Cowboy Christianity catching on?

January 24, 2012 By

Howdy, buckaroos.

Howzabout we strap the saddles on the horses and mosey out to the GetReligion Ranch?

In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m compensating for my lack of knowledge of cowboy culture by pretending — in an extremely awkward way — to understand the lingo.

For the record, I did grow up watching “Gunsmoke” and enjoyed both the original 1969 “True Grit” starring John Wayne and the 2010 remake with Jeff Bridges.

In my Associated Press reporting days, I had fun with a feature on a West Texas school that trains cowboy preachers:

MIDLAND, Texas — Across the street from a flea market, in the shadow of oil wells and tumbleweeds, Glenn Smith trains aspiring ministers in a building that looks more like a steakhouse than a seminary. But that’s OK – these are cowboy ministers.

“Preaching Jesus, Western style,” reads the sign out front.

“These boys and girls will come out of here full-fledged ministers, but they’ll be ministers that look like I do,” said Smith, 70, sporting a Resistol hat and ostrich-skin boots.

At the School of Western Ministries, pickup-driving pupils don colorful cowboy shirts, Wrangler jeans and belt buckles with messages such as “Jesus Christ: Champion of Champions.”

From Alabama to Australia, students come to West Texas to study how to teach the Bible in places where a barn might double as a sanctuary, and where horse tanks and farm ponds make do as baptisteries. They’re awarded certificates of completion at the end of their coursework.

Given my (admittedly limited) experience with the subject, I am always interested when I come across mainstream media reports on cowboy churches.

The Denver Post ran a feature Sunday on a Colorado-based organization that helps link interdenominational cowboy ministries. The story was tied to the National Western Stock Show in Denver.

Here’s the top of the 800-word trend piece:

At age 36, Jim Chamley says a lifetime of alcohol abuse and living the “cowboy way” left him physically and morally bankrupt.”

He’d lost his business and his wife, had filed for divorce and was contemplating suicide in a Kansas City, Mo., hospital as he awaited back surgery.

“The only reason I didn’t go through with it,” he says, “was because I was only on the third floor, and I was afraid I’d screw that up too.”

Chamley, a native of rural northwestern North Dakota, says he cried out to God to “come into his life and change him” in the midst of his despair, even though, he says, being both a Christian and a cowboy was something of a contradiction in those days.

“If you were a Christian cowboy back then — I wasn’t — you were in the closet,” he says, “and when you went to the rodeos, you sure didn’t thump the Bible or talk about religion or spiritual things.”

Now 68, Chamley is among those who have transformation stories within a group that once occupied society’s moral and spiritual bottom rungs.

As the story goes on, it develops the premise that cowboys — up until the 1970s — were all immoral bad dudes. Then the cowboy church movement started, and suddenly, the first Christians who wear Western hats were converted. It’s a nice storyline, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reading an oversimplified version of events.

To the Post’s credit, the paper does go outside the movement (presumably) to quote a historian:

Retired University of Tulsa professor and cowboy historian Guy Logsdon thinks cowboy churches and ministries have played a significant role in a shift in cowboy culture.

“It’s a freestyle way for cowboys and cattlemen to express themselves without a denominational policy,” he said.

Logsdon says the migration of cowboys toward Christianity is a significant and new moral chapter in the cowboy narrative, which historically was even more scandalous than movies are able to portray.

In reference to that specific section, I wish the story had elaborated on the direct quote. I’m not entirely clear on what it means concerning denominational policy.

The piece attempts to provide numerical evidence to back up its thesis:

A 2009 count conducted by the Baptist General Convention of Texas found cowboy churches accounted for more than 10 percent of the state’s total baptisms since 2000.

Still, at the end of the story, I felt like I’d eaten a cheap hot dog, not devoured a thick, juicy steak cooked on a cattle-run campfire.

But partner, I’d urge you to read the story yourself and twirl your lasso in the comments section.

