Journalism

“Scoring” at church?

October 23, 2005 By dpulliam

I am not a frequent reader of the magazine Maxim, but it did carry a rather humorous article on how to “score in church.” While the article is quite crude in its advice and I would not encourage anyone to try “this at home,” or at church for that matter, it is an interesting look at how a different worldview sees Christianity and the American church scene.

The excellent Indiana-based blog In the Agora first tipped me off to the article, with writer David Darlington stating that the article was “creepy and funny at the same time.” I agree on both accounts:

1. Find Your Faith
Macking in a holy place is easier than almost anywhere else — the good girls never see it coming. Plus, “every girl wants to tell her father she met her boyfriend at church and not at a bar,” says God-fearing cutie Erin Howard, 25. Look for progressive sanctuaries that offer “contemporary” services (to attract a younger, hipper crowd) and coffee hours (so you can actually talk, as opposed to just ogling from afar).

2. Enter the Kingdom
Scope out the finest churchgoer, then snag the pew in front of her. You won’t appear too eager, yet you can make eye contact easily — and shake her hand if there’s a “sharing of the peace.” Avoid making moves mid-service. “You’re in a place of bloody worship; you have to be respectful,” notes Tracey Cox, author of Superdate. Instead, listen to the sermon, which’ll give you plenty to talk about later.

3. Get Religion
Despite the communion wine, forget your sloppy bar tactics. After the service, just introduce yourself and act genuinely curious about the church. Say, “I’m new here. Are you a regular?” This’ll transition to the coffee hour, where you can quiz her about the service and how she ended up there. If all else fails, say something about looking for a higher meaning in life. She may make it her goal to “convert” you.

4. Reach the Promised Land
At this point patience is key. “A lot of repressed religious girls are damn hot in bed,” notes Cox. “But you’re not getting a quick shag here.” Provided she’s sending positive signals (e.g., laughing, smiling, not making the sign of the cross), simply tell her you’d love to meet up, outside of church, and ask for her digits. And no matter where it goes from there, try to think like the Browns do: There’s always next Sunday!

If you attend a church that is largely made up of singles like mine is, reading this article can be quite a downer on first thought. The likely motivations of many of the young people attending church these days is probably not the most pure.

But then deeper thoughts hit me and I realize that the premise of this article — attending church in an attempt to “score” as if one is at a bar or a nightclub — is quite ridiculous. That said, this is Maxim and it’s not exactly known for great insights on how to live life. People have been attending religious services for the purpose of finding their life partner for centuries (see here for how the Mormons handle their single population).

Females, last time I checked, do not attend church with any notion of being “scored” on, and those females foolish enough to fall for even the smoothest of the smooth, well, I don’t know what to say. Sure there is a darker side of the church singles scene, in that some people do attend church with the primary motivation being the opportunity to meet singles of the opposite sex, but Maxim has not caught up on anything earth-shattering or even legitimate.

Filed Under: Evangelicals, Journalism, Religion, Social Issues

Exalting the Mormons

October 21, 2005 By dpulliam

mormon temple Newsweek magazine splashed a story on the growth of the Mormon Church on its cover last week. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints keeps receiving more and more media coverage, and it is handling it quite well, considering some of its more controversial teachings.

Nothing extremely shocking in this piece (and GetReligion has covered some of these issues here, here, here and here), but this is one of the country’s major newsweeklies and an article that will gather quite a number of eyes should not be ignored.

The author, Elise Soukup, seems a bit transfixed by the polygamy issue, but it’s clear that LDS leadership abandoned that teaching a long time ago. It’s old news.

The news too me is LDS teaching on exaltation, but the following few sentences are all that is mentioned on the issue:

However, LDS doctrine holds that some polygamist marriages will exist in the celestial kingdom, the highest tier of heaven. Smith taught that humans (who were spirits in a “pre-existence”) come to earth to get a body and to be tested. After death, everyone is placed into one of three kingdoms, depending on his level of righteousness. Those in the highest degree will dwell with God, their families will be eternal and they’ll even become gods themselves — as God did. Lorenzo Snow, fifth LDS prophet, articulated doctrine when he said, “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may be.”

