About TMatt

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

Tables turned: Our Sarah on ‘ghosts’

April 8, 2011 By

When it comes to the day jobs held by your GetReligionistas, Sarah Pulliam Bailey is the team member who is probably in the most interesting, or even delicate, position.

One reason that she writes for us less than I would would wish, to state it bluntly, is that she already has a prime slot in the religion blogosphere through her work over in the wider Christianity Today online empire.

This is one reason that she doesn’t do many posts about topics about events in the evangelical world. She always has to ask a valid question, in the eyes of her CT editors: Is this a news story for the magazine or a blog critique for GetReligion (or a CT blog, now that I think about it). We’re just glad to have her time when she can spare it.

One of the duties that Sarah has latched on to, here at GetReligion, is our occasional 5Q+1 feature. For newcomers, the 5Q+1 feature in a slot in which we sent a series of standard religion-news questions to someone in the news business who either works the religion beat or, and we love these, journalists and editors on other subjects who have excelled at covering news in which they have a chance to spot the religion “ghost” in stories on other beats. We then print interactive versions of their answers.

So here is a twist. A website has just interviewed Sarah Pulliam Bailey and asked her some interesting questions, including a question about this website and its goals. I thought GetReligion readers would enjoy reading what she had to say when placed on the other side of the notebook. Here is a logical slice from that:

Trevin Wax: Let’s start with your work on GetReligion, which has recently become one of my favorite blogs. The tagline for that site is “the press just doesn’t get religion…” Why do you think this is the case? What are the main blind spots that the press has when it comes to religion reporting?

Sarah Pulliam Bailey: Reporters work really well with concrete data, numbers that prove some thesis or trend. It’s difficult to capture religion because you can’t always quantify it. Journalists don’t always know what to do when someone says they did something because “it was God’s will” or “God called me to do this.” We’re told to capture who, what, where, when, why, and how questions, but reporters often gloss over the “why” question. Why would people give away money, why would people volunteer their time, why would they hold certain beliefs about politics, money, sex, family, entertainment, etc. Sometimes reporters just miss one of the key factors in a story.

We often stumble across interesting stories that miss an underlying religion angle, what we call a ghost. Sometimes it might be skepticism (such as in sports writing) or sometimes it’s ignorance. A 2007 Pew report suggested that 8 percent of journalists say they attend a church or synagogue weekly and 29 percent of them never attend services. You do not have to be religious to report on religion or find religion angles, but your personal experience might impact how important you think religion could be in a story. Then we often see stories that just miss the mark, such as calling Jim Wallis a face of the religious right. Even for those data-driven reporters, there are several sociology, political science, history, etc. scholars offering research or “expert advice” on recent trends to keep reports accurate.

Trevin Wax: I wonder how detrimental this oversight is to reporting on other issues. I’m often amazed at how the Middle East conflicts are so often conceived of in purely secular terms, as if religion is not a key factor in the battles raging in other parts of the world. Stephen Prothero has pointed this out in God is Not One. Many Americans tend to think that religion is relegated to the realm of speculation and private spirituality, and many journalists appear to follow that pattern in how they report on news stories in other parts of the world. Do you think “not getting religion” hinders our ability to understand some of the world’s great conflicts?

Sarah Pulliam Bailey: Yes, I think your point is key: journalists often look at international events through a political or economic lens. I’m amazed at how many events are seen through election coverage (“Libya a political challenge for Obama“) and not through other factors, such as religion. …

And so forth and so on. Read it all.

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Filed Under: 5Q+1, Evangelicals, Godbeat, Journalism, Religion, Web/Tech

5Q+1: Julia Duin and her times

May 21, 2010 By

Sunday is the much-overlooked Christian feast of Pentecost and we live in an era in which the global rise of Pentecostalism is simply — this cannot be debated — one of the most important religion stories of our time. Ask the experts at the Pew Forum on the Religion & Public Life.

So I thought this would be a good time for a 5Q+1 with a religion-beat veteran who has just written a book that addresses a variety of newsworthy topics linked to this trend — such as the impact of Charismatic renewal in the national and global Anglican scene and ways in which this freewheeling form of faith can be a source of great strength and a door into forms of leadership that can be abused.

The book is “Days of Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community” and the author is Julia Duin, who is best known, for those who have long followed religion-news coverage, for her work at the Houston Chronicle and at the Washington Times. In all, she has worked at five mainstream newspapers, often earning high marks in Religion Newswriters of America contests and written five books, including another recent work that drew media attention — “Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do About It.”

“Days of Fire and Glory” cuts especially close to the bone, since it focuses on events in the nationally known Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, which Duin attended during her Houston years. The other key word in the title is “community,” since much of the work of that parish revolved around the lives of individuals and families that, literally, lived in common households, communities, communes, etc. This fascinated Duin since she had experience with life in a Christian community in Portland. For more information on this fascinating and frightening book, which is rooted in 20 years of research and interviews, see this review by journalist George Conger of the Church of England Newspaper.

Duin was born in Baltimore and was raised in Hawaii, Maryland, Connecticut and Oregon. She is a graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland and has a master’s degree in religion from the Trinity School for Ministry, an Anglican seminary in Ambridge, Pa. For more information on her work and interests, visit her homepage and blog.

So here are her responses to those familiar questions:

(1) Where do you get your news about religion?

I check GR and Whispers in the Loggia every morning plus I get literally hundreds of emails from Richard Kim, an Episcopal-turned-Anglican priest who operates an informal wire service of religion news. He scoops up a lot of stuff. When I have time, I check Rod Dreher’s weblog, Titus 1:9 and then the Episcopal Cafe, to see what the left is up to.

