Fox forces the Mass into Christmas

December 21, 2012 By

A friend put this picture up on Google+ (so I guess that answers the question of whether people still use Google+!). Around the same time, a reader submitted this story from Fox News, headlined:

Church devastated by super storm Sandy looks forward to Christmas mass 

At first I thought the reader submitted it because of the redundancy of calling worship on Christ’s Mass a “mass.” But that’s not why it was submitted, although it’s related to that issue.

For years The Oasis Christian Center had been a gathering place for the residents of Midland Beach, on the Eastern shore of Staten Island, New York.

“We’ve done our best,” Pastor Tim McIntyre said, “to reach our community with God’s love through food pantry and children’s programs, youth programs as well as our Sunday service.” …

McIntyre saw his church the day after the super storm. He says he didn’t think it would ever open its doors again, much less in time for Christmas mass.

Oasis Christian Center? Pastor Tim McIntyre? Mass?

The Mass is “the celebration of the Eucharist.” It is a term most commonly used by Roman Catholics, although other sacramental church bodies also use the term. Is Oasis Christian Center one of those?

I reviewed the quotes in the article and the church’s web site and I never found any mention of a Mass, Divine Service, Eucharist, Holy Communion, Communion, sacrament or the like.

Instead, there is information such as this:

What kind of church are we?

Oasis is a nondenominational church that is Biblical in practice and charismatic in expression. We are a Christ-centered community of faith that believes we have a mandate from heaven to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ in our community.

We choose not be contentious about the non-essentials of the Christian faith, which version of the Bible we read, spiritual gifts, predestination, etc. There are a number of secondary beliefs that the leadership of Oasis is passionate about. Complete agreement is not required for those who choose to worship with us, but it should be known that we will preach, teach, and counsel in accordance with these theological convictions. It is important that we are all striving to diligently preserve unity and peace concerning these secondary beliefs.

It’s pretty clear that this is just a straight up error by the reporting. But it is somewhat funny, at least.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Worship Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Pod people: Don’t mention the war!

December 20, 2012 By

“Don’t mention the war!” is the catch phrase from “The Germans” episode of the British television series Fawlty Towers. I thought of this episode and John Cleese when I prepared a story for GetReligion on the New York Times‘ and Los Angeles Times’ reporting on the Bundestag’s vote to protect the religious freedom of Jews and Muslims by forbidding courts to ban the circumcision of infant boys.

The two Times were unable to get past the war in their reporting on this story, and ultimately missed the real story picked up by NBC, which was that German objections to circumcision were not crypto-Nazi prejudices but a consequence of the secularization of German society.

In “The Germans” episode, John Cleese, playing a concussed and bandaged Basil Fawlty, insults a party of German tourists dining at his hotel. Even though he warns his assistant Polly, “don’t mention the War”, he proceeds to do so with each line taking on a sharper tone. The comedy reaches its zenith when Basil gives an impression of Adolf Hitler and goose-steps round the hotel.

The humor in this episode comes from the interplay between the slightly mad Basil Fawlty’s attempts at maintaining  bourgeois respectability and his German jokes. The audience also comes to this episode with a common cultural understanding that the Second World War was the fault of the Germans. However, being British, it is impolite to mention it.

This tone of anti-German animus was the topic of this week’s Crossroads podcast with host Todd Wilken, along with a quick discussion of British reporting on the appointment of Tim Scott as South Carolina’s first African-American senator — but the meat of our conversation was on the dastardly Hun.

Germans, like Catholics, remain one of the few “safe” topics of Anglo-American humor, and I find national stereotyping amusing. But when ethnic and national stereotypes blind reporters to the true issues at play, it is a problem for journalism.

My argument in this week’s Issues, Etc., show was that mentioning the war, e.g., alluding the Nazi past when referring to a court ban on circumcision, clouded the issues. As NBC News’ story pointed out, the objections to circumcision arose from the de-Christianized culture of Germany that ascribed no religious significance to the practice, and as such, viewed circumcision as a barbaric cultural practice that should not be permitted in an enlightened European state.

