CNN on the superstar Stanleys: The ties that blind

November 19, 2012 By

Suffice it to say that I started working my way onto the religion-news beat in the late 1970s, precisely the era in which the Southern Baptist Convention — the mega-denomination in which I was raised, as part of a family active on all levels of SBC life — veered into a civil war that took very few prisoners.

For better and for worse, I speak fluent Southern Baptist.

While at The Charlotte News and then The Charlotte Observer, I began to pay close attention to the Rev. Charles Stanley of the First Baptist Church in Atlanta. Yes, I even have family ties in Baptist life in greater Atlanta.

Anyway, I interviewed Stanley several times when he was leaping into national SBC leadership and, to make a long story short, I thought he was the archetypal Southern Baptist megachurch pastor of this era. He was on television, but his television ministry was really an extension of his pulpit ministry. He was a pulpit star, only with a softer edge that fit the beginning of the pastoral-counseling era in which ministers were supposed to be soothing, rather than jarring. Stanley was an old-fashioned version of smooth, blended with big doses of the new suburban Southern style.

Let me stress my main point again: Stanley was a talented megachurch preacher and, thus, it’s safe to say that he faced the challenges that the superstars in that line of work end up facing. And what might those challenges be?

First, you have to be able to maintain a high level of performance in an age in which younger audiences want younger preachers. You must retain your core audience.

Second, you have to set up loyalty structures that allow you to hang onto your pulpit to the point of retirement or beyond, depending on the size of your gifts and/or ego.

Third, you must dance a dangerous dance with workaholism and the other temptations that come with being The Man On Which Everything Depends.

Fourth, if possible, you have to find a talented successor who is willing to serve as second fiddle until the moment when you choose to step aside, to one degree or another. For some reason or another, megachurch pastors like to hand these franchises to their own children — which can get messy. Ask the Rev. Robert H. Schuller.

The bottom line: It is very hard to have an easy transfer of power when a massive institution is built almost completely on the talent and charisma of one man.

This brings us, naturally, to the massive — 5,000-plus words — new CNN feature about Stanley and his son Andy. The headline sets the tone of this dramatic piece: “Two preaching giants and the ‘betrayal’ that tore them apart.”

What, precisely, was this “betrayal”? That is the question at the heart of this story, yet it is the question that is never answered. That’s a problem.

Did the son walk away from his role as his father’s heir apparent because (a) he got tired of waiting, (b) his new neo-evangelical seeker flock was outgrowing his father’s old-fashioned Southern Baptist operation, (c) his father made decisions — precise details are hidden — that devastated his mother or (d) all of the above?

What’s at stake? This summary paragraph offers a strong metaphor:

There’s no father-son preaching duo quite like the Stanleys. Imagine if Steve Jobs had a son, who created a company that rivaled Apple in size and innovation — and they barely spoke to one another.

That was the Stanleys. Neither man has ever fully explained the events that tore them apart 19 years ago — until now.

This feature offers a riveting view of the personal conflict that tore these two superstar preachers apart, even as it becomes clear that — for whatever reason — neither man is willing to address the private details of the earthquake at the heart of the story, the elder Stanley’s divorce and the rumors that have swirled around it for years.

Thus, many will think that the following passage is the pivotal moment in this ambitious and largely successful piece:

The quiet exit of Anna Stanley from the pews went public in June 1993 when she filed for divorce. Her action caused a sensation in Southern Baptist circles, where divorce is considered a sin by some based on a literal reading of the Bible. Some pastors shunned Charles; others publicly demanded that he step down. The scandal dragged on for years as the couple attempted to reconcile.

In 1995, Anna Stanley explained why she wanted a divorce in a letter to her husband’s church that was excerpted in the local newspaper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in an article titled “Torn Asunder.”

She said she had experienced “many years of discouraging disappointments and marital conflict. … Charles, in effect, abandoned our marriage. He chose his priorities, and I have not been one of them.”

The article makes it obvious that Andy’s primary loyalty, in this family schism, was to his mother. At the same time, how could the son build a sprawling, mega-ministry of his own — 33,000 people attend one of the son’s SEVEN churches every Sunday — without stepping into some of the same traps as his father?

Personally, I think there is another piece of this CNN feature story that comes closer to making the essential point.

