Mormons

About Merlin’s Mormonism…

March 15, 2010 By mark

It was my experience growing up LDS that Mormons have always been eager to point out successful Mormon celebrities where they could. The blog Waters of Mormon explains this phenomenon well:

Having famous Church members in the news in a variety of professional fields–business, sports, singing and dancing — provides a certain comfort to Latter-Day Saints who can see fellow Saints be successful on a national stage, even beyond the simple “good PR for the Church” standpoint.

If I (or one of my kids) wants to be a successful entrepreneur (or musician, or athlete, or writer) it’s nice to be able to point to some famous person and say, “See, he or she is a faithful Church member while also being successful at career X”. Having famous and/or successful Mormons sends the message outwardly that Church members are ‘normal’ and play regular roles in regular society — we’re not all cooped up in armed compounds in southern Utah or Texas or something — but also sends the message inwardly that secular success and spiritual success can mix: that faithful Saints don’t necessarily have to choose one or the other.

Of course, in order for this to really count, those famous Mormons have to be faithful and active also. Just being a member doesn’t mean much: if those famous Mormons are not currently active and practicing — even if the reasons for not being active have nothing to do with their chosen profession — they don’t really work as ‘examples’ for other Saints who might want to believe that they can be successful in their career without being forced to compromise their beliefs somewhere along the line.

In most professions, one can find any number of active and inactive Church members. Acting, however, seems to be an outlier.

It’s true that there just aren’t that many famous Mormon actors. When I was growing up, Merlin Olsen, the former football great turned broadcaster and family-friendly TV star, was frequently identified as a prominent exception. Granted, this is an awfully subjective metric here, but I was always under the impression that he was a Mormon in good standing.

So that’s why I was so sorely disappointed in the coverage of Olsen following his recent death. Olsen’s faith wasn’t mentioned in the Los Angeles Times or USA Today obituaries. And incredibly, for one of Utah’s more famous native sons, it wasn’t noted in the The Salt Lake Tribune. Adding to the confusion, the Los Angeles Daily News does identify him as Mormon. And the The New York Times does bring up his Mormon background, but doesn’t explain much:

“I was raised in a very strict Mormon home and in a Mormon community,” The Post-Standard of Syracuse quoted him as saying when he took the role of the Amish patriarch Aaron Miller. “There are certain things I can lean back on and remember in a family situation that helped me to work as an actor.”

For a guy that was identified as Mormon for decades, isn’t this all a bit odd? It kind of set off alarm bells when even the church-owned Deseret News didn’t discuss Olsen’s faith in their obituary. So I did a little poking around the internet and I saw some claims that Olsen was a non-devout cultural Mormon. He wasn’t an active LDS member, though he was loyal to his family which was still active in the faith. He believed strongly in the Mormon values imparted in him, and as such, perhaps didn’t mind being the face of the church.

That’s an interesting explanation, and if it’s true it would probably make for a fascinating story. Regardless, somebody on the Godbeat ought to get to the bottom of why someone frequently identified as Mormon suddenly wasn’t Mormon when he died.

Filed Under: Journalism, Mormons, People, Pop Culture

Is that it?

February 15, 2010 By mollie

Frequently we criticize reporters for ignoring or obscuring the role religion might play in stories about socio-economic trends. But here’s a case where a reporter led with the religious angle when looking at a new report that shows that Utah had the fifth-highest foreclosure rate in the nation.

Apparently 1 in 231 homes there received a foreclosure notice in January, nearly double the national rate. The story says that explaining why Florida, Nevada, Arizona and California had even higher foreclosure rates is straightforward — home prices more than doubled since 2000 and then real estate values dropped precipitously. But Utah home prices only rose half that much, the story says. So what’s the deal with Utah, according to the Christian Science Monitor?:

“It’s a lot of younger people who spent way, way beyond their means, absurd amounts of money trying to keep up with their folks,” says one Utah resident who helps counsel financially troubled families at his church. They’re “cool, nice, wonderful people, but an awful lot of them don’t know how to spend money very wisely.”