Ignorance of faith, not anti-Semitism, lay behind the circumcision ban. Well, that is what I hoped to have said. Listen — and let me know what you think.

If I blow this gig, could I try my hand at radio?

Filed Under: Islam, Judaism, Podcasts, World Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Christmas carol wars on the DC Metro — not

December 20, 2012 By

Anyone who spends much time on subways and other forms of mass transit knows that a whole lot of religious stuff goes on while people are moving from home to work. I’m not just talking about the people with their sports pages and copies of 50 shades of hades or whatever.

Lots of people on the Washington, D.C., Metro spend their commuting time doing studying their Bibles. Years ago, one of my students did a feature about the stash of Bibles that the Metro staff maintains so that people who have accidentally left them on trains can retrieve them. Also, I am sure that some of the folks sitting in silence with their eyes closed are praying and you see the occasional sign of the cross gesture.

The key word here, however, is “silence.” Many commuters are open to talking to one another, even about religion (it happens to me all the time, depending on what book or magazine I’m reading), but other folks covet their peace and quiet, even when not in the “quiet car” on the regional train lines.

Everyone learns the rules. However, I’ve always enjoyed the mass-transit experience, all the way back to my journalism and graduate-school days in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., a twin cities area with a great bus system. I jumped on the Blue Line there during a visit 20 YEARS after my departure and the bus driver remembered me as a regular on the route. Can you imagine that?

All of this is to say that I really enjoyed The Washington Post Style feature about a local pastor who has been part of my commutes here in greater DC for more than a decade. I have always know this man as the Korean pastor who sings classic Christian songs, or plays them on his trumpet, outside Union Station. Some of his favorites are “Amazing Grace,” of course, as well as “Just As I Am” and “How Great Thou Art.” He must have worked in a Billy Graham crusade somewhere.

As it turns out, he has another branch of his public ministry this time of year. Is he part of the “Christmas wars”? I am sure that some believe that he is.

On a crowded morning train on Metro’s Orange Line, Fisher Yang, 50, of Centreville, gets his share of jeers, eye rolls and smiles.

Yang, who is the pastor of a church in Shenandoah County, sings Christmas carols two days a week during the morning rush hour on Metro’s five subway lines. Starting at Vienna, he makes his way along the Orange Line toward downtown and then switches onto Metro’s other train lines, singing all the way.

Wearing black corduroy pants, a red and blue plaid flannel shirt buttoned up to the neck and a cross with the pattern of the American flag pinned on the lapel of his sport coat, Yang stepped onto a train, his chest puffed up in anticipation, and made his announcement.

“Good morning. Excuse me. Can I have your attention, please?” he told riders on Monday morning. He cleared his throat and belted out in a bass voice all the verses of “The First Noel,” No. 123 his English-Korean hymnal.

At each station, he sprinted from one rail car to another and started his routine again. He goes so quickly between rail cars, sometimes he loses track of which direction he’s going on the system, he said.

On a crowded Orange Line train leaving Rosslyn, a few riders looked up from books or the ground, rolled their eyes and then looked away.

This is not easy work, as it turns out. The story contains the telling detail that he is currently using his fifth hymnal, because some riders have taken copies away from him and ripped out many of the pages.

The story also asked one of the first questions that jumped into my mind in this litigious age, especially since the Metro is the kind of environment in which a train driver can cause controversy merely by saying the words “Have a blessed day” over the intercom.

Metro’s chief spokesman, Dan Stessel, said Yang’s not violating any policy. In 2010 there were flash mobs singing Christmas carols on some Metro trains.

“If you’re standing on a train and you happen to be singing instead of talking, it’s not something we’re going to regulate,” Stessel said.

So what is missing from the story?

Well, for starters, I would assume that, under the Associated Press Stylebook, this man should have been called “the Rev. Fisher Yang.” Sometimes I think that folks at the copy desks of our major newspapers have decided that Protestants, especially ethnic clergy, are not really ordained.