Tmatt tells me that the big question is whether it is prejudice to even write about Mormon doctrine. I see it as quite necessary, if it is indeed an essential holding of the Mormons. And as tmatt showed us, last month this issue could blow up in the face of many conservative Mormon politicians.

Filed Under: Journalism, Religion

The abortion coverage gap

October 19, 2005 By dpulliam

I know this is not a news story, but this column by former Washington Post journalist Patricia E. Bauer is deeply moving and will hopefully — I say hopefully — encourage America’s mainstream media to explore the damage legal abortions have done to our society. The column by Bauer deals with how abortion has started to weed out children with disabilities. Reading it this morning nearly moved me to tears, and in conversations with friends of mine in the medical profession and parents (I am neither) I have learned even more that makes me think this is a huge story that has gone completely uncovered.

Bauer, the mother of Margaret, a Down syndrome child, opens her heart to us and explores the ethics of prenatal testing:

Whenever I am out with Margaret, I’m conscious that she represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion. I don’t know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent.

Imagine. As Margaret bounces through life, especially out here in the land of the perfect body, I see the way people look at her: curious, surprised, sometimes wary, occasionally disapproving or alarmed. I know that most women of childbearing age that we may encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living.

To them, Margaret falls into the category of avoidable human suffering. At best, a tragic mistake. At worst, a living embodiment of the pro-life movement. Less than human. A drain on society. That someone I love is regarded this way is unspeakably painful to me.

In my discussions with parents and those in the medical field I found out that prenatal testing merely gives the likelihood of a disability — does not prove anything — and that the test puts the mother at risk for a miscarriage. How many lives have been snuffed out unnecessarily? And what does this tell use about the direction our society is heading? Bauer gives us some context:

In ancient Greece, babies with disabilities were left out in the elements to die. We in America rely on prenatal genetic testing to make our selections in private, but the effect on society is the same.

Margaret’s old pediatrician tells me that years ago he used to have a steady stream of patients with Down syndrome. Not anymore. Where did they go, I wonder. On the west side of L.A., they aren’t being born anymore, he says.

And what of the emotional impact on women who do choose to abort their baby because the test showed a likelihood of a birth defect or disability? I am told that it is not healthy and has wrecked lives. It’s time for the mainstream media to take a serious look at the impact abortion has had on our nation.

Filed Under: Journalism, Science, Social Issues

Old ghost in the Iraqi vote

October 16, 2005 By tmatt

I don’t know about you, but every now and then I get two emails and, because I read them back to back, they become connected. This happened today, when I reached Jackson, Tenn., to visit Union University. I thinned out the deluge of email from the previous day or so and then started reading.

The Iraqi vote, of course, is one of the biggest stories out there today. I read the main Washington Post piece and, to my way of thinking, there was something missing. If the White House is going to be excited about this election and its impact on something that can be called a “democracy,” then I want to know about the impact of this vote on issues such as free speech, women’s rights, religious liberty and other related topics.

It may not be fair to read this story and let it stand alone, without taking into account other Post stories from the recent past. Still, read it and tell me what you think. Early on, we are told:

The strong overall turnout in the west, however, raised the possibility that the disempowered Sunni minority could defeat the draft charter, which endorses a loose federal system with a weak, religiously influenced central government. Many Sunnis fear the draft would bring the breakup of Iraq into ethnic and religious substates, and make permanent their loss of power to the Shiite Muslim majority after the toppling of Hussein. …

In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Bush said that the referendum dealt “a severe blow to the terrorists” while sending a message to the world. “Iraqis will decide the future of their country through peaceful elections, not violent insurgency.” Bush said the referendum was “a critical step forward in Iraq’s march toward democracy.”

