Totally secular right to die

July 21, 2010 By

A billboard campaign orchestrated by a right-to-die group remains alive and well, but it already has gone straight to heaven.

Free-media heaven, that is.

From the New York Daily News to ABC, the mainstream media are shining a spotlight on the billboard’s message: “My Life / My Death / My Choice / FinalExitNetwork.org.”

Religion News Service picked up a Star-Ledger story on the billboards this week and distributed it nationally. Datelined Hillside, N.J., the RNS report explains:

The 15-by-49-foot billboard went up June 28, paid for by Final Exit Network, a nationwide group that provides guidance to adults seeking to end a life of constant pain from incurable illness.

The billboard, along with one in San Francisco and another planned for Florida, anchors a national campaign by the network to raise awareness of itself and its mission. Members say the locations were chosen for their reputations as being socially progressive and, in Florida’s case, for its elderly population.

“What we’re trying to do is let people know that Final Exit Network exists, and that we’re here, and if they spend a little time trying to find out what we do, they might actually support us,” said Bob Levine, 88, of Princeton, who founded the group’s New Jersey chapter after his first wife died of cancer.

From there, the story immediately delves into what could be considered religious issues — just as you’d expect from the nation’s only secular news service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics:

Levine said reaction on the organization’s website has been mixed: “From, ‘God bless you, we finally have somebody who understands us,’ to ‘You are a bunch of atheists and you ought to be put in jail.’”

Criticism has also come from two other corners: suicide prevention counselors and the Catholic Church.

Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark, said the message “cannot be condoned.”

“The Catholic Church teaches, and has always taught, that all human life has dignity and all human life is precious,” he said.

OK, the organization has been called a “bunch of atheists.” What religious beliefs, if any, does Levine actually hold? What about Final Exit’s reported 3,000 members nationwide? Do they come from diverse religious backgrounds or share a common theological — or lack of theological — perspective? Unfortunately, RNS provides no answers — or even clues — on any of these questions.

Those two paragraphs about the Catholic Church, meanwhile, are as deep as that theological discussion gets. There is no context on the complexity of how the church hierarchy views different life issues, such as abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment.

Contrast the RNS approach with that of Fox News, which consulted a variety of faith leaders and religious scholars for its report on the moral debate sparked by the right-to-die billboard campaign.

I know that wire services, such as RNS and The Associated Press, face word-count constraints, but Fox managed to answer a key question with two single words:

Levine, an agnostic, says he has no problem with other people’s religious beliefs. “If you want to say, well, God just has to take it (my life) that’s OK as far as I’m concerned for you, but certainly not for me.”

An agnostic. See, that wasn’t so hard. Now, granted, if RNS had used that description, I would have wanted an explanation of what Levine means by that. But that’s because I expect more of RNS. Smile. Seriously, though, in a story about religion, such details matter.

Fox also turned to a leading religious scholar for insight:

And that’s where the secular and sacred worlds part. None of the major religions condone suicide, as defined as the willful taking of one’s own life, says religion scholar Stephen Prothero, author of “God is Not One” and “Religious Literacy.”

“Suicide is forbidden in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” and it is considered “bad karma in Buddhism and Hinduism,” he said.

But the question of whether it is acceptable to end pain and suffering or commit to martyrdom is nuanced in many faiths.

Again, that’s great information. And I couldn’t help but chuckle at Fox quoting a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor. But I digress.

Here’s another meaty chunk of the Fox report:

But Pastor Tom Nelson of Denton Bible Church says martyrdom “is not taking your life (or anyone else’s). It’s giving your life.” He says that’s a major distinction, even when a person is in severe pain.

Nelson, author of “A Life Well-Lived,” says nowhere in the Bible is there a glorified suicide. “You see good men wishing they were dead, and asking God to take their life” — like Jonah or Elijah. “But they never do it themselves.”

One of the problems with our society is that we never have conversations about death, said Rabbi Irwin Kula. It’s the common denominator of all human beings, the great equalizer, yet most of our talk is polarized.

