Race

Sotomayor? Probably a “majority” Catholic

May 31, 2009 By pastorliz

Over the past week, GetReligion has been pursuing this question: What is the mainstream press saying about where Judge Sonia Sotomayor falls in the spectrum of Catholic life and practice? Well, New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein has been researching this for all of the curious minds who read that newspaper (not to mention GR readers), and here’s what she has found out:

Four of the Catholics on the court are reported to be committed attenders of Mass, and they make up the court’s solid conservative bloc — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. The fifth Catholic, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, often votes with them.

There are indications that Judge Sotomayor is more like the majority of American Catholics: those who were raised in the faith and shaped by its values, but who do not attend Mass regularly and are not particularly active in religious life. Like many Americans, Judge Sotomayor may be what religion scholars call a “cultural Catholic” — a category that could say something about her political and social attitudes.

First of all, we’re pleased as punch that Goodstein has tackled this question. It’s long been clear that conservative Catholics vote along conservative lines — so the fact that the mass–attending Justices generally trend reliably conservative should not shock anyone. As Terry said in a previous post, the hinge issue is abortion. Is there any way of predicting by her church attendance (and Goodstein has done her homework here) how Sotomayor would vote on abortion-related, or “right to privacy” cases that come before the court?

Franklly, it’s unwise to predict how anyone would vote, even if you think you know. Purely my opinion, but confirmation processes have now become a charade, where aspiring Justices say as little as possible without totally compromising their integrity. Yet it seems clear that piety (if one can judge piety by church attendance, which is a whole other debate) is a factor, if not a totally understood factor, in where one falls on the spectrum of liberal-conservative opinion (as in this poll on the Notre-Dame controversy). Here’s some interesting stats on a few social issues culled by Goodstein.

In fact, 52 percent of Catholics who do not attend church regularly say abortion is morally acceptable, compared with 24 percent of churchgoing Catholics, according to a Gallup study released in March based on polling over the previous three years. Gallup found that 61 percent of non-churchgoing Catholics found same-sex relationships morally acceptable, compared with 44 percent of churchgoers.

But legal scholars say that while Judge Sotomayor’s Catholic identity will undoubtedly shape her perceptions, they will not determine how she would rule on the bench. After all, they point out, Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Frank Murphy, both Catholics, had records as liberals, while Justice Scalia has been a reliable conservative. Their positions have differed, even on issues covered in Catholic teaching, like abortion.

That’s a fascinating stat on same-sex relationships — anyone want to guess what it means? Actually, let’s start with the term “morally acceptable.”

Then there is the whole issue of whether Judge Sotomayor’s ‘Catholic identity’ was shaped by her Hispanic roots. She has talked about being proud of her Latina heritage — did she spend any time with the more than one-half (in this 2007 Pew poll) of Hispanic Catholics who identify themselves as charismatic? There’s no evidence here that she did. And there’s really no way of predicting yet how Sotomayor will vote — with the exception of the Ricci affirmative action case recently argued before the Supreme Court, she doesn’t have a huge paper trail on hot button issues. Generally picks for the Supreme Court don’t.

As much as I liked the Goodstein article, I had a few problems with it. Characterizing Anthony Kennedy (as Professor Powe does) as a “country club Republican” says nothing about his Catholic identity. Nor does telling us that Justices Breyer and Ginsburg are Jewish or that Stevens is a Protestant illuminate anything about how their faith and/or culture shapes their decisions. Aren’t you curious about them, too?

But here’s what I want to know — is it possible that “cultural Catholics” aren’t much different than the majority of Americans as a whole? If Sotomayor doesn’t go to church very often, then she’s like most of the rest of us. Does terming someone a “cultural Catholic” in an age of ethnic diversity and diversity of practice really mean a whole heck of a lot anymore? The vague definition here (a commitment to social justice and community service) could as well be applied to Quakers.

In the end, of course, it comes down to what one woman with a Catholic heritage believes — and as excellent a reporter as Goodstein is, she hasn’t been able to get inside Sotomayor’s head. Which won’t keep a lot of other people from trying.

