Chuck Smith, fundamentalism and (yes) the AP stylebook

October 15, 2013 By tmatt

Readers who have been following this weblog through the years are probably familiar with the following passage in the Associated Press Stylebook. We’ve been dealing with it since the earliest days of GetReligion’s existence (click here for one ancient example).

Yes, we are talking about the “fundamentalist” label. That’s the familiar F-word that philosopher Alvin Plantinga of the University of Notre Dame once explained is a common term of emotional abuse, a semi-curse, among academics (and I would argue, far too many mainstream journalists).

To be blunt, “fundamentalist” means “sonofabitch” or in Southern slang “sumbitch.” A common variation is “fascist sumbitch.”

“(There) is a bit more to the meaning. … In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views,” noted Plantinga, in an Oxford Press publication. “That makes it more like ‘stupid sumbitch.’ … Its cognitive content is given by the phrase ‘considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.’ ”

However, the AP stylebook takes a more cautious and accurate approach to this hot-button historical term. Faithful GetReligion readers should be able to recite this by now:

fundamentalist: The word gained usage in an early 20th century fundamentalist-modernist controversy within Protestantism. In recent years, however, fundamentalist has to a large extent taken on pejorative connotations except when applied to groups that stress strict, literal interpretations of Scripture and separation from other Christians.

In general, do not use fundamentalist unless a group applies the word to itself.

Alas, there are competing approaches in other journalism scriptures. This brings us to The New York Times and its recent obituary for the Rev. Chuck Smith, one of the most important figures in the rise of a new brand, a new style of charismatic-Pentecostal Christian faith in the second half of the 20th Century. The appropriate headline: “Chuck Smith, Minister Who Preached to Flower Children, Dies at 86.”

The top of the story, unfortunately, stacks one religious label on top of another, like someone was trying to throw journalistic spaghetti against the wall hoping that something would stick. Some of these labels are accurate and some are not.

The Rev. Chuck Smith, a Southern California minister who shepherded flower children and rock ’n’ roll into the conservative wing of the evangelical movement while building a religious organization that grew to encompass 700 congregations and hundreds of radio stations, died on Oct. 3 at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 86.

The cause was lung cancer, said a spokesman for Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, the flagship church of Mr. Smith’s worldwide Calvary Chapel federation.

Though lesser known than evangelical leaders like the Rev. Pat Robertson and the Rev. James C. Dobson, Mr. Smith was influential for his liturgical innovations, for the cultivation of a new generation of prominent preachers and for the introduction of pop culture into the evangelical movement’s vernacular. His amalgam of fire-and-brimstone theology and avuncular charm made him a successful if unlikely Christian fundamentalist ambassador to the youth culture of the late 1960s. He predicted the end of the world and condemned drug use, sex out of wedlock, abortion and homosexuality while serving as pastor to a hippie tribe known as the Jesus Movement.

Yes, it doesn’t help that the Times — in one of the most common journalism mistakes of the age — turns Dr. James Dobson into an ordained minister. Click here for Douglas LeBlanc’s classic GetReligion post on that subject: “That’s Dr. Dobson to you, punks.”

(more…)

Fundamental misunderstandings of ‘fundamentalism’

June 12, 2013 By Joe Carter

When it comes to religious terms, you would be hard pressed to find a word more misapplied by the media than “fundamentalist.”

As your GetReligionistas have stressed a gazillion times, that is why the term has its own cautious entry in the Associated PRess Stylebook:

“fundamentalist: The word gained usage in an early 20th century fundamentalist-modernist controversy within Protestantism. In recent years, however, fundamentalist has to a large extent taken on pejorative connotations except when applied to groups that stress strict, literal interpretations of Scripture and separation from other Christians.

“In general, do not use fundamentalist unless a group applies the word to itself.”

Alas, whenever this term is used by the media, you can be assured that it’ll have almost nothing in common with its original meaning.

Here’s how we got the term: In the early 1900s a conservative movement sprung up within Protestantism — including the mainstream Protestant churches — in reaction to liberal theology and the form of Biblical interpretation known as higher criticism. A series of articles was written and collected into a four-volume work called The Fundamentals which was intended to outline the key doctrines, the “fundamentals”, of the Christian faith. The movement eventually moved away from its intellectual roots, though, and by the end of World War II it had receded from the culture at large.