I also wanted to know more about why Yang does this, using his time and gas money to get into DC from a church more than 60 minutes West of the Beltway. The story quotes a few people on the Metro reacting to his work. I would like to know what the head of his deacon board thinks of this work, which he has been doing since 1998.

The pastor gives a logical quote, theologically speaking — “God wants me to sing in front of him. … It doesn’t matter what other people think.” Still, I’d like to know more about his contacts with believers, as well as unbelievers.

The story ends like this:

Yang said he became a Christian when he was a young boy in South Korea after “volunteers from the Salvation Army evangelized to him.” He said he’s partial to “The First Noel” because it “spreads the Christmas message.”

Just as he finished the chorus, a woman got up from her seat, clapped, and gave him $1. He’s received money before — although he said he doesn’t solicit money.

“I love to tell the story because I know it is true,” he told her. “Thank you. And Merry Christmas.”

Reading this story also made me flash back to something I witnessed on the Orange Line back in 2000. I tried to write this for the Style section, but editors there thought it was too, well, religious. I then turned a shorter version of the piece for Scripps Howard, with the title “Just another voice on the Metro.”

The context: Minutes after rolling away from the Capitol South station, an elderly African-American woman began preaching:

“God’s grace is real, but that doesn’t mean you can just keep on sinning and sinning and sinning,” she said, gazing straight ahead. “God is watching all the time. God sees all of you. … Our God is a Holy God.”

People kept their eyes down, reading their newspapers and paperbacks. A young black woman across the aisle giggled. “Oh no, it’s church,” she whispered to a friend. New riders glanced around in surprise, as they boarded the crowded car. But no one challenged the preacher or asked her to stop.

“God doesn’t ask that much of us,” she said. “He wants us to love each other and take care of each other and follow the commandments that are in His Word. Is that too much to ask?”

A youngster listening to rap on headphones said, “Preach it, sister.” Surely the collision between the pounding music and the sermon was causing a storm in her head. At first she was amused. Then she began shooting daggers at the preacher with her eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said the elderly woman. “You’re saying, ‘How are we supposed to know how we’re supposed to live?’ … You know what the Bible says: ‘For God so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.’ You all know that verse, right?”

No one answered.

“Sweet Jesus is all the guide we need. But God also gave us his Word. You open up your Bible and read it and tell me that God hasn’t made himself perfectly clear how we’re supposed to live. The Bible is God’s book. There’s no other book like it. Some of you may go to church and you may read your Bible. But have you ever let it get inside you and change you? That’s what I’m talking about. We’ve got to change on the inside. We’ve got to change how we live.”

I turned this into a commentary on mass-transit life and, in particular, this city’s vibrant African-American churches and believers. Of course, that Orange-line train was rolling out into Prince George’s County — the home of many, many black megachurches.

The last thing this preacher said, after the train reached its destination, was her thesis: “If one person hears the Word, then this is worth it. Just one person.” She was the last person to exit.

Welcome to mass transit.

Anyway, the Post piece was a good one. I would be interested in knowing the reactions of GetReligion readers to that piece. Was it funny? Inspiring? Both?

IMAGES: From the Panabasis photo blog.

Filed Under: Godbeat, People, Race, Religion, Worship Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The nones on the bus

December 20, 2012 By

This week the Pew folks came out with a large Global Religious Landscape report. It’s a super fun read for anybody who follows this site. Yesterday, we looked at one story that came up short when discussing the significance of Christianity’s dominance. In the comments to that piece, reader MJBubba wrote:

Not so fast on those 16% unaffiliated. I heard a radio news broadcast that briefly mentioned this story and, though I don’t recall their actual words, it sounded like the 16 % were all atheists and agnostics. The Pew report says that 62 % of the 16 % are Chinese, and then goes on to say that 44 % of these 700 million Chinese “say they have worshiped at a graveside or tomb in the past year.” It sounds like many of these unaffiliated are either too suspicious to give their affiliation (Falun Gong perhaps, or un-registered Christians or Muslims?), or maybe they practice the “Chinese indigenous spirit religions.” Either way, some media coverage of the 16 % seems to run far further than the Pew report supports.