The religion element is there, but quickly vanishes. We learn valuable information about the strong turnout, the threat of violence, the potential political impact of the votes and other topics. But if religion is at the heart of these issues, what happened to that information? How will the vote and this new constitution affect basic human rights?

At that point, I opened another email. Click here to read a fresh Freedom House release on the vote. Then read the Post report again.

I don’t know about you, but I want the excellent reporters at the Post to answer some of the questions raised by the Freedom House activists.

Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, Social Issues, World

Breaking news: Britain’s church is dead

October 13, 2005 By dpulliam

church I am sad to report that the Church of England is passing away, at least according to this article in the Daily Telegraph I stumbled upon yesterday.

As I continue to unscientifically poll the British newspapers while riding the London Underground, I have discovered that my initial findings — that there is an “absence of religion coverage” — was not quite accurate, as many of you have pointed out. The papers do cover religion, but not in a way that would make anyone jump for joy at the thought of attending a church service.

A reader of ours, Lee, alerted us to the doomsday Telegraph story that finds the Anglican church past the point of bankruptcy:

Britain’s Churches are in such serious decline that if they were shops, they would have been declared bankrupt long ago, Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, said last night.

In a bleak assessment of the future of Christianity in this country, he said that the Churches were approaching meltdown and the “last rites” could be administered at any moment.

In a lecture in a Buckinghamshire church, Dr Carey expressed his exasperation that his efforts to revive the Church of England in the 1990s had been frustrated by lack of support from the clergy.

He delivered a warning to his successor, Dr Rowan Williams, that his initiatives could meet a similar fate.

“Last rites,” “bankrupt,” “meltdown,” “despair,” “plunging congregations,” “club of the elderly” are all quite depressing words for describing Anglican churches.

I guess this story could be reporting the true condition of the Church of England. I am not the expert. The rest of the article deals with the political repercussions of Dr. Carey’s assessment. But there is room for a positive thought at the end of the article:

However, Dr Carey said there was also good news. He cited the 2001 census, in which 72 per cent of the population described themselves as Christian, and said that there was still a “deep allegiance” between nation and Church.

He said the Church had to ["]focus on mission from top to bottom” or it would become “an irrelevancy in the nation and a club for the old, the resigned and those tired of life.”

I don’t know about Dr. Carey’s prediction, but I can personally report that in attending St Helen’s Church in London Sunday evening, I found a packed house of mostly students and young professionals with nary a chair to spare and a Wednesday evening Bible study attended by a similar audience flowing with lively discussion of the Bible.

Filed Under: Anglicanism, Journalism, World

True or untrue!?!

October 11, 2005 By dpulliam

newsboy Greetings from London, GetReligion readers! My five days in the British capitol find me on the edge of my seat, per the huge news I keep reading in the easy-to-read-in-the-tube tabloids! So much seems to be happening! The families of delinquent children receiving £5,000 for misbehaving! Fathers receiving 6 months paternity leave! And the BBC asking for more British taxpayer money!

OK, so it’s not that exciting over here, but it’s certainly a change of pace from the staid Washington papers. I have noticed, in my completely unscientific poll of the London papers, an absence of religion coverage, but that’s not saying that there isn’t any.

Speaking of which, let’s move onto more important things that don’t include the newspaper headlines I’ve been reading.

One of our readers, Francis, found this article in the Times of London “interesting.” On a first read, I also found it interesting and also completely frustrating because it reads as a hit piece by an authority who knows little about religion. The headline, “Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible,” is enough to give anyone who knows anything about the Catholic Church heartburn. After that, the piece is all downhill:

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.

“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.

The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US.

I’m sure the Catholic bishops of England, Scotland and Wales were thinking of the rise of the evil religious right when they “warned” their parishioners that Catholics do not swear to the absolute truth of the Bible. And since when was a group of bishops from Great Britain “the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church”?

