Risking lives to save souls in Mexico

November 2, 2012 By

Before I left on a mission trip south of the U.S. border this past spring, a Facebook friend was so kind as to post a State Department warning for all of us “crazy enough to travel to Mexico.”

That same day, I read a wire service report where one source suggested that mission groups going to Mexico “bring a body bag along.”

Still, I chose to trust in God and go on the trip. But I prayed hard when a convoy of trucks filled with men toting machine guns and sporting green military uniforms zipped past our church vans and set up a makeshift checkpoint. As it turned out, the soldiers behaved extremely professionally as they examined cargo in our caravan of 13 vans. They assured us they were trying to protect us from any potential threats. I used the trip as a peg for a Christian Chronicle news story on “A rocky road for Mexico missions.”

Because of that experience and my previous reporting adventures in places such as Tijuana, Juarez and Saltillo, a Los Angeles Times Column One feature on evangelical missions in Mexico piqued my interest. The headline of the front-page story touted Americans “risking lives to save souls.”

A chunk of the top of the 1,400-word report:

MONTERREY, Mexico — Pastor Andres Garza had told the American evangelicals to stay away from his troubled city. The drug war made it too difficult to guarantee their safety.

But now they were back, in their golf shirts and sensible shoes and halting Spanish, happily milling around Monterrey’s new headquarters for evangelical Presbyterians.

Garza smiled at his old friends. Al Couch, 81, a retired pharmaceutical salesman from Nashville, had come here so many times in the past that he’d earned the nickname “Monterrey Jack.” But this was his first time back since Garza had warned the Americans early last year that the violence had grown too intense. …

The way Garza saw it, the Americans’ return on this September weekend was part of an epic spiritual battle for a city, like Babylon, that had fallen into decadence and was in need of salvation. There was also a little of Jesus’ story in their visit.

“They came from a very secure place, the way Jesus came from heaven, to a place that isn’t very secure,” he said — and they had come to save souls.

The writer does a nice job of setting the scene. In fact, the entire story is filled with compelling details and anecdotes on the security situation and crime concerns in a modern, once fairly safe big city (I recall riding a public bus by myself in Monterrey just a few years ago and feeling totally secure).

However, the full report left me with a hollow feeling as a reader. The old men who ignored warnings to stay home and not travel to Mexico came across as rather shallow figures to me. To illustrate, consider this section of the story:

Most of the Americans figured they would be safe because they were short-timers with no connection to the drug world. Over breakfast, they spoke with a common strain of fatalism: Who’s to say I won’t get hit by a bus back in San Antonio? Or murdered in my sleep in Dallas?

“I pray they’ll keep us safe,” said Montana resident Jim Routson, 61. “But when your time’s up, your time’s up.”

There was talk of the renowned Protestant missionaries who had spread the Gospel in dangerous places in times past: Adoniram Judson, who survived a wretched imprisonment in 19th century Burma. Jim Elliot, slain, in 1956, by Waodani warriors in the jungles of Ecuador.

“Once you’re not afraid of death,” said Whited, 76, the retired pastor, “life gets a lot easier.”

Do these men really share a common strain of fatalism? Or would faith be a better word to describe their outlook? Why aren’t they afraid of death? Could there be a spiritual reason for that?

Trust me, I’ve interviewed old men before. With certain old men, I can imagine that a reporter trying to delve deep into their souls might inspire frustrated grunts in response to probing questions. Nonetheless, a few more pointed follow-ups might have gone a long way toward busting the “religion ghosts” that haunt this piece.

Then again, maybe I expected too much based on my personal experiences. By all means, read the whole story and weigh in.

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Filed Under: Evangelicals, First Person, Journalism, Religion, World Religions Tagged With: , , , ,

Missing some fundamental facts on Obama and faith

November 1, 2012 By

A week or so ago, I wrote a Scripps Howard News Service column about the survey research indicating that secular and self-proclaimed liberal Americans are much more likely to be prejudiced against Mormon political candidates than are evangelical Protestants, the very folks that everyone has been worried about during the Mitt Romney campaign. That column opened like this:

With the White House race nearing an end, it’s time for America’s political pundits to face that fact that millions of voters will in fact be worried about Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith on Election Day.