The “nones” (not to be confused with the “nuns,” as I do literally every time I hear a report about them) are a huge story this year. But when we talk about those who are unaffiliated with any particular confession of faith, we could be talking about everything from hard-core atheists to folks who worshiped at a sacred place in the previous year. How does the coverage handle this?

One of the difficulties in covering this story is that it takes quite a few words to explain what “unaffiliated” means. And “unaffiliated” isn’t the most exciting way to phrase it sometimes. This Reuters report is great. Here’s the top dealing with the issue at hand:

People with no religious affiliation make up the third-largest global group in a new study of the size of the world’s faiths, placing after Christians and Muslims and just before Hindus.

The study, based on extensive data for the year 2010, also showed Islam and Hinduism are the faiths mostly likely to expand in the future while Jews have the weakest growth prospects.

It showed Christianity is the most evenly spread religion, present in all regions of the world, while Hinduism is the least global with 94 percent of its population in one country, India.

Overall, 84 percent of the world’s inhabitants, which it estimated at 6.9 billion, identify with a religion, according to the study entitled “The Global Religious Landscape” issued by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life on Tuesday.

The “unaffiliated” category covers all those who profess no religion, from atheists and agnostics to people with spiritual beliefs but no link to any established faith.  “Many of the religiously unaffiliated do hold religious or spiritual beliefs,” the study stressed.

“Belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7 percent of unaffiliated Chinese adults, 30 percent of unaffiliated French adults and 68 percent of unaffiliated U.S. adults,” it said.

It’s everything you could hope for in a very brief report on this intriguing trend. But we did have a few complaints about the headline, which reads:

“No religion” third world group after Christians, Muslims

What do you think?

Less successful was the New York Times headline:

Study Finds One in 6 Follows No Religion

The story is very short and doesn’t include details about how many of those one in six hold religious beliefs even as they’re unaffiliated. As Peter Manseau put it:

Better headline for this would be “Study Finds 1 in 6 Follows No Religion Exclusively.” Unaffiliated doesn’t mean none.

Even the New York Times headline was better than this one from Religion News Service, which was just flat out false:

Unbelief is now the world’s third-largest ‘religion’

Pew asked about religious affiliation, not belief.

It’s a difficult concept to capture in a headline. I still think “unaffiliated” might be the right term to use, but copy editors might riot rather than use it. What do you think?

Filed Under: Atheists & Agnostics, Religion, Uncategorized, World, World Religions Tagged With: , , ,

Bring your swords, and guns, to church

December 19, 2012 By

Back in my high school days, my family attended a Church of Christ in Fort Worth, Texas.

Most every Sunday, our minister made the same request before he preached.

“Hold up your swords!” he’d say, and we’d all raise our Bibles to show that we brought them.

I don’t recall him ever asking us to hold up our guns. Of course, that was years before Texas passed a law allowing the carrying of concealed handguns.

In the days since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, we’ve seen a barrage of news stories and social media posts on the gun control issue.

ReligionLink produced a helpful primer on “God and gun control,” with background articles and expert source suggestions for reporters covering the faith-based response to the Connecticut tragedy.

A Religion News Service headline caught my attention today:

Churches under fire for using gun classes as outreach

When I clicked the link, I noticed that the story had an Oklahoma dateline. Since that’s my home state, my interest was piqued even more.

Here’s the top of the story:

PRYOR CREEK, Okla. — Pryor Creek, Okla., is gun country.

Located midway between Tulsa and Siloam Springs, Ark., the town of approximately 8,500 sits in the heart of Oklahoma’s greenbelt. Hunting and fishing are simply part of everyday life in Pryor, as it is known to locals.

Derek Melton is the assistant chief of police in Pryor, as well as senior pastor at Pryor Creek Community Church, a congregation he describes as Baptist, but not Southern Baptist.

Immediately, two things struck me about this story. First, the lede seemed to lack condescension or outrage. That’s not always the case when the national media report on gun-toting folks in the sticks. Second, the writer (or his editor) felt compelled to identify the nature of the church. How many journalists would have put a period after “Pryor Creek Community Church” and left it at that?