“What we need is a genuine conversation about what it means to die, which we don’t have,” said Kula, author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life.”

“The billboard is rhetoric, it avoids conversation,” he said. He also said it’s part truth. “It’s not ‘my life’, it’s both my life and God’s life…. It’s not just my choice, it’s my choice and God’s choice. “You’re not here alone. You’re part of a network.”

Unless I’m missing it, Fox doesn’t tell me where Denton Bible Church is located or give any more details on Kula’s home congregation — both facts that seem relevant.

But I’m impressed with Fox’s attempt to dig below the surface and conquer the religion ghosts in this story.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Islam, Journalism, Judaism, Religion, Social Issues, World Religions

Did God pick Harry Reid’s opponent?

July 19, 2010 By

No longer content to play a role only in Bible Belt politics, the Almighty has entered the fray in Republican Sharron Angle’s bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada.

So far, there’s no word on God’s positions on legalized gambling and prostitution, but he is weighing in on abortion and school choice. (Surely I jest.)

The top of a Sunday Page 1 story in the Las Vegas Sun:

RENO — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle describes her motivation for seeking elected office as a religious calling.

Politics, including her bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is God’s purpose for her life — one he has long been preparing her for, she says.

“When God calls you, he also equips you and he doesn’t just say ‘Well, today you’re going to run against Harry Reid.’ There is a preparation,” she said during a recent interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Moses had his preparatory time. Paul had his preparatory time. Even Jesus had his preparatory time, and so my preparation began on a school board.”

Now, at first glance, Angle’s comments don’t surprise me. For a Southern Baptist politician to suggest that she’s following God’s calling in her life impresses me as, well, exactly what you’d expect an evangelical to say.

The bigger question is this: Is she heeding God’s general direction in her life or saying that God handpicked her to unseat Reid?

The Sun story and an earlier Associated Press report provide little insight into that. To be fair, Angle appears to be cherry-picking friendly interviewers and avoiding mainstream media questions about her religious beliefs.

Nonetheless, the Sun used Angle’s CBN interview remarks last week to focus on her public policy positions concerning separation of church and state:

A Southern Baptist active in her church, Angle’s religious convictions have informed many of her positions throughout her years in politics. She believes abortion is a violation of God’s will and should be banned in all cases. She argued for the religious freedom of private and home schools. And she has said that public policy should support the “traditional” family structure as described in the Bible, in which one parent stays home with the children while the other works.

Note the scare quotes around “traditional.” Some of that space might have been better used to explain precisely what Angle means by a traditional family structure. Moreover, the reporter might have included the specific Bible chapter and verse that refers to one parent staying home with the children while the other works.

The story then goes into a lengthy exploration of “a religious political movement — Christian Reconstructionism — seeking to return American civil society to biblical law”:

The movement’s more extreme beliefs are based on a strict interpretation of Mosaic law described in the Old Testament and include the execution of homosexuals and unchaste women and the denial of citizenship to those who don’t adhere to Reconstructionists’ religious beliefs. Angle has never advocated those views.

Angle has never advocated those views. But what the heck? Let’s bring them up anyway.

Now, given the amount of ink devoted to this movement, you might assume that Angle has subscribed to it. Well, not exactly. But she does consider her candidacy a calling from God.

In general, the Sun story reports too many details as fact — about Christian Reconstructionism and Angle herself — for my tastes. In this kind of politically and religiously charged story, I prefer over-attribution to facts hanging out there with no sources.

So, there you have it. A Southern Baptist running for high political office in the home of Sin City.

Her opponent: Oh, he’s a practicing Mormon who said in 2001 that you can’t “separate your religion from your politics; it’s part of your personality. It is part of who you are.” He also describes himself as anti-abortion.

For now, though, it’s Angle’s faith — not Reid’s — that’s making headlines. And that’s just fine with the Democrat, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist who wrote about Angle’s calling from God:

Of course, Reid’s camp is having a field day with this. In hardball politics, this is batting practice.