Isn’t this a nice picture of Sotomayor with her mother (Wikimedia Commons)?

Filed Under: Catholicism, Journalism, People, Politics, Race, Religion, Social Issues, Worship

It’s Brenda Lee’s world . . .

May 29, 2009 By Douglas LeBlanc

. . . The pope and the president just live in it.

Yesterday morning at Los Angeles International Airport, Brenda Lee presented herself as a journalist, a Catholic priestess, and a California citizen so concerned about gay marriage that she wanted to give a letter to President Obama. In blurring those identities — in behaving as an activist while standing amid journalists — she managed to get herself hauled away in full-throttle civil disobedience mode.

The best reporting of this harmonic convergence of strange came from two reporters pursuing local angles.

Jon Cassidy of The Orange County Register addressed the question of Lee’s claim to Catholic priesthood:

In a phone interview, Lee said that she is a Catholic priestess “with St. Juliana’s in Fullerton,” and that there are 60 other Catholic priestesses worldwide.

Father Paul Gins of St. Juliana’s said that Lee is a member of the parish and a “well-meaning person,” but that “she does not represent the church. We do not recognize women priests, and haven’t for 2,000 years.”

Lee said that her duties as a minister involve consecrating the host, and ministering to the disabled and elderly in convalescent homes.

Cassidy also delivered the most poignant detail of the day:

Outside the terminal, a police officer chided Lee for making a scene, she said.

“‘This could’ve been much worse,’” she said the officer told her. “We could have cuffed you, put you in a black-and-white, and held you for 72 hours.’”

Lee — whose sister worked in a mental hospital, she said — understood the reference to the holding period for mental illness cases.

As she tearfully recounted this afternoon, she had one thing to tell the officer: “Are you trying to imply that there’s something mentally wrong with me?”

While other reporters had to settle for saying that editors at the Informer newspaper of Macon, Georgia, did not return calls, Travis Fain of Macon.com reached its longtime publisher:

Herbert Dennard, until recently the publisher for the Georgia Informer, which has changed its name to the Informer, said Lee is from the Macon area but now lives in California. She writes a column for the Informer, a monthly newspaper that focuses on the black community and routinely prints public officials’ salaries.

“She writes a lot of religious things and gives opinions on things from abortion to gay marriage,” Dennard said.

“She’s a very good person,” Dennard said. “She has very strong views on some moral issues. And I had talked to her, and she said she wanted to try to interview the president of the United States. I said, ‘if you can do it, fine.’”

Steven Mikulan of LA Weekly scoured Lee’s sparse record of columns for the Informer and found sad ramblings such as this: “Mother Teresa was a female and a person of color. Because she overshadowed Pope John Paul II for sainthood, her reputation had to be destroyed.”

Mikulan ruined his post, however, with this stunningly ignorant speculation about Lee’s future among what he calls faith-based conservatives: “It will be interesting to see if and how Rev. Lee writes about her own recent experience on the LAX tarmac — and if she becomes a Joe the Plumber for faith-based conservatives.”

If you have to ask, you’ll never understand.

Filed Under: People, Politics, Pop Culture, Race, Radio & TV, Sex, Social Issues

Do you hear what I hear?

May 18, 2009 By pastorliz

How did NPR’s Scott Simon make it into this post? Hang on, gentle reader, and all will be clarified.

There’s been growing speculation in the media about President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court seat to be vacated when Justice David Souter retires at the end of June. Here’s a fun, if slightly speculative article from the New York Times on Republican strategy as regards a pick for the Supremes (of course, there’s no name yet from the White House.)

The assumption is, and it might be a safe one, given that the Court only has one member of color and one woman, that the President will go for racial and gender diversity. Possibly a Hispanic. Perhaps an African-American. Even more potently symbolic, someone who is both a minority and a woman, though, as the Times points out, all candidates will piously probably deny that they have any opinions at all.

This weekend, Los Angeles Times’ writers Johanna Neuman and Andrew Malcolm reported growing advocacy for a gay Supreme Court nominee, a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” and various other issues of particular interest to gays and “gay advocates.”