In mid-decade, when Utah was tops in bankruptcies, various commentators pinned the blame on Mormon religious and cultural practices, such as tithing, creating large families, buying homes at a young age, and as one critic put it: “the pressure in Mormonism to be, or at least appear, financially successful as proof the Lord is blessing them.”

Indeed, Mormons in 2004 had a bankruptcy rate that was approaching twice that of the national average. But a 2007 study by two Harvard Law School graduates found that rates among non-Mormons in Utah were even higher, suggesting that religion, if anything, was restraining bankruptcies.

First off, what’s the deal with not giving the person in the first quote a name? And does he speak only to experiences in his own unidentified congregation or do we have reason to think his explanation is applicable more broadly? And if you’re going to suggest that the foreclosure ranking is caused by Mormons, you have to base it on much more than a nameless quote and no data. And when data is brought into the equation, it doesn’t exactly support the thesis either.

Also, the way that reporter Laurent Belsie won’t identify sources is frustrating. It’s good to know, I guess, that two graduates of a particular law school studied the issue of bankruptcy in Utah. But who was the study for? Which peer-reviewed journal published it, if any? If someone wants to find out more information, rather than taking the reporter’s word about what the study says (something I try not to do!), what do we do?

And wouldn’t it be nice to know what percentage of Utah is Mormon and what percentage of that group is practicing Mormon? I’m not asking for a full blown regression analysis, but if you don’t know enough about the difference between correlation and causation to look into a few of these issues, you really shouldn’t be speculating on all this.

The rest of the story comes up with other explanations, including low wages, high medical costs, large number of bankruptcy filers with at least one dependent child, large family size, garnishment laws, repeat bankruptcy filers and something called “the effect of having a large proportion of young, middle-class people earning $30,000 to $60,000 a year.” I’m not even sure half of these things are true but needless to say, they are really poorly explained.

Also, I have to mention the headline for this piece:

Foreclosure mystery: Why can’t conservative Utahns afford their mortgage?

Now, certainly Utah as a state tends to vote conservatively but that doesn’t mean that everyone in Utah is conservative. We don’t know whether there is any correlation between the political or social views of a given Utahan and their propensity to foreclose on a property. For all we know, only liberal or moderate Utahans are foreclosing. That headline goes so far beyond what the original report looked at that it’s laughable.

It’s a good instinct to look at possible correlations between religious views and social trends. But if you’re going to do it, I think it needs to be done a bit more thoroughly than we see here.

Filed Under: Academia, Business & Economy, Mormons, Politics, Religion

The Mormon public square

February 10, 2010 By steve

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God and culture: 2009 remix

December 30, 2009 By steve

I’ve only been a card-carrying Get Religion-er since August, and in that brief time I’ve been repeatedly drawn to articles that cover the intersection of faith and culture.

And what a year it was for examining Dan Brown and the Masons, Michael Moore and Catholicism, the Coen brothers and Judaism, punk rock musicians and Islam, Ricky Gervais and atheism, Glenn Beck and Mormonism, or the online pranksters of the Assclown Offensive and Scientology.

There were also fascinating books (such as cartoonist Robert Crumb’s Bible project, Andre Agassi’s memoir “Open,” and Carl Jung’s huge (and hugely anticipated) “Red Book.”

The Vatican gave a fitting postlude to the year in culture with its Dec. 22 release of a document commemorating TV’s “The Simpsons” on its 20th anniversary. The Associated Press was first up with the story: “Vatican paper says ‘The Simpsons’ are okely dokely.”

While not ignoring the show’s apparent problems (“excessively crude language, the violence of certain episodes or some extreme choices by the scriptwriters”) the article in L’Osservatore Romano by Luke M. Possati graciously praised the show’s accomplishments:

Religion, from the snore-evoking sermons of the Rev. Lovejoy to Homer’s face-to-face talks with God, appears so frequently on the show that it could be possible to come up with a “Simpsonian theology,” it said.

Homer’s religious confusion and ignorance are “a mirror of the indifference and the need that modern man feels toward faith,” the paper said.

