My USA Today guest column argues that the news media are failing to treat religion with the seriousness it deserves when journalists approach minority religions with kid gloves. Excerpt:

A culture’s metaphysical dream tells us a lot about its strengths and weaknesses. One is not required to make a theological judgment about voodoo — or any other religion — to explore the connection between its metaphysical tenets and the world it has made among its believers.
A world in which most people believe that reality is governed by the occult caprice of the gods will be a very different place than a world in which people believe events can be explained according to either a Christian or a scientific materialist metaphysic. It’s as legitimate to ask what role voodoo plays in Haiti’s fathomless social troubles as it is to ask the same question about fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East, conservative Christianity in the Bible Belt, or militant atheism in the land of academia. And it’s as necessary.