Enough with U.S. politics and punditry. How about more news-media reportage on major developments abroad?

One top hot spot in the coming Joe Biden era is Iran, with the regime's intensified rivalry with Arab neighbors led by Saudi Arabia, ongoing hatred toward a supposedly satanic United States and ambitious pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Journalists give far less notice to Iran's religious situation, perhaps because they tend to emphasize Islam's dominant Sunni branch more than the minority Shi'ism that became Persia's official faith in 1501, and because we assume rigid theocracy is frozen in place and that's that.

But what if the religo-political rule so famously imposed in 1979 upon this large and pivotal land has lost so much public respect that we see "the near collapse of official Iranian Islam"? That startling quote comes from Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins in a column for The Christian Century. If true, that's a huge story just waiting for thorough examination through interviews with stateside experts or, for media so equipped, on-the-ground coverage.

The new edition of the authoritative World Christian Encyclopedia says its sources report that starting around 2002, Iran's Islamic rule has inspired the quiet spread of small underground Christian fellowships with thousands involved -- some say a million -- despite the fact that those forsaking Islam face prison, even death. This has been discussed in niche Christian circles online, but that’s about it.

Jenkins is iffy on the extent of Christian growth, since hard evidence is lacking, but is confident about Islam's collapse due to an important opinion survey in Iran last summer by a Dutch organization.

What is happening? Only 78% of the Iranians sampled believe in God in any sense, and just 32% consider themselves to be Shi'a Muslims any longer. A mere one-fourth expect the coming Imam Mahdi (messiah), a fundamental tenet of Shi'ism.

"The vast majority of mosques are all but abandoned, even during great celebrations" on the Islamic calendar, Jenkins reports.

His sardonic comment: "Forty years of ruthless theocracy will do that to a country."

Regarding obits, Hefner, Weinstein, Trump, religious hypocrites, 'Cheap Sex' and the death of eros

Within the Christian fellowship, the Good Book says, members should “not speak evil against one another” (James 4:11). A societal maxim tells us verbal caution is especially required in one instance: “Do not speak ill of the dead.”

Though journalists have a duty to “speak evil” if it’s both true and newsworthy, obituaries sometimes obey Johnny Mercer’s sermonic song lyric: “You’ve got to accentuate the positive.” Just before the defenestration of Hollywood bigwig Harvey Weinstein over his sexploits, the death of publisher Hugh Hefner -- a personification of the media maxim that "sex sells, inspired bland, fond farewells, even on “conservative” Fox News.

Or, given recent events at the New York City headquarters of that news operation, is that especially on Fox News?

Not so the truly conservative and ever-fascinating New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, an outspoken Catholic, whose sendoff was an invective classic. His Hef was the “grinning pimp of the sexual revolution,” the “father of smut addictions and eating disorders, abortions and divorce and syphilis,” a “flesh procurement” agent for celebrities, and “lecherous, low-brow Peter Pan” whose career concluded in “sleazy decrepitude.”

In Hefner’s wake it was perhaps inevitable, given the amalgamated contempt for both evangelical Protestants and President Donald Trump across sectors of U.S. high culture, that some journalists would brand believers as hypocrites, e.g. Brandon Ambrosino, a onetime Liberty University student who came out as gay, writing in Religion News Service.

Ambrosino noted that a Facebook post generated dozens of comments “to defend Trump’s sexual history while excoriating Hefner for his.” After rehearsing the president’s moral career in order to castigate preachers who vouched for his character, he concluded: “These evangelicals have lost any moral high ground from which to lecture culture about sexual morality.”

Interesting. So The Religion Guy scanned 95 posted comments about this column.