Filed Under: Baptists, Evangelicals, Journalism, Pop Culture, Radio & TV, Religion

WPost: Faith crucial to black women! (cue crickets)

January 24, 2012 By

One of the news items creating buzz inside the DC Beltway this week is a national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post exploring the lives and beliefs of African-American women.

In a short feature explaining the poll’s roots and methodology, Post editors included these helpful talking points:

Some of the key findings from the poll:

– Religion is essential to most black women’s lives; being in a romantic relationship is not, the poll shows.

– Nearly three-quarters of African American women say now is a good time to be a black woman in America, and yet a similar proportion worry about having enough money to pay their bills.

– Half of black women surveyed call racism a “big problem” in the country; nearly half worry about being discriminated against.

– Eighty-five percent say they are satisfied with their own lives, but one-fifth say they are often treated with less respect than other people.

The religion numbers really jump out, when looking at the poll results themselves (click here). In fact, 92 percent of the black women polled said that “living a religious life” was important to them and, within that big-picture stat, a stunning 74 percent said religion was “very important.” This put the importance of religious faith up at the top of the poll results, along with “being respected by others.”

This fact is mentioned in the summary paragraphs high in the 3100-word first day report, which ran on A1.

Religion is essential to most black women’s lives; being in a romantic relationship is not, the poll shows. Nearly three-quarters of African American women say now is a good time to be a black woman in America, and yet a similar proportion worry about having enough money to pay their bills. Half of black women surveyed call racism a “big problem” in the country; nearly half worry about being discriminated against. Eighty-five percent say they are satisfied with their own lives, but one-fifth say they are often treated with less respect than other people.

The poll’s findings and dozens of follow-up discussions reflect the conversations black women are having among themselves at church halls after Bible study, at happy hours after work, in college lounges after listening to lectures. …

Believe it or not, that’s the last Post readers were told about the role of faith in the lives of African-American women in the first two days worth of printed features based on this important study. The second-day report focuses on how black women feel about the values and style of First Lady Michelle Obama.

While the first-day story ended with a short promotional note alerting readers about the second-day feature, the lengthy Michelle Obama story does not end with an item holding out hope for another major installment of the series.

So, at this point, it seems that the high priority that African-American women say that they place on religious faith — a value found at the very top of this Kaiser-Post poll — will receive, oh, about a dozen words worth of attention in the printed editions of the newspaper. That would be about a dozen words out of 7,000 or so.

Will there, in fact, be future features produced from this important poll data?

We can only hope. There may be a reference that I have missed somewhere on the Post site to future publishing plans about this subject. I sure hope that is the case.

At the moment, all I am hearing is angry crickets.

Perhaps Post editors were shocked by this result and, in effect, had not taken religion into account when planning ahead for this buzz-worthy series. If so, this tells us more about the priorities of the editors of this important newspaper than it does about the values and lives of black women. That high pro-faith number in the poll is not shocking, for anyone who has done some research into this topic.

Let’s hope that I am wrong and that a major feature is forthcoming on the missing religion factor in this series. One can hope.

Filed Under: Journalism, Marriage & family, People, Politics, Race, Worship

Grappling with “life issues”

January 24, 2012 By

Yesterday was the annual March for Life. This is a large annual event where people come in from all over the country — and world — to march to the Supreme Court on the anniversary of the date it handed down Roe V. Wade. This has been going on for almost 40 years and it’s been covered poorly for many of those years. This year was brutally cold and wet and yet the crowds were still there, marching as they always do. They may have been wondering why the Supreme Court hadn’t handed down the decision in June instead of January, but they were there.

But guess what! This year, this march — larger than all of the Occupy Wall Street groups combined — actually received a mention in the New York Times! Twice! Things are looking up!

Oh wait, actually they’re not. One of the references was in a blog post about how Sen. Rand Paul was detained by TSA during his security screening on the way to Washington. In the last paragraph:

A posting on the senator’s own Twitter account shortly before the incident announced that he was headed to Washington to speak at the March for Life, an antiabortion rally.