You see, the CNN team seems to think that there is such a thing as a Southern Baptist tradition (there are many, quite frankly) and even a Southern Baptist theology (there is no one such approach to doctrine; ask Bill Clinton about that). The elder Stanley is held up as a prime example of the old Southern Baptist way and then Andy becomes the brave young leader who steps away from that frozen orthodoxy and finds his own way.

Truth is, Baptists and members of similar free-church flocks always evolve from generation to generation with millions of churchgoers flocking to the hot new preachers and the emerging super congregations that rise and fall in power year after year, decade after decade. One generation always creates its own new tradition and then outvotes the older generation by moving on to something new. In these evolving structures only the living saints get to vote.

Thus, here is the piece of this story that hit me:

Andy had discovered another preaching mentor, the Rev. Bill Hybels, an unassuming, genial pastor — the kind who travels alone without an entourage. He helped pioneer “seeker churches” while leading Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago.

People tend to focus on the cosmetic innovations of seeker churches: incorporating contemporary Christian music in worship, injecting clever skits and colorful stage props into services. But Andy was also drawn to Willow Creek’s primary mission: reaching “irreligious people” who had been turned off by traditional church.

After hearing Hybels, Andy says, church made sense “for the first time in my life.” Hybels became his hero.

“They were more committed to progress instead of maintaining traditions.”

How could his aging father compete with that? Especially since Charles Stanley was, in effect, his own tradition. Now his son has to come to grips with the new tradition that he, inevitably, has created by escaping from his father’s orbit.

This CNN feature is more than worth the time that it takes to read it all.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Baptists, Books, Evangelicals, Marriage & family, People, Radio & TV, Worship Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Got news? Obama as Antichrist prequel draws silence

November 15, 2012 By

Man oh man do I feel conflicted writing this post.

Let me state, right up front, that I would be the first news-media critic to argue that mainstream press folks are too quick to take a single statement by a single, often obscure, conservative preacher and then turn it into a national story about how all Fundamentalist or even evangelical Christians think about a given topic. In fact, I once went so far as to argue, at Poynter.org, that it was time for journalists to pay less attention to the Rev. Pat Robertson for precisely this reason.

Still, I am very surprised that the following story received a little bit of ink in conservative Christian media – The Christian Post, to be precise – and then never broke out into the mainstream. While I fear what would have happened, in terms of warped coverage, when the story went viral, I still think that it was a significant story.

For starters, I am amazed that the story received no coverage, that I can find in this pay-wall age, at The Dallas Morning News. It is getting harder and harder to remember the days when that newspaper was a trailblazer in some forms of religion-news coverage.

So what’s up?

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, made remarks on Sunday before the election that should Obama win, his victory would lead to the reign of the Antichrist.

“I want you to hear me tonight, I am not saying that President Obama is the Antichrist, I am not saying that at all. One reason I know he’s
not the Antichrist is the Antichrist is going to have much higher poll numbers when he comes,” said Jeffress. “President Obama is not the Antichrist. But what I am saying is this: the course he is choosing to lead our nation is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.”

To some degree, this is simply a variation on the whole idea — which national polls do support in many ways — that America is slowly evolving into Europe. Then again, this is the United States, an intensely religion-haunted land in which many atheists continue to tell pollsters that they continue to pray, to Something or Somebody or perhaps Themselves.

I would have been interested to have known WHY Jeffress made this statement, doctrinally, other than the usual serious social issues linked to the sanctity of human life and the decline of marriage in our culture. When people make this kind of statement, it helps to carefully quote them on some of the specifics, to provide context (or perhaps further outrage).

The other point that needs to be made — saith Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher — is that the First Baptist Church of Dallas is not an obscure, out of the way pulpit. This is a once dominant, and still important, pulpit in one of America’s two or three most important cities, in the world of conservative Christianity.

And, yes, we are talking about THAT preacher, the same Robert Jeffress who received so much attention when he worried out loud about Mitt Romney, as a Mormon, being the GOP nominee. Jeffress called Mormonism a “theological cult,” which many reporters then shortened to “cult” — period — and all heckfire broke forth in the headline. Click here for a previous GetReligion post on the term that he used and the blunter term that reporters jumped on.