Many will be offended by what they believe are the intolerant, narrow teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on marriage. Others will be worried about Mormonism’s history of opposing abortion rights.

“There really is a large group of people in America who won’t vote for Mitt Romney for president because he is a Mormon,” noted Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes, in a recent Institute on Religion and Democracy lecture. “It’s a very large group and there is a name for them — liberals.”

So the column opened with a well-known conservative political insider, who is also a conservative Anglican, making a conservative point based on survey research that digs into the biases of religious and secular liberals. Do the math and add up the number of times the word “conservative” is used in that sentence.

Days later, I started getting response emails from readers from coast to coast (since one of my email addresses is attached to the bottom of my columns in most newspapers). I received a higher rate than normal that Monday.

Each and every one of these emails — every SINGLE one of them — accused me of attacking Mitt Romney while, of course, taking part in the great mainstream-media conspiracy to hide the fact that President Barack Obama is (wait for it) a Muslim.

Against my better judgment, I responded to a few of these emails by citing the facts that I have written about many times here at GetReligion.org and in other columns — that Obama made a public profession of faith and, at a time never precisely confirmed by the congregation, was baptized by a clergy-person in one of America’s most theologically liberal Christian denominations. Along with his family, he was active in that Christian congregation for many years. He has made numerous public professions of his liberal take on the Christian faith since then.

People responded by saying (a) he’s lying or (b) that members of the United Church of Christ — a liberal national denomination that continues to include some quite conservative local congregations — are not real Christians.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why so many people in conservative-church pews and pulpits cannot grasp the fact that Obama is a liberal Christian. Yes, he may be so doctrinally liberal that, when it comes to eternal questions, he believes that there are no ultimate differences between Christians, Jews, Muslims and everybody else — but he is certainly not alone in believing that. The leaders of many denominations believe that. Legions of seminary professors agree with him.

In oh so many ways, Obama is a perfectly normal liberal Protestant Christian.

However, as recent Pew Forum research made clear, the world of liberal Protestantism is no longer at the heart of American life. The old mainline is now on the sideline, to the left of the mainstream. That does not mean that oldline churches are not important or worthy of balanced, nuanced coverage.

This brings me to a recent piece at the CNN Belief Blog called “The Gospel according to Obama“? At one point, that headline read: “Is Obama the ‘wrong’ kind of Christian?” The whole point of the piece is that Obama is a Christian progressive and part of the old mainline Protestant world. Thus, readers are told:

When Obama invoked Jesus to support same-sex marriage, framed health care as a moral imperative to care for “the least of these,’’ and once urged people to read their Bible but just not literally, he was invoking another Christian tradition that once dominated American public life so much that it gave the nation its first megachurches, historians say. …

Obama is a progressive Christian who blends the emotional fire of the African-American church, the ecumenical outlook of contemporary Protestantism, and the activism of the Social Gospel, a late 19th-century movement whose leaders faulted American churches for focusing too much on personal salvation while ignoring the conditions that led to pervasive poverty.

No other president has shared the hybrid faith that Obama displays, says Diana Butler Bass, a historian and author of “Christianity after Religion.”

“The kind of faith that Obama articulates is not the sort of Christianity that’s understood by the media or by a large swath of Christians in the U.S.,” says Bass, a progressive Christian. “He’s a different kind of Christian, and the media and the public awareness needs to reawaken to that fact.”

There is much to criticize in that passage and in the article as a whole, but the key is this: The CNN team seems to have assumed that today’s mainline Protestantism is essentially the same, doctrinally, as the mainline Protestantism of the late 19th century. Also, there continue to be all kinds of people who, for example, would frame health care as a biblical imperative yet disagree with Obama and modern Christian liberals on a host of other issues, including doctrinal matters that can be framed in creedal terms.

