Better late than never

January 29, 2008 By

blue like jazzLast week the Associated Press put out over the wires a news story on Donald Miller and his bestselling book Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. The story was picked up in a number of newspapers’ religion sections over the weekend leaving many readers wondering what took so long.

Don’t get me wrong. This is an absolutely appropriate news story, but you could have written this story about Donald Miller at least a year ago, if not earlier. Christianity Today did a cover story on him back in June 2007, and even that was overdue. That said, the AP story captures Miller’s message nicely and what has drawn so many people to his writing:

Donald Miller still loves God and Jesus. Don’t misunderstand him.

His problem is with Christianity, at least how it’s often practiced.

“It’s a dangerous term so I try to avoid it,” says Miller, who considered giving up his career as a Christian writer and leaving the church in 2003 because he couldn’t attend services without getting angry.

For him, the word conjured up conservative politics, suburban consumerism and an “insensitivity to people who aren’t like us.” He sat in his boxer shorts and banged out a memoir of his experiences with God, stripped of the trappings of religion.

When I was an undergraduate, this book was all the rage amongst Christian and even non-Christian communities. Why are other authors in Miller’s area of thinking not mentioned in the story? A friend of mine who is an undergraduate passed along the names of Lauren Winner and Ann Lamott, but feel free to leave us a note with the authors (and links!) that are part of this movement.

The article does not act like Miller is the only one out there. The ideas Miller is writing about are bigger than one person. The story correctly notes that the writings by Miller and others like him are in response to something out there in the culture:

Some experts say Miller and authors like him are in sync with a generation of young adults who very much believe in God, Jesus and the basics of Christianity, but are struggling to balance their conservative Christian upbringings with a culture that embraces a go-along-to get-along philosophy.

“People like Donald Miller are speaking almost like a prophet of a new age and describing the landscape in a way people who feel comfortable in that landscape really couldn’t articulate before,” says David Kinnaman, a researcher for The Barna Group and author of Unchristian.

Critics call Miller’s works casual and glib and say he strays from biblical truths when he downplays homosexuality.

One such critic, Shane Walker, says Miller forgets to remind readers that Jesus is also a judge and avenger who “wants to save you from his just wrath,” according to his review for 9Marks, an organization designed to help local churches re-establish their biblical bearings.

Overall, the AP report on Miller is nicely done and captures both his viewpoints and the viewpoints of those who disagree with him succinctly and thoroughly.

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Filed Under: Books, Evangelicals, Journalism, Pop Culture, Religion, Worship

Define “cult” — give three examples

January 27, 2008 By

19b 01Long ago, during my days in the Church-State Studies program at Baylor University, I took a course on contemporary religious movements and “cults.”

The word “cult” is much like the word “fundamentalist.” One person’s cult is another person’s “sect” or another’s freethinking religious movement. And, you know what? That’s absolutely correct.

In that class, the veteran researcher on this topic stressed that there are sociological definitions of the word “cult” — often dealing with the role of prophetic figures who claim radical new revelations. Then there are theological definitions, in which the leaders of a religion use the word to describe those who have surrendered or radically altered major, historic doctrines in the faith.

There was a time when mainstream Christians used to pin the “c” word on Mormons, using both sociological and theological definitions. Hardly anyone does that, anymore, on the sociology side of the divide. Yet there are traditional Christian thinkers who continue to use the word “cult” to describe Mormons, due to the latter faith’s radically different doctrines about the nature of God. Click here for a column I once wrote on the struggles to understand why some people use the word “cult” in this context and others do not.

But the key is that you have to define this word, one way or another, if you are going to use it with any sense of integrity. This word demands a sense of perspective. Which is precisely what is missing in the recent Los Angeles Times piece that ran with the headline: “Radical Shiite cults draw concern in southern Iraq.” Here is the opening of the story:

NAJAF, IRAQ – Security official Abu Ali has reviewed hundreds of documents about the obscure messianic cult that incited deadly clashes last weekend at the height of Shiite Islam’s most important holiday.

The group, Abu Ali and other security and government officials say, wants to spark a war among Shiite Muslims.

Officials said the so-called Supporters of the Mahdi disrupted Shiite worshipers last weekend in Basra and Nasiriya and fought security forces, leaving as many as 80 people dead. In similar battles in January 2007, hundreds of members of another cult, Heaven’s Army, were killed.

Later in the story, we are given a tiny slice of information about the meaning of that crucial phrase “Supporters of the Mahdi.”