By the way, reading that line makes me wonder if the media really need to come up with a better way to describe a movement that is about more than just abortion. Speaking of, this Washington Post treatment of Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life is intriguing, to say the least:

The Catholic Church has increasingly focused on educating and mobilizing its youth around its antiabortion ideology…

With another presidential election looming, many antiabortion advocates at the event said educating youths in their ideology is more important than ever…

Group chaperone Karina Franco, 37, said this was the first real education in antiabortion ideology for most of the youths…

Exsqueeze me? I don’t know Karina Franco but I suspect the words “antiabortion ideology” hadn’t even entered her mind, much less exited her mouth. But apparently it’s the new media term for describing the same Catholic doctrine that is linked to beliefs on a wide range of subjects, not just abortion. It would be like saying the church has an “ideology” on salvation.

Anyway, the other mention of the March for Life in the Times comes from the editorial page editor mocking Rand Paul’s beliefs on both TSA security and the abortion of unborn children. If the only way the March for Life gets mentioned in your paper is because a libertarian Senator missed his flight thanks to TSA’s security procedures, you’re doing it wrong.

Speaking of doing it wrong, I endured the unbelievably boring NBC debate of the Republican candidates. If you’ve missed a few or most, I hope last night’s was one of them. Unless you like lots of questions about what the candidates themselves think of the horse race of running for office. (Newt Gingrich did discuss his unique views on divine judgment and one Fidel Castro.) One of the few substantive parts of the debate was a question about something that happened seven years ago. Here’s how the Huffington Post wrote it up:

Exhuming Terri Schiavo

Adam Smith, citing a 2005 case that gripped the state of Florida, and, eventually the nation and the federal government, reminds Rick Santorum about his support for the family of Terri Schiavo. Santorum said that the support he offered was sincere, but made sure to indicate that he “did not call for congressional intervention.” Rather, he said, “I called for judicial intervention on behalf of the parents,” who were from Pennsylvania, and thus, his constituents. Santorum said that his intention was simply to ensure that the judicial process worked as fairly as it could.

Asked if “do not resuscitate” orders were “immoral,” Santorum said, “No, I don’t think so.”

This is a very abbreviated and not entirely accurate summary but the question was “Do not resuscitate directives, do you think they’re immoral?” and the response from Santorum was “No, I don’t believe they’re immoral. I mean, I think that’s a decision that people should be able to make, and I have supported legislation in the past for them to make it.”

It was interesting that neither the journalist nor Santorum mentioned that the legislation Santorum sponsored regarding Schiavo received votes from every Democrat, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. However, the “do not resuscitate” question was supposed to be the follow-up to the Terri Schiavo question. And why? I have absolutely no idea. The question about Terri Schiavo’s life was about whether her husband should be permitted to starve and dehydrate her, not whether she should be resuscitated. In fact, her husband had obtained a do-not-resuscitate order on her life 12 years prior. It is staggering to me that a reporter who had prepared such a dated question wouldn’t have some grasp of the most basic facts of the case. Particularly considering he’s at a local newspaper there (the Tampa Bay Times). Even before I experienced dehydration in 2010, I knew this (once you’ve experienced dehydration, if you survive it, you will not forget it — unbelievably painful).

Speaking of debates and “life issues,” I also wonder if anyone caught this question from CNN’s John King during the last South Carolina debate:

(APPLAUSE) KING: I think we have nodding heads. I assume we have agreement on that. But let’s move on to another issue that came up in the campaign right here in South Carolina this week, and that’s the life issue.

Mr. Speaker, your campaign sent out a mailing to South Carolina Republicans across this state essentially questioning Governor Romney’s commitment on this issue, saying that he has changed his position on the abortion issue.

“The life issue.” That has to be the first time a moderator has used this vocabulary in a debate.

