Banned in Wheaton

February 11, 2010 By

I’m going back to examine an interesting January article that got lost in the Get Religion shuffle.

The article, published on the web site www.insidehighered.com, explores the decision by an executive at Christianity Today, Inc. to cancel a planned article about Wheaton College that was set to be published in CTi’s highbrow Books & Culture magazine.

Evaluating the work of the education web site and the Christian magazine, the grades (I’ve been grading papers) are:

– www.insidehighered.com = A

– Books & Culture = F

You can read both articles here, including the banned article by Andrew Chignell, an associate professor of philosophy at Cornell University. Chignell graduated from Wheaton and his father taught there for more than two decades. Chignell has also posted a behind-the-scenes article about the battle over his original piece.

Chignell’s banned article is a classic example of the insider/loving critic approach that so often infuriates evangelicals (and true believers of all stripes):

The goal here is to view Wheaton the way it views itself: as the preeminent religious college in the country and the training ground for generations of Christian leaders. To lay claim to such a responsibility, there has to be a willingness — especially in a community founded on love of God and neighbor — to honestly evaluate past administrations in the process of appointing new ones.

The article about this article, written by Scott Jaschik for www.insidehighered.com, is a fair, balanced and thorough example of forensic journalism:

… [Chignell's] article was killed at the last minute by the president of Christianity Today International, a ministry founded by Billy Graham that publishes Books & Culture and many other periodicals. According to the editor of Books & Culture, no article has been blocked in its 15-year history and he stands behind the killed piece. Harold B. Smith, the president of Christianity Today International, declined via e-mail to say why he killed the piece, but confirmed that it was his decision.

CTi is based in Carol Stream, Illinois, a stone’s throw from Wheaton. Both institutions share a commitment to a similar brand of biblically based and socially conservative evangelicalism pioneered by Billy Graham, who attended Wheaton (where The Billy Graham Center houses his archives) and was a visionary founder of Christianity Today magazine, which debuted in 1956. [NOTE: I have written for CT and other CTi publications.]

Now, some Christians want to throw stones at CTi for its decision to kill Chignell’s article, which adopts a critical tone toward Duane Litfin, who has served as Wheaton’s president for 17 years. Litfin told www.insidehighered.com that he did nothing to stop publication of Chignell’s piece:

Litfin, the Wheaton president, said that college officials “had zero contact” with Christianity Today International officials about the article. “Even if I had the ability to stifle the article, I would not have done so,” he said. “It goes against the grain of everything I believe.”

He added: “I disagree with the article, but I don’t think the article is something we need protection from.”

Apparently, CTi’s Smith felt somebody or something needed protection. That’s his privilege to make such decisions, but an explanation might help defuse this controversy. Stonewalling only makes things worse.

Plus, Billy Graham believed a magazine like Christianity Today could add intellectual heft to an evangelical movement best known for warmed hearts and revivalism. Smith’s decision seems like a retreat from Graham’s bold vision for Christian periodicals.

Meanwhile, this story has helped me find a great new web site. I’d never previously visited www.insidehighered.com, which was founded in 2004. But I will visit the site from now on because I’m impressed with its even-handed and thoughtful coverage of this important (but neglected) dispute.

Filed Under: Academia, Evangelicals, Journalism, Religion

The Mormon public square

February 10, 2010 By

When the late Richard John Neuhaus argued for greater participation in civic life by people of faith in his classic 1984 book, his title was metaphorical. The Naked Public Square warned about the crisis of faith confronting a democracy that legislates religious faith to the periphery of cultural life.

But Kirk Johnson of The New York Times’ Denver bureau writes about a literal public square that some say may be too wrapped up with religion in his recent piece, “Project Renews Downtown, and Debate.”

The public square in question is a 20-acre, $1 billion development project called City Creek Center that is being funded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is located near the church’s temple and the adjacent Temple Square.

This story operates on multiple levels — religious, financial and civic. Johnson gives each its due, quoting church officials and members as well as local business and academic experts.