Sullivan weighs in, and is predictably caught up in the misleading nature of the article:

Of course. Anyone who believes that the world was literally created in six days a few thousand years ago is not expressing his or her “religious beliefs”. Believing something that is demonstrably and empirically untrue is not religion. It is simply superstition or lunacy. It has nothing to do with faith in things we cannot know. The notion that it should actually be taught in public schools as science is beneath even debating.

I am not a Catholic, but I do know a thing or two about the Catholic Church, and one is that official Church doctrine has long rejected its traditional position regarding the absolute accuracy of the Holy Scriptures from a modern historical and scientific perspective. Then why is this paragraph in the article, referring to this somehow groundbreaking document?

The document shows how far the Catholic Church has come since the 17th century, when Galileo was condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by advocating the Copernican view of the solar system.

Right. From condemning Galileo to “some parts of the Bible are not actually true.”

And while this is possibly an editing oversight, the end of the article contains a list of passages from the Old and New Testaments citing, as fact, those that are true and those that are untrue, but it fails to cite a source.

Jimmy Akin has a much thorough breakdown of the articles failures than I could ever provide (and delivers quite a smackdown, by the way), so I encourage you to read more here if you’re interested. Here’s a snippet:

Ooooooh! That’s completely different, then! It ain’t “the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church” but just the bishops of England, Wales, and Scotland that issued the document!

Gledhill must have been raised in a non-Euclidian universe where the fallacy of composition works, so that you can identify the part with the whole without fear of inaccuracy.

Things — including news reporting — must be so much simpler in Gledhill’s universe of origin, what without having to worry about that pesky part/whole distinction.

Over there the Vatican has probably not bothered calling any ecumenical councils gathering all of the world’s bishops to speak for the Church. They’ve just let the bishops of Great Britain issue all of the Church’s official statements. Maybe the pope is even based in non-Euclidian England!

So why is this, along with the many other 32-point type headlined stories that I’ve read in the last few days, news to anyone? I guess you have to do something to sell newspapers these days, along with free DVD offers blasted across the upper folds. With these trends making their way across the Pond, I worry about the future of American journalism, though I wouldn’t mind a tabloid size Post or Times for my morning yogurt and eggs, minus the big headlines of course.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Journalism, Religion, World

Why is the Bush burning?

October 11, 2005 By tmatt

Moses and the Burning Bush Before I head out the door on an eight-day speaking trip (perhaps with spotty blogging prospects in terms of time and web access), I want to try to connect a few dots on the HHGR story.

If you visit this blog fairly often, you may have noticed my mantra that the two hottest religion stories over the past decade or two have been sex and/or salvation. Lurking in the background are issues such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, church-state separation (on the religious left as well as the right) and other topics.

The spirit of the age, especially in newsrooms, is a kind of moral libertarianism that combines elements of conservative economics and liberalism on cultural, moral and religious issues. Thus, journalists in the MSM struggle, at times, to do fair coverage of the religious traditionalists that they consider backward, while often overlooking altogether stories about the religious left. It is hard to tolerate those you have decided are intolerant.

I have decided that the MSM honor this law in coverage of moral and cultural issues: When in doubt, the Religious Right must lose.

Now we see why the strange case of Harriet Miers has everyone so confused. The template is gone, because the Religious Right is divided. There are religious leaders in favor of Miers and those who are opposed. There are abortion-rights advocates who are furious about her appointment — singing in chorus with opponents of abortion on demand. There are evangelicals who think this church lady is right on and those who think her nomination is an abomination.

Cultural conservatives and libertarian conservatives are gathering in several camps:

• Those who trust the team of God and President Bush above all.

• Those who do not trust Bush, in part because of rising evidence that the crony card trumps everything else.

• Traditional conservatives — including many in pews — who are insulted that Bush passed over thousands of more qualified candidates (including younger judges, other females and minorities) and that now, to fight the opposition, the White House is playing the God card.

Thus, the typical MSM journalist is confused. There are sources that she or he respects (or laughs at) on both sides. It’s hard to punch the macro key that inserts the normal Religious Right language. Who is smart? Who is stupid?