Later on, the CNN team strives to contrast Obama and the believers who support him with — you got it — the world of 20th century Christian fundamentalism. It’s crucial that the article defines the “social Gospel” in ways that appear to contrast it with the beliefs of people who supported, and continue to support, conservative stances on basic Christian doctrines and moral teachings. Thus, readers learn:

The Social Gospel, though, sparked a backlash from a group of pastors during World War I. They were called fundamentalists. They published a pamphlet listing the “fundamentals of the faith:” Biblical inerrancy, the virgin birth, Adam and Eve. But the fundamentalists lost the battle for public opinion during the “Scopes Monkey Trial” in 1925. John Scopes, a high school science teacher, was tried for violating a Tennessee law that prohibited the teaching of evolution.

Though Scopes lost, fundamentalist Christians were mocked in the press as “anti-intellectual rubes,” and a number of states suspended pending legislation that would have made teaching evolution illegal, says David Felton, author of “Living the Wisdom: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity.” The trial drove fundamentalists underground where they created a subculture, their own media networks, seminaries and megachurches, he says.

That’s close, kind of.

The big problem, of course, is that the original “fundamentals of the faith” documents were crafted in that hotbed of anti-intellectualism — Princeton Theological Seminary. They were signed by Anglicans, Presbyterians and others in mainline churches. The purpose was to defend Christian basics, in terms of doctrine, not to reject ministry to the poor. Many did reject, and continue to reject, any belief that ministry to the poor can replace or exclude evangelism and the concern for eternal salvation. Basic, mere, Christianity is a both/and proposition in which it is heresy to deny either side of that equation.

Thus, a GetReligion reader who sent us the URL for this CNN story noted:

Some interesting stuff on President Obama here, but then they totally butcher the history of the development of fundamentalism (and completely misunderstand what fundamentalism was pushing back on among liberalism — that is, not the good works but the rejection of Christ as God), the background of Christian charity works stretching into the First Century, and so forth. Also worth note: they don’t bother to interview any but the most easily caricatured conservative voices, and typically go out of their way to make evangelical believers look like downright rubes. …

This is a real missed opportunity, because so many evangelicals might benefit from seeing how President Obama could share their faith while differing from them. Instead, it ended up being just another chance to rag on evangelicals.

*sigh*

Precisely. This CNN story has some fundamental flaws.

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Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism, First Person, Mainline, People, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Hurricanes and political storms, near my desk in D.C.

October 29, 2012 By

A long time ago (in digital terms), back at the beginning of this here weblog, I sat at my desk in West Palm Beach, Fla., listening to the sound of an oncoming hurricane and thinking about a very practical issue: How does one blog about religion news on a daily basis if the power goes out for, let’s say, a week?

Well, that happened to me twice back in the fall of 2004.

That led me to write about a whole mess of bizarre religion stories in short, machine-gun bursts of commentary — on topics ranging from Britney Spears (still in the news today, alas) to the voice of U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, one of the last of the old-school, culturally conservative Democrats. The whole idea was to get some news into cyberspace for GetReligion readers to think about when I vanished.

But I also ended that post this way:

… (You) know what, I am really more interested in requesting the prayers of GetReligion readers who are into that kind of thing. The hurricane shutters on our house are almost totally up and we have just made the decision that, unless something changes radically, we are riding the storm out here in West Palm Beach. …

Palm Beach Atlantic University, where I teach, is on the canal in downtown. If we take a direct hit and Palm Beach island goes under water, the campus will suddenly be facing the storm surge. This has not happened since 1928 or so and the city is a radically different place now. No one really knows what will happen downtown. …

This morning, I took the “essentials” out of my campus office. It is an interesting thing, trying to choose what goes in one box to take out of the flood zone.

All my academic books are still there on the shelves, covered by plastic trash bags. Then there are the four tall filing cabinets full of notes from 25 years of reporting. They could be ruined. All those manila folders full of notes scribbled in Flair pen — the ink that runs when it gets wet.

I saved things that cannot be replaced, like lecture notes, icons from Greece, a few marked-up books and old video tapes. Oh, that and the large oil painting of Aslan. Further up and further in.