(2) What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?

Overseas religious persecution tops the list. I did a front-page story recently on how the Chinese government is killing off hundreds — no one knows the true number — of Falun Gong prisoners for their organs and I got no pickups. Now that story is not completely new but the MSM is not touching it. It’s Nazi horror stuff: people getting snuffed out for their skin, lungs, corneas, livers and kidneys. The Falun Gong had a press conference recently in the Capitol on this — with secular folks who are not part of their movement testifying — and it was pathetic how few media attended. The slow strangulation of Orthodox Copts by the Egyptian government is another story. Teen-aged girls are getting kidnapped, gang-raped and forced to convert to Islam. Islamic mobs attack Christians with impunity. These stories are not hard to do but I don’t see journalists out there doing them.

(3) What is the story that you will be watching carefully in the next year or two?

I just did a series on the interfaith movement and how interesting combos of Jews, Mormons and Muslims are getting together, setting up think tanks and institutes and holding off-the-record meetings on ways they can work together. One New York foundation — led by a rabbi — does nothing but get foreign imams and rabbis together for several days to teach them how to import American-style interfaith networks into their own countries. I’m also watching how Islamic governments (Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kazakhstan) are sponsoring all these interfaith conferences; in fact, Kazakhstan is having yet another one next month. Meanwhile there’s these off-the-record meetings American evangelicals are having with Muslim governments, such as Morocco, about religious freedom.

(4) Why is it important for journalists to understand the role of religion in our world today?

It informs everything we do and religion stories are truly everywhere. When you’ve got 95 percent of the American public believing in God; when religious events are Americans’ biggest leisure activity, when Americans spend millions of dollars on sports, but billions on religion (the late George Cornell of the Associated Press did a story in 1994 that actually proved this); then you have to ask why religion stories rarely make the top of A1 unless it’s about the pope. And why is it that journalists who’ve attended a religious college or seminary find it nearly impossible to get hired at a major newspaper? And why is it that sports gets 20-30 writers and photographers and a whole section to itself while at the same paper one reporter has to cover all the major world religions plus several thousand churches, mosques, temples and synagogues in his or her city?

(5) What is the funniest, most ironic twist that you have seen in a religion news story lately?

The way Jim Wallis has become a statesman for the Religious Left. I’ve watched Sojourners since 1976 and how it started out as evangelical group that morphed into a mainline Protestant institution. There was a total vacuum of leadership and Jim neatly stepped into it, creating himself a place on the New York Times bestseller list in the process.

On the other end of the spectrum, I am amazed at how people who jumped on the Charismatic renewal bandwagon 30 years ago don’t want to be identified with it today, now that it’s no longer fashionable. Instead, they’ve gone Reformed, neo-Calvinist, emergent or whatever the theological flavor of the year is.

BONUS: Do you have anything else you want to tell us about religion coverage in the mainstream news media?

I still wish the beat was given the respect that politics, entertainment and sports get. There could be a minimum of five-six reporters per media outlet covering religion because believe me, the stories are out there. Not only the predictable stuff but there are some great scandals out there I’d love to go after if I had the time and the staff. What’s been so disheartening over the years is to see how the largest media outlets consistently hire reporters for the religion beat who have little or no experience or background in religion coverage. I watch these reporters and usually they last 2-3 years max. At the same time, these media outlets demand years of expertise when it comes to staffing the beats they really care about, such as the environment, entertainment, health and election coverage.

So to all you recruiters out there: Don’t just pick someone from your existing staff to plug the religion hole. Do a national search for the right person. You’ll be amazed at the wealth of talent out there and the number of people who have honed their skills in small and medium markets, who’ve done graduate work in religion and would love the chance to cover the Godbeat in a way that would make the most impact.

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Filed Under: 5Q+1, Anglicanism, Books, Godbeat, Journalism, Pentecostalism, People

Brad Greenberg on God, news, blogs

June 22, 2009 By

BradGreenberg.jpgIf you are interested in God and also in blogs that are about religion and God, then you are probably familiar with The God Blog, which is operated by the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. And if you are familiar with The God Blog, that means you are familiar with the work of the young religion-beat specialist Brad A. Greenberg.

Now, I have been interested in having Greenberg do a 5Q+1 post for us for quite some time now. However, there is now another reason to introduce him to GetReligion readers. During our latest reorganization — with Ari Goldman’s decision not to wade into the blogosphere — we’ve been looking for another member of the GetReligionistas and Greenberg has answered the call.

Now, I will let young master Greenberg fill in even more details about where he is in his career when he does an introduction post later this week. But briefly, let me tell you where he has been.

Greenberg is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and has done some adjunct teaching at UCLA, as well, working with journalism interns. He has worked as the religion-beat reporter at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Ontario, Calif., The Sun in San Bernardino, Calif., and the Los Angeles Daily News. However, he is best known for his work as the senior writer at The Jewish Journal. You may have also seen his byline as a contributing writer at Christianity Today.

When it comes to awards, he placed second in the Religion Newswriters Association’s Cornell Religion Writer of the Year contest in 2006, picked up a third-place award from the American Academy of Religion contest for mid-sized newspapers and, in 2008, the Los Angeles Press Club gave The God Blog its “best individual blog” nod. One of his recent Facebook updates noted: “Thank God for the religion beat. At the Press Club dinner; won Journalist of the Year in under 100k category. Amen.” That would be the LA Press Club, again.

Greenberg is especially interested in religion and popular culture and, thank goodness, that also includes an interest in faith and sports. We will let him offer some more insights into his unique background later on. Meanwhile, here’s the standard 5Q+1 questions:

(1) Where do you get your news about religion?