Nowadays, though, the term “fundamentalist” has become synonymous with just about any strict conservative stance in any religion or ideology. Once again, it pays to remember that the AP stylebook notes that it has “taken on a pejorative connotations” and advises avoiding it unless a group applies it to themselves.

Unfortunately, that suggestion is rarely followed and the label is applied in seemingly contradictory ways. Take, for example, the title of a report an ABC New’s Nightline: ‘Modern Polygamy: Arizona Mormon Fundamentalists Seek to Shed Stereotypes.’

The story contrasts a group of “1,500 fundamentalist Mormons” living in Centennial Park, Ariz. with another group of nearby polygamists, “the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints followers, or FLDS, the group led by self-described prophet Warren Jeffs.” There’s no indication the Centennial Park polygamists call themselves fundamentalists so why use the term to compare them with a group that does?

The “stereotype” referred to in the title is that Mormon polygamy is repressive to women:

(more…)

Let us attend: Waiting for a religion shoe to drop in Boston

April 16, 2013 By tmatt

As you would expect, people were a bit tense last night on my commuter train from Union Station in Washington, D.C., back to Baltimore. If anyone was talking, they were talking about the Boston Marathon explosions and the other unexploded bombs found in that tense area.

Of course, police were everywhere near the U.S. Capitol. That was to be expected. And there was another element of the scene that was to be expected. I didn’t hear anyone express the slightest doubt that they believed this would be shown to have been the work of a terrorist or terrorist with some kind of link to radical Islam.

That’s the world that we live in, of course. That’s the world journalists have to work in, as well. The early reports of a Saudi national being question and detained, but not arrested, did not help matters.

In other words, everyone is talking and now we are waiting for the religion shoe to drop, waiting to see the quality of (a) the information that government officials choose to release and (b) the additional information that journalists — left, right and center — attempt to dig up.

Everyone is being extra cautious — as they should — when it comes to the facts that they think they know at this point.

One of the main stories at The Boston Globe has the basics, with the “person of interest” angle played down. Note the plural language in the lede:

A changed Boston started the search for normalcy today as law enforcement continued its search for those responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings that has so far claimed 3 lives, left more than 140 wounded and transformed downtown Boston into a closed-off crime scene.

Commuters faced increased security on the MBTA today in one of the signs of increased security in response to the detonation of two bombs, within 12 seconds of each other, at the finish line of the Marathon on Boylston Street Monday afternoon. At South Station this morning, Amtrak passengers were met by police with a bomb-sniffing dog who strolled alongside passengers. Baggage was swabbed by police and put through explosives-detecting scanner before passengers were allowed to board.

Overnight, a wave of law enforcement officials swarmed a home in Revere, looking at what the Revere Fire department described as a “person of interest,’’ but no arrests were reported this morning. The FBI, which has taken the lead in what a top official called a “potential terrorism investigation,’’ is expected to update the public at 9:30 a.m. today.

And later in the story, this addition glimpse of the behind-the-scenes activity:

No arrests have been reported this morning. According to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation, authorities are trying to determine if more than one person was involved in the attacks. …

On Monday, a Saudi national was questioned by investigators at a Boston hospital and late Monday night descended on a high-rise apartment building in Revere and conducted a search related to the investigation. FBI and Homeland Security agents were seen entering the Water’s Edge apartment complex at 364 Ocean Ave.

So what are journalists looking for? At what point does religious information or, sadly, speculation enter the news picture?

(more…)

The Air Force, faith and a very dangerous ‘f-word’

August 24, 2012 By tmatt

If anyone is interested, here is an short update on GetReligion’s recent move to Patheos. The RSS feeds seem to be working for the vast majority of users. We are still trying to get some art issues — past and present — worked out. A few tweaks continue, thanks to the patient Patheos staff. Some people think we have moved to a liberal site. Some people think we have moved to a conservative site.

Par for the course. Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?

At least once a day, I have found myself wondering to what degree I need to take into account the fact legions of new readers have not followed the six million words or so published on this blog since 2004. There’s quite a bit of history here, including some insider lingo and subjects that are so familiar that we rarely pause to explain them.