In the midst of all of that, Jeffress noted that he intended — eventually — to support Romney and to vote for him. This came to pass. Thus, The Christian Post quoted him as saying:

“I haven’t changed my tune … In fact, I never said Christians should not vote for Mitt Romney. When I talked about his theology,” said Jeffress in an interview with Fox News.

“I still maintain there are vast differences in theology between Mormons and Christians, but we do share many of the same values, like the sanctity of life and religious freedom.”

So, in context, what was it that Jeffress said about Obama — who is a liberal mainline Protestant — and the future of our land? Even as I cringe, I must confess that I am surprised that reporters didn’t find that a compelling question.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Baptists, Creeping Fundamentalism, Evangelicals, People, Politics Tagged With: , , ,

Red-state American in her natural habitat

November 13, 2012 By

I gotta admit: Just a few sentences into this Washington Post feature on post-election Red America and I was already worried.

I just knew that this was going to be one of those sarcastic, elite-reporter-gets-to-know-ignorant-people-in-the-sticks kind of stories (i.e., see the pretty zoo animals with “Mitt Romney” campaign buttons):

HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. — She arrived early to take apart the campaign office piece by piece, just as she felt so many other things about her life were being dismantled. Beth Cox wore a Mitt Romney T-shirt, a cross around her neck and fresh eyeliner, even though she had been crying on and off and knew her makeup was likely to run. A day after the election, she tuned the radio to Glenn Beck and began pulling posters and American flags off the wall.

Her calendar read “Victory Day!!” and she had planned to celebrate in the office by hosting a dance party and selling Romney souvenirs. But instead she was packing those souvenirs into boxes, which would be donated to a charity that sent clothes to South America. Instead a moving company was en route to close down the office in the next 48 hours, and her friends were calling every few minutes to see how she was doing.

“I will be okay,” she told one caller. “I just don’t think we will be okay.”

Next comes the nut graf:

Here in the heart of Red America, Cox and many others spent last week grieving not only for themselves and their candidate but also for a country they now believe has gone wildly off track. The days after Barack Obama’s reelection gave birth to a saying in Central Tennessee: Once was a slip, but twice is a sign.

(An aside before we move on: Central Tennessee? Is there such a place outside of a Beltway newspaper page? Folks familiar at all with Tennessee know that it has three grand divisions: East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee and West Tennessee.)

As I kept reading, I kept seeing signposts indicating a strong religion angle to this 1,800-word, front-page feature. “Values and beliefs” were referenced. The Romney supporter was described as “prayerful.” Her causes were “at the heart of her faith.” She counseled young married families “at church.”

I started marking up my printout of the story, prepared to point out the holy ghosts.

But then something strange happened: I actually began to like the story — and the flair with which the writer revealed important details all along the way. My initial concern that this would be a cardboard-cutout portrayal of a mindless social conservative mostly disappeared. Instead, the focus on a single voter allowed the writer adequate space to intertwine nuggets of nuance:

She blamed some of the divisiveness on Republicans. The party had gotten “way too white,” she said, and she hoped it would never again run a presidential ticket without including a woman or a minority. The tea party was an extremist movement that needed to be “neutralized,” she said, and Romney’s campaign had suffered irreparable damage when high-profile Republicans spoke about “crazy immigration talk and legitimate rape.”

But many other aspects of the division seemed fundamental and harder to solve. There was the America of increased secularism that legalized marijuana. And there was her America, where her two teenage daughters are not allowed to read “Harry Potter” or “Twilight,” and where one of them wrote in a school paper: “God is the center and the main foundation of my family.”

There was the America of gay marriage and the America of her Southern Baptist church, where 7,000 came to listen on Sundays, and where church literature described marriage as “the uniting of one man and one woman.”

That reference to church literature strikes me as a bit awkward because I suspect that the church would attribute that belief to a different source.

Later in the story, the reporter follows the woman to a small-group prayer meeting at the church and backs out of the way (letting the dialogue itself tell the story):

“The world will tell you to be so many things,” she advised them, and on this night she talked to them about the importance of preserving life, the sanctity of marriage, the advantages of raising children at home and the importance of “relying on family, and on your core values, and not on the government.”

“It’s not an easy road to be a Christian, and if it was, everybody would be on it,” she said. She passed out blank white note cards and asked each woman to write down a worry to surrender to God. Then, before closing, she asked what they wanted to pray for.