I started in print journalism as a purist, so it’s a bit embarrassing that I get almost all of my religion news online — and not just from the online versions of The New York Times and The Washington Post. In addition to the religion feeds of mainstream media staples, my Google Reader overflows with content from 90-something blogs written by religion reporters; journalists at sectarian outlets; pastors, rabbis and imams; scientists and skeptics; lefties and rightists.

The nice thing about filtering religion news through sectarian publications and personal blogs is that you immediately know the perspective the author is bringing to the story (though I don’t want to confuse that with the term “agenda”) and the authors often communicate a better understanding of why something is occurring and what is at stake. There is more of a mixed bag with religion blogs at mainstream papers, in large part, I think, because traditional journalists remain uncomfortable with having an online identity that differs from the person they need to be in the paper. I know I did. Sadly too, some of my favorite newspaper religion blogs have fallen by the wayside or been drawn back dramatically due to decimated and discouraged staff.

My three most trusted sources — both for keeping up on religion news and for those lazy Monday mornings when I desperately need a quick blog post — are Christianity Today, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and, for a quick view of what the MSM is writing about, GetReligion. I really couldn’t survive without those three. I’m also a big fan of Friendly Atheist, FaithWorld, The Forward and Religion Clause. At the national news level, I think The New York Times and NPR do the best job. I get very little these days out of my local paper, the Los Angeles Times. But I also get a healthy dose of quirky religion news on Twitter from Holy Weblog! and through my at-home subscriptions, which include The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Wired, but not Newsweek and Time. Really, you’d be surprised how many religion currents run through an issue of Wired.

(2) What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?

blog_header_thegodblogDefinitely the Miss California mess.

Actually, though that was designed as a joke, there was plenty wrong with the way media reacted to Carrie Prejean’s belief that homosexuality is a sin. And that hints at a bigger religion story that the MSM continues to miss, or at least oversimplify: homosexuality and the church. The Episcopal schism and California’s Proposition 8 come with their own pre-packaged stories. But it’s too easy to settle for a storyline that pits gay rights activists against Christian soldiers. When is the last time you saw a reporter really try to explain why most Christians believe homosexuality is a sin? Considering the great range of opinions on this topic, from everyone’s-welcome theology to fire and brimstone for those who stray, shouldn’t journalists being trying a bit harder to understand why even members of the same denomination, the same church, the same family could understand the same few biblical passages so differently?

(3) What is the story that you will be watching carefully in the next year or two?

The arc of the atheist evangelists. A few years ago, there was all this hoopla over atheists and agnostics “coming out of the closet.” But aside from a few bestsellers and getting a lobbyist in Washington, I’ve seen a lot more news ink dedicated to this movement than seems warranted. Some polls have found an uptick in the percent of Americans who identify as unreligious, which is different than being atheist or even agnostic, but other polls continue to find that nontheists are viewed more negatively by others than just about any other group. No, they aren’t baby eaters, but Americans would still be more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who is female, African American, Latino, Catholic, Jew, Muslim or Mormon than for an atheist.

I think journalists have made the mistake of over-hyping this story because they feel like atheists have been underrepresented and under respected for years. Their perspective, though, is likely skewed. Based on the random samplings of the dailies I’ve worked at in Southern California, newsrooms have a disproportionately high percentage of unbelievers among their ranks.

(4) Why is it important for journalists to understand the role of religion in our world today?

Because that role cannot be understated. This is a point I have made for years. In fact, I emphasized it in a blog post last year titled “The dangerous world of religion reporting.” I wrote:

Once considered a backwater of journalism, the Godbeat feels to me quite chosen, home to immensely important and interesting news. Religion, after all, is the rubric through which each person uniquely sees the world. Science, education, politics, entertainment — it regularly serves as an undercurrent in these fields. (That was, in fact, part of my pitch at The Sun three years ago when they were looking for a reporter for the newly created position and I was eager to get out of Rialto.) The religion angle also is occasionally relevant when trying to understand peoples’ beliefs in God, their perspectives on the life hereafter and that which gives every day meaning.

Think of the God beat as the Jerusalem of journalism. Seriously.

(5) What is the funniest, most ironic twist that you have seen in a religion news story lately?

You mean besides learning that a reporter at a Jewish newspaper, who looks and acts and even spells his name like a Jew, is in fact a Christian?

Well, I wouldn’t call the general phenomenon funny — it’s the reason I’m going to law school — but as newspapers have been cut to the bone and, in some cases, gone belly up, the religion beat has suffered. The Los Angeles Times, which only a few years ago had three-plus religion reporters, has had periods with none. Picking up the slack have been reporters with other specialties, which has led to the funny part of this sad story. For instance, an article about soaring fuel prices last summer included this paragraph:

The problem is affecting even the holy business, driving down attendance at churches, synagogues and mosques. Religious leaders are struggling to help their members cope, spinning new themes about a society that has become almost sinfully reliant on motorized transport. Others are viewing the energy-price squeeze as a test of the way they serve God and their communities.

Now, any Jew, and most gentiles, could tell you that Orthodox Jews don’t drive on the Sabbath. They haven’t since the Model-T went into mass production, regardless of the price of gasoline. But the reporter, who quoted a Muslim and a few pastors in his article but no Jews, must not have known this; surprisingly, neither did his editors. It’s difficult to imagine Russell Chandler making that mistake.

BONUS: Do you have anything else you want to tell us about religion coverage in the mainstream news media?

It sure ain’t what it used to be, and I worry about how much more it will slip as more and more metropolitan papers drop their religion reporter slot(s).