Instead, RNS elaborated on the church’s denominational affiliation (or more precisely, its lack thereof) even before getting to the nut graf:

“We follow the 1833 Baptist Confession,” Melton said. “We are an historically evangelical church.”

The confession is better known as the New Hampshire Baptist Confession of 1833, and there are very few churches around the country that subscribe to it. They answer to no denominational headquarters, no bishop, no overarching authority, except the Holy Spirit as mediated through the congregation.

Pryor Creek Community Church is also one of a few dozen churches around the country that are offering concealed carry certification classes as a way to reach out to non-Christians and attract new members. Melton sees no conflict between being a Christian and possessing weapons.

The story runs only 660 words but gives both gun proponents and critics ample space to express their points of view.

Even better, the critic is allowed to present a nuanced perspective. In other words, his position isn’t totally black or white. There’s a little gray, just like in real life:

Cizik, who was a top official at the National Association of Evangelicals before leaving it and helping form his new group, said he is concerned about churches using weapons training as a means to reach non-Christians.

“I grew up in gun country,” Cizik said. “I am not intrinsically anti-Second Amendment; however, this seems to be an ethically suspect message. The gospel should be’Put your faith in Christ.’ This seems to be’Put your faith in Glock.’”

Cizik said he believes it’s difficult to make a hard and fast judgment about the method, though. He believes gun ownership and even concealed carry permits are matters of personal judgment.

“The church has always used a variety of methods for drawing people in,” he said. “However, I do think that there are plenty of organizations more suitable that could be doing the training.”

For the sake of full disclosure, I recognized the name of the writer whose byline appeared atop this story. I have known Greg Horton for more than a decade. When I served as religion editor for The Oklahoman, he frequently e-mailed me with his critique — positive and negative — of the Saturday religion section and other religion stories that I wrote.

I think I’d still give the church gun story a positive critique even if I didn’t know the writer.

But by all means, GetReligion readers, check it out and weigh in with your journalism-related comments.

Image via Shutterstock

Filed Under: Baptists, Godbeat, Journalism, Politics, Religion Tagged With: , ,

Christians are numerous. What’s their problem?

December 19, 2012 By

Yesterday, Pew came out with a new “Global Religious Landscape” report. Much of the media coverage has been focused on the relatively high percentage of people who are religiously unaffiliated. We’ll probably need to look at how some media continue to confuse everything between atheism and multiple religious traditions into one grouping.

The Washington Post had a blog item that had a markedly different focus, headlined “Our Christian Earth: The astounding reach of the world’s largest religion, in charts and maps.” It was a bit of a disappointment, beginning:

Christmas is an official government holiday in the United States, one that coincides with a smaller and informal but well-known tradition: debating whether or not there is a “war on Christmas.” In this thinking, American Christians are obligated to ”stand up and fight against this secular progressivism that wants to diminish the Christmas holiday,” as prominent Fox News host Bill O’Reilly recently argued. “We have to start to fight back against these people.” This is often portrayed as a global fight; O’Reilly, in one of his books, suggested that the “war on Christmas” is part of an effort to “mold [the U.S.] in the image of Western Europe.”

This movement to defend one of Christianity’s most important holiday can sometimes seem to begin from the assumption that Christianity itself is on the defensive in the world, a besieged minority or at least under threat of being made one.

A very different picture emerges from a just-out Pew report, “The Global Religious Landscape.” There are a number of fascinating trends and details in the study, but it’s worth examining what it indicates about the place of Christianity in the world. And, based on this data, the world’s largest religion seems to be doing just fine.

Hunh? That second paragraph is just a mess. If you’re a reporter and you use the phrase “can sometimes seem to begin from the assumption,” your editor should probably explain to you why that’s not good journalism. Seem to whom? And about this assumption — was it made up by the reporter or is there something substantive that a journalist can point to?