“Our president,” said one, and the women in the group nodded.

“Our values,” said another.

“All people in our country who are lost.”

“The soul of America.”

“Amen,” Cox said.

This is not a perfect narrative, and some questions go unanswered (such as the name of the church and the specific role of Cox’s vaguely referenced pastor husband).

But all in all, this piece converted me. Mark me down as a believer in this particular Post story.

Broken heart image via Shutterstock

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Baptists, Evangelicals, Politics, Religion, Same-sex marriage, Social Issues Tagged With: , , , ,

The day after: The prophet John Green, revisited

November 7, 2012 By

It should be a quiet day on the religion-beat front, in the wake of yesterday’s nail-biters in the real world of politics. If the past repeats itself, as it often does, it will take a few days for the religion elements of the story to emerge, other than the usual “Obama won the Catholic vote (whatever that is)” headlines.

We do know several things for sure, on the day after. The ultimate ties that bind are race and religion, even when those two realities pull in different directions. The map also shows the degree to which many working-class voters in the urban Northeast and Midwest remain in deep, deep pain and many are convinced that the government is their ultimate, if not only, friend. GOP leaders seem to be deaf to their populist cries. (Then again, I am a registered Democrat who just bought a Chevy Cruze).

In its wrap-up analysis, USA Today went back to the map:

The changing U.S. electorate split in two Tuesday — not only along lines of political party and ideology but also by race and ethnicity, gender and marital status, region and religion, education and age. The divisions are even sharper than they were four years ago, when Obama attracted broader support, especially among whites.

But this time the contest was much closer in a country that is undergoing tectonic shifts in its demography. “We have never had a more polarized electorate,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres says.

If there was one thing that seemed to unite the nation, it was a sense that the stakes were high and the election mattered.

The nation froze in place in an amazing state of gridlock. Things pretty much remain the same on the nation’s hot-button moral, cultural and religious issues: The only vote that actually matters, at least for a few years, is that of Justice Anthony Kennedy. It’s his country, but he lets us live here. For church-state insiders, all eyes are on his editing pencil and numerous First Amendment cases (free speech, freedom of association and religious liberty) are headed his way.

As election night plodded on, I kept thinking about University of Akron scholar John Green and that recent Pew Forum “Nones” study and America’s growing coalition on the secular and religious left. To be specific, I flashed back to a Media Project seminar in the summer of 2009, when Green stood at a whiteboard and described the changes that he was seeing in the landscape of American religion. Everything he said on that day showed up years later, in the 2012 Pew Forum study of the religiously unaffiliated.

On the right side of the American religious marketplace, defined in terms of doctrine and practice, is a camp of roughly 20 percent (maybe less) of believers who are seriously trying to practice their chosen faith at the level of daily life, said Green. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there is a growing camp of people who are atheists, agnostics or vaguely spiritual believers who define their beliefs primarily in terms of the old doctrines that they no longer believe. This is especially true when it comes to issues of salvation and sex. As the old saying goes, on these issues these spiritual-but-not-religious believers reject all absolute truths except the statement that there are no absolute truths.

In recent national elections this growing camp of secularists and religiously unaffiliated people have formed a powerful coalition with Catholic liberals, liberal Jews and the declining numbers of people found in America’s liberal religious denominations (such as the “seven sisters” of oldline Protestantism). Add it all up, Green said in 2009, and you had a growing camp of roughly 20 percent or so on the cultural left.

The bottom line: This coalition was emerging as the dominant voice in the modern Democratic Party on matters of culture and religion. Just as Republicans have, in recent decades, had to wrestle with the reality — the pluses and the minuses — of the energy found on the Religious Right, leaders in the Democratic Party will now be faced with the delicate task of pleasing the Religious Left and its secular allies. This could, to say the least, shape the party’s relationships with the Catholic Church, Orthodox Jews, Muslims and other major religious bodies.

Here’s what Green had to say, a few weeks ago, after the press gathering announcing the “Nones” report. This is taken from a column I wrote for the Scripps Howard News Service.

The unaffiliated overwhelmingly reject ancient doctrines on sexuality with 73 percent backing same-sex marriage and 72 percent saying abortion should be legal in all, or most, cases. Thus, the “Nones” skew heavily Democratic as voters — with 75 percent supporting Barack Obama in 2008. The unaffiliated are now a stronger presence in the Democratic Party than African-American Protestants, white mainline Protestants or white Catholics.