One thing, however, is clear. The old, vague Bush code (thank you, David D. Kirkpatrick) on moral issues is not working.

But I believe several editorial writers have hit the nail on the head, starting with John Fund in The Wall Street Journal and Democrat Francis Wilkinson in The New York Times. Let’s start with a long, long chunk of Fund’s essay — which demonstrates why the “Trust me” line is not working.

After leaving office, Dwight Eisenhower was asked by a reporter if he had made any mistakes as president. “Two,” Ike replied. “They are both on the Supreme Court.” He referred to Earl Warren and William Brennan, both of whom became liberal icons.

Richard Nixon personally assured conservatives that Harry Blackmun would vote the same way as his childhood friend, Warren Burger. Within four years, Justice Blackmun had spun Roe v. Wade out of whole constitutional cloth. Chief Justice Burger concurred in Roe, and made clear he didn’t even understand what the court was deciding: “Plainly,” he wrote, “the Court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortions on demand.”

Gerald Ford personally told members of his staff that John Paul Stevens was “a good Republican, and would vote like one.” …

An upcoming biography of Sandra Day O’Connor by Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic includes correspondence from Ronald Reagan to conservative senators concerned about her scant paper trail. The message was, in effect: Trust me. She’s a traditional conservative. From Roe v. Wade to racial preferences, she has proved not to be. Similarly, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation recalls the hard sell the Reagan White House made on behalf of Anthony Kennedy in 1987, after the Senate rejected Robert Bork. “They even put his priest on the phone with us to assure us he was solid on everything,” Mr. Weyrich recalls. …

Most famously, White House chief of staff John Sununu told Pat McGuigan, an aide to Mr. Weyrich, that the appointment of David Souter in 1990 would please conservatives. “This is a home run, and the ball is still ascending. In fact, it’s just about to leave earth orbit,” he told Mr. McGuigan. At the press conference announcing the appointment, the elder President Bush asserted five times that Justice Souter was “committed to interpreting, not making the law.” The rest is history.

Wilkinson veered into the same territory in an essay titled “Another Republican for Roe?” The key concept: Try to imagine a Bill Clinton appointing someone to the court who ends up being pro-life. Can you picture that, even though 40 percent of the Democratic Party continues to identify itself as opposed to abortion on demand?

So what is going on inside the big tent of the new GOP? Wilkinson writes:

There are various theories to explain these instances of Sudden Pro-Choice Syndrome but no clear explanation. It’s the darnedest thing, but when it comes to the most sacred cause in the Republican canon, the right to life, Republican presidents somehow find a way to mess up. You’d almost think they were doing it on purpose. …

Roe v. Wade is not a fine point of law that busy presidents and their staffs overlook. It is the most visceral, emotional and politically contentious issue the court has decided in the past three decades. If you were president of the United States and truly believed abortion to be a modified form of murder, I suspect you would not only nominate someone who seemed to share your view on this paramount issue, but you’d also make damned sure there was no margin for error.

So what is the Big Idea?

Journalists must realize the leadership of the Republican Party knows that pro-life, traditional religious believers — Democrats, as well as Republicans — have nowhere to go in an era in which, to paraphrase Maureen Dowd, the Democratic Party’s only iron-clad value is the defense of Woodstock. So the Republican establishment can treat cultural conservatives the way the Democrats treat labor unions.

Also, opposing abortion is not a logical stance, for those who define “conservatism” as the radical freedom of every individual and the rule of the almighty dollar. Check out this classic essay from The Atlantic that explains all of this.

At the moment, the GOP leadership is divided for a simple reason. The party is divided. Meanwhile, the Religious Right is divided, between those who trust Bush and those who believe that the ultimate veto rests with, well, a Burning Bush. Journalists are going to remain confused if they do not — quickly — realize that these are two different groups.

Filed Under: First Person, Godbeat, Journalism, Politics