It commented on several religion-themed episodes, including one in which Homer calls for divine intervention by crying: “I’m not normally a religious man, but if you’re up there, save me, Superman!”

“Homer finds in God his last refuge, even though he sometimes gets His name sensationally wrong,” L’Osservatore said. “But these are just minor mistakes, after all, the two know each other well.”

Other reports soon appeared in newspapers, entertainment publications and blogs worldwide–none of them improving on the AP’s original. I can’t comment on the faithfulness of these various reports to the original L’Osservatore Romano article, which I have been unable to find in English translation. But some of the reports generated the ire of Catholics, like these two readers:

You have got to be kidding. It is a crude and vile show that teaches nothing. I can’t believe that the Vatican would sanction this.

Are there not enough good and beautiful works of man that we must sift through his most insulting and degrading work for one shred of value, only to be seen as “cool” in the eyes of the world?

Perhaps that’s the way things will be eternally at the intersection of faith and culture. A work will evoke religious euphoria in one recipient, while another will recoil from the same work in revulsion.

Finally, I can’t let 2009 end withouot praising Religion & Ethics Newsweekly for two fine reports: Rafael Pi Roman’s Nov. 20 piece on Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor and Kim Lawton’s in-depth look at Jewish rap singer Matisyahu.

I can’t wait to see what kinds of culture faith will inspire in 2010.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Film, Humor, Journalism, Judaism, Mormons, Music, People, Pop Culture, Radio & TV, Religion, Social Issues, World Religions

WPost: Chaste vampires are not us

November 23, 2009 By TMatt

twilight-cover Anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to the “Twilight” explosion in pop culture knows that author Stephenie Meyer is a somewhat unorthodox Mormon believer who isn’t exactly shy about letting symbols and themes from her faith, uh, bleed over into her vampire kingdom.

The Rev. EEE took on the topic a time or two here at GetReligion, since the subject has received some mainstream media attention. But the topic is now everywhere. I mean, click here and surf around a bit.

Meanwhile, my dear friend John “HogwartsProfessor.com” Granger is focusing his considerable talents in fantasy analysis on this pop-culture tsunami, as well. You may want to check out the new Forks High School Professor website (especially to keep tabs on his theories until his new book comes out).

Are the books worth all of this heavy intellectual breathing? I have avoided them like the plague, quite frankly. And so have lots of other people, according to one of those snarky, navel-gazing Washington Post features that draw so much attention when they run back in the edgy confines of the newspaper’s famous Style section.

But, wait! This sprawling piece on the “Twilight” craze didn’t run in the Style section, where the lines between news and analysis are blurred more often than not. This story ran on page A1, right there in the sacred territory dedicated to politics. The double-decker headline just about says it all:

‘Twilight,’ the love that dare not speak its shame

Good, smart, literary women tried to resist the romantic-vampire phenomenon. And then, alas, they bit.

You see, this article is for smart women, the kind who still read the Post and not popular novels that are, well, more on that later.

Apparently, it was easy to write off Meyer and her shiny heroes when only the, you know, shallow and stupid women were reading them, the kinds of women who yearn for full-blooded romances and even — shocking — men who are willing to make sacrifices and be faithful to them, well, forever.

Here’s a sample of this buffet line of elitist guilt, at the very top of this journalistic sermon by Monica Hesse:

We know. You hate “Twilight.” You don’t want to hear anything more about “Twilight.” That’s why this is not another story about the “Twilight” or “New Moon” mania, nor will it rhapsodize on the vampire craze, nor does it contain any interviews with Robert Pattinson.

This is a story about shame.

All across the country, there were women who managed to avoid Stephenie Meyer’s series about a star-crossed human/vampire teen couple. (Vampire Edward lusts for mortal Bella, but also for her blood; the books are less plot than endless yearning). They resisted the first three books — refused to read them, didn’t know they existed — and the lunacy that was “Breaking Dawn.”

“Twilight” came for the tweens, then for the moms of tweens, then for the co-workers who started wearing those ridiculous Team Jacob shirts, and the resisters said nothing, because they thought “Twilight” could not come for them. They were too literary. They didn’t do vampires. They were feminists.