There’s a reason Angle’s poll numbers are tanking despite Reid’s resounding unpopularity and Nevada’s high unemployment rate. But you can’t blame the good Lord or the Searchlight senator for it.

Given the subject matter, just a reminder: GetReligion is interested in the media coverage and journalistic issues related to this Senate race. Please take political comments somewhere else.

Filed Under: Baptists, Evangelicals, Mormons, Politics, Religion, Social Issues

Frozen souls: Hooked on cryonics

July 15, 2010 By

Religion is nowhere to be found in a fascinating New York Times Magazine article titled “Until Cryonics Do Us Part.”

On second thought, religion is everywhere in this compelling, 2,900-word account of the marital stress created when a husband decides, “Hey, when I die, freeze my brain so I can live again if science figures out how to resurrect me.”

Ostensibly, this story features two non-religious people. There is the wife, Peggy, a hospice worker. There is the husband, Robin, an economics professor.

The piece characterizes Peggy this way:

Peggy describes herself as not religious and “definitely not a Christian,” though she lacks Robin’s surety that nothing lives on when the body dies. Her line of work has left her focused on managing the last days of life, partly by encouraging her charges to stop fixating on medicine. Families come from hospital to hospice obsessed with numbers: blood count, blood pressure, heart rate. “Look at his face,” she counsels. “Does he look comfortable? It’s very common-sensical, but it takes a lot of work to get people to let go of the hospital stuff.”

(Just imagine the politically correct Times including a phrase such as “definitely not a Muslim” or “definitely not a Jew” in a story. I think some editor might have argued that “not religious” pretty much eliminates any organized faith group. But I digress.)

The article paints this picture of Robin:

Robin is the kind of nerd who is very excited about the future, an orientation evident on his C.V., which lists published articles like “Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence” (on why robots will give us growth rates “an order of magnitude” higher than we’ve currently got), “Burning the Cosmic Commons: Evolutionary Strategies of Interstellar Colonization” (on what behaviors we can expect from extraterrestrials) and “Drift-Diffusion in Mangled Worlds Quantum Mechanics” (it’s very complicated). His enthusiasm is evident in the way he talks about these ideas, hands in the air, laughing amiably every time he brings up the distance between his own theories and those of the mainstream. If he is in a chair, the chair is moving with him.

Yet, just below the surface, this really seems to be a story about religion. The Church of Cryonics, if you will. You’ve got faithful adherents mildly confident that, after their last breaths, preservation of their brains will lead to life after death. You’ve got non-believing spouses — generally wives — raising concerns about their partners’ beliefs.

What’s that force threatening marriages? It certainly appears to be interfaith conflict.

The story itself grasps the religious symbolism, but not the religion angle:

Of the nonreligious white males who predominate in the ranks of cryonicists, many are software engineers, a calling that puts great faith in the primacy of information. “If you have a hard drive on a computer with a lot of information that is important to you, you save it,” says J.S., a 39-year-old cryonicist and software engineer who lives in Oregon and who will not allow his full name to be used out of fear that his wife would divorce him. “You wouldn’t just throw it into a fire. It’s clear to me that memories are stored as molecular arrangements. I’m just trying to preserve the memories.”

Near the end of the article, there is this:

It has not escaped the members of the often sappily life-affirming cryonics community that their practice, so often thought to be the province of either misfit loners or rugged individualists, involves great faith in the competent benevolence of other people. Nor is Robin Hanson blind to the extent to which he depends on his tribe. Marriage, despite its lack of clean edges and predictable outcomes, is one of the few institutions he seems to have no interest in reforming. Peggy describes their conflict as akin to a deep religious difference, bridgeable by some core shared belief. “Robin and I have been together for 28 years,” Peggy says. “We’ve always loved spending time together. He is an excellent father. He devotes an enormous amount of time and energy to family life. And that has to be there.”

Despite those passages, this is a story about faith that neglects to deal with that fact.

In other words, this story is haunted. Thus, we get no exploration of the main characters’ religious backgrounds (except for the red-flag-raising “definitely not a Christian” reference). In a story about life, death and faith, such details matter. Regrettably, they’re ignored — victims of a mistaken notion that this is a story about non-religious people.