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Filed Under: 5Q+1, Announcements, Evangelicals, Godbeat, Journalism, Judaism, Web/Tech

5Q+1: Ari Goldman is in the house

March 31, 2009 By

searchforgodharvardNot to bury the lede or anything, by when it comes to religion writing, Prof. Ari L. Goldman of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has been there and done that. During his two decades at the New York Times, he was one of the nation’s most trusted bylines on the religion beat and I have heard that judgment voiced by a stunningly broad range of clergy and Godbeat critics.

In other words, any decent survey of religion writing in the late 20th century would have to include Ari’s work. I sure hope GetReligion.org readers start paying more attention to this weblog’s attempts to deal with religion reporting in a global context, because as soon as we can get the software tweaked that will be the main focus of Goldman’s blogging as the newest member of your GetReligionistas.

But you need to know some more about Ari, first.

In his current academic incarnation, he serves as the director of the Scripps Howard Program in Religion, Journalism and the Spiritual Life, a duty which regularly takes him and a circle of students to religion news hot spots around the world. Before entering journalism, Goldman went to all of the predictable schools, as in Yeshiva University, Columbia University and, of course, Harvard.

Of course, he is also known as the author of the bestseller, “The Search for God at Harvard,” as well as “Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today” and a recent memoir, “Living a Year of Kaddish.”

You can find out more (he plays cello in the New York Late-Starters String Orchestra) by reading his online bio and Ari will write his own note of introduction in a few days. However, since he is a pro with years of experience on the beat, I thought I would also ask for his take on our usual 5Q+1 questions, since it has been way too long since we offered one of those. So here goes:

(1) Where do you get your news about religion?

I mostly get my news from old media and first-hand reporting. By old media, I mean The New York Times and the New York Daily News, which I read on paper every day. I also have subscriptions — yes, on paper — to a host of denominational papers from Jewish, Catholic, Hindu and Muslim sources. Perhaps most important, I get my religion news from synagogues, churches, temples and mosques, which I visit frequently, both in New York where I live and on my travels. I listen to sermons and I talk to people.

So I am decidedly old-fashioned, but not totally dependent on paper and first-hand observation. I read the religion writing of my former students on the Internet. I have been teaching a course at Columbia in religion writing since 1993. My students have gone on to write religion for mainstream papers in such cities as Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, Raleigh, N.C. and La Crosse, Wisc. Many of them, like Manya Brachear of the Chicago Tribune, even blog. I read her blog, The Seeker, and several academic blogs, including The Revealer out of NYU, Religion Dispatches out of Emory and Diane Winston’s out of USC. And, of course, I read getreligion.org. While I have a special place in my heart for print, I realize that these internet sources are the future of religion journalism.

(2) What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?

I want to begin by saying that there is much that the mainstream media gets right. It is easy to bash the work of religion journalists and pick apart their work. But as a former religion writer, I know what a battle it is to report religion intelligently for editors who simply do not “get” religion. And I was at one of the best papers in the country, The New York Times; I can only imagine how hard it is at smaller papers. I am also aware that even if the reporter gets it right, the editors can cut the story and change its focus and meaning.

But that wasn’t your question. What does the mainstream press miss? The role of faith in global conflicts. I just returned from a trip to Northern Ireland and was struck by the efforts of Catholic and Protestant leaders to damp down any return to violence in the aftermath of the recent killing of two British soldiers by a radical IRA group. In what is often portrayed as a religious conflict, religion has actually emerged as the solution and not the problem. Another global hot spot where religion plays a role is the Arab-Israel conflict. Facile comparisons to Northern Ireland are being made in part because of the appointment of former Senator George Mitchell as the United States’ special envoy to the Middle East. In Ireland, he is often hailed as a magician because of his work on the Good Friday Accords. But whether he can work his magic in the Holy Land, where the stew of religion and politics is quite different, requires some smart mainstream media analysis.

arigoldman(3) What is the story that you will be watching carefully in the next year or two?

Number one is the economy. It is the big story that has already begun to shape our society, from banks to housing to law enforcement to schools. Religion will not be immune. The Catholic Church is already closing schools and parishes. Other religious organizations are laying off workers, cutting back services and shuttering their doors. But most important is how the economy will affect the people in the pews. With unemployment rising and less disposable income at hand, will people turn toward faith or away from it? A lot of that has to do with how the churches, temples and mosques respond to this crisis.

Another story I will be watching is the integration of Muslims in Europe. In addition to Ireland, I recently traveled to Germany. One of the raging controversies there is the building of mosques in certain neighborhoods. The fears of the mosque are rooted in a mix of bigotry, xenophobia and real estate values. The integration of Muslims in Germany, France, England and other European countries is an important bellwether for the West.

(4) Why is it important for journalists to understand the role of religion in our world today?

Most things go in and out of fashion — politics, economic theories, sports teams, clothes, celebrities — but religion, like it or hate it, remains. And that it because religion is about ultimate questions. How individuals and nations answer those questions motivates them in powerful and practical ways. I mentioned global conflicts earlier, but religion also motivates people’s spending, their values, their associations and the ways they educate their children. If you miss the religion story, you miss a good part of our world.

(5) What is the funniest, most ironic twist that you have seen in a religion news story lately?

It’s far from funny, but I guess it is ironic. I’ve seen reference after reference in the mainstream press, including the Wall Street Journal, of Bernie Madoff as an “Orthodox Jew.” That hurt. There is nothing Orthodox about Madoff. He did not keep kosher or observe the Sabbath or do other things that Orthodox Jews do. What he did was ingratiate himself with the Orthodox who trusted him and gave him money by the millions. Those who trusted him included my alma mater, Yeshiva University, and the high school my wife and oldest children attended, the Ramaz Upper School.