Photo via Catholic University of America gallery.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Journalism, Orthodoxy, Politics, Social Issues

Santorum stunner at Florida church!

January 23, 2012 By

One of the first things that I do with student journalists is teach them the following trick. If you are struggling with some particularly tough passage in a story, perhaps a tricky paraphrase with some complicated grammar, then it is wise to print a copy of your rough draft, walk away from the keyboard and read the stuff out loud. Most of the time, your ears will catch the mistakes.

This even works, sometimes, with errors of fact. It’s amazing how the really dumb stuff just jumps off the page when you hear your own voice reading the words. No, this technique doesn’t work nearly as well when you simply read the text silently, inside your own head.

A reader just sent your GetReligionistas a classic example of a mistake that made it into print at the Palm Beach Post (the newspaper that landed in my yard about a decade ago) that surely, surely would have been caught if a reporter or editor had paused long enough to read this howler out loud. Here’s the top of this short political-beat story:

Rev. O’Neal Dozier, the conservative pastor of Pompano Beach’s Worldwide Christian Center, told the Palm Beach Post … that Mitt Romney cannot win the presidency because Americans won’t vote for a Mormon president.

Following his third place finish in South Carolina, Rick Santorum made his first Florida campaign stop at Dozier’s church, where he gave a faith-based sermon. Dozier has been an outspoken critic of homosexuality and radical Islam. In November, former presidential candidate Herman Cain decided minutes before a speech not to have Dozier deliver his invocation, as was originally planned.

First of all, under Associated Press style, that would be “The Rev. O’Neal Dozier,” with a T-H-E.

However, that isn’t the most humorous choice of words in this passage.

Did you see it? Raise your hands, out there in GetReligion reader land, if you have ever heard someone deliver, in a church, a non-faith-based sermon.

I assume that the reporter was trying to say that, instead of getting up in the pulpit of a conservative church and giving a talk about tax breaks for manufacturers, the Catholic senator elected to talk about matters directly related to Christian faith. Thus, it was a “faith-based sermon” instead of, well, a “secular sermon.”

Then again, after that kind of gaffe, are readers supposed to trust that this was a “sermon” at all? Did Santorum actually preach the sermon in this church service or did he simply make some off-the-cuff remarks? In other words, is the reporter using the word “sermon” as a metaphor?

In this case, I would think that many readers would actually want to know if a candidate for the White House spoke before the service in a major African-American church, during the service or afterwards. Was he in the pulpit or did this take place in coffee hour?

After reading that strange “faith-based sermon” reference, I am not sure what happened, in this case.

As for the main thrust of this story, Palm Beach Post editors also needed to challenge this prominent pastor on one of his alleged facts. Read the following carefully:

Dozier, who is black, said a Republican will need at least 10 percent of the black vote to win the presidency.

“Blacks are not going to vote for anyone of the Mormon faith,” Dozier said. “The book of Mormon says the Negro skin is cursed.”

From 1849 through 1978 the Church of Latter-Day Saints barred blacks from its priesthood. The church has lifted but not repudiated the policy. Dozier said if Romney is the nominee, President Obama’s surrogates will bring out what Dozier considers to be racist views in the Mormon Church.

First of all, the story should have referred to “The Book of Mormon,” not the “book of Mormon.” Also, that controversial “doctrine” or “teaching” — as opposed to “policy” — is linked to a passage in a different Mormon text, one called “The Book of Abraham,” within “The Pearl of Great Price.” It isn’t in “The Book of Mormon,” itself. If I am in error on that point, someone shoot me a correction.

All in all, this was not a happy excursion onto the religion beat.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Journalism, Mormons, Politics

Pod people: Endorsing the chosen one

January 23, 2012 By

My father — a newspaper professional adapting to the digital age — considers his kids his personal information technology help desk, so we’re regularly helping him update his iPhone apps or showing him a new trick.