So, why is this a GetReligion subject? Precisely because the story never goes there, it never gets into Meyer’s connection with her main audience and never, ever, connects the dots to the franchise’s unique take on love, sexuality, marriage, family and, literally, tribe. We are told that these feminist readers are all offended by the fact that the books are for stupid, shallow women, but the beliefs and tastes of those women are simply painted in negative, in a reverse image.

New Moon Poster There is very little religion in the story. That’s kind of my point.

Instead, the story gets busy and stays busy describing, detailing and dissecting the exquisite guilt that liberal, secular, feminist women feel because they are falling head over heals in love with these books and movies that are supposed to only sell to, well, you know — those other women (you know who they are).

Guilt. Shame. It’s a sad scene.

However, there is a kind of political/religious angle that appears briefly down in the body of the report. Yes, the Post briefly mentions the A-word:

Witness the downfall of Sarah Seltzer, a freelance literary critic who also writes for a reproductive rights Web site:

“I wanted to write about the abstinence subtext,” Seltzer says, which is why she read the books to begin with. She planned on questioning the allegorical “abstinence only” theme that runs through the series. “But the books are kind of hypnotic, so it’s very much that while you’re reading them you’re sucked in, and then you take a step back and you think, this is kind of troubling. She jumps off a cliff because she misses her boyfriend?” What?!

“New Moon” shows Bella at her most pathetic, and so the grown women who love “Twilight” have methodically come up with rebuttals to the accusations that the character is anti-feminist. Perhaps her single-minded desire for a relationship is actually a Third Wave feminist expression? Maybe it doesn’t matter that she’s choosing Edward over everything else, as long as it’s her choice? Maybe her wish to become a vampire is really a metaphor for asserting her rights over her own body?

Keep reminding yourself that this outpouring of guilt is taking place on A1, in one of America’s most important newspapers.

I freely admit that there is something of substance here. So you read the story. Do you sense a ghost? Do you see the reflection in the mirror, the women that these smart, informed, liberal, secular, feminist women fear? I think I do.

Filed Under: Books, Creeping Fundamentalism, Humor, Marriage & family, Mormons, People, Pop Culture, Religion

Mormons still to blame, somehow

November 5, 2009 By mollie

TMatt has been looking at some of the larger issues of framing in coverage of Maine’s vote to overturn a law legalizing same-sex marriage. But I’m also curious about some of the nitty gritty. I’ve been meaning to look at some of the coverage for days so let’s begin with this pre-election story by the Washington Post‘s Karl Vick. The story explains the situation — the legislature passed and the governor signed a bill to permit same-sex couples to marry and gets his perspective that the “libertarian” Maine will note vote to overturn that law. The campaign against same-sex marriage, we learn, is drawing heavily on its communications strategy from their successful fight over the same issue in California last year. And then this:

Proponents of same-sex marriage are also playing on Mainers’ wariness of outsiders, calling attention to the California consultants and the volume of the “Yes-on-1″ campaign from out of state.

Questions about the largest contributor have sparked an investigation by the state ethics commission and a court battle. The National Organization for Marriage, or NOM, has contributed $1.6 million to Stand for Marriage Maine but has declined to reveal its own contributors, despite a federal district court decision last week that it must do so under Maine law.

Okay, while the figure for the National Organization for Marriage is incorrect (they actually say they contributed $1.8 million to the Yes on One campaign), perhaps the true amount wasn’t available at press time. But what I do find absolutely fascinating about this is that we don’t learn anything about this campaign contribution in context of the battle itself. For instance, how much money did the “No” campaign raise? And how big was the entire Yes on One effort to overturn the state law permitting same-sex marriage? And how much money for both groups came from “outsiders”? I mean, I have several neighbors in DC who worked for months on this, some driving up to Maine to work on the effort and others just working on raising money from here. They were pro-same-sex marriage folks, but nowhere do we learn that outsiders were working to keep the law, much less how much of the work to keep the law came from outsiders.