In other words, Madoff stole from the Orthodox but he was not one of them. And even when he wasn’t identified as “Orthodox,” the fact that he was Jewish was often cited. As Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Manhattan recently told his congregation, the Madoff scandal broke just as the scandal Blagojevich scandal was breaking in Illinois.”Did you ever see a reference to Blagojevich’s religion?” the rabbi asked. “Yet we kept seeing Madoff described as Jewish.”

BONUS: Do you have anything else you want to tell us about religion coverage in the mainstream news media?

The mainstream media is already beaten down. It is in a very different place than where it was when getreligion.org started five years ago. There is far less religion coverage and the religion writers who remain are heroic, but not perfect. As a blogger, I hope to point out the good and the bad.

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Filed Under: 5Q+1, Announcements, Godbeat, Journalism, Judaism, Web/Tech, World, World Religions

5Q+1: It’s pronounced “Dow-thut”

August 8, 2008 By

douthat2One of the advantages of living and working on Capitol Hill is that there are all kinds of interesting people who live in your neighborhood. I mean, there is this house a block or so away from my computer keyboard that, these days, has all kinds of people in black suits in black cars around it these days. I think it has something to do with it being the home of the junior senator from Illinois.

But I digress. Another very interesting thinker, when it comes to religion and public life, also lives in this neighborhood. His name is Ross Douthat of The Atlantic and he is someone who shows up in all kinds of interesting places around this very small town talking about all kinds of interesting things. Check out this interesting Pew Forum session on God and the Democratic Party, with the omnipresent Amy Sullivan and E.J. Dionne.

If you want to know more about Douthat, here is what they say about him at his day job:

Ross Douthat is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (Hyperion, 2005), and Grand New Party, with Reihan Salam, which is forthcoming in 2008 from Doubleday. He is the film critic for National Review, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, GQ, Slate and other publications. A native of New Haven, Connecticut, he now lives in Washington. …

Of course, these days, you also need to know that he is the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of the new and much-discussed book “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.”

You also need to read this man’s weblog over at The Atlantic, where there is currently a very lively discussion on this provocative question: Why are modern Evangelical Protestants more pro-life than modern Catholics? Yikes.

And, of course, the name is pronounced “Dow-thut.”

So here we go, with the standard 5Q+1 questions:

(1) Where do you get your news about religion?

I get my news primarily from a combination of the big newspapers that I read every day — the New York Times and Washington Post chief among them, with the Wall Street Journal close behind — and a slew of bloggers who are either interested in religion or writing about it full time, ranging from the crew at GetReligion and Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Con blog to the First Things blog, Dan Gilgoff’s God-o-Meter, and my colleague Andrew Sullivan. (I consider myself vastly more underinformed than I was in the days when Amy Welborn used her blog as a Catholic-inflected clearinghouse for religion news of all kinds; I don’t blame her for giving that up, but I miss it.)

(2) What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?

It isn’t the sort of story that makes for newspaper headlines, so it’s no surprise they don’t get it, but I think the media’s focus on the culture wars — whether between secularists and believers, or the religious right and the religious left — has led them to underplay the larger theological context in which its occurring: Namely, the collapse of orthodox Christian belief in the United States, and its replacement by a cluster of competing religious narratives that tend to offer variants — some socially-liberal, some socially-conservative — on what Christian Smith has termed “moral therapeutic deism.” I think there’s still a core of orthodox Christian belief (broadly defined to include Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed traditions), but there isn’t enough coverage of the extent to which the “conservative evangelical” who gets her religious teaching from Joel Osteen the Prayer of Jabez and the liberal Protestant who cheers for the consecration of V. Gene Robinson actually share a lot of theological premises, most of which are functionally post-Christian.

douthat(3) What is the story that you will be watching carefully in the next year or two?

Since this is an election year, Barack Obama’s attempt to broaden the Democratic Party’s support among religious voters, both Catholic and evangelical, strikes me as the biggest national religion story of the next six months. The second-biggest is the cracking-up of the Anglican Communion — the media tends to overhype it, but it’s implications for the future of Christianity, in America and abroad, are large enough deserves at least some of the hype.

(4) Why is it important for journalists to understand the role of religion in our world today?

I can think of a hundred reasons, but here’s one big one: Because religious belief and practice relate not only to our timebound lives but to eternity — which means that the stakes in religious controversies tend to be higher than in any other aspect of human affairs — which means in turn that the capacity for dramatic, world-changing actions (for good or for ill) is higher in the religious sphere than anywhere else. And if you’re a journalist looking for the story of a lifetime — well, anyone can cover Presidential politics; it’s the writer who discovers the next Mother Teresa, or Osama bin Laden, who’s really going to make a name for himself.

(5) What is the funniest, most ironic twist that you have seen in a religion news story lately?

This was well-covered, especially in the liberal press, but when Larry Craig and David Vitter showed up as two of the 10 co-sponsors of the Federal Marriage Amendment was reintroduced in the Senate last month, I don’t care where you stand on the amendment, or on the attention we should pay to hypocrisy … You HAD to chuckle, at the very least.

BONUS: Do you have anything else you want to tell us about religion coverage in the mainstream news media?

This relates more to my own sphere of opinion journalism than to newspaper and magazine reporting, but I would love to live in a world where the media provided more space for arguing about the actual truth claims of religion — where op-ed columnists and bloggers and essayists spent less time on meta debates about the politics and sociology of religion, and more time arguing about whether Christianity or Islam or Judaism is true. These kind of arguments still take place, obviously, but they take place in books rather than in the popular press — and I’d like to live in a world in which the pope’s book about Jesus of Nazareth sparked a lively intellectual debate about Christianity’s truth claims in, say, the Times Book Review and the Post op-ed page, instead of being largely ignored.