Some residents say the church, by opening its checkbook in a recession, rescued the city when times got tough. The 1,800 construction jobs at City Creek alone have provided a big local economic cushion. Completion of the project–20 acres of retail shops and residential towers–is scheduled for 2012.

“City Creek has been a literal and figurative godsend,” said Bradley D. Baird, the business development manager at the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, a private nonprofit group that has no direct involvement with the project.

Other people say that if the new heart of downtown has a strong church flavor, Salt Lake, which has become more diverse in recent years–could veer back toward its roots, for better or worse. About half of city residents are Mormon, according to many estimates, and if many, or most, of the roughly 700 apartment units at City Creek were occupied by Mormon families, the city could have a dramatic new feel.

“Our downtown has become a ghost town in my life–nobody lives there,” said Dan Egan, 55, a lawyer and church member who works near the site but lives in the suburbs. “Having several thousand people live down here will have a big impact, and having many of them L.D.S. would be a very interesting thing to see.”

Church leaders say they are pursuing no religious agenda with the development, and say they will negotiate special contracts with restaurants that allow the sale of alcohol, which church members are taught to avoid.

Though parts of this story are unique to Salt Lake City and its Mormon establishment, issues raised by the City Creek Center development project are of interest to religious institutions and civic leaders in other cities who are seeking viable urban renewal partnerships at a time when public deficits create the need for creative responses to recurring urban problems such as crime and the loss of jobs and residents to the suburbs.

Although lots of urban churches worry about those issues, the ones that can write a $1 billion check are rare.

“It’s certainly one of the largest, if not the largest project in the United States funded by a single entity, and the fact that the entity is a church makes it doubly unusual,” said Patrick L. Anderson, the chief executive and founder of the Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan-based real-estate consulting company.

Perhaps Johnson’s piece on City Creek Center shows how religious, business and government groups can cooperate in public squares that are both literal and metaphorical.

Filed Under: Business & Economy, Journalism, Mormons, Politics, Religion, Social Issues

Cizik’s new evangelicalism

February 5, 2010 By

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Richard Cizik, who ably served as the National Association of Evangelicals’ liaison to Washington, D.C. for decades.

In a 2008 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Cizik tested the limits of evangelical political orthodoxy by revealing that he liked Obama and was growing more favorable to civil unions for gays.

Within days, he was out of a job, following in the footsteps of leaders of the National Religious Broadcasters and the Evangelical Press Association who had years earlier been given the right foot of fellowship after angering powerful, conservative gatekeepers within those organizations.

Now Cizik is back with a new organization and a new agenda. He told Newsweek’s Lisa Miller all about it in a Newsweek Web Exclusive.

America’s evangelicals exiled their leader for insufficient orthodoxy. Now he’s back, and he’s unrepentant.

After a year of keeping a low profile, Cizik is “making a comeback,” as he puts it. This week he announces the formation of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, a group devoted to developing Christian responses to global and political issues such as environmentalism, nuclear disarmament, human rights, and dialogue with the Muslim world. Cizik’s partners in this effort are David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University who has written extensively on torture, and Steven D. Martin, a pastor and filmmaker. For years, Cizik has been saying that the evangelical right needs to reframe its politics, to walk away from divisive name calling and find common ground with opponents, even on hot-button issues like abortion and gay marriage. “We are evangelical in our roots and orientation, but we aren’t going to work only with evangelicals,” explains Gushee.

There are plenty of potential landmines in a story like this, but Miller expertly avoids most of them. Miller does a particularly good job of moving beyond black-and-white stereotypes to place Cizik in a broader context of an evangelical movement that is both evolving and still predominantly conservative on several issues.

Critics will say that Cizik has gone soft or, worse, that he’s allowed himself to be co-opted by the left: he’s the token conservative evangelical with the progressive agenda who gets trotted out as evidence that conservative evangelicals no longer care about the issues that once mattered so much to them. (This broad point of view, though embraced by many in the left-wing press, is not supported by polls. Younger evangelicals are concerned with a broader range of issues than their parents, especially environmentalism and the developing world, but they are more conservative on abortion.) In any case, Cizik shrugs these criticisms off. “I am, at heart, a centrist evangelical. I am more pro-life than [Sojourners founder] Jim Wallis is, actually. I am what we should be–that is, post-ideological. We are to be about healing, not division. We are not to be subservient to ideology, but above it.”