It turns out that the National Organization for Marriage contributed most of the Yes on One campaign’s resources. But more newsworthy, perhaps, is that the “No” campaign seems to have out-raised its opponents by 50 percent or so. See this more even-handed report from the Associated Press:

Both sides in Maine drew volunteers and contributions from out of state, but the money edge went to the campaign in defense of gay marriage, Protect Maine Equality. It raised $4 million, compared with $2.5 million for Stand for Marriage Maine.

See, that’s helpful information. The Boston Globe, meanwhile, says both groups claim to have raised $4 million (although that’s not true). While the Washington Post story does quote someone saying that same-sex marriage defenders had out-raised opponents two to one, no facts are included to substantiate the statement. Which brings me to another point. Check out this paragraph in the Post story about the National Organization for Marriage:

Some groups for gays say the organization is a stalking horse for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons, which dominated fundraising in the California campaign. Many of the actors in a nationally televised ad produced by NOM, called “Gathering Storm,” turned out to be Mormon activists.

Wow. Okay, so the allegation at play here is that the Mormons are deceiving everyone by operating this group without being up front about it. That is a very serious charge. Nowhere is it substantiated. I mean, I know that the National Organization for Marriage has at least one Mormon board member — Orson Scott Card. But he’s hiding in plain sight. I found out that information by surfing the NOM website myself. And what does it mean that “many” of the actors in a television ad “turned out to be” Mormon activists? I don’t even know what that means, although it does sound scary. What, exactly, is a “Mormon activist”?

But if you have people making this claim, go ahead and name them and be specific about the charges of deception and, you know, maybe get a response from the church. While Vick did try (on a weekend, before an election) to reach the National Organization for Marriage to discuss the allegation, the church should also have been contacted. The allegation is denied by someone involved in the Maine political battle, for what it’s worth. Perhaps with so little to substantiate the charge and apparently no time to contact the targets of the charge, it should have been dropped from the story altogether. It tarnishes both sides when allegations such as that aren’t given a chance to be fully reported.

Anyway, the Washington Post pushes the claim that the National Organization for Marriage is a stalking horse for the Mormon Church. Which is quite different than what the New York Times says about it. I noticed it last week in Abby Goodnough’s preview of the Maine fight. And here it is again in her “news analysis” TMatt mentioned earlier:

“It interrupts the story line that is being manufactured that suggests the culture has shifted on gay marriage and the fight is over,” said Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, the conservative Christian group that is leading the charge against same-sex marriage around the country. “Maine is one of the most secular states in the nation. It’s socially liberal. They had a three-year head start to build their organization, and they outspent us two to one. If they can’t win there, it really does tell you the majority of Americans are not on board with this gay marriage thing.”

Okay, did you catch how Goodnough describes the group? That’s right, it’s a “conservative Christian group.” I have been following the coverage of same-sex marriage battles for a good year and a half now and it occurred to me that I had never once seen the National Organization for Marriage use religiously-based arguments in their campaign material. I know that Gallagher is married to a Hindu and I think she’s Christian. I know, from the Washington Post profile of executive director Brian Brown that he’s Catholic. But having Christians on staff doesn’t necessarily make your organization a “conservative Christian group” or that means that my local grocery store is Christian. There has to be a reason for describing a group this way. And I’m not sure I see that reason. Go ahead and take a look around the group’s website, review its public communications. Maybe it is a conservative Christian group — I just see no evidence of that. I even looked over their IRS forms for evidence to support the claim, but the only mention of religion in any of their documents is their mission to protect all faith communities that sustain marriage. Indeed, religious liberty is a big part of their mission but that doesn’t make the group itself religious anymore than it makes the ACLU religious.

But either way, I think the media need to get on the same page here. If the National Organization for Marriage is not what it claims to be (a nonprofit organization with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it) is it a “stalking horse” for the Mormon church or is it a “conservative Christian group”?