But I’m as guilty as everyone else in this regard … In a short-form medium like journalism, it’s easier to write around the central questions raised by religion than to attack them directly.

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Filed Under: 5Q+1, Books, Catholicism, Politics, Religion

Continuing the Useem dialogue

February 19, 2008 By

IMG 6378You know what?

I have been putting off posting the second part of my dialogue (click here for earlier post) with freelance journalist Andrea Useem for two simple reasons: (1) I was out of town for a week, attempting to survive four days of traffic-challenged driving in greater Los Angeles and (2) we normally fill our 5Q+1 interviews with hyperlinks to all of the publications, schools, think tanks, etc., linked to the journalist’s career and, in this case, Useem has just been too busy for me to look up all of those links.

Honest. I’m only going to do about half of them. Or less. So there. Try it yourself.

To flash back, Useem is the veteran religion-beat freelancer and researcher who is behind the ReligionWriter.com blog. There are all kinds of nice details in her personal biography — read it all — but here is the section that many will find the most interesting.

After reporting first-hand on the 1998 embassy bombing in Nairobi, Andrea became intrigued by Islam, a religion she knew little about. She studied informally with Muslim leaders in Kenya, Egypt and Sudan, and what started as a journalistic interest gradually became a personal conviction. Just before leaving Africa for good in the fall of 1999, she formally embraced Islam while in Zimbabwe.

Back in the United States, Andrea earned her Master’s of Theological Studies at the Harvard Divinity School. She studied Arabic at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Middlebury’s renowned summer language institute. She met and married an American convert to Islam in early 2001, before graduating from Harvard that spring. After long consideration, she decided against pursuing a Ph.D. in religious studies, largely because she preferred the fast pace and wide reach of journalism.

Did you follow all of that? As stated before, she has professional ties to all kinds of people, including Religion News Service, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chronicle of Higher Education, the Dallas Morning News, etc., etc. I met her when she called me up to talk, as part of research she is doing for some Religion Newswriters Association “webinars” on coverage of Islam. It looks like the dates for those are March 11 and April 22. Check it out.

So here come the standard question:

(1) Where do you get your news about religion?

I get the majority of my news, including religion news, via RSS feed on my Google desktop sidebar. Big breaking stories — like the death of Gordon Hinckley, for example — usually come to me first from major news outlets on my RSS, like Forbes, CNN, or the Guardian.

Blog-wise, I am trying to create an all-star religion RSS line-up. Currently some of my favorite national-audience religion RSS feeds are: GetReligion, Gary Stern’s Blogging Religiously, Dan Gilgoff’s God-o-Meter, the First Things blog, Reuter’s FaithWorld, the Religion News Service blog, washingtonpost.com’s On Faith, BlogRunner’s religion category, and CBN’s The Brody File, in addition to religion-specific RSS feeds from Slate, NPR and washingtonpost.com. I read ChristianityToday.com, CAIR, Altmuslim.com and the Pew Forum via email and browsing.

I also pay attention to the news feed on my Facebook page, and friends who mass-email on religious topics — that gives me a sense of what stories have caught the attention of other people. Locally, I read blogs by religious folks in Northern Virginia, including that of Reston Community Church pastor Ben Arment, and consume local publications like The Muslim Link.

(2) What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?

Here’s an important story that simply hasn’t been covered: The death of the Salafi movement in America. Maybe it hasn’t been covered because a reporter would have to spend so long setting the context for why this neo-traditionalist Muslim movement is important (Answer: It significantly shaped the character of Islam in America for a decade or more, and this very conservative thinking often results in isolationist us-versus-the-West thinking; whether it is associated with violence is a separate question).

This story came to my attention via Northern Virginia Muslim blogger Tariq Nelson, a person I think religion reporters should include in their Rolodex/Blackberry/RSS (particularly if the question at hand is, “Where are the conservative Muslims who condemn violence?” or “What are the debates going on right now among American Muslims?”) Tariq pointed me toward a seven-part series — The rise and fall of the ‘salafi dawa’ in the US — published last January by Umar Lee, an American Muslim who, like Tariq, spent time as a Salafi. Anyways, Umar’s tale of Salafism is fascinating: It’s a story that simply hasn’t been told, at least as far as I’m aware, in the mainstream press.

MuslimUSA(3) What is the story that you will be watching carefully in the next year or two?

Is the Christian legal movement paving a multicultural superhighway, on which the next generation of minority religions will ride? School prayer isn’t a burning issue right now, but it’s a perfect example of an issue conservative evangelicals have trumpeted without apparent thought to how non-Christian groups would use such legal precedents to champion their own rights. If there were any sort of state- or federally-mandated prayer in public school, it would open wide the door for, say, Muslim students to ask for time off during class, special foot-baths or other accommodations. The point is not that I’m against Muslims praying in school but that the very people pushing for these rights may be a bit shocked at the eventual results. Yet because the Christian legal movement frames its arguments in terms of religious liberty, which applies to all Americans, I do believe they are setting the stage for further battles over religion-in-the-public-square, as minority religions follow in the litigious footsteps of evangelicals.

(4) Why is it important for journalists to understand the role of religion in our world today?

Substitute the word “politics” or “economics” for the word “religion” in that question, and the answer is obvious: Religion is a large part of what makes the world go round. Remain ignorant at your own risk.