We’re seeing more and more columns that blend analysis, commentary and reporting, a trend (call me old-fashioned) I find a little confusing. Here’s Neuman’s and Malcolm’s gumbo-like (a dash of this, a hint of that) lede:

With more states enacting same-sex marriage laws, pressure is growing on President Obama to moderate his stance against gay marriage.

Advocates are urging him to appoint a gay man or woman to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David H. Souter. Even if Obama does not name a gay justice, senators are likely to question the nominee about the hot-button issue during confirmation hearings, propelling it to the top of the political agenda this summer.

Two gay women are among the candidates being considered, according to the New York Times: Kathleen M. Sullivan and Pamela S. Karlan, both of Stanford Law School.

Already, Christian groups are lobbying against such a selection by organizing protests in Washington, where the District of Columbia City Council recently voted to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

Take it from the top — what do they mean, “moderate” his stance on gay marriage? Errr — what would that look like? We know that the President favors civil unions. “Moderating” his policy beyond civil unions could only mean affirming gay marriage — what am I missing? Is the word “moderate” now a substitute for the term “progressive”?

Or are the writers implying that Obama’s views are, to use a term I loathe, “out of the mainstream”?

Which “Christian” groups are opposed to same-sex marriage? The United Methodists? The ELCA? The Presybterian Church (USA) or the Presbyterian Church in America? The National Baptist Convention? The writers only quote one pastor (actually, they quote the New York Times), and they don’t mention whether he’s part of a larger coalition.

Am I being too hard on two writers essentially doing a kind of a general round-up? Perhaps — but if you can’t be specific on the fundamentals, why bother to post such an item at all?

Now we get to NPR host Scott Simon’s wise and timely Saturday admonition to all of us who think we can approach a topic without bias. Simon takes two statements on marriage from two different speakers, and asks his readers to make a judgement about who said them. I won’t spill the beans — read the piece for yourself. Suffice it to say that it links nicely with a story we’ve been covering here. But though I cavil with a few descriptors, I love these sentences from the end of his comments:

I play this little exercise this week because it may show how people — especially intelligent people — hear what they want to …

It makes it a bit harder, but more important, to do real journalism and sometimes tell an audience, “We know what you think you know. But listen to this.”

One of the jobs of a good journalist is to look at his or her assumptions, figure out what she or he thinks they know — and then go looking for people and situations that test those assumptions. What they find might surprise them — and us.

Filed Under: Journalism, Mainline, Politics, Race, Radio & TV, Religion, Social Issues

Church hunting in a war zone

May 6, 2009 By TMatt

In a strange kind of way, a team of reporters at the Washington Post metro desk (including my long-time friend Hamil Harris) has written a fitting sequel for that recent news feature about the First Family’s struggle to find a church home, one that fits them in terms of political realities and the liberal Christian beliefs that drive the heads of the household.

This may not be what the reporters set out to do, but that is what they have done — if one reads between the lines a bit. Click here, if you wish to catch up by reading my recent post on that topic: “Obama seeking right church on left.” Or, here is its thesis statement about the president:

I have always argued that … he is what he has said he is — a sincere, liberal, mainline Protestant whose approach to faith is built on a modernist, non-literal approach to scripture. But this creates an awkward situation here in Washington, where the most powerful, high-profile African-American churches may or may not be able to affirm that Obama approach to faith, morality and doctrine. Clearly, they want to embrace the president and his family, but, well, certain subjects could cause trouble.

That brings us to the new story in the Post, which ran with the headline, “Uproar in D.C. as Same-Sex Marriage Gains.” Here’s the lede:

The D.C. Council overwhelmingly approved a bill yesterday to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, in a vote that followed a sharp exchange between an openly gay member and a civil rights champion and set off shouts of reproach from local ministers.

The council passed the measure by a vote of 12 to 1. During the debate, council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) accused Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who cast the dissenting vote, of having taken a “bigoted” position. After the vote, enraged African American ministers stormed the hallway outside the council chambers and vowed that they will work to oust the members who supported the bill, which was sponsored by Phil Mendelson (D-At Large). They caused such an uproar that security officers and D.C. police were called in to clear the hallway.