So my parents laughed when I asked them if I could use their land line for our weekly “Crossroads” podcast interview. It felt like asking if I could use a typewriter, but I suppose many people still use telephones that are attached to the wall, every now and then.

In this week’s podcast discussion, we talk about evangelical endorsements ahead of the GOP primaries. Todd asked me whether a reporter might stand outside of a church in South Carolina after a Sunday morning service and do some interviews to gauge reactions of how evangelicals might vote. That’s fine, I suggested, if the reporter has never been to a church, and it might provide a little color.

Still, going to one church in South Carolina will certainly not be representative. It’s probably better to look to a leaders of a larger organization that represents many different denominations, rather than one specific church on a random Sunday. You need to look at a forest, not just one tree.

As the results from Newt Gingrich’s win in South Carolina show, at least 40 percent of evangelical voters backed the former Speaker of the House. In a state where 60 percent of voters identify themselves as evangelicals, that’s a nice slice of the state for Gingrich.

We also saw that, despite endorsements for Rick Santorum by 150 conservative religious leaders in Texas last week, he received about the same amount of support as Mitt Romney received.

So what’s going on? Did this major endorsement come too late? Do evangelicals and other conservative religious folks fail to follow so-called leaders? Should reporters even bother looking to endorsements from religious leaders as indicators of how those within their movement might vote?

By its very nature, the Protestant movement called “evangelicalism” is pretty diverse with no official hierarchy, so it’s difficult to pinpoint who leads whom. In some of the stories that covered endorsements leading up to the primary, few reporters acknowledged in the piece that endorsements are only one part of the puzzle in politics.

Using data from polls and talking with researchers who have studied the area can help bolster a reporter’s thesis for why something is significant. In other words, reporters need to build a case for why someone is significant, showing who they represent and why their endorsement could matter. A story that focuses only on endorsements is too simplistic.

As you listen to the podcast, give us some feedback on what kind of coverage you’re seeing coming out of the primaries. Are reporters fleshing out the complexities, or do you feel more confused than ever before?

Filed Under: Evangelicals, Journalism, People, Podcasts, Politics, Religion

Gingrich and the evangelical vote

January 23, 2012 By

I’m usually not very good at political prognostication but last week I told my husband that I thought Newt Gingrich would win in South Carolina. He laughed at me. Well look who’s laughing now! Actually, I have no idea who is laughing, but I do know that the entire DC political class of media and pundit types are freaking out about what happened. It was pretty interesting to watch Twitter reactions from all types as they process that Republican voters might not be ready to settle on Mitt Romney.

So, are there any religion angles? Heck yeah there are religion angles! There’s the fact that a bunch of evangelical leaders pushed their support of Santorum. Santorum overperformed on Saturday. Was that because of his support from some evangelical leaders? Or was it because of his debate performances? His general advocacy of issues that social conservatives care about? Do reporters even care?

Mitt Romney’s widely regarded as failing to connect with voters. Is that because of his wealth? His somewhat recent conversion to conservatism? His style of speaking? His religion? Speaking of his religion, I stole this picture here from Daily Mail political reporter Toby Harnden who writes:

Not headlines Romney wanted as he arrives in Tampa – incl 1 about Mormons w word “cult” in it

Here’s a link to the story. And Gingrich. He didn’t just win evangelical support, he won everybody’s support. He even did well among the group everyone said he’d perform poorly with: married women. (Here’s a bit from the Wall Street Journal about how he performed well across all voting sectors.) How is it possible, some religion reporters asked, that evangelicals could support such a vile human being? Or as one New York Times religion writer tweeted:

For MANY, evangelicalism=cultural attitude, not actual conviction on how to behave: how else adulterous Gingrich win Xian-heavy S. Carolina?

I responded by suggesting the Christian teaching of forgiveness might play a role! But actually, I think there’s another larger religion issue that is in play. This Reuters article from a week ago does the best job of explaining how conservative evangelical Christians were working through who to vote for. Here’s how it begins:

These are desperate times for Newt Gingrich.

