either.
I can’t think of any particular NPR story that illustrates my point, it is more of a general observation. But I’ll be listening and when I come across a story, I’ll post a link and analysis.