Ironically, Barry’s stance on this issue appears be the same as that professed by President Barack Obama — pro gay rights, pro civil unions, but opposed to same-sex marriage.

Next up is the actual bill to legalize same-sex marriage in the nation’s capital.

Barry … warned after the vote that the District could erupt if the council does not proceed slowly on same-sex marriage.

“All hell is going to break lose,” Barry said. “We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this.”

The shock waves could also reach the U.S. Congress, of course. But that is not what interests me in this story.

The Post team clearly understood that the roots of this conflict are in the African-American church itself and, especially, inside at least some of the mainstream black congregations in the city.

Here is a lengthy passage that contains the emotional heart of the story, as Barry clashes with gay activists.

… (T)he emotional debate that took place yesterday at the Wilson Building suggests that the issue could be divisive in a city with a long history of racial tension in politics. Barry, a prominent figure during the civil rights movement, said that he “agonized” over whether to oppose the bill but that he decided to stand with the “ministers who stand on the moral compass of God.”

“I am representing my constituents,” said Barry, who later told reporters that “98 percent of my constituents are black, and we don’t have but a handful of openly gay residents.”

Civic activist Philip Pannell, who is openly gay and lives in Ward 8, called Barry’s remarks offensive. “He of all people, coming out of the civil rights movement, should understand the need to fight for the rights of all minorities to be protected,” Pannell said.

Catania and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) are the two openly gay members of the council, and Catania made it clear that he took offense at Barry’s stance.

“This issue is whether or not our colleagues, on a personal level, view me and Jim Graham as your equals,” Catania said, “if we are permitted the same rights and responsibilities and obligations as our colleagues. So this is personal. This is acknowledging our families as much as we acknowledge yours.”

Barry, visibly upset, fired back that he has been a supporter of gay rights since the 1970s.

“I understand this is personal to you and Mr. Graham. I understand because I have been discriminated against,” Barry said. “… I resent Mr. Catania saying either you are a bigot or against bigotry, as though this particular legislation represents all of that.”

Catania replied: “Your position is bigoted. I don’t think you are.”

So, where does the story go next?

This report noted that more than 100 black ministers recently signed a letter to the mayor opposing efforts to approve same-sex marriage. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington also released a statement after this first vote, saying that it revealed a “lack of understanding of the true meaning of marriage.” And on the left, there was this:

Council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7) accused some of the black ministers of questioning her religious commitment and threatening to unseat council members who supported the bill. “The ministers have really upset me to a point they have questioned my Christianity, they have questioned my morality,” Alexander said.

Actually, they are questioning her doctrine and this is one of those issues on which it is impossible to take a stand — on left or right — without saying that believers on the other side of the church aisle are reading the Bible incorrectly.

So here’s my question about that list of 100 black ministers. Are there any names on that list from churches that are still being considered by the Obamas? Probably not. But are there many mainstream black pastors who have signed on to pray, preach and lobby on behalf of the gay-marriage coalition? Probably not.

Now, do you see the political puzzle that the First Family is trying to solve as it tries to find a church home?

Filed Under: Evangelicals, Mainline, Marriage & family, Politics, Race, Sex, Social Issues

Obama seeking right church on left?

May 4, 2009 By TMatt

Now that the White House has settled the puppy issue, folks inside the DC Beltway have returned to whispering about the even more symbolic issue — the First Family’s church home. This means it’s time for a trip into tmatt’s folder of GetReligion guilt.

You see, a team of Washington Post reporters offered a news feature on that topic a week ago and some of the details in it were so specific that — honest — I thought a decision might be right around the corner. But another week has passed, so let me note the sections of this piece that rang the bell for me.

The headline focused on the highly personal element of all this for African-American church leaders around here: “Quiet Prayer in D.C. Churches for Obama’s Decision — Questions of Race, Faith Fold Into One: Will He Choose Us?” But, the story also notes another theme that has, until now, played only a minor role in mainstream reports on this topic.

What might that be? It can be stated as a question that has been asked before here at GetReligion: What if Barack and Michelle Obama have some strong theological beliefs and they actually want to join a church that shares their approach to doctrine and faith?