It’s not that gigantic a stretch to suggest that this piece is as much about theology as science. The article — otherwise remarkable — suffers for its failure to recognize that.

Filed Under: Academia, Marriage & family, People, Religion, Science

Oops, forgot the kitchen sink

July 14, 2010 By

An Associated Press story this week headlined “Lawmakers turn to faith leaders” has it all, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

In a vague, strange way that makes you wonder if it’s a really slow news week in Washington, the AP pulls out a big ole “religion and politics” stewpot and throws in all this:

Senators turning to a chaplain during the 2008 presidential campaign. Religious advisers helping lawmakers sort out policy issues behind the scenes. Policymakers discussing confidential matters with priests and pastors at church. Catholic leaders criticizing politicians for supporting legal abortion. Senators who espouse faith not measuring up and having affairs with staffers. President Barack Obama taking his time finding a new minister after the furor over inflammatory comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

With all that strung together in a 1,040-word report, the world’s largest news organization manages to leave out a few key ingredients: A timely news peg. Comments from actual senators. Story cohesiveness. Any below-surface-level exploration of religion. And, oh yeah, the kitchen sink.

Here’s the top of the story:

WASHINGTON — When senators were tripping over one another to run for president in 2008, a number of them turned to a Senate adviser to discuss campaign challenges and opportunities. It didn’t matter that their opponents were talking to the same person.

Senate chaplain Barry Black heard about all the ups and downs: The senators were exhausted or elated, optimistic or downcast, worried about poll numbers, unsure whether to run.

Black would reframe their challenges in theological or philosophical terms and reassure them that “things are going to play out in the way God would want,” he said.

Since 1789, Black is the first African-American, the first Seventh-day Adventist and the first military chaplain to serve as chaplain of the U.S. Senate — all facts left out of the AP stew. Also missing from the stew: any identification of the senators who reportedly turned to Black during their 2008 presidential campaigns.

We do get this:

Faith leaders who were interviewed declined to identify the lawmakers whom they counsel, and several senators declined requests to discuss their faith for this story. More than a half-dozen senators flirted with or ran for president in 2008, Barack Obama among them.

That’s what you call reporter absolution: “Several” senators whose names we won’t bother to reveal wouldn’t talk to us, so we’re leaving out an important element of the story. But it’s not our fault.

Right.

Then again, the lede on this story takes an abrupt detour almost immediately. So the story really isn’t about Black, who is referenced only once more later in the piece. Rather, we get this nut graf (which is supposed to tell us what this story is about) right after the opening:

Year in and year out, campaign or no campaign, clergymen, rabbis and faith leaders in Washington serve as part adviser, friend, counselor or ear to legislators and other political figures. At times, some even play a behind-the-scenes role in influencing public policy and help legislators sort out conflicts between their faith and policy views.

Wow, faith advisers play a behind-the-scenes role! Interesting. I can’t wait to read specific examples of how religious leaders have influenced public policy and helped sort out conflicts between faith and policy views. Alas, please see my previous reference to the vague nature of this story. This story makes no attempt whatsoever to answer that question.

Instead, the piece zigs and zags through the laundry list of tangentially related items listed above, with no clear direction or purpose.

Even the sourcing of religious leaders quoted is curious.

We get the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, a former minister at Washington’s Foundry United Methodist Church. We don’t find out his present title or circumstances.

We get the Rev. Cletus Kiley, a former president of the Faith & Politics Institute. We don’t find out his present title or circumstances.

Other quotes are attributed to “Rev. Monsignor Charles Antonicelli, pastor at St. Joseph’s on Capitol Hill, as well as Rabbi Charles Feinberg of Adas Israel.” That’s the full extent of the description of St. Joseph’s and Adas Israel. Amazing.

My advice to AP: Pour out this awful pot of stew and start over.