The article “seems to” falsely concludes that because there are many Christians in the world, perceived attacks on Christians in the American public square are of no concern for Christians. Of course, there could be many Christians in the world, and many Christians in North America, and many Christians in the United States and there could still be attacks on Christians in the American public square.

And since the global report shows that there are growing numbers of “unaffiliated” — not just around the world but in the United States, too, the data trends there might be as important as the raw numbers, or more so. I’ve long stated my dislike for theological giant Bill O’Reilly (who once said my church didn’t follow Jesus because we oppose syncretism), but his arguments have nothing to do with the data supplied by the Pew report. Further, folks worried about the expression of Christianity in the public square include those at the Vatican, who perceive a threat from secular humanism and its effects on the church and culture. Their concerns aren’t specifically addressed by the Pew report but they’re definitely not renounced by it.

Anyway, another item is that the article was half-edited to correct an early error that asserted that Christmas is Christians’ most important holiday. It now says “one of Christianity’s most important holiday [sic].” And speaking of editing, there were some problems (on review these have been corrected since I first read the story) confusing North Africa and North America and whether 68 million Christians represent 5 percent or one-fifth of the Chinese population. The article ends:

Two of the 10 countries with the world’s largest Christian populations are not actually Christian-majority: Nigeria, which is about half Muslim, and China. Those 68 million Chinese Christians only make up about five percent of their country’s population, but it’s a remarkable toehold for the world’s largest religion in the world’s largest country. And the number of Chinese Christians appears to be growing rapidly, particularly as the government loosens long-held restrictions on free religious expression.

This data is likely to provide little comfort to the handful of Christian communities, particularly in countries such as Iraq, that are facing real persecution. But, overall, the story of Christianity in today’s world is still one of vast majorities, enormous populations, and historically unique reach. If there truly is a war on Christmas or any other facet of Christianity, then, in global terms, it doesn’t seem to be doing very well.

Again, this study is not the one to use to determine whether attacks on Christians or tenets of Christianity are doing well. This study does not even begin to broach those topics. Pew actually has looked at which religions are most persecuted in the world and found that Christians are persecuted in more countries than other religions are. As for basic tenets of Christianity, those are always in conflict throughout the world, including in the United States of America, where major battles dealing with religious liberty are being obscured by the media.

Filed Under: Academia, Atheists & Agnostics, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Islam, Judaism, Uncategorized, World, World Religions Tagged With: , , , ,

The late Rev. Fred Rogers fills his pastoral role, once again

December 19, 2012 By

During the past few days, how many of you have either (a) seen this picture and the following quotation on Facebook or (b) have received an email with a URL that points you toward this material?

The quotation, of course, is this one:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.” — Mister Rogers

The Washington Post Style team noted this trend and turned it into a gentle story in the midst of the ongoing rush of painful Newtown, Conn., coverage. This is fitting, since we are all experiencing this tragedy in the age of omnipresent social media. The top of the story noted:

As America reeled from the news of the shootings at Sandy Hook, parents looked for a way to explain the unexplainable to their children. But they also needed an explanation for themselves — someone to help process the magnitude of what it means to live in a world where 20 children can be gunned down amid storybooks and crayons.

That person was — and will always be — Fred Rogers, known to children everywhere as Mister Rogers. After 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting shared the children’s television host’s quote about helpers, along with an image of a tiny boy cradling Mister Rogers’ face in his hands, each looking lovingly into each other’s eyes, it began to go viral on Facebook. As of this writing, it has been “liked” more than 48,000 times, and shared more than 88,000 times. It has more than 1,500 comments, many of which echo this sentiment, expressed by Dianne Quigley: “WE can be the helpers … by creating a fabric of love, generosity, understanding and compassion. Smile and help someone today.”

Rogers’ quote and the image even closed Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press.” David Gregory offered a prayer for the families affected: “May God give you strength and at least you can know there is a country full of helpers here to catch you when you feel like falling.”

So, once again, we see one of the famous faces of the PBS universe providing that service that he provided so well for so many years — serving as a kind of semi-official national children’s pastor.