I know that this cuts against the views of some on the right that the president is faking his faith. I have always argued that this is not the case and that he is what he has said he is — a sincere, liberal, mainline Protestant whose approach to faith is built on a modernist, non-literal approach to scripture.

But this creates an awkward situation here in Washington, where the most powerful, high-profile African-American churches may or may not be able to affirm that Obama approach to faith, morality and doctrine. Clearly, they want to embrace the president and his family, but, well, certain subjects could cause trouble.

So here is the dominant image that reporters are using and the questions they are asking:

Will the Obamas affiliate themselves with a black church, which could signal that they are still comfortable making their spiritual home one that is predominantly African American? Or will they choose a mostly white or racially integrated church, sending the message that they are interested in shifting the paradigm of religion and race?

That’s the normal template. But later in the story we read that, in addition to Nineteenth Street Baptist Church and other obvious choices, the Obamas are considering some interesting options. For example:

Other churches are familiar to the White House because prominent staff members have long ties in the city. Melody C. Barnes, White House domestic policy director, is an active member of Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ, a church that is theologically liberal and not opposed to same-sex marriage, an issue that has been a political hot button for the president.

Obama came to Christian faith in the context of a liberal African-American church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, then led by, of course, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The UCC is his natural home. Then again, the idea of seeking a liberal African-American congregation — on basic biblical issues — adds an interesting element of risk and difficulty to the equation.

Read between the lines of this statement by the Rev. Keith Byrd of Zion Baptist Church, which opens with a reference to Wright and Trinity:

The family’s ultimate decision not to join another predominantly black church might be because they are worried about that kind of conflict, said Byrd of Zion Baptist. “There is a tradition in black churches of speaking truth to power,” he said. The pastor Obama chooses “has to be clean as a whistle and have past viewpoints consistent with the president’s.”

The worshipers at Nineteenth Street Baptist are undeterred. Theirs is a congregation with a traditional worship service, a gospel choir that favors hymns and a relatively liberal church structure that ordains women as ministers and deacons. It also has a ministry that serves the homeless and one that has done educational outreach on HIV and AIDS prevention in the black community.

So the pastor and Obama will need to see eye to eye, as much as possible. And it’s positive that Nineteenth Street Baptist is active in HIV and AIDS ministry. But that isn’t the issue, is it? Many traditional Christian churches are active in these kinds of ministries, including early, trailblazing work in AIDS hospice work by Catholics, traditional Anglicans and others.

It’s a complex and interesting issue, with the Post getting closer to seeing some of the key pieces on the game board. Good job.

If you want to see this decision through a wider lens, you may want to read or watch (above) Obama’s famous, scripture-drenched campaign sermon delivered from the Ebenezer Baptist Church pulpit of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is the sermon that won over gay activist Andrew Sullivan, since Obama — in effect — is telling an African-American congregation that it needs to change it’s doctrine and get on God’s side on the gay-rights issue. Here’s the famous quote:

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays — on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system. And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.

Second image: Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ.

Filed Under: Baptists, Mainline, Marriage & family, Politics, Race, Social Issues, Worship

Let’s work on those analogies

April 25, 2009 By mollie

Newsweek has an interesting story about black parents adopting white children headlined “Raising Katie: What adopting a white girl taught a black family about race in the Obama era.” As you may have picked up from the headline, the story struggles a bit with trying to pack way too much into one family’s story. Still, it’s an interesting piece:

Several pairs of eyes follow the girl as she pedals around the playground in an affluent suburb of Baltimore. But it isn’t the redheaded fourth grader who seems to have moms and dads of the jungle gym nervous on this recent Saturday morning. It’s the African-American man — six feet tall, bearded and wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt — watching the girl’s every move. Approaching from behind, he grabs the back of her bicycle seat as she wobbles to a stop. “Nice riding,” he says, as the fair-skinned girl turns to him, beaming. “Thanks, Daddy,” she replies. The onlookers are clearly flummoxed.