It’s so interesting to me that so many of these stories about the Yes on 1 victory in Maine portray it as a loss for gay activists. But that similar focus isn’t brought to bear on the scrutiny of the groups that are involved in the effort to legalize same-sex marriage. I mean, I’m on a bunch of denominational news list-servs and there were plenty of religious groups fighting this ballot initiative and working to keep same-sex marriage legal in Maine. Why don’t they get the same scrutiny as the Mormons, who actually may have had no discernible role in the Maine campaign? It’s just odd.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Journalism, Mainline, Marriage & family, Mormons, People, Politics

Maine point: Someone loses, someone wins?

November 4, 2009 By TMatt

Here’s the thought for the day, as you ponder the headlines out of Maine. This famous quote is taken from “The Press and Foreign Policy” by Bernard C. Cohen:

” … (The) press is significantly more than a purveyor of information and opinion. It may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think ABOUT. And it follows from this that the world looks different to different people, depending not only on their personal interests, but also on the map that is drawn for them by the writers, editors, and publishers of the papers they read.”

I thought of this quotation while reading some of the early coverage of the not-so-stunning vote in Maine, which became the 31st state to reject same-sex marriage at the ballot box. Of course, it was also a stunning outcome because of Maine’s reputation for independent, enlightened, not-so-religious thinking as a state in true-blue New England. That second sentence, of course, reflects most of the mainstream news coverage leading up to the vote.

This leads us to the top of an early New York Times report (and you can expect in-depth sequels):

In a stinging setback for the national gay-rights movement, Maine voters narrowly decided to repeal the state’s new law allowing same-sex marriage.

With 87 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday morning, 53 percent of voters had approved the repeal, ending an expensive and emotional fight that was closely watched around the country as a referendum on the national gay-marriage movement. Polls had suggested a much closer race. …

The Maine vote was particularly discouraging for gay-rights groups because it took place in New England, the region that has been the most open to same-sex marriage, and because opponents of the repeal had far outspent backers.

In other words, this was a lose for gay-rights activists, not a victory for groups that wanted to repeal the law. That’s what journalists call a news “template.” It’s what Cohen called a “map.”

This is also the principle that dominated the late David Shaw’s justifiably famous series in the Los Angeles Times about mainstream media coverage of abortion. He found, time and time again, that journalists tended to frame stories in a way that presumed the rightness of the pro-abortion-rights cause.

You see, reporters and editors often forget that they have a choice to frame coverage in a way that favors one side or the other. But we also have another choice, which is to do the hard work to find ways to frame a story in a way that balances the two interests — creating a debate, instead of electing to favor one side or the other.

In this Maine vote, the implication is that (a) the result was a shock because newspapers thought the vote would go the other way and/or (b) the result was a shock because the wrong side won. Or is the story that it was a shock (c) because voters keep voting for the status quo on marriage?

Before you click “comment,” please wait to hear my point. I think that this is a case where the Times basically got the story right, but buried a different lede that was also justified. Would it have been “conservative” to have led with the fact that this was the 31st ballot win in a row for those who oppose gay marriage, and then allow the leaders on the cultural left to respond that they will not back down, but carry the issue back to voters again and again until they find a way to win?

In other words, is it possible to write this story in a way that says — right up front — that someone won and someone else lost, instead of strictly framing it in terms of the loss for the gay-rights side? Yes, the loss is major news. But was it news that someone won?

And what about the story that most Americans will be reading online this morning, which would be the basic Associated Press report?

This story led with the loss for the gay-rights side, but quickly attempted to offer perspectives from both the winners and the losers. Here is what that looked like in practice:

PORTLAND, Maine – Maine voters repealed a state law Tuesday that would have allowed same-sex couples to wed, dealing the gay rights movement a heartbreaking defeat in New England, the corner of the country most supportive of gay marriage.

Gay marriage has now lost in every single state — 31 in all — in which it has been put to a popular vote. Gay-rights activists had hoped to buck that trend in Maine — known for its moderate, independent-minded electorate — and mounted an energetic, well-financed campaign. With 87 percent of the precincts reporting, gay-marriage foes had 53 percent of the votes.