One box. To go. It was a sobering process. And not a bad thing to have to do, every now and then.

So now my office is a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol and the streets here inside the ultimate Beltway are very, very quiet — people-wise. No buses. No subways. No Amtrak or commuter trains. I am here, with my students, riding out the storm. All of those files full of Flair pen notes survived the Florida storms and are now stashed in a leaky basement in our blue-collar neighborhood just south of Baltimore. I would appreciate prayers that they survive Sandy and that the giant tree in front of our creaky old house stays upright, in its current location.

So what should we talk about today, as the winds begin to howl? I am told by the Divine Mrs. M.Z. Hemingway that the power rarely goes down here on The Hill, so I think I will be around, or back online, pretty quick this time. So let’s talk about another kind of storm — the volatile combination of race, moral theology and politics that is swirling around several ballot-box issues in Maryland, with same-sex marriage in the middle of all of it all. That mix came up the other day, of course, in my post about the interesting case of Angela McCaskill, the Gallaudet University diversity officer.

Now, The Washington Post has waded into similar waters with a piece that ran under this headline: “Maryland referendums on gambling, gay marriage and immigrant tuition prompt soul-searching among black churchgoers.”

A GetReligion reader offered this viewpoint via email:

WaPo had an interesting article about PG County churches and voters and their relationship with the big ballot issues in Maryland this election (the Dream Act, same-sex marriage and casinos). I wish it were a bit longer, but it’s quite good. It gives a lot of context for the religiosity of PG County, and it’s not “brainless Biblical literalists vs. nuanced progressives” on the gay marriage stuff, which is nice. It even gets into the idea of the Dream Act being a social justice issue that Maryland religious groups are mostly supporting, so it’s a wonderful change from the “religious = Republican” meme.

It’s kind of hard for me to comment on this particular piece, because one of the authors is a close friend of mine — veteran Post metro reporter Hamil Harris, a man with a seminary degree to his credit (as well as a NCAA national-championship ring from his Florid State University football days). However, let me note the following as an example of the kind of material that reporters are looking for if they want to take African-American believers seriously.

This is how the story opens.

With the fog still burning off at 7:30 a.m., the Rev. Henry P. Davis III was just warming up, settling into the rhythm of a sermon about relying on faith during hard times. But two hours later, as the congregants filed out, many still remembered, word for word, one line.

“No matter what is on the ballot, I am going to stand on the word of God,” said Davis, pastor of First Baptist Church of Highland Park, a brick building with a white steeple just over a knoll from FedEx Field in Prince George’s County.

Although he’d been vague, his flock knew exactly what he meant. And on a Sunday morning before the Nov. 6 election, in a county with 800 mostly black churches, it was a familiar refrain.

What didn’t need to be said was that Davis believes the Bible teaches that homosexuality and gambling are sins; that he will vote against measures to legalize same-sex marriage and to allow the state’s largest casino. And he would hope his congregants would do the same. On a third controversial measure, which would allow in-state tuition breaks for some illegal immigrants, Davis sees it as many other clergy do — as the kind of charity lauded by the Bible.

Not since Maryland voters were asked to weigh in on abortion 20 years ago has a ballot so deeply drawn church leaders in to the state’s political fray. Then, however, there was one emotional issue, and most were on the same side. This time, the religious community has focused on three key measures, and conflicting interpretations of Scripture and priorities have roiled congregations statewide.

And what are the basic facts on the ground?

… Maryland’s ballot measures have come to a head in Prince George’s more than anywhere else. And with polls showing that voters are leaning slightly in favor of same-sex marriage and the gambling measure a toss-up, the county could play a pivotal role in whether the measures pass.

The county is among the most religious in the state: Three quarters of likely voters in the majority African American county say they attend services at least monthly, according to a mid-October poll by The Washington Post.

Fully 45 percent of registered voters in the county who are African American say they have heard about same-sex marriage from their clergy, compared with 31 percent of blacks in the rest of the state.