As a black father and adopted white daughter, Mark Riding and Katie O’Dea-Smith are a sight at best surprising, and at worst so perplexing that people feel compelled to respond. Like the time at a Pocono Mountains flea market when Riding scolded Katie, attracting so many sharp glares that he and his wife, Terri, 37, and also African-American, thought “we might be lynched.” And the time when well-intentioned shoppers followed Mark and Katie out of the mall to make sure she wasn’t being kidnapped. Or when would-be heroes come up to Katie in the cereal aisle and ask, “Are you OK?”–even though Terri is standing right there.

Is it racism? The Ridings tend to think so, and it’s hard to blame them. To shadow them for a day, as I recently did, is to feel the unease, notice the negative attention and realize that the same note of fear isn’t in the air when they attend to their two biological children, who are 2 and 5 years old. It’s fashionable to say that the election of Barack Obama has brought the dawn of a post-racial America. In the past few months alone, The Atlantic Monthly has declared “the end of white America,” The Washington Post has profiled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s struggle for relevance in a changing world, and National Public Radio has led discussions questioning the necessity of the annual Black History Month. Perhaps not surprising, most white and black Americans no longer cite racism as a major social problem, according to recent polls.

Again, that reporter is working overtime to make this adoption mean something huge.

I have neighbors of various races who have adopted children of various other races — including a black mother with a white child. But while it’s acceptable and increasingly popular for white families to adopt black children, the opposite scenario isn’t as prevalent. While both white and black families prefer to adopt children of their own race, black families have a better chance of adopting a same-race child because of the current demographic situation in foster care. So this makes for a great idea for a story — particularly since we learn in this Newsweek piece that Congress might reinstate race as a salient consideration in adoption cases.

While there are certainly religious ghosts in all of this, none of them are explored. Well, almost none. Check this out:

Last November, after a grueling adoption process–”[adoption officials] pushed the envelope on every issue,” says Mark–little Irish-Catholic Katie O’Dea, as pale as a communion wafer, became Katie O’Dea-Smith: a formally adopted member of the African-American Riding-Smith family.

We don’t learn what religion, if any, the Riding-Smith family has. We don’t learn what it means that Katie O’Dea is “Irish-Catholic.” But more than anything, what in the world is that “pale as a communion wafer” line? The reader who submitted the story put it in her typically understated fashion: “Not the best analogy.”

That’s an understatement.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Journalism, Marriage & family, Race, Religion, Social Issues

Writing in tongues

April 12, 2009 By Ari Goldman

If great religion journalism is going to survive, it is going to be because of the writing and not because of the pictures, graphics, videos or even blogs. That was driven home to me today when I read Andrew Rice’s masterful piece in the New York Times Magazine on the Redeemed Christian Church of God, one of the African missionary churches that the Times says is transforming Western Christianity.

To make my point, I am not adding a picture with this blog post. Let the words carry me.

This is the second vividly written religion piece in the Times Magazine in so many weeks. My colleague Doug LeBlanc praised Zev Chafetz’s story on “Obama’s Rabbi” last week. Like Chafetz, Rice had the daunting challenge of making a devotional scene come to life. Here is one snippet:

Even by the passionate standards of Africa, the Redeemed are renowned for the intensity of their prayer. In Nigeria, it has been called “the weeping church.” During services, members of the congregation will clap, whoop and break into glossolalia — speaking in tongues — which Pentecostals believe to be the verbal expression of the Holy Spirit. They will collapse to the floor, burying their faces in the carpet, and writhe in the throes of divine communion.

And another begins with the preacher asking, “You want to talk to God?”

In response, his congregants dropped to their knees and began to speak in tongues, which to the uninitiated sounds like a babble of sharp syllables. Above the din, Ajayi-Adeniran voiced a series of petitions to God, seizing certain phrases and repeating them, almost as if he were chanting an incantation. “Father, restore the old glory back to our nation,” the pastor said. “The old glory. The old glory.” Ajayi-Adeniran jabbed a finger toward heaven, his sermon crescendoing in a high-pitched, swooping cry: “Churches are in pain. Children of God are in pain. People are losing their jobs. Many are losing their jobs. Marriages are breaking up. God — God almighty — come and heal our land. Come and heal our land! Come and intervene. Move! Move! Move!”