Now then, what we have here (a phrase I use quite a bit, actually) is a perfect example of one of the white stags that we have been hunting for a long time. Yes, your GetReligionistas dream of a day when many mainstream journalists will repent of their sins and decide to heed the following wisdom from the pages of the news bible known as The Associated Press Stylebook:

“fundamentalist: The word gained usage in an early 20th century fundamentalist-modernist controversy within Protestantism. In recent years, however, fundamentalist has to a large extent taken on pejorative connotations except when applied to groups that stress strict, literal interpretations of Scripture and separation from other Christians.

“In general, do not use fundamentalist unless a group applies the word to itself.”

This leads us directly to an oh-so-familiar passage in an NBC News report that, online, ran under the strange headline, “Air Force rules limit size of tattoos, role of gospel.”

So is that the role of the Christian Gospel among inked-up folks or are we talking about the gospel of tattooing? Or neither?

Whatever. This is another update from the religion wars in the U.S. military, a zone in which some evangelical officers do not seem to know how to take no for an answer, when starting discussions of faith, and some activists on the secular left seem to be seriously uncomfortable with equal-access laws and other traces of First Amendment rights among people in uniform (please note the word “traces” in that sentence).

Thus the lede:

Just days before retiring as Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen. Norton Schwartz issued a document designed to dictate the conduct of U.S. airmen worldwide — all violations enforceable by military law. For the first time, amid regulations on tattoo size and flag handling etiquette, it laid down the law on religious proselytizing by leaders: Don’t do it.

Section 2.11 of the 27-page Air Force Instruction AFI 1-1 Standards of Conduct is the latest salvo in a battle over religious bias and Christian proselytizing in the military branch. It calls on officers and supervisors to “avoid the actual or apparent use of their position to promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion.”

Now, if you care about church-state issues, the first thing that pops into mind is the following question: What does “proselytizing” mean?

Well, the story never tells us, which is a big problem. The definitions that can be found with a few clicks of a mouse tell us that this is a word that transcends doctrine and, amazingly enough, even religion.

pros·e·ly·tize …

1. To induce someone to convert to one’s own religious faith.

2. To induce someone to join one’s own political party or to espouse one’s doctrine. … To convert (a person) from one belief, doctrine, cause, or faith to another.

So what is going on here, according to NBC? What does the word “proselytize” mean in this news report? Sure enough, a timely usage of the “f-word” tells us pretty much what we need to know.

As in U.S. public institutions more broadly, there has been a long string of battles between those in the military who want to root out religious content and others, mainly fundamentalist Christians, who argue that to do so impinges on religious freedom.

The conflicts have arisen over military leadership promoting Christian religious meetings through official channels, military courses incorporating Biblical material in coursework, officers trying to convert non-Christians and allegedly favoring “born again” Christians and using Christian doctrine and imagery in logos and official military materials and Christian prayer in official events.

The military has been sued for using Christian doctrine to recruit new members, and pressured to change logos and review course materials that incorporate Christian doctrine, and more recently, those that are anti-Islam. In 2006, after complaints by non-Christians that they were being pressured by evangelicals to convert, the Air Force issued guidelines cautioning superiors from pressing their personal religious views on subordinates. But months later they eased the guidelines after Christian conservatives argued that the guidelines restricted freedom of religion.

In this context, it is almost impossible to figure out what the word “fundamentalist” is supposed to mean. Apparently, in the world of NBC News, Christian doctrines about spreading the faith only apply to the world of Protestant Christianity defined by the Fundamentals of the Faith documents in the early 20th Century.

Please do not misunderstand: There is a serious story here and, based on the reading I have done, there are evangelicals in the Air Force who have abused their powers in the name of evangelism. But there were others who did not, yet appear to have been targeted as wrongdoers.

The key, for journalists, is to connect “faith to facts.” Readers need to know what the words mean and, most of all, they need one or two examples of behaviors that have been ruled out of bounds and those that have not. Like what?

It is wrong for an evangelical officer (or a pagan officer) to do ________.

It is not wrong for an evangelical officer (or a pagan officer) to do ________.

If an active Orthodox Jew invites a secular Jew to a Seder, is that “proselytizing”? If a gay Episcopalian, a chaplain, invites a conservative Anglican of a lower rank, also a chaplain, to a workshop on healing homophobia, is that “proselytizing”?

Like I said, this is a serious story and, when reporting hot-button stories of this kind, it is crucial that reporters talk to informed, qualified voices on both sides of the issues (and some of the folks in the middle, on this one). NBC News did not do that. No way.

Which explains that non-journalistic use of a dangerous “f-word.”