Filed Under: Godbeat, Got news?, Journalism, Politics, Religion

Prayers in the outfield (updated)

July 7, 2010 By

Screams and frightened gasps interrupted Tuesday’s night’s Texas Rangers-Cleveland Indians game when a fan fell 30 feet from the second deck while trying to catch a foul pop.

“Whoa! A fan tumbled out, and I pray that he’s OK,” Rangers play-by-play announcer Josh Lewin said on the Fox Sports Southwest broadcast that I was watching. “Oh my.”

Lewin wasn’t the only one who prayed.

The TV screen showed Indians outfielder Trevor Crowe kneeling face down with his head in his hands.

“What’s he doing?” my 13-year-old son asked, unsure if he was seeing what he thought he was.

“He’s praying,” I confirmed. As emergency personnel at Rangers Ballpark rushed to the fan’s aid, Cleveland shortstop Jason Donald also appeared to be praying.

I have watched a few thousand — OK, a few million — major-league baseball games in my lifetime. Never before that I recall have I seen major-league ballplayers bow on the field in spontaneous prayer. I was curious to see if news reports would pick up on that image. I was pleased to see that some did.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer quoted Donald up high in its game story:

ARLINGTON, Texas — The Indians were on the way to loss No. 50 Tuesday night when a man fell out of the stands at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington in the fifth inning.

“I didn’t see it,” said shortstop Jason Donald, after the Indians’ 12-1 loss to Texas, “but I heard it. I heard the body hit and I heard the crowd reaction. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened.”

Donald immediately squatted down in the outfield grass and started praying.

“I was praying that he wouldn’t die,” Donald said.

Now, I’d love to know more. I’d love to know Donald’s faith background. I’d love to know if he prays often or if his appeal for God’s help was an unusual thing for him. But that’s probably asking too much from a deadline game story.

Evan Grant of The Dallas Morning News is one of my favorite baseball writers. Devoted Rangers fan that I am, I read Grant’s stories, um, religiously.

Unfortunately, his story did not mention the players praying. Now, that could be because they were Indians, and his beat is the Rangers. But I would suspect that Rangers such as Josh Hamilton, who has made no secret of his evangelical Christian faith, might have been praying, too. I wish Grant had included that angle.

Like the Plain Dealer, the Akron Beacon Journal noticed — and noted — the reactions by Crowe and Donald:

After the incident, Trevor Crowe in left and Jason Donald at shortstop went down on one knee, obviously feeling emotions coursing through them.

”It was crazy,” Crowe said. ”I looked up and saw him coming down. He tried to catch himself [on the suite railing], but he kept coming down. It’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen.

”I just started praying for the guy. There was nothing to break his fall. I thought he might have killed himself. It affected everybody emotionally, but that’s not the reason we lost the game.”

The game was interrupted for 16 minutes, and just before it restarted, players were told the man was conscious and moving.

”I didn’t see it happen because my head was turned, but I heard it,” Donald said. ”I heard the crowd, I heard the body hit the seats. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Thank God I didn’t see it. That would have done damage to me.”

Donald retreated to the clubhouse for a couple of minutes to compose himself.

”I was down on one knee, because I was praying for the guy and the people he landed on,” he said. ”It kind of puts in perspective that we’re playing a game. You take your family to a game, and you never think something like this could happen. It’s terrifying.”

Kudos to the Beacon Journal for letting the players describe, in their own words, what they were thinking and feeling. The description of Crowe going down on one knee is not totally accurate, however, as he clearly was down on both knees. A YouTube video (since removed from the Internet by Major League Baseball) confirmed my recollection.

It sounds like the man who fell — and four people slightly injured when he landed on them — will be OK. But players and fans had no way of knowing that at the time.

That made the prayers in the outfield all the more dramatic. And worthy of news coverage.

Photo: That’s my niece and nephew at Monday night’s game. Thankfully, we were not there in person to witness the fan’s fall Tuesday night.

UPDATE: The original video I posted was removed from the Internet by MLB, so I have replaced it with an ESPN Dallas video in which the reporter describes the two Indians players praying.

Filed Under: Got news?, People, Religion, Sports

Bible Belt begets better business?