What we’re seeing now in journalism, I believe, might be called a market correction, except that it’s really an intellectual correction. Not to get too bookish, but members of the media, like a lot of secular elites, subscribed to the modernist assumption that as the world became more and more technologically advanced, religion would play a smaller and smaller role before finally being extinguished by the march of human progress. Of course, that’s not at all how the story has played out, and the media, along with academia, government and business, has finally gotten the memo. For an excellent sociological peek into the special role evangelicals are playing in bringing religion to elite American institutions, I recommend D. Michael Lindsay’s Faith in the Halls of Power.

(5) What is the funniest, most ironic twist that you have seen in a religion news story lately?

While reading Jacqui Salmon’s Washington Post article on how the NFL forbid churches from broadcasting the Super Bowl on large screens, I almost laughed out loud when I read the Christian legal movement may yet weigh in on the issue:

John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville civil liberties group that focuses on religious freedom issues, is threatening to sue the NFL on behalf of an Alabama church that wants to host a big-screen Super Bowl party. He is also seeking sponsors for federal legislation to exempt churches from the ban.

On the face of it, this is funny just because I think only evangelicals could conceive of Super Bowl parties as a religious freedom issue. It demonstrates how hard it is find the line sometimes between American culture and evangelical culture, both for outside observers and inside believers. This religion-culture overlap comes up in a number of debates, including: Is entertainment-style megachurch worship still worship? Has Joel Osteen blurred forever the line between faith and self-help? One person who I think is asking some thought-provoking questions on these issues is Skye Jethani, now managing editor of Christianity Today‘s Leadership Journal and author of the well-read 2006 piece, “All We Like Sheep,” which speaks out against the consumerization of evangelical Christianity.

BONUS: Do you have anything else you want to tell us about religion coverage in the mainstream news media?

Yes, very much so. While I am as interested as the next religion reporter in questions about the-next-great-religion-story and how to improve religion coverage, I do worry that these discussions are like so many concertos on the Titanic foredeck. The mainstream media faces some very serious business problems, to which it has not yet discovered any simple answers — so while we’re honing our skills on the reporting side, the business side is deciding whether or not to throw us overboard.

What I would like to see much more of are discussions about, for example, how “denominational” bloggers are not only serving as important sources for the mainstream media, but are in some senses replacing the mainstream media. I think religion reporters could also benefit immensely from digital news-gathering strategies, like Jay Rosen’s ideas about using social networks to assist in beat reporting. I find traditional print reporters are, for the most part, incredibly resistant to the changes going on. So I’d like to see the religion-in-the-media conversation be more new-media focused.

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Filed Under: 5Q+1, Godbeat, Islam, Journalism, Web/Tech, World, World Religions

5Q+1 visits with new Tennessean

January 14, 2008 By

SmietanapicThat would be GetReligion reader Bob Smietana, of course, along with the rest of his family.

You see, Smietana has just made a very interesting and rare leap from the world of the denominational press back into a mainstream newsroom. He has joined the Tennessean as the new religion reporter in the very symbolic city of Nashville — which is known as guitar town, the Baptist Vatican and lots of other names. (I interviewed for that same job a long, long, long time ago and the statistics on religion in that zip code are amazing.)

Smietana has been a contributing editor for Christianity Today, a correspondent for Religion News Service, and for eight years he served as features editor for the Covenant Companion, a Chicago-based publication of the Evangelical Covenant Church. He received more than a dozen national awards from the Associated Church Press for his work there.

A native of Attleboro, Mass., Smietana has a degree in religion from North Park University in Chicago, and he earned a master’s degree in communication from National-Louis University in Chicago. In 2001, he completed a summer program in reporting on religion news at Northwestern University’s the Medill School of Journalism. His freelance credits are extensive and he will soon begin blogging at GoodIntentionsBook.com, in support of what he calls a “Freakonomics-style” book on poverty, immigration, global warming and other related issues.

So here are his answers to the usual 5Q+1 questions from your GetReligionistas:

(1) Where do you get your news about religion?

These days I’ve been missing Ted Olsen’s mighty, mighty weblog at Christianitytoday.com, which seems to have been phased out these days. It was a great spot to get a ton of coverage, all in one place, and it’s sorely missed.

RNS remains a great source — Kevin Eckstrom and Adelle Banks do great work. And the denominational press — Baptist Press, Presbyterian News Service, United Methodist News Service, etc. — give an insider’s view of what’s happening in those groups I just did a story on the effect of the weak dollar on missionaries and international relief groups, and got the inspiration from something the Baptist Press ran.

The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, all do great coverage when they take religion. And usually there’s something in those publications that will spark a God-beat story. Religion is one of the world’s largest industries, and the trends, like the weak dollar, that effect big for-profit companies also effect churches.

Probably the most important sources are religious folks themselves, especially the clergy and lay leader who know what’s going on below the surface.

(2) What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?

Here’s one story that I, as newly minted member of the mainstream media didn’t get — the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. This year, Southern Baptist hope to raise $165 million, or more than half their annual budget, in that one offering, taken in December. In effect, every year they wager the future of their world-wide missionary enterprise, which is 5,300 missionaries strong, on this one offering. This past decade, they’ve raised more a billion dollars through the Lottie Moon offering. If the money doesn’t come in every year, they are sunk. It’s a fascinating story, one that reveals the priority that Southern Baptist place on missions. They have about 15 million members and 5,300 missionaries. The Methodists, with 8 million members, have about 400 missionaries. And Lottie Moon, who was a China missionary in the 1800, is an icon for Southern Baptists, who are the largest Protestant group in America. I’ve covered religion professionally since 1999 and had never heard of her before coming to Nashville.

I’m not sure the major mainstream media — the New York Times, CNN, ABC, etc. — get evangelicals or the faith of believers in general. They don’t get the personal and grassroots nature of religion, and spent too much time looking at religious celebrities and not enough time looking at the day to day the lives of believers.