“The institution of marriage has been preserved in Maine and across the nation,” declared Frank Schubert, chief organizer for the winning side.

Gay-marriage supporters held out hope that the tide would shift before conceding defeat at 2:40 a.m. in a statement that insisted they weren’t going away.

“We’re in this for the long haul. For next week, and next month, and next year — until all Maine families are treated equally. Because in the end, this has always been about love and family and that will always be something worth fighting for,” said Jesse Connolly, manager of the pro-gay marriage campaign.

Please help your GetReligionistas watch the coverage today. I would be especially interested if anyone in the mainstream actually framed the story as a win for the cultural right, which would be flipping the template issue the other way. I don’t expect to see that and, besides, it would be the same principle in action — only with a conservative bias.

What I’m looking for is newsrooms that opened with a lede that tried to do justice to the feelings and beliefs of the left and the right, the losers and the winners. In other words, a strictly journalistic approach.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Journalism, Marriage & family, Mormons, Politics, Sex, Social Issues

Harry Reid and litmus tests

October 26, 2009 By steve

Do you believe in God? Do you promise to follow him and forsake sin? And do you endorse God’s one-and-only approved stance on this latest piece of legislation? Then (and only then) may you be counted among the elect!

Many evangelicals have been using this approach toward equating political correctness with doctrinal orthodoxy for decades. It’s no surprise that Mormons are doing the same, as Thomas Burr of the Salt Lake Tribune reported in “Harry Reid: A Mormon in the middle.”

The Temple-recommend-carrying Reid is very active in his church, say fellow members in the Washington area. But that may come as a shock to some Mormon critics who contend that the Senate leader’s political stands put him at odds with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The latest round of religiously charged criticism came after Reid told gay rights groups in a private meeting that the LDS Church’s efforts to back the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California was a waste of resources and hurt the faith’s missionary efforts.

Utah Republican Party Chairman Dave Hansen posted a news story on that subject on his Facebook page, prompting several conservatives to challenge Reid’s Mormon credentials.

Conservative activist and Utah blogger Holly Richardson said she found Reid’s comments disconcerting and doesn’t see how Reid’s far left political beliefs can align with the LDS Church.

“I just don’t get how his politics translate to somebody who has LDS beliefs,” Richardson says. “He’s an embarrassment to me as a Mormon.”

Reid, who converted as a college student and regularly attends services, has grown accustomed to the condemnation of conservative Mormons (who make up a majority of the Mormon faithful).

He recalls a time when his grandchildren were trick-or-treating at a local LDS ward event and came upon a poster featuring a picture of the Devil and Reid, and asking “Can you tell the difference?”

“I remember it,” Reid says when asked how he deals with the criticism, “but I try not to let people who do not represent the teachings that I have learned interfere with my basic beliefs.”

Burr gets quotes from the usual suspects (Pew’s John Green) but goes further and deeper by quoting church doctrine and examining recent practice:

The LDS Church declined comment for this story but pointed to its statement on relationships with government.

It says that elected officials who are LDS make their own decisions “and may not necessarily be in agreement with one another or even with a publicly stated church position.”

And the church has made efforts in the past to dispel the notion that it sides with conservative politics. In 1998, church General Authority Marlin Jensen stressed that good Mormons can also be good Democrats. The late James E. Faust, a Democrat and then a member of the First Presidency, the church’s top governing body, said it was in the church’s best interest to have a two-party system.

All faith groups wrestle with how to apply their beliefs to society and politics. Leon Wieseltier explored whether Judaism is essentially conservative or liberal in his Sept. 13 New York Times Book Review review of Norman Podhoretz’s Why Are Jews Liberal? I love how Wieseltier put it:

Judaism is not liberal and it is not conservative; it is Jewish.

So, is religion necessarily a “conservative” political force? Some are certain it is. Others are more cautious about espousing a one-size-fits-all link between doctrine and public policy, echoing the sentiments of J. B. Phillips (who wrote the classic book, Your God Is Too Small) or C. S. Lewis, who distinguished between “mere Christianity” and an adulterated form of faith he called “Christianity plus.”