But this is the audience he’s been waiting for: South Carolina’s evangelical Christians, who he hopes will rescue his flagging bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

His message to them is direct and urgent: Christians are under attack, and Republicans shouldn’t trust Mitt Romney to always oppose abortion.

“We will not tolerate a speech dictatorship in this country against Christianity,” the former House speaker told a crowd of 300 in Rock Hill, South Carolina on Wednesday, railing against what he has called government intrusions on Catholic charities and other religious organizations.

The article gets better from there, asking specific questions about how Gingrich’s past weighs on voters’ minds as well as what they think of everyone else’s negatives. It’s well-rounded and simply reports what voters are thinking. And it sounds like they were thinking that Gingrich might do a better job advocating for them.

Back when Romney was leading in the state, the New York Times ran a story about how his religious views were significantly less of a problem there this time around. But even in that article it says that the issue that dominated voter thinking was ability to defeat President Barack Obama. Now all the pundits and the reporters are mocking South Carolinian voters about this, but exit polls showed that voters believed that Gingrich had a much better chance of beating President Obama than Romney did. So did Romney’s religion come into play? Even the exit poll question designed to answer that might have some ambiguity.

Over in a nice round-up at Christianity Today, there’s a good graph showing how people answered the question of how much a candidate’s religious beliefs matter. Among those who answered that it mattered a great deal, Gingrich and Santorum dominated. Among those who said it only mattered somewhat, Gingrich and Romney fared best. Among those who said it didn’t matter, Romney and Gingrich did the best. But what do we mean by “religious beliefs”? It may seem a silly question, but when a pollster asks that question, does the voter think “I want a Catholic?” or something like that? Or does it mean “I want someone who will fight bigotry against religious institutions?” Again, that Reuters story quoted evangelicals saying they don’t think too favorably of Gingrich’s marital failures but they do think highly of how he’ll advocate for religious concerns.

The fact is that relatively few people make a decision to vote for anyone based on any one trait or position that the candidate has. It can be tricky to understand the complex decision-making that goes into a vote. Also, the temptation among reporters is high to come up with catchy narratives to explain the vote. (We all do it…)

I have to highlight an article that I thought did a good job of reporting the facts with the right dose of analysis — coming from experts as opposed to cooked into the story. Here’s the top of Dan Gilgoff’s piece for CNN all about how Gingrich managed to win more evangelicals than his rivals:

If there were any doubts that Newt Gingrich, a thrice-married convert to Catholicism, could connect with the evangelical voters who make up the Republican Party base, Saturday’s South Carolina primary put them to rest, with the former House Speaker winning twice as many evangelical votes as anyone else in the race.

Evangelical Christians made up two-thirds of the South Carolina electorate on Saturday, and Gingrich took 44% of their votes, according to CNN’s exit poll.

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, who rode evangelical support to victory in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses earlier this month, each got 21% of the evangelical vote in South Carolina.

Gingrich got roughly the same share of the South Carolina evangelical vote as Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, did four years ago.

The former House speaker campaigned vigorously among evangelicals in the Palmetto State, talking about “values” issues and speaking to and holding conference calls with hundreds of evangelical pastors.

“Whatever his personal values may be, he certainly talked effectively and cogently to the kinds of issues that evangelicals care about,” said John Green, an expert in religion and politics at the University of Akron.

It packs a lot of different things in there without attempting to do too much. CNN also had this article which is the opposite of the ‘Evangelicals in the Mist’ stories we see so much of. It’s headlined “Evangelicals in SC: Not What You Think” and basically says that evangelicals are not a monolothic voting bloc. Who knew?

And for a brief discussion of Catholicism here, I have to echo what one reader asked when submitting this story about “more than 40 Catholic leaders and theologians” who wrote an open letter to Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum “warning them ‘to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.‘” The reader asked us:

What’s missing from this story? Oh, not much. Just minor details like the names and affiliations of the 40 people who are doing the warning.