“It may very well be that in the future the unaffiliated vote will be as important to the Democrats as the traditionally religious are to the Republican Party,” said Green, addressing the religion reporters. “If these trends continue, we are likely to see even sharper divisions between the political parties.”

Sound familiar?

So where does this go? Where will journalists be looking for the next wrinkle in this story?

The reality that trumps many of these religious divisions is, of course, race. At some point, cultural conservatives are going to have to find a way to separate married and religious African-Americans and Latinos from the single adults and secular people in those large ethnic groups. White voters divide alone lines of religious practice (the “pew gap”) and marital status, while black and Latino voters do not.

If cultural conservatives are not able to do this, then do the math.

Meanwhile, here comes the deeper information from the exit polls. If journalists continue to march in lockstep, we are only days away from reports about the growing division between young evangelicals and old evangelicals (whatever the word “evangelical” means).

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Atheists & Agnostics, Baptists, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Islam, Judaism, Mainline, Marriage & family, Pentecostalism, Politics, Race, Religion, Same-sex marriage, Sex, Social Issues Tagged With: , , , ,

Weed is a beautiful gift from God

October 18, 2012 By

There is something about writing about marijuana that gets reporters a bit, well, dopey.

You see, they think that marijuana, and its legalization, are just fodder for jokes. Perhaps it’s because I’m a libertarian who believes in a very limited government, but I take discussions about what the government should concern itself with quite seriously. I’m sure marijuana prohibitionists do as well. Editorial pages have not shown a lot of wisdom in how they weigh in on this topic, as Reason magazine has chronicled over the years.

I’ve asked various pastors for their thoughts on weed and will never forget the one guy who told me, “Weed? Weed? Weed is a beautiful gift from God.” He added, immediately, “Of course there are First Article issues for us.” That referred to the First Article of the creed and our obedience and love for all of God’s Law — about which a whole book could be written.

Anyway, I had hoped for a bit more from this Associated Press article headlined “Holy Schism Emerges Over Pot Legalization In Colorado.” It begins:

The stakes in Colorado’s marijuana debate are getting much higher – as in, all the way to heaven.

A vigorous back-and-forth between pot legalization supporters and foes entered the religious arena Wednesday. A slate of pastors called on Coloradans to reject making pot legal without a doctor’s recommendation.

“It’s heading to a path of total destruction,” warned Bishop Acen Phillips, who leads New Birth Temple of Praise Community Baptist Church in Denver.

About 10 pastors spoke at the event organized by the campaign to defeat the Colorado ballot proposal. If approved, the measure would allow adults over 21 to possess small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. Oregon and Washington have similar proposals before voters next month.

Colorado’s legalization supporters responded quickly to the holy war on pot, releasing a list of clergy members who support legalizing the drug and ending criminal penalties for its use. Those ministers argued that religious leaders and parents should guide decisions about marijuana, not the law.

“I do not support smoking pot. I do not like the stuff,” said the Rev. Bill Kirton, a retired Methodist minister in Denver. “But the harm it does is much less than sending more and more people to prison. And I think it’s time to legalize marijuana.”

What you’ll notice is that there’s very little “religion” in this “religious arena.” These people could just as easily be random community leaders as leaders of religious communities. We learn that Kirton chuckled about “supporting an illegal drug as a man of the cloth” — ha ha! — and that he believes most clergy are with him. Then we hear from others who say they’re worried about the problems caused by drug use and that attracting drug dealers is bad for a community.

It almost seems to me that we’re dealing with an economic or cultural divide that may not have as much to do with religion as the headline and copy suggest. A sample of the depth to the piece:

The religious divide over marijuana is the latest arena in which folks are taking sides on Colorado’s pot measure. The pro-marijuana and anti-marijuana groups have in recent weeks gone back and forth over who sides with them.

There’s just not a lot of there there.

It’s also worth noting how this story exemplifies the way that some religious groups are marginalized from news stories. Basically there are the types of churches that believe their doctrine indicates a particular legislative or policy approach. And there are churches that don’t believe that policy prescriptions are within their wheelhouse. We tend to hear far less from the latter because the media love political stories.