July 6, 2010 By

Believe me, I understand the difficulty of writing about a complex academic study within the confines of a normal-sized daily newspaper or wire service story.

Researchers spend months or even years examining a topic. They produce a thick report on their findings. Then a university PR office whips up an important-sounding press release and sends it out.

What’s a reporter to do? Take time in a frenzied newsroom to understand the big words in the study report? Or run with the press release and produce a “news story” with a bunch of vague generalizations with no specific details to back them up?

The above scenario falls under the category of hypothetically speaking. I have no way of knowing if it applies to a Birmingham News story that ran this past weekend with the headline Bible Belt may keep reins on accounting fraud, study says.

What I do know about the Birmingham story — a version of which was picked up and distributed nationally by Religion News Service — is this: I wouldn’t bet the (meager) savings in my 401(k) retirement account on the claims made in this 475-word story.

Here’s the top of the report:

Companies in Alabama and other Bible Belt states may do a better job of thumping accounting fraud than those in other states, a study indicates.

Research by Mays Business School at Texas A&M University found that companies headquartered in counties with high levels of churchgoing are less likely to practice aggressive financial reporting.

The study conducted by accounting faculty members Sean McQuire, Thomas Omer and Nathan Sharp also found that small and medium-sized firms tend to use religion as a self-regulating mechanism in the absence of more formal external monitoring.

Got that?

Apparently, the idea is that religion contributes to a higher level of business integrity and ethics. But the story never connects those dots, except for noting that the researchers — in a way never explained — compared Gallup surveys on religiosity with shareholder lawsuits related to accounting malfeasance.

Also, the article never specifies what area is covered by the Bible Belt — an ambiguous geographic region that doesn’t exactly show up on U.S. maps.

More from the story:

Sharp, in an interview Friday, said the study is more a measure of an overall accounting approach among multiple firms of various sizes in the Bible Belt and can’t predict mega frauds such as those at Birmingham-based HealthSouth Corp.; Clinton, Miss.-based WorldCom and Houston-based Enron Corp. — all companies in Bible Belt states.

“We would view them more as anomalies,” Sharp said. “What we focused on was smaller, systemic aggressive accounting occurring as almost a part of doing business.”

Sharp said the study also does not account for how some people use religion itself to defraud others.

Instead, the study zeroed in on how companies in areas of high levels of religion approached accounting.

“We can’t predict those one-off cases,” he said. “On average, when you hold everything constant, accounting practices are less aggressive in areas with high religiosity.”

OK, do we all understand now?

Even a few specific examples of companies — in the Bible Belt and beyond — reviewed by the researchers and how they fared might provide a bit of needed context.

At the same time, it would be helpful to know if extenuating factors were considered; for example, the types of companies that might be headquartered in the Bible Belt as opposed to New York or San Francisco. In other words, did researchers really compare apples, or could this be an apples-and-oranges situation?

Maybe there really is a newsworthy story in this study. However, it’s impossible to tell based on this report.

The headline grabs your attention, yes. But the story itself fall short.

Filed Under: Academia, Business & Economy, Got news?, Religion

Ghosts in toddler’s tragic death?

July 1, 2010 By

Salt-and-pepper hair. Western-style mustache. Cowboy hat. Thomas Mitchell looks like my kind of editor.

I met “Mitch” a few years ago at a Poynter Institute seminar on blogging. He impressed me as no-nonsense, slightly gruff and firmly committed to old-school journalism — and I mean that in all the best ways.

Yet here he was, the seasoned editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, taking time to educate himself and try to figure out how to harness the digital age for journalistic purposes — and survival. When we talked, I discovered that we shared an affection for fried catfish, not to mention similar Texas upbringings. He, like me, grew up in non-instrumental Churches of Christ — although he left at some point.

And, best of all, when he talked about journalism, you could tell that Mitchell’s passion and commitment to our profession came from his heart. He was — and is — a real newspaperman’s newspaperman.