And when religious leaders have spoken about gay marriage, fully 80 percent of the voters say they have heard their pastor register opposition and 9 percent heard a supportive message; 11 percent heard a mix of opinions. Roughly two-thirds of voters — black or white — who oppose same-sex marriage say their religious beliefs have the biggest influence on their views.

Read it all.

That is, assuming that YOUR power stays on.

IMAGE: Hurricane Sandy, via NASA.

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Filed Under: Announcements, Evangelicals, First Person, Marriage & family, People, Politics, Religion, Same-sex marriage Tagged With: , , ,

A non-journalistic flight to heaven and back

October 16, 2012 By

In the past week of so, I have received a number of requests for a GetReligion news critique of the Newsweek cover story that ran under the grabber headline: “Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife.” The problem, of course, is that this cover story by Dr. Eben Alexander is a perfect example of a larger trend, which is the flight of America’s major news magazines away from actual news coverage and into the world of first-person, advocacy, experiential writing.

Please note that this particular feature focuses on a subject that remains highly newsworthy, even after decades of books and chatter about evidence that near-death experiences can in some way be documented and/or investigated. This trend has affected popular culture, pop religion, journalism, etc., etc.

Clearly, millions of Americans are intrigued with this subject, while others merely groan, curse or shake their heads.

I have been reading up on this topic for a quarter of a century or so and, if this subject interests you, please surf around a bit in the contents of this Google search. Pay special attention to references to the stricken “looking down” from above their bodies and retaining information about objects they could not possibly have seen with their own eyes.

So there is news content here. There are voices on both sides of these debates with information and arguments to share. There are theologians and religious/cultural historians who will gladly debate the implications of the experiences that resuscitated people claim to have had during NDE events.

But do not look for this material in the Newsweek cover story. This is a non-journalistic feature that raises all kinds of questions that journalists could investigate — if they have the will to do so.

Instead, readers are given prose such as the following:

Although I still had little language function, at least as we think of it on earth, I began wordlessly putting questions to this wind, and to the divine being that I sensed at work behind or within it.

Where is this place?

Who am I?

Why am I here?

Each time I silently put one of these questions out, the answer came instantly in an explosion of light, color, love, and beauty that blew through me like a crashing wave. What was important about these blasts was that they didn’t simply silence my questions by overwhelming them. They answered them, but in a way that bypassed language. Thoughts entered me directly. But it wasn’t thought like we experience on earth. It wasn’t vague, immaterial, or abstract. These thoughts were solid and immediate — hotter than fire and wetter than water — and as I received them I was able to instantly and effortlessly understand concepts that would have taken me years to fully grasp in my earthly life.

I continued moving forward and found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch-black as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me. The orb was a kind of “interpreter” between me and this vast presence surrounding me. It was as if I were being born into a larger world, and the universe itself was like a giant cosmic womb, and the orb (which I sensed was somehow connected with, or even identical to, the woman on the butterfly wing) was guiding me through it.

Later, when I was back, I found a quotation by the 17th-century Christian poet Henry Vaughan that came close to describing this magical place, this vast, inky-black core that was the home of the Divine itself. “There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling darkness …”

This is interesting material to quote in a serious cover story on this topic. However, this passage is — in effect — drawn from the “fact paragraph” material in this report. It’s contents cannot be discussed by others or debated. There are no sidebar articles accompanying this feature written by skeptics — secular or religious (such as this reaction piece, predictably, by Sam Harris).

And in the end, what does all of this mean? Well, Dr. Alexander is not shy:

Today many believe that the living spiritual truths of religion have lost their power, and that science, not faith, is the road to truth. Before my experience I strongly suspected that this was the case myself.

But I now understand that such a view is far too simple. The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed. In its place a new view of mind and body will emerge, and in fact is emerging already. This view is scientific and spiritual in equal measure and will value what the greatest scientists of history themselves always valued above all: truth.