I’m pretty sure that my church body would simply say Lutherans have the freedom to use their own reason to vote on this topic. That’s an important viewpoint, too, and one shared by more than just Lutherans. Yet it never appears in these stories about the various political factions in the religious community. And in a state such as Colorado, it might be nice to find out what some less-mainstream religious communities think on this topic. Any Native religious groups weighing in? Any of the Eastern religious communities that have thrived there?

Anyway, I’m still interested in whether there is anything in Scripture — or some other religious norm or framework — that could inform how we vote on these matters. When saying that there is a “holy schism” and that the stakes go so high that it’s all the way “to heaven” — what an overstatement — on this matter, it would be nice to have some actual religious content other than “bishop” or “the Rev.” in the story.

Cannabis image via Shutterstock.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Baptists, Godbeat, Mainline, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

On sex: Smart black Christians vs. you know who

October 17, 2012 By

Brace yourselves, GetReligion readers. I am about to do something shocking.

I would like to take this opportunity to offer careful praise for a Baltimore Sun story that focuses on the lives of two African-American believers who are have struggled with same-sex attractions. I say “have struggled” because the story focuses on two radically different people whose experiences and decisions have led them in two radically different directions, in terms of how they view the Bible and their own Christian lives.

The opening of the story sets up the framework that shapes this long news feature. The goal, quite simply, is to let two people tell their own stories. The result isn’t perfect — more on that in a minute — but it’s evidence that journalists can, by featuring candid human voices, help readers wrestle with complex issues in human life and faith.

While growing up in an African-American Baptist church, Harris Thomas was taught homosexuality is an “abomination in the eyes of God.” As a young minister, he disparaged the gay lifestyle even while secretly pursuing it. Today he heads a Baltimore church that serves gay Christians of color “right where they are.”

Grace Harley, too, grew up in a mainstream black church. She discovered the gay underground as a teen and lived as a lesbian for nearly 20 years. But God freed her from homosexuality, she says, a “blessing” she gladly recounts as a straight minister based in Silver Spring.

Both longtime Marylanders began their spiritual journeys in a similar place, as black Christians who felt strong same-sex attractions. Both faced rejection from family and community, and particularly forceful disapproval from fellow African-Americans, a group whose values have long been shaped by conservative religious thinking. But on a key question of the day, Thomas and Harley could not be more different.

As Maryland’s same-sex marriage referendum looms next month, Elder Harris Thomas, 57, the openly gay pastor of the Unity Fellowship Church of Baltimore, backs “marriage equality.” The Rev. Grace Harley of Fruit of the Spirit Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., 58, opposes it. Both have arrived at their views at a steep price.

And, thus, the story wades into some of the messy details. It’s crucial to know that both of these ministers, one liberal and the other conservative, have lived lives that defy simple labels. Both could, in some sense, accurately describe their lives in terms of bisexuality, as well as homosexuality.

This is a long story for a good reason: It takes time to let these two people tell, and interpret, their stories. (By the way, I should mention right up front that I happen to know the reporter — Jonathan Pitts — whose byline tops this report and I know a bit about how he works. He is a solid interviewer with a long, long attention span.)

So what is my problem with this story? Simply stated, the story falls into an easy trap when talking about issues of scripture and sexuality. Once again, readers are offered the simplistic notion that the modern church is divided into camps of “biblical literalists” — simple code for “fundamentalists” — and more nuanced believers who have spent some time in a seminary and, thus, have grown to accept modernized teachings on sexuality. Thus, readers are told:

African-Americans have deep spiritual roots in the evangelical tradition of Christianity, a broad school of faith incorporating the Pentecostal, Baptist and African Methodist traditions, among others, and stressing biblical authority. Evangelicals tend to read Scripture literally, religious historians say, and at first glance, the Bible seems to leave little room for tolerance of homosexuality.

Later, there is this kicker, care of the Rev. Cedric Harmon, an “African-American pastor who is co-director of Many Voices, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that advocates for same-sex marriage within the black church.”

First, Harmon says, black preachers were among the first African-Americans who could read, and their interpretive skills were rudimentary. Second, slaveholders abused black sexuality so badly, it took hundreds of years for their descendants to develop a healthy sense of self. As they did so, he believes, a culture developed inside and outside the church that scorned behaviors that might be seen as aberrant. He wonders whether African-American men adopted a culture of machismo at that early stage.