While he will always be known as Mister Rogers, it would have been good — especially under these circumstances — for the Post team to have accurately noted that his actual name was the Rev. Fred Rogers. This was a key element of his persona, even if he did not explicitly fill that role when in front of television cameras.

As one online tribute to him noted, about the roots of his public-television career:

While with WQED, working on The Children’s Corner, he used his off time to study theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, as well as to take courses in child development. By 1962, he received a Bachelor of Divinity degree and was ordained as a minister in the United Presbyterian Church and charged with continuing his work on creating and contributing to wholesome children’s television programs, which was his passion.

Photographer Jim Judkis — who took this famous photo at The Children’s Institute in Pittsburgh — is also the father of the Post writer who wrote the article:

Rogers was visiting the school to spend some time with the children, and my dad remembers the kids’ first encounter with him.

“This boy immediately went right up to him and held out his hands to touch him, and he said ‘Mister Rogers!’ In total awe. Total awe. And that was the moment of the photo,” said Judkis. “I think it shows the pure attraction, the love … it’s like he’s seeing God, touching God.”

If Mister Rogers were still alive, Judkis is sure that he would be doing anything he could to help the children of Newtown. “In my opinion, Fred is close to a saint,” he said.

I don’t know if Presbyterians have saints, in the formal sense of the word. However, I do know that Rogers was an ordained minister and, with this quote going viral in the aftermath of Newtown, it would be good if that fact was including in this kind of coverage.

This unofficial pastor to the nation’s children was, in fact, an ordained minister. That fact would have helped this story, putting a name on one of the religion ghosts behind this story.

IMAGE: Via Facebook, the photo by Jim Judkis.

Filed Under: Godbeat, Mainline, People, Radio & TV, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

Dancing alone in that D.C. Franciscan hermitage?

December 18, 2012 By
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Back in my Rocky Mountain News days, I covered an ecumenical gathering in Boulder, Colo., focusing on contemplative prayer and meditation. One of the main speakers was a leader at the Nada Carmelite monastic community — part of the Spiritual Life Institute — located in Crestone, Colo., at on the western face of the Sangre de Christo mountains.

During the question-and-answer session, the mother abbess was asked why she kept insisting that her prayers and meditations were focused on the person of Jesus Christ, and not on her own spirit, her own soul, her own personality. Why, she asked, did she keep insisting that the Divine was outside of herself.

For starters, she said, the reality of the Holy Trinity and a transcendent God is at the heart of Christian theology. Deny that and you have denied the faith. Plus, she added, “I have never enjoyed dancing alone.”

I will help to keep that quote in mind while reading the recent Washington Post Style section feature about the urban hermitage that has been opened by the Franciscan brothers of urban Washington, D.C. Here’s the top of the story, which sets the tone for this three-pronged news feature:

The headline in the monthly Ward 5 newspaper described what sounded like an antidote to the nonstop iPhone-checking, list-making, ladder-climbing, goal-setting, Washington mind-set: “Refuge for the Metropolitan Hermit.”

The article described a postage stamp of a cabin, urbanely designed and gloriously sunlit, standing alone amid four acres of maples and white oaks on a protected hilltop you’ve probably never seen, although it’s in the middle of the city. Dubbed “the hermitage” by the brothers of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Northeast Washington, the space has no WiFi, TV or radio, and its occupancy limit is one.

It’s been booked nearly solid since it opened in October.

Now, I called this a three-pronged story for a simple reason. On one level, it’s a story about this unique and interesting hermitage. On another level, it’s also about the noisy crush of urban life and the challenges faced by those trying to flee it, even for a brief period of time.

So far so good. The problem, from my perspective as an orthodox and Orthodox Christian, is that the story also seems to have assumed that all theories, doctrines and methods of contemplative prayer are one and the same or, at the very least, they are all seeking the same end.

The journalistic question this story raised for me is whether that this story accurately represents the beliefs and ministry of this hermitage and the brothers who operate it. More on that in a moment.

The strength of the story focuses on that second point, with the Style team reaching out to its core readers, those urban folks trapped in their noisy ruts. This is the “we” in the story, the assumed point of view.