What’s the journalistic argument for leaving that out?

(second photo via shortformblog)

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Journalism, Mormons, Politics

Egypt’s moderate and puritanical Muslims

January 22, 2012 By

In recent days, some news has sputtered out of Nigeria about the horrific ongoing attacks perpetrated by Boko Haram. Many journalists have been pooh-poohing claims by the U.S. and Nigerian governments that Boko Haram is tied to al Qaeda. See, for example, this Reuters report headlined “Analysis: Nigeria’s Boko Haram ups game but no Al Qaeda.” Now that we’re learning more about the widespread coordinated attacks on Christians and other targets (the death toll is at least 162 in this Associated Press report), I sure hope to see more in-depth coverage of what’s happening there.

So it’s nice to see both the Washington Post and New York Times giving prominent coverage to the seating of Egypt’s new parliament. Both stories are good and well worth a read. The Post‘s piece is headlined “Salafists to take a quarter of Egypt’s lower house.”

Followers of a puritanical form of Islam will fill about a quarter of the seats in the lower house of the new Egyptian parliament on Monday, underscoring the political power being wielded by Islamists in the wake of the Arab spring.

Finding themselves badly outnumbered, some Egyptian liberals are weighing whether to align themselves with the moderate Muslim Brotherhood in hopes of preventing an all-Islamist alliance between the Brotherhood, whose Freedom and Justice Party will be the largest in the new parliament, and the ultraconservative Salafist Nour party, the second-largest.

I just had to highlight the use of the word puritanical. Something tells me that 16th century English Protestants had no idea that they would come to be associated with Egyptian Salafists.

As for describing the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate, I’m curious what you think of that. Certainly the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt practices a more moderate form of Islamism than some, but that could be viewed as a pretty low bar for bestowing the “moderate” word. There’s also this section:

The Salafists adhere to a hard-line interpretation of Islam that advocates a staunch segregation of the sexes and forbids alcohol, and have insisted that they won’t compromise their Islamic values. A history of rivalry between the two Islamist groups makes an alliance between the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood unlikely; the Nour Party’s precursor, the Salafist Call, was born from a movement founded in the 1970s to counter the Brotherhood’s domination at the university campus in Alexandria.

But the two parties do play to an overlapping Islamist base, and the Salafists’ strong electoral showing has given new prominence to issues involving morality.

Again, I’m not sure this is entirely fair. Are these “hard-line interpretations”? Or are they tenantstenets of Islam? Do moderates or liberals believe in compromising Islamic values? Does the Muslim Brotherhood have new positions on alcohol and the sexes? Are these the best examples we have and, if so, could we learn a bit more about how the other groups disagree with the Salafists? A great story, particularly with the limited word count the reporter seemed to be working with, but I do have some questions.

The New York Times took a slightly different approach in its article headlined “Islamists Win 70% of Seats in the Egyptian Parliament.” It begins:

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities confirmed Saturday that a political coalition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the 84-year-old group that virtually invented political Islam, had won about 47 percent of the seats in the first Parliament elected since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. An alliance of ultraconservative Islamists won the next largest share of seats, about 25 percent.

Did the Brotherhood invent political Islam or a modern incarnation of it? There has always been political Islam, since the beginning of the religion, no? Here we seem to have agreement that there’s this “ultraconservative” group but the Times doesn’t define the Brotherhood as moderate, although it gives some more specifics as to how its political means might be more moderate:

The tally, with the two groups of Islamists together winning about 70 percent of the seats, indicates the deep cultural conservatism of the Egyptian public, which is expressing its will through free and fair elections for the first time in more than six decades.

But the two groups have described very different visions and appear to be rivals rather than collaborators. The Brotherhood has said it intends to respect personal liberties and will focus on economic and social issues, gradually nudging the culture toward its conservative values. By contrast, the ultraconservatives, known as Salafis, put a higher priority on legislation on Islamic moral issues, like the consumption of alcohol, women’s dress and the contents of popular culture.