“Literal readings can lend themselves to condemning and ostracizing interpretations,” Harmon says. “Now that many of us have gone to seminary and studied those scriptures, that language has begun to lessen a bit. But that doesn’t diminish the intensity of what many people have gone through.”

In other words, there are smart people on one side, people who have gone to seminary, and on the other side there are, well, macho biblical literalists who have never been to school.

This is a very poor and simplistic way to describe the viewpoints of biblical scholars who — in a variety of traditions, Catholic and Protestant — keep clashing in these debates. The Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area, I might add, offers very deep resources when it comes to finding articulate, informed, academic voices on both sides of this debate. Where are the conservative scholars? This story, in other words, reduces 2,000 years of orthodox Christian doctrine on human sexuality to one form of Protestant literalism.

The journalistic goal, of course, should be to do justice to the theological viewpoints on both sides. This story does a good job of accurately quoting the voices of these two ministers — the stakeholders in this feature — but falls short when it comes time to quote experts who are asked to frame and explain what these stories mean.

So I can offer some praise to the Sun for letting these two believers tell their stories, in their own words. The problem is that the story slips back into a familiar, simplistic journalistic rut when it comes time to explain the bigger picture. The result is yet another warped portrayal of a very complex debate.

This was a good try, but one that failed to take seriously the sources of the beliefs of people on both sides of these painful stories.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Academia, Baptists, Interviews, Marriage & family, Pentecostalism, People, Same-sex marriage, Sex Tagged With: , , ,

Baylor grad pushes app for cheaters?

October 11, 2012 By

A long, long time ago, I was a journalism major at Baylor University, which, as you may know, is the world’s largest Baptist university. Baylor is located in Waco, Texas, which many folks in the Lone Star state like to call “Jerusalem on the Brazos.”

It didn’t take long, as a young journalist, to realize that stories linking Baylor to anything having to do with sin and sex were like journalistic catnip in mainstream news newsrooms.

Even in the world before search-engine optimization, it was rare for copy-desk professionals in Texas, or anywhere else, to pass up each and every opportunity to put, let’s say, “Baylor” and “Playboy” in the same headline. It appears that this a subject that never dies, decade after decade, as journalists have fun with the whole idea of Baptist co-eds choosing to pose for this noted feminist publication.

Well, Playboy isn’t planning another visit to Waco — at least, not that I have heard about — but Newsweek recently ran a rather depressing little story that could have been seen as an update on this whole Baylor and the Sexual Revolution riff.

Don’t get me wrong. I am rather glad that the publication didn’t choose to push that button. Frankly, I am amazed that Newsweek didn’t push that button — so much so that this rare act of inky restraint actually made me pay more attention to this story than I normally would have. Paying attention made me think that there could be a ghost in this mini-feature.

So here is the top of the report, complete with the B-word. The headline sets the stage: “New App Helps Cheaters Cover Their Tracks.”

Great News for all you current and aspiring cheaters out there! Neal Desai, a 25-year-old pre-med graduate of Baylor University, has a smartphone app designed to help keep your dirty little secrets a secret.

The app is named CATE, short for Call and Text Eraser — which pretty much explains its basic function. Once set up, CATE keeps hidden any and all contact from certain special friends until the user inputs a secret access code. Better still, the app isn’t even visible on the phone until you enter the code, providing an extra layer of protection from snooping spouses.

So a graduate of the world’s best known Baptist school has come up with a way to help husbands cheat on their wives or wives cheat on their husbands (since the story later notes that about 70 percent of the downloads, so far, appear to be by women).

Meanwhile, what the potential impact of this technology on those who, at any given point in time, are being tempted to this sin for the first time? How about those who are trying to walk a path to recovery after a marital crisis?

Anyway, I am glad — I guess — that Newsweek passed up the Baylor angle, although it certainly would have been valid to note this irony, briefly. However, I now question whether theis news story should have been written in such a values- and ethics-free manner.

So, readers, thumbs up or thumbs down on omitting the Baylor irony? How about the editorial decision to make this a rather lighthearted, jolly report about the destruction of marriages? Would mentioning moral concerns be dangerous, since that might validate the views of those who consider adultery to be sin?