Cizik says he represents a tradition of evangelicalism going back to the beginning of the 20th century–to Francis Schaeffer and Carl Henry, evangelicals who were strictly orthodox, but advocated a broad engagement with the world. “I’m not some upstart who’s trying to conjure up a new vision,” he says. “This goes back a long way.”

Miller’s piece is entitled “Redemption.” It’s unclear who or what is being redeemed. Is it Cizik or evangelicalism?

And it would have been nice to hear what conservative evangelicals think of Cizik’s new venture. (Here Miller’s role as a columnist may be the reason she doesn’t fulfill the obligations of a reporter.)

Still, this is a solid article that successfully guides readers through one side of a very complex story.

Filed Under: Announcements, Evangelicals, Journalism, People, Politics, Religion, Social Issues

From Baptist kid to jihadist fighter

February 3, 2010 By

In “The Jihadist Next Door,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Andrea Elliott’s Sunday cover story in The New York Times Magazine, Elliott turns her laser focus on the journey of one American youngster who decides to join a Somali terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda.

By going deep into one particular story, this long-form feature sheds light on bigger issues. But as I read her opening grafs, I worried that Elliott was going to give short shrift to the story’s religious dimensions.

Sentences like this one, which appeared high up in the story, teased the reader but were not immediately developed:

Brought up a Southern Baptist, Omar [Hammami] went to Bible camp as a boy and sang “Away in a Manger” on Christmas Eve.

On the second page of the 12-page story was another teaser:

Hammami’s journey from a Bible Belt town in America to terrorist training camps in Somalia was pieced together from interviews with his parents, sister, best friends and law-enforcement officials, as well as hours of home videos and passages from his e-mail messages, journal entries and hundreds of his postings on an Internet forum.

A later sentence seemed to link “Alabama’s conservative Christian culture” to a previous paragraph’s mention of Ku Klux Klan, but this may have been merely an unfortunate transition.

Once the stage is set, Elliott dives into her subject’s warring religious loyalties:

Yet for all of his social triumph, Hammami was consumed with a profound internal conflict. He didn’t know whether to be Muslim or Christian.

Omar was raised by a father who came to America from Syria and a mother who had Omar baptized in the local Baptist church. Somehow mom and dad found a way to make their two-faith marriage work, but as Omar grew older he became obsessed over questions of religious identity. In time began wearing Arabic robes to school and praying to Mecca at the flagpole where Christian students regularly gathered for their prayers.

We know Omar is headed for big trouble when he develops a more-fundamentalist-than-thou mindset and begins “searching for guidance on the Internet.” Before long he moves to Toronto, to join the Muslim community there, and on to Somalia where he rapidly climbs the jihadist ladder to emerge as a leader with his own YouTube recruitment videos. (He shows up at about 2:30 into the video featured at the top of this post.)

Dear Ms. Elliott: I am sorry I let a few early teaser sentences lead me to briefly doubt you. This is a great and fascinating (and disturbing) piece of journalism. I can only imagine the hard work you did to establish trust and communication with Omar’s family members and his jihadist brethren. And the hundreds of reader comments show that you have hit a nerve with your in-depth reporting.

Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, Marriage & family, Middle East, People, Politics, Religion, Social Issues, Web/Tech, World, World Religions

‘Lifies’ and the Haggard saga

February 1, 2010 By

Gayle Haggard, the loyal wife of fallen evangelical mega-pastor Ted Haggard, was all over the mainstream media world (Oprah, “Today,” etc.) last week promoting her new book: “Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour.”