My younger brother died last year, suddenly and unexpectedly, while in the Philippines to finalize the adoption of his daughter. During that time, our church family, kept the faith for us. They carried us through that time of almost unbearable grief, with acts of kindness great and small. That close knit, grassroots community was our lifeline. (I wrote about it afterwards), and I can’t imagine trying to go through that experience without faith and without the company of ordinary believers.

(3) What is the story that you will be watching carefully in the next year or two?

At least three stories come to mind.

One of these days, and it will probably be soon the Southern Baptist are going to stop growing and begin shrinking. That’ll be a huge story for them.

The growth of multi-site megachurches. They are becoming the Wal-Marts of the church world, and it’s putting a tremendous amount of pressure on small congregations, some of whom are giving up and reinventing themselves as franchises of the brand-name megachurches.

Gay bishops get all the press when it comes to Mainline churches, and but I’m more curious about demographics and finances of those institutions. The denominational feuds are fueled as much or more by money and fannies in the pews as they are by sex.

Rockygloves(4) Why is it important for journalists to understand the role of religion in our world today?

Journalists are supposed to ask who, what, where, when and why. You can’t get to why without asking about religion.

(5) What is the funniest, most ironic twist that you have seen in a religion news story lately?

It’s got to be the Rocky boxing glove, which was sent out to pastors in order to promote Rocky Balboa as a faith-based film and attract some of the Passion of the Christ crowd. There was even a website, rockyresources.com/, with preaching tips, banners and even a video message from Sylvester Stallone for church leaders. Stallone was pitched as a true believer, with quotes like, “If you don’t have a great relationship with God, you can go off the deep end.” He must have been thinking about the new Rambo film.

BONUS: Do you have anything else you want to tell us about religion coverage in the mainstream news media?

In coming to the Tennessean, I moved from the magazine world, and mostly religious publications, to a daily newsroom. I’ve been amazed by the skill of my colleagues, who day after day produce quality news under unrelenting deadlines. As a magazine editor and writer, I had the luxury of time to dig deep into stories. I don’t have that luxury anymore, and it’s given me a greater respect for longtime daily journalists.

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Filed Under: 5Q+1, Announcements, Godbeat

Time for religious and secular ghosts

September 28, 2007 By

vanbiemaIt’s Time.

Anyone who knows the history of religion writing in the American press knows that Time played a major role in proving that religion is, in fact, news and, come to think of it, that cover stories about religion can move large numbers of copies off the store shelves. Cover stories about religion have often fueled debate about American religion (like the old yet still famous “Is God Dead?” story) as well as reflected the news.

These days, the magazine’s senior writer for religion news is David Van Biema, who has written numerous cover stories in his 14 years there — reaching the religion beat about 10 years ago. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Connecticut and the Columbia School of Journalism and won awards from the Religious Communicators Foundation, the the Religion Newswriters Association, the American Academy of Religion and the Amy Foundation. His previous journalistic stops included People, Life and The Washington Post Magazine.

I had a chance to talk shop with Van Biema last spring, when I was speaking at a journalism conference in New York City (where Van Biema lives with his wife and son). He promised to take part in our 5Q+1 feature when he had a chance, so here goes. His answers are on the concise side, which makes me now wish I had recorded our conversation that day! It was a delight to spend some coffee and tea time with him.

(1) Where do you get your news about religion?

AP, RNS, CNS, other wires, assorted blogs, book publishers, my morning paper plus Nexis alerts, magazines and let us not forget colleagues who care.

(2) What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?

It’s not a story, really, but the difference between outsiders’ definition of “evangelical” and insiders’. I’m inclining toward your point that it’s becoming meaningless, but what does one substitute?

(3) What is the story that you will be watching carefully in the next year or two?

The two-way globalization of American religion.

(4) Why is it important for journalists to understand the role of religion in our world today?

I would emend that to the “roles” of religion; but have you looked at the world lately?

(5) What is the funniest, most ironic twist that you have seen in a religion news story lately?

Not funny, but the Juanita Bynum situation is certainly replete with ironies.

BONUS: Do you have anything else you want to tell us about religion coverage in the mainstream news media?

I think that just as there are religious ghosts in “secular” stories, there may also be secular ghosts in many religion stories.

TimeMagBibleCover 723686Now that last item really interested me, because I totally agree. There are all kinds of secular or realities that, at first glance, appear to be faith-free that affect religion news. Consider the role of pensions and property costs in shaping much of the Anglican Communion warfare.

So I wrote Van Biema back to ask for him to elaborate a bit. He replied:

I’m actually not sure how many stories it applies to, but in a recent piece I did about Mother Teresa’s long dark night of the soul, the book on which it was based and considerable commentary after the story discussed her condition on strictly faith terms. (Given that the book was edited by her postulator, of course, one would expect nothing else.) I tried to do justice to the faith understanding, but it seemed to me that her case would be seen very differently by a secular psychologist and yet again differently by an atheist. Those views are represented in the story at a graf or two apiece, not as quick brushoffs nor as negating the religious view, but as having a different logic.

I am not trying to get out of my gig by imposing the word “alleged” before every use of the word Resurrection, the way Calvin Trillin’s protaganist did in his classic book, Floater. But part of me wants to suggest that there is a bifurcation: we either talk about religion stories in overly secular terms or unquestioningly remain within the religious frame. At a time where the intertwining of the two is one of the biggest stories we cover, perhaps there is some obligation to open our pieces out in whichever direction seems in danger of being scanted, without effacing either.

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Filed Under: 5Q+1, Godbeat, Web/Tech