I thought about Mitchell as I examined how the Sin City newspapers — the Review-Journal and the Las Vegas Sun — covered the tragic death of 2-year-old Christian Cunningham, the youngest son of quarterback-turned-pastor Randall Cunningham. Even though it’s been a while since Mitchell and I traded e-mails, I hoped I wouldn’t need to give his publication a, shall we say, negative review.

Good news (for me): The Review-Journal, which broke the news of Christian Cunningham’s death Tuesday, passed its GetReligion test. Especially when grading on a curve because of the difficult circumstances of covering such a heartwrenching story on deadline.

The Associated Press, which relayed the news to most of the country, stuck with the facts and let religion ghosts haunt its relatively short coverage of the boy’s death:

LAS VEGAS — The 2-year-old son of former NFL star quarterback Randall Cunningham has died in what authorities on Wednesday called an apparent backyard hot tub accident.

The Clark County coroner’s office identified the child as Christian Cunningham, and said the cause of death was pending.

Las Vegas police Officer Marcus Martin, a department spokesman, said the death appeared to have been an accidental drowning, but authorities were still investigating.

Cunningham, 47, is an ordained minister and pastor of a church six blocks off Las Vegas Boulevard that he runs with his wife, Felicity. Christian Cunningham was the youngest of their four children.

Contrast that with the Review-Journal, which opened its initial story on the tragedy with a focus on Randall Cunningham’s “church family”:

Skip Jourdan, who plays guitar at Remnant Ministries, has missed only three Sundays in three years.

He knew where he had to be Tuesday night.

Christian Cunningham, who would have been 3 in December, died after being found floating in the backyard hot tub, according to friends of the family. Randall Cunningham performs baptisms in the hot tub at his home, which is near the church.

Jourdan was among 30 to 40 church members who quickly assembled at the church on Windmill Lane as news spread about the death of Randall Cunningham’s 2 1/2-year-old son. Cunningham, the former UNLV and NFL star quarterback, is pastor of Remnant Ministries.

“This is why you have a church family,” Jourdan said. “This is why you belong to something like this. I can’t imagine trying to go through something like this and not having a church family. Who are you going to turn to?”

On a breaking story, did you see what the Review-Journal managed to capture? The fact that church members would want to be together and likely gather at the church. The fact that Cunningham performed baptisms in the same hot tub. The fact that a “church family” would come together to deal with the tragedy.

But keep reading. The Review-Journal report does not include religion at the expense of other important elements. Like the AP, the local story provides details on the police investigation and questions surrounding the death. While a wire service has a different mission than a local newspaper, the AP story would be more engaging if allowed a bit of real life — real faith even — into its text. Instead, we get an inverted-pyramid police report.

Even better than the spot-news coverage by the Review-Journal was a piece today by sports columnist Ed Graney. Graney delves further into the emotional outpouring and strong faith of Cunningham’s grieving congregation.

Here’s the top of the piece, which ran under the headline “It is the rest of us who need prayer”:

The prayer was about being strong in faith, about guiding them along this difficult path, about allowing the family to find peace, about helping others not to assign blame, about making their relationship with him stronger in such a sorrowful time. They asked God for support.

They came Tuesday evening, one by one, tear by countless tear, long embrace after long embrace, to the place where some sense might be made of it all. To the place their pastor has counseled and encouraged and helped them countless times.

They came searching for answers.

The Las Vegas Sun coverage of the story that I found online was a “Staff and wire reports” piece that seemed to ignore the religion angle. I did see a nice post by Sun blogger Ray Brewer headlined “Randall Cunningham’s faith, devotion to children will give him strength.” Check it out.

Finally, the Philadelphia Daily News takes a crack at the faith angle with a cover story today that opens like this:

FAMILY COMES first at Remnant Ministries, the Las Vegas church where former Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham serves as pastor.

“The family unit is the most important unit in the universe,” the church’s Web site states. “Healthy families are the closest thing to heaven on earth.”

Cunningham’s universe was shattered late Tuesday afternoon when his youngest son accidentally drowned in the family’s back-yard hot tub – the same tub in which Cunningham, an ordained minister, reportedly performs baptisms.