With this book blitz, reporting on the Ted Haggard story has now officially moved from Chapter 1 in the Media Playbook (Hard news: Scandal) to Chapter 3 (Features: “Lifie”) without going through Chapter 2 (Analysis: What the heck is really going on here?). Readers would have benefited from deeper questioning.

Ted Haggard finally admitted his sins in November 2006 and was subsequently fired from the Colorado Springs megachurch he founded. He resurfaced in January 2009 when HBO broadcast Alexandra Pelosi’s gripping documentary, “The Trials of Ted Haggard” and he and Gayle appeared on Oprah’s show.

Late last year he started a new church down the road from his old congregation. At that point, some reporters (including local religion reported Mark Barna at The Gazette) did good analysis pieces that raised questions about Haggard’s suitability to lead.

All those questions have been forgotten in the wake of Gayle’s successful p.r. campaign (which was orchestrated by Tyndale, the Wheaton, Illinois-based evangelical publisher that learned a few things about big-league promotion with the Left Behind novels). Marcia Z. Nelson of Publishers Weekly’s Religion BookLine reports that Tyndale has already gone back to press after selling out a first printing of 75,000 copies.

The Haggard story has now evolved into the type of media events Neal Gabler called “lifies,” which are celebrity-driven, media-friendly stories about failure and redemption that serve up big, gooey life lessons for viewers.

Gayle Haggard presents readers and viewers with a powerful message of marital love, personal loyalty and Christian forgiveness, and I was particularly impressed by her interview with Meredith Vieira on “Today” and the piece by Adelle banks of Religion News Service.

But as the Haggards seek to find a new life and calling for themselves, important questions remain:
- Can we believe Ted when he says, as he did on Oprah last week, that after therapy, he has not had “one compulsive thought or behavior”?
- Even if that is true, is Ted now in a position to once again assume the mantle of pastoral leadership?
- Gayle Haggard has certainly suffered enough already, and her husband’s sins do not necessarily bar her from leadership. But is the “evangelical industrial complex” helping to return the couple to a form of shared leadership by publishing and promoting Gayle’s book?

Gabler’s “Life: The Movie” argues that entertainment has conquered reality. The Haggard saga, at least as it is currently being covered, is the latest in a long list of stories about tarnished evangelical, charismatic and Pentecostal leaders that demonstrates the truth of Gabler’s argument in religious circles.

Despite their frequent and often angry protests against pop culture, many Christians reveal that they are all too willing to submit to the marketplace–not any ecclesiastical authority–as the ultimate arbiter of who qualifies as a leader.

This isn’t the last we will hear from the Haggards. Perhaps next time around enterprising reporters will ask some of the tough questions about leadership and authority that have been lost in in the “lifies.”

Filed Under: Books, Business & Economy, Evangelicals, Interviews, Journalism, Pentecostalism, People, Pop Culture, Radio & TV, Religion, Sex, Social Issues

Beer, babes and … abortion?

January 27, 2010 By

Let’s gather ’round the TV as we celebrate one of America’s biggest holidays, Super Bowl Sunday. And if the game’s a dud we can laugh at the commercials, many of which feature beer and babes.

This year, a new Super Bowl advertiser (Focus on the Family) is paying CBS to air a spot with a different kind of message about (pick one) pro-life or anti-abortion values.

As we could have predicted, some pro-choice (or pro-abortion) groups are SHOCKED that Focus would do such. And Focus is SURPRISED that they are shocked!!!

An Associated Press story available at the Sports Illustrated web site captures the shock and surprise surrounding this ad, which will feature college football star Tim Tebow and his mother:

The New York-based Women’s Media Center was coordinating the protest with backing from the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority and other groups.

“An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year — an event designed to bring Americans together,” said Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center.

“By offering one of the most coveted advertising spots of the year to an anti-equality, anti-choice, homophobic organization, CBS is aligning itself with a political stance that will damage its reputation, alienate viewers, and discourage consumers from supporting its shows and advertisers,” the letter said.

(P.S. #1: When did women’s groups come to believe that the Super Bowl’s marathon mix of man-on-man violence and ads that objectify sisters was a hallowed ground that demanded their protection?)