And the crescendo of the piece, which takes place in a Baltimore arena with 13,000 seats, is purposefully understated:

“In Africa, we get excited when people give their lives to Jesus,” Adeboye instructed his flock. “Go ahead,” he said, “talk to the almighty.” And then it came, in a roar like a wave, thousands of voices raised in the unknowable language of heaven.

While the writing brought me into the frenzy and passion of the moment, the one thing the article lacked was any personal interaction between the writer and his subject, something that Chafetz did so deftly in his piece on “Obama’s Rabbi.” As any religion writer who has covered Pentecostals knows, they want your soul more than they want your story. To be fair to Rice, he might have included such an interaction and the editors could have taken it out. I am all too aware of the Times‘ heavyhanded editing style. But since this blog is not being edited by the Times (or anyone else) I can conclude with my own story about recently interviewing a Pentecostal minster who was hellbent on converting me.

The pastor seemed okay with the fact that I am Jewish but added, “You do believe Jesus Christ in your Lord and Savior?”

“No,” I told him.

“But the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament,” he said. “It depends how your read it,” I answered. “And how do you read it?” he asked me.

“In Hebrew,” I said.

Photo: An empty canvas, added by an ironic editor.

Filed Under: Evangelicals, Journalism, Judaism, Race, Religion, Web/Tech, Worship

Happy Easter to you, too

April 12, 2009 By TMatt

I will not see the dead-tree-pulp edition of the Washington Post Sunday edition until tomorrow, since it is delivered at my office on Capitol Hill.

However, a reader who lives in the district sent the following comment. Can this possibly be true?

I saw that GetReligion was looking for Easter coverage. I opened my Washington Post this morning to find not one mention of the holiday anywhere on the front page.

Help us out, GetReligion readers who live inside the DC Beltway. Is this true? Is A1 an Easter-free zone? Not even feature art?

Of course, the online edition’s “front page” does contain a few Easter references, although even the live coverage the First Family’s safe trip to Easter services at St. John’s Episcopal (“Church of the Presidents) across the street is run as a kind of visual follow-up story to the hard-hitting coverage of the “First Puppy” issue. You could also read the “On Faith” feature casting familiar doubts on the historical foundations of the Christian faith, a form of essay that we will surely see linked to major holidays in other faiths — especially Islam — in the near future.

With the safe — in every sense of the word — visit to St. John’s Episcopal, scribes in the mainstream press can now return to the vital issue of whether the First Family will ever join a local congregation. That was one of the official pre-Easter features for this year in several newspapers. It is fun to contrast the Washington Times story and the New York Times story.

In the latter, we do get this nice, punchy, highly political summary:

… (The) president’s spiritual quest has also revived the awkward questions that often simmer in a city where blacks and whites, rich and poor still live in largely separate worlds: Will the nation’s first black president join a predominantly black church or a predominantly white one? Will he pray in a wealthy community or in a neighborhood that is less prosperous? …

Mr. Obama’s aides have reached out to several churches, including Nineteenth Street Baptist and Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ, which both have middle-class black congregations and are in predominantly black, mixed-income neighborhoods rarely frequented by American presidents. They have also contacted Calvary Baptist Church and National City Christian Church, multiracial churches closer to the White House. Pastors at both churches have written to the Obamas. The Rev. Amy Butler of Calvary Baptist posted her invitation on her blog.

As you would expect, there are doctrinal and cultural considerations hidden between the lines and both of these stories tip-toe around them. It would be natural for President Obama to go to one of the two liberal mainline churches that offer a theological approach similar to the one he embraced in Chicago — which would be the United Church of Christ congregation or the one affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). If the family joined one of the city’s most prominent, powerful African-American churches, that could lead to symbolic clashes on hot-button social issues.

So stay tuned. There’s a good chance that we’ll see coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s homily for Easter, tomorrow. Otherwise, it seems that Easter was a bit of a dud this year for the Washington Post.

P.S. Hey, the Post did offer – on B7 – the advance text of the Easter sermon by Bishop Paul S. Loverde of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington. Enjoy.