Just asking.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Academia, Baptists, Ethics, First Person, Marriage & family, Sex Tagged With: , , ,

Meanwhile, back at AP’s sausage factory

September 28, 2012 By

On Thursday, I highlighted a fine piece of journalism produced by The Associated Press’ filet mignon department — where reporter chefs with unlimited time, space and resources whip up the kind of delectable stories that win big prizes.

However, most AP journalists perform grueling labor in a different department — let’s call it the, uh, Sausage Factory.

In most cases, grinding up press releases, chucking the uncooked meat immediately onto the wire and begging readers to devour the incomplete product — NOW! — does not make for the most quality or compelling journalism.

Take, for example, this tweet with which AP teased its 1.2 million Twitter followers about the same time my previous post was going up at GetReligion:

As an Oklahoma resident whose wife and 13-year-old daughter have been known to invest more of our family’s funds than I’d like in Hobby Lobby — except on Sundays, when the company’s stores are closed — I was intrigued by AP’s tweet.

For one thing, this is Oklahoma, after all, and we tend to lean rather conservative politically and religiously. For another, I had read in The Oklahoman about the strong support for the Hobby Lobby lawsuit from the state’s faith community — from the president of a Nazarene university to the Roman Catholic archbishop to the executive director of the Southern Baptists’ Oklahoma state convention. (I may have missed it, but I don’t recall an AP story or tweet on that support for Hobby Lobby. AP did, however, produce a fair report on the initial lawsuit filing.)

So I was curious to learn more about this “coalition of Oklahoma pastors” who were protesting the lawsuit. I clicked on the link and read this report:

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A coalition of Christian pastors in Oklahoma is opposing Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit challenging federal health care guidelines that require the arts and crafts chain to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill.

The Rev. Lance Schmitz says more than 80,000 people signed petitions opposing the Oklahoma-based company’s lawsuit. Schmitz tried to deliver the petitions Thursday to Hobby Lobby headquarters but was ordered to leave the property. The pastor says he will mail the petitions instead.

The company had no immediate comment.

Hobby Lobby, which operates more than 500 stores in 41 states, argues in its lawsuit that providing coverage for the morning-after pill violates its owners’ “deeply held religious beliefs.”

The petitions say Hobby Lobby should not use its Christian beliefs to deny women access to birth control.

That. Is. It. The entire report. Enjoy your sausage, 1.2 million people who follow AP on Twitter.

Who exactly are the pastors who comprise the reported coalition? Except for “the Rev. Lance Schmitz,” who isn’t exactly a household name, AP gives no clue.

Generally, AP’s practice is to get the basic facts onto the wire quickly, then update with more detail and insight. So I clicked the link again three or four hours later to see if the story had improved. The only change that I recognized was that someone had introduced a “liberal” into the lede, a label intended, I guess, to differentiate these pastors from the Christian leaders quoted by The Oklahoman a week ago. The pastors later evolved into a “coalition of liberal Christian groups.”

Eventually, a longer AP report made it onto the wire with this lede:

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Christian activists attempted Thursday to deliver a petition to Hobby Lobby criticizing its challenge to a portion of the new federal health care law, but guards at the company’s headquarters turned them away.

“I thought they’d let me drop off the package,” said the Rev. Lance Schmitz, pastor of the Capitol Hill Church of the Nazarene in Oklahoma City.

Schmitz said more than 80,000 people had signed copies of a petition circulated nationwide by Faithful America, an online Christian group, and UltraViolet, which promotes women’s rights. Schmitz said he intends to mail the petition to the company.

To its credit, the final story gives a Hobby Lobby spokesman an opportunity to respond to the concerns expressed by the vague activists:

An attorney for the company, Kyle Duncan, said the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, respects the religious convictions of others, “including those who do not agree with them.”

“All they are asking is for the government to give them the same respect by not forcing them to violate their religious beliefs,” Duncan said.

Lest I leave the impression that AP is the only news organization that produces sausage, feel free to take a big bite of this nasty FoxNews.com concoction.

Your turn, faithful GR readers: What do you think of “breaking news” sausage? Please focus on the journalistic issues.

Sausage factory image via Shutterstock
Print Friendly

Filed Under: Baptists, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Journalism, Mainline, Politics, Religion, Sex, Social Issues