This new picture of reality will take a long time to put together. It won’t be finished in my time, or even, I suspect, my sons’ either. In fact, reality is too vast, too complex, and too irreducibly mysterious for a full picture of it ever to be absolutely complete. But in essence, it will show the universe as evolving, multi-dimensional, and known down to its every last atom by a God who cares for us even more deeply and fiercely than any parent ever loved their child.

How does one critique this kind of material as journalism?

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Filed Under: Atheists & Agnostics, First Person, Journalism, People, Science, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

#RNA2012: Outside a Mormon temple wedding

October 12, 2012 By

In a couple of recent posts — here and here — I’ve already highlighted some of the excellent Godbeat journalism that claimed prizes in the Religion Newswriters Association’s annual awards contest.

If you haven’t checked out the winning entries, I’d encourage you to do so. For regular readers of GetReligion, many of the honorees’ names will read like a who’s who in religion news. Among those names: Dan Gilgoff and Eric Marrapodi of CNN’s Belief Blog, David Gibson of Religion News Service and Tom Breen (formerly) of The Associated Press.

Another familiar name from the Godbeat: Peggy Fletcher Stack of The Salt Lake Tribune. 

This past weekend, Stack was busy covering the 182nd annual LDS General Conference, so she didn’t actually make it to the RNA annual conference in Bethesda, Md., just outside the nation’s capital. But she was recognized as the Cornell Religion Reporter of the Year, which honors religion writers for the nation’s mid-sized newspapers.

Stack produced a truly fascinating story on Mormon weddings dividing families when some loved ones are forced to wait outside the temple. The top of the story, which I missed when it was published in June 2011:

You see them on Salt Lake City’s Temple Square nearly every day. They pace nervously or stroll aimlessly, staring down at the tulips or up at the spires.

They are nottourists or templegoers. They are parents, siblings, cousins and friends of Mormon couples being wed inside the LDS sanctuary. But, for one reason or another, they are not allowed to view the ceremony.

Maybe they are Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish or atheist. Perhaps they once were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Or maybe they are current Mormons who fail to meet all the faith’s belief and behavior standards for a “recommend” to enter into the temple.

Stack demonstrates her expertise on Mormonism with a story that provides theological insight and historical background. At the same time, she writes in a way that makes sense even to a reader not as well versed in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She quotes a variety of sources, from church spokesmen to those who have married inside the temple — without certain key relatives joining them.

Moreover, Stack places the weddings in the context of a changing society:

Part of the problem has emerged in recent years as society has moved weddings from the sacred to the secular, says Brigham Young University sociologist Marie Cornwall. Marriage was once a church-centered celebration, given that most people’s religious and secular communities were the same. Now they
aren’t.

Many of today’s weddings no longer are seen as a holy event before God and witnesses, she says, but rather as a chance to bring everyone together to celebrate the newlyweds.

“Everyone now has relatives who are not religious,” she says. “So weddings have become more and more part of the market. Couples are spending huge amounts of money for celebrations to include all their friends.”

When I clicked the link to Stack’s winning entry, I couldn’t stop reading, which is always a good sign.

Congratulations to Stack and the rest of the RNA winners!

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Filed Under: First Person, Godbeat, Journalism, Mormons, Religion 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.

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

#RNA2012: Godbeat’s ‘Susan Lucci’ takes second place

October 10, 2012 By

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At the Religion Newswriters Association’s annual awards dinner Saturday night, Abe Levy of the San Antonio Express-News jokingly referred to himself as the “Susan Lucci of the RNA.”

Levy, a perennial finalist in the RNA’s religion writing contests, came this close to a top spot yet again — taking second place in the Religion Reporter of the Year competition for metropolitan newspapers.

The first-place award in that category went to Judy Thomas of the Kansas City Star. The Star reported on her win:

Thomas was recognized for her coverage of a priest sex abuse scandal involving Father Shawn Ratigan, Bishop Robert Finn and the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese, and stories about the Rev. Jerry Johnston and the former First Family Church of Overland Park.