It’s not a terrible piece, and it includes a few references to prayer — which you don’t always see in a major paper. But mainly, the writer relies on Web research and borrowed quotes from other sites and publications, including the Review-Journal.

Over the next few days, it’ll be interesting to see if Randall Cunningham and his family talk about the death, and if they do, how the media handle the faith element. If you come across any relevant secular media links, please don’t hesitate to share them.

In the meantime, here’s a shout-out to Mitchell and his Review-Journal staff for a job well-done.

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

Please, God, help us with ‘this awful oil spill’

June 29, 2010 By

At first glance, it sure seems like The New York Times’ make-fun-of-prayer squad is at it again.

Earlier this month, GetReligion went behind the scenes of a Times story on unidentified faith groups seeking “divine wisdom” (scare quotes courtesy of the “Old Gray Lady”) to close a California state budget gap of biblical proportions.

Now comes a Times story from the Gulf Coast that opens like this:

BON SECOUR, Ala. — In a small white building along the baptizing Bon Secour River, a building that once housed a shrimp-net business, the congregation of the Fishermen Baptist Church gathered for another Sunday service, with the preacher presiding from a pulpit designed to look like a ship captain’s wheel.

After the singing of the opening hymn, “Ring the Bells of Heaven,” and the announcement that an engaged couple was now registered at Wal-Mart, the preacher read aloud a proclamation from Gov. Bob Riley that declared this to be a “day of prayer” — a day of entreaties to address the ominous threat to the way of life just outside the church’s white doors.

Whereas, and whereas, and whereas, the proclamation read. People of Alabama, please pray for your fellow citizens, for other states hurt by this disaster, for all those who are responding. And pray “that a solution that stops the oil leak is completed soon.”

In other words, dear God, thank you for your blessings and guidance. And one other thing, dear God:

Help.

That snarky enough for you?

You’ve got the baptizing river (seriously, what does that mean?). You’ve got the obligatory Wal-Mart reference (I’m guessing there’s not a Macy’s or even a Target in that small town). You’ve got the scare quotes around the “day of prayer.” The only thing missing is Forrest Gump’s mama saying, “You have to do the best with what God gave you.”

Get past the condescending approach, though, and this story actually is a hundred times better than the California piece.

Yes, it manages to include the word “mortals,” just like the story from the West Coast. Yawn. But this time, when the Times refers to divine intervention, there are no scare quotes. Let’s chalk that up as progress.

Even better, there’s some actual religion meat in here — specific details on the wording used by each of five states’ governors who declared days of prayer Sunday:

In the two months since the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion began a ceaseless leak of oil into the gulf, damaging the ecosystem and disrupting the economy, the efforts by mortals to stem the flow have failed. Robots and golf balls and even the massive capping dome all seem small in retrospect.

So, then, a supplementary method was attempted: coordinated prayer.

In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry encouraged Texans to ask God “for his merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis.” In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour declared that prayer “allows us an opportunity to reflect and to seek guidance, strength, comfort and inspiration from Almighty God.” In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal invoked the word “whereas” a dozen times — as well as the state bird, the brown pelican — but made no direct mention of God. In Florida, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp asked people to pray that God “would guide and direct our civil leaders and provide them with wisdom and divinely inspired solutions.”

I could get all nitpicky and complain that the story never tells me whether the Fishermen Baptist Church has any ties to the Southern Baptist Convention or another denomination. I could complain that the piece uses the term “Bible Baptist” and doesn’t explain what that means. But I won’t. Unless, of course, I just did.

The story ends this way:

A missionary about to leave for Brazil was waiting to make a multimedia presentation, but first these kneeling men, led by Brother Harry — Harry Mund, a relative of the pastor’s — needed to finish their prayer.

Please God, help us with “this awful oil spill,” he said. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The men rose from their knees and returned to their pews, a couple of them rubbing the salty wet from their eyes.

So there you go. A prayer story from the Times that’s not half bad. I think I’ll rub the salty wet from my eyes, too.

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