摘要：In Religion in the News, S.H. is concerned primarily with the relationship between two major social institutions in American society -religion and the press. The series of questions that this relationship provokes is tackled from several points of view: empirical, historical and theoretical – with a strong emphasis on social and cultural discourse as the crucial framework within which to understand the more detailed material. The central question is articulated at the outset: «Why is it that in the United States, the most religious of the western industrial countries, the coverage of religion by the secular press continues to be so controversial?» (p. 1). The answer reveals layers of complexity not only within religion and the press themselves, but in the intricate relationships between them.