Thomas isn’t actually a Godbeat pro. She’s a projects writer who focuses on in-depth reporting and investigations. That was evidenced by the three stories that she submitted to the judges. Her first story — co-written with another bylined reporter — measured about 5,700 words (or, in newspaper terms, roughly three entire forests). She also included a three-part, 6,300-word series related to a priest sex abuse scandal as part of her entry.

So, in some ways, we’re comparing apples and oranges when we talk about a projects writer such as Thomas and the three religion writers who claimed second place (Levy), third place (Tim Townsend of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) and honorable mention (Anyssa Johnson of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) in that category.

On the daily religion beat, in-depth enterprise reporting and scandal stories must be balanced against the demands of breaking news, developments on ongoing stories and the general nitty-gritty of the world of faith. That makes the award-winning stories by writers assigned full time to religion news — and producing bylines day in and day out — all the more remarkable.

Levy’s entry, for example, included a major investigative piece on a priest sex abuse case as well as a trend story on black churches repackaging themselves as multicultural and a spot news report on a Texas controversy related to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith.

So, while I extend heartfelt congratulations to Thomas (whose community certainly appreciates her high quality of journalism), I must admit that I am equally impressed with Lucci — er, Levy.

In most of the RNA categories, I should stress, Godbeat pros claimed the top honors. I’ll highlight a few of those winners in my upcoming third — and final — post on the 2012 award winners.

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Filed Under: First Person, Godbeat, Journalism, Religion

#RNA2012: ‘Energized’ to tell great religion stories

October 9, 2012 By

Screenshot of award-winning story by Jennifer Preyss

That awkward moment when you meet a really nice, aspiring Godbeat pro at the Religion Newswriters Association annual convention, and he tells you that you panned one of his stories …

Oops.

A former seminarian, Wes Gentry is a native Oklahoman and a late-blooming journalist who earned second place Saturday night for RNA’s Chandler Award for Student Religion Reporter of the Year. In fact, his award-winning entry included the story about which I raised a few questions.

Not that I got defensive or anything (smile), but I explained to Gentry that we generally don’t include the reporter’s name when we write a negative review. Also, I noted that we produce a lot of posts on deadline and may not nail every single one. But Gentry let me off the hook rather easily and told me how much he enjoys reading GetReligion. I look forward to following his developing career.

Another young journalist honored this past weekend was Jennifer Preyss of the Victoria Advocate in Texas. Preyss captured RNA’s Cassels Religion Reporter of the Year prize. The first-place award recognized Preyss as the top Godbeat pro among the nation’s small newspapers.

Advocate editor Chris Cobler nominated Preyss for the award:

Victoria Advocate faith reporter Jennifer Preyss loves her beat. She shows that regularly with her daily assignments and with her in-depth features for our Saturday faith section.

She covers this important beat better than any reporter we’ve ever had on it. She cares deeply  about her subjects and the issues explored, and it shows. Our readers let us know how much they enjoy her work and appreciate she’s writing about what truly matters to them.

Preyss’ winning stories (which can be read here) included profiles of an artist who uses hip-hop to spread the gospel of Jesus, a Pentecostal pastor who “speaks in tongues” during his sermons and a young woman who waged a spiritual battle against cutting herself with razor blades.

I enjoyed hearing the nervousness in Preyss’ voice as she thanked her colleagues for the award. These words about the importance of an organization focused on improving religion reporting stuck with me:

I’m leaving here (the RNA convention) more energized than ever to go home and tell great religion stories.

Paul R. Carlson, an RNA member since 1957, received the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, Carson, 82, stressed the importance of RNA in ensuring “a fair and balanced account” of all religious groups. In an age when advocacy often masquerades as journalism, that’s certainly a praiseworthy mission.

A personal aside: I enjoyed meeting in person for the first time a number of Godbeat pros whose work I have followed, including Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Tim Townsend of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Rose French of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and David Gibson of Religion News Service. It was nice, too, reconnecting with my former colleague Richard N. Ostling, retired religion writer for The Associated Press and Time magazine.

In a couple of upcoming posts, I plan to highlight some of the other award-winning religion stories honored by RNA.

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Filed Under: First Person, Godbeat, Journalism, Religion