What do we complain about more these days than the tyranny of constant stimulation? Our attempts to tune out the outside world — the occasional radio-less drive to work, the concerted decision to leave the phone at home for a few hours — are often ineffectual. It has come to this: True solitude is such a rarity in our modern lives that we have to buy it — or, in this case, rent it for $70 a night.

But it turns out solitude isn’t that simple. Although participation in silent retreats is on the rise, many of those preparing to spend time at the hermitage said they were so unaccustomed to unstructured time alone that they made to-do lists — then feared they were doing “solitude” wrong and scrapped them. They agonized over what to bring and wear and eat, as if they were traveling to an exotic land.

Michelle Harris-Love, a neuroscience researcher, wife and mother who lives near the monastery, was happy to pay $140 for two nights at the hermitage. But as the days drew closer, a stressful question surfaced. “I thought: ‘How am I going to fill my time?’”

This is a serious question.

The Catholic University architecture students who designed the RV-size space worked to envision the needs and rhythms of tenants who were unplugged. They were asked to turn off all their own devices and spend an hour alone and silent. Of the 12, only three were able to do it.

This explicitly Catholic context is then linked to a larger trend in American culture, broadly defined, which is the interfaith quest for silence and peace, as represented by the rising numbers of people attempting spiritual retreats of various kinds.

Various expert voices are marshaled to help flesh out this perfectly valid story. However, things get interesting — some would say distressing — when we jump into the history of the Franciscans.

The 350-square-foot hermitage was the idea of brothers whose order is named for Saint Francis, the legendary Catholic preacher who ditched his wealthy upbringing in pursuit of a material-free life of contemplation. Typically hermitages — the word means a place for someone who wants to live in seclusion, usually for spiritual reasons — are in remote areas, but the Franciscans wanted to create one in the middle of the city.

The 42-acre monastery grounds lent themselves to the project; the property sits on one of Washington’s rare hilltops and feels almost Mediterranean. Its main building is a huge Byzantine-style church built in the late 1800s and modeled after Istanbul’s 4th-century Hagia Sofia. Its grounds include sprawling rose gardens tended by a 100-volunteer guild and the four-acre wooded hillside that is home to the hermitage. Although 20 friars live in the monastery, the property emphasizes aloneness, its design intended to facilitate contemplation of the inner self. (For the Franciscans, such contemplation ideally deepens one’s relationship with God.)

This website has many informed Catholic readers of various stripes. Thus, I would like to ask them to chime in as I ask one or two basic questions.

First and foremost, which description best describes St. Francis? Was he a “preacher” or was he someone whose ministry primarily focused on “contemplation”? I know some Franciscans and I have written about members of contemplative orders, such as the Carmelites. These are not the same ministries. The brothers in D.C., for example, describe their work this way, stressing that:

… 800 years ago, the Roman Catholic Church entrusted the guardianship of the Holy Land and other shrines of the Christian religion to the Order of St. Francis. This work has grown to include support of schools and missions in the Holy Land, as well as care for refugees and other needy people throughout the region.

The Franciscan Monastery in Washington, D.C., sustains this 800-year mission of the Franciscan Friars in the Holy Land through education, fundraising, recruiting vocations, promoting pilgrimages and providing pastoral ministry locally to religious and lay Catholics and to all of good will.

Also, it is rather strange to say that their spirituality focuses on the “contemplation of the inner self,” even if — the Post hastens to note the order’s narrow Christian vision — the purpose is to deepen “one’s relationship with God.” I thought that the primary purpose of self examination, in Franciscan and Catholic thought, was to lead to repentance of sin and, ultimately, to a state of thankfulness and union with a forgiving God. The goal, as the Carmelite abbess said, is the opposite of dancing alone.

In the end, I was left wondering about the purpose of this beautiful urban hermitage. This is a fascinating news story about a fascinating and timely subject. Still, I was left asking: Did the Post team get this right or not? Were the views of the Franciscans accurately reported or not?

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