Both articles are helpful, particularly read together. The Times also gives a brief mention to how Copts fared in elections.

Image of Egyptian protesters via Shutterstock.

Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism, Islam, Journalism, Politics, World

Another Raven player, another holy ghost

January 22, 2012 By

OK, this is getting really, really strange.

The other day, I posted a blog about Baltimore Ravens cornerback Cary Williams, a young man with a remarkable and at times tragic life story. The plot changed for the better, however, when he went to live with a relative who turned out to be an ordained minister, even if the Baltimore Sun didn’t seem interested in that particular angle of the story. There was tons of evidence that faith played a major role in this story, yet very little of that information made it into ink.

Now it’s time to take a look at a lengthy Sun feature about defensive lineman Arthur Jones. Here’s the double-deck headline, which sets the tone:

Arthur Jones overcame injury, death of sister on path to NFL

The Jones family has produced two other elite athletes: MMA champ Jon and draft-eligible Chandler

Note that the strength of the family itself is central to this news feature. After an opening act, readers are given this summary of the story:

Through individual triumphs and family tragedies — the death of their older sister and a fire at their home — the brothers have formed a lasting bond. They have thrived thanks to their religion and strong faith in their family.

“Guys always ask why I smile so much,” said Arthur, whose wide grin lights up the Ravens locker room. “I’m healthy. I’ve got a beautiful family. My parents are both still living. I have so much to be happy and proud about and to smile for. And I play for a great organization, so why not?”

Note the vague reference to “their religion.”

That faith-centered note pretty much vanishes until much later, when it turns out that this isn’t simply a family with some vague, tangential connection to faith. As the story develops, there are other faith-centered moments, examples of language that reveal something about this family and its home life:

Jon and Chandler had always looked up to their oldest brother for guidance and inspiration. But the Jones boys learned to rely on each other when their older sister, Carmen, was diagnosed with brain cancer and quickly grew seriously ill. She died at age 17 when Arthur was in eighth grade.

“She was an angel. You ask God, ‘Why?’ But I guess God had a better plan for her,” Arthur said.

At this point, well into this lengthy report, the Sun finally serves up one rather crucial detail:

With his father, Arthur Jones Jr., who is a pastor in Binghamton, N.Y., and his mother, who used to work with the mentally handicapped before complications from diabetes caused her kidneys to fail, tending to Carmen during her two-year battle with cancer, the brothers survived the difficult and confusing time together. There were left at times to fend for themselves until Carmen was released from the hospital and spent the rest of her life in their home.

So this strong family does not have a vague connection to some generic form of religion.

No, Jones is actually a pastor’s son — even though it does not seem important to mention anything about that. As it turns out, his father is the outspoken leader of a small congregation, but one that is part of a powerful and very important African-American denomination — the Church of God in Christ. With a few clicks of a mouse, it’s possible to find out that “Arthur Jones Jr.” is actually the Rev. Arthur Jones Jr., of Mt. Sinai Church of God in Christ.

This brings up another Associated Press Stylebook point that, to my amazement, I must make again. Why is it that editors of The Baltimore Sun are so quick to strip Africa-American clergy of their formal titles if and when they show up in stories that are not directly about events in religious organizations? In stories that are about sports, for example? Why is it necessary to turn the Rev. Arthur Jones Jr., into Arthur Jones, Jr., who — oh, yeah, by the way — just happens to be an ordained minister?

In this case, the central theme of this story is the strength of this particular family and its ability to stay strong and united when faced with the tragedies and challenges of life. Are we supposed to assume that the Sun editors believe that this family’s strength is not, in some way, linked to the ministry of this father and mother? All of this has nothing to do with this son growing up in a pastor’s home?

Just asking. Again.

Filed Under: Godbeat, Journalism, Marriage & family, People, Race