Meanwhile, Focus has gone from not acknowledging the ad to discussing it to (in the AP piece) defending it:

Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, said funds for the Tebow ad were donated by a few “very generous friends” and did not come from the group’s general fund.

Schneeberger said he and his colleagues “were a little surprised” at the furor over the ad.

“There’s nothing political and controversial about it,” he said. “When the day arrives, and you sit down to watch the game on TV, those who oppose it will be quite surprised at what the ad is all about.”

“We understand that some people don’t think very highly of what we do,” Schneeberger said. “We’re not trying to sell you a soft drink–we’re not selling anything. We’re trying to celebrate families.”

(P.S. #2: I once had a close friend who routinely embarrassed me in social situations. Time after time he would do things that others found offensive. He was always surprised by people’s reactions, but then he would go on to offend again and again. I wonder what ever happened to him.)

The story is popping up in papers and other media outlets nationwide, but so far I haven’t seen any local angles or coverage in Colorado papers.

It would also be intriguing to see coverage that explored some of these related issues more deeply:

* What kinds of advocacy ads have aired or not aired on previous Super Bowls?

* What does this conflict say about the unique and elevated status the Super Bowl has in our national life?

* Following the Supreme Court‘s recent decision opening the doors to greater political advocacy by corporations, what’s the role of free speech on mega-events like the Super Bowl?

For his part, Tebow has asked viewers to respect a point of view that led to his being born:

“I know some people won’t agree with it, but I think they can at least respect that I stand up for what I believe,” Tebow said. “I’ve always been very convicted of it (his views on abortion) because that’s the reason I’m here, because my mom was a very courageous woman. So any way that I could help, I would do it.”

Filed Under: Business & Economy, Evangelicals, Journalism, Marriage & family, People, Politics, Pop Culture, Radio & TV, Religion, Sex, Social Issues, Sports

People of the (Christian) book

January 25, 2010 By

On December 1, 2009, CBA (which was formerly called the Christian Booksellers Association, back when Christian bookstores sold more books than gifts and other merchandise) asked the Department of Justice to investigate alleged predatory pricing by big-box stores and online retailers that threatens the very existence of the nation’s dwindling number of Christian retailing outlets.

On January 7, 2010, Adelle M. Banks of Religion News Service (for which I occasionally write) published a news story on CBA’s complaint: “Christian retailers seek federal probe of competitors.”

Since then, I’ve been waiting to see who would publish this story or add an interesting local angle. Mostly, I’m still waiting.

Among the very short list of those that have, either in print or online: The Houston Chronicle (NPR.org and businessweek.com linked to the article there); christianitytoday.com; and timesunion.com (in Albany, New York).

Among those that haven’t: publications here in Colorado, where CBA is based.

Banks spelled out the issues in her RNS piece:

“Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target are using predatory pricing practices in what appears to be an attempt to control the market for hardcover best-sellers,” the CBA board of directors wrote in the letter to the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.

Eric Grimm, business development manager at CBA…said Christian retailers have long been concerned about competitors’ pricing strategies, and called the letter a “pre-emptive” action before the competition for Christian books grows even more challenging.

“What we want to do is establish that this is an unfair practice so that when the next big blockbuster comes out of a Christian book that they won’t do the same thing,” he said.

Christian booksellers are not alone:

The CBA letter follows a similar request for a Justice Department investigation by the American Booksellers Association, which cited deeply discounted pre-sales of new books by [Stephen] King, former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and novelist John Grisham by the same three retailers.

Banks also got a quote from one of the industry’s biggest agents (with whom I have worked):

…CBA supporters like Rick Christian, president of the literary agency Alive Communications, also worry that the pricing by competitors is leading to fewer new voices entering the marketplace as publishers rely on popular authors who are more likely to generate big sales.

“In the short term, consumers will get too-good-to-be-true deals,” said Christian, who has represented titles like the “Left Behind” series and “The Message” Bible, in the letter to the Justice Department.

“However, the broad river of titles now available to readers will ultimately be reduced to a trickle, and the vast publishing industry we know will become a relative wasteland.”

But based on an article in Sunday’s New York Times, Christian retailers may need to look at the practices of Christian publishers like Zondervan, which is giving away e-books in an effort to spur sales of e-books.

In the Times article, “With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell,” Motoko Rich, reveals an interesting secret about the bestseller lists of titles for Amazon.com’s Kindle reader:

“That’s right. More than half of the “best-selling” e-books on the Kindle, Amazon.com’s e-reader, are available at no charge.”

…Earlier this week, for example, the No. 1 and 2 spots on Kindle’s best-seller list were taken by “Cape Refuge” and “Southern Storm,” both novels by Terri Blackstock, a writer of Christian thrillers. The Kindle price: $0. Until the end of the month, Ms. Blackstock’s publisher, Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, is offering readers the opportunity to download the books free to the Kindle or to the Kindle apps on their iPhone or in Windows.

Will Justice investigate CBA’s claim? I’m still waiting for some reporters to follow Banks’ lead and tell us where things stand. Meanwhile, Christian retailers may be facing challenges that are bigger than predatory pricing by the big mainstream retailers. They may be facing a cultural tsunami.

Filed Under: Books, Business & Economy, Evangelicals, Journalism, Pop Culture, Religion, Web/Tech

Rethinking liberalism in academia

January 21, 2010 By

In my last post I wrote about how people read a film like “Avatar,” seeing what they want to see (or what they most fear). Now, a new research paper seeks to prove that the same thing happens in other areas of life.

The paper, which focuses on something it calls “typecasting,” is entitled, “Why Are Professors Liberal?” And The New York Times’ article about the paper, “Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left,” by Patricia Cohen, successfully probes beneath the turbulent surface of our arguments about liberalism and conservatism.

The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals–and so few conservatives–want to be professors.

Here’s the point of the paper, which is based on data from the General Social Survey of opinions and social behaviors. We know that less than six percent of American nurses are men. Why is that? It’s largely because of gender typecasting. We have pretty much decided that nursing is a job for women.

In short, the same thing happens in academia, but it involves political typecasting. When Johnny and Janie are deciding what careers to pursue, chances are they will rule out academia if they are conservative.

Nursing is what sociologists call “gender typed.” [Paper co-author Neil] Gross said that “professors and a number of other fields are politically typed.” Journalism, art, fashion, social work and therapy are dominated by liberals; while law enforcement, farming, dentistry, medicine and the military attract more conservatives.

“These types of occupational reputations affect people’s career aspirations,” he added…

I wish Cohen had devoted more space to discussing the religious elements of academia’s liberal tilt. Unfortunately, she only briefly mentions “secularism” and academia’s preference for professors who embrace “a non-conservative religious theology.”

Still, her article explains the “Why Are Professors Liberal?” paper’s thesis and its implications in a balanced manner, quoting contributors to the conservative American Enterprise Institute’s collection on college life, “The Politically Correct University.” Cohen also adds helpful transition sentences, such as: “Typecasting, of course, is not the only cause for the liberal tilt” [in higher education].

Cohen provides a solid conclusion with another quote from Gross:

“The irony is that the more conservatives complain about academia’s liberalism,” he said, “the more likely it’s going to remain a bastion of liberalism.”

As an aside: I am regularly in contact with conservative Christians who both condemn secular culture and express a desire to redeem it, sometimes in the same sentence. I am also regularly in contact with these people’s children, many of whom conclude that it is safer to live and work within the expansive Christian subculture than it would be to pursue a career in an area mom and dad and Pastor Bob consider enemy territory. I pray that some residents of the subculture would somehow stumble upon this article, read it article and share it with young people who are asking God what they should do with their lives.

[I also ask that Get Religion's wonderful readers would share their comments on Cohen's article (focusing on coverage of religion is our purpose here at GR), not their theories about liberalism in academia or elsewhere!]

Filed Under: Academia, Books, Journalism, Pop Culture, Social Issues