The Supporters of the Mahdi group is named after a figure Muslims believe will appear with Jesus to establish peace. Most Shiites believe the Mahdi is their 12th imam and a descendant of the prophet Muhammad who they say went into hiding in 878 and will return. Some cults believe they can hasten his return by spreading chaos.

There are several problems here. First of all, I do not believe that it is accurate to say that “Muslims believe” that the Mahdi will return at the end of all things. This doctrine has not — please correct me if I am wrong — been formalized as a Sunni teaching. Meanwhile, it is one of the defining characteristics of Shia faith and practice.

Thus, there is nothing particularly alarming in the name “Supporters of the Mahdi.” That’s like a Catholic group calling itself, “We Love the Pope.”

The question, of course, is, “What makes this group a ‘cult’ in comparison with traditional forms of the Shiite faith?” And that is where the story does not give us a single clue as to what is going on.

Are there Shiites who are NOT supporters, quote-unquote, of the Mahdi? What are the doctrinal differences between this group that is being hit with the “cult” word, as opposed to the more mainstream Shiite leaders they are trying to kill or drive out of power? If it is simply a matter of clashing tactics in the battlefield that is the alleged nation of Iraq, then why use a religious word — “cult”?

Or, is the newspaper using “cult” in some other way? Just asking.

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Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, World Religions, Worship

New monks are revolutionaries?

January 27, 2008 By

merton Stephanie Simon of The Los Angeles Times scored a coup: She interviewed young evangelicals who left their previous lives to live as monastics. Her story was rich with detail and nuance. But I wonder if she missed a major story.

Simon introduced readers to five young adults, plus their children, who left their comfortable suburban homes for a spartan, communal one. As you may imagine, Simon described in great detail the travails and triumphs of such a radical life change. Here is how she depicted the decision by one of the families, the Porrett’s, to leave the house:

“I’m never alone. I never have time to think,” [Phyllis Porrett] said. “There’s no time to grow.”

Communal life was supposed to have taught her to resolve conflicts. Instead, Phyllis said, she found herself obsessing about every grievance: how many nights in a row she made dinner, or who had scratched her coffee table.

Far from learning to live like Christ, she’d realized just how far she was from that ideal. “I’m not a very gracious person,” Phyllis said. “I don’t love people the way God does.”

In August, she and Kyle announced that they could not keep their yearlong commitment to the house. They had learned they could adopt their foster children, and they wanted to start fresh in their own home that fall.

Yet why did these five adults decide to form a religious community? To my mind, Simon’s answer is inadequate:

The couples came to monasticism out of frustration, a sense that modern Christianity had grown soft and self-centered.

Jeromy, 29, and Debbie, 30, worshiped at an evangelical church with a bouncy six-piece band, but they thought the sermons empty; they went more out of habit than conviction. Kyle, 30, and Phyllis, 25, had stopped going to church because their lives were too hectic.

The two couples and Jake, 29, sought a more fulfilling path in the Bible. They found themselves drawn to accounts of how Peter organized the early church into communities of believers. Members sold all they owned, shared necessities in common, and “continuing daily with one accord . . . did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.”

In other words, the couples were dissatisfied with their religion and sought to imitate the early Christians. Maybe this is true, but it sounds like something’s missing. Dissatisfaction with one’s religion at some point is practically a universal sentiment. Few believers, however, abandon their former lives to live like monks.

Simon mentions earlier in the story that the couples are part of “the New Monastic movement sweeping white, suburban evangelicals.” But she makes it sound like a fad rather than a revolutionary social movement. Indeed, the movement describes itself in radical terms:

Throughout the history of the church, monastic movements have arisen during times of rapid social change. When the minority movement that Jesus started was flooded by converts after Constantine, desert mothers and fathers went into their cells to discern a new way of life. When Europe collapsed into the Dark Ages, Benedictines carved out spaces for community and new life. When the advent of a cash economy revolutionized European culture, St. Francis started an order of beggars to proclaim the divine economy of providence. Over the past two thousand years, monasticism has helped the church remember who we are.

Ours is a time of rapid social change. We are post-modern, post-Cold War, post-9/11, even post-Christian. All signs point to change, and we know things aren’t what they used to be. But we hardly know who we are. Amidst wars and rumors of war, our global identity crisis threatens to consume us.

This description casts the adults’ decision to form a religious community in a wholly new light. These people are more than a bunch of well-meaning Christians. They are spiritual revolutionaries, ones who seek to create alternative communities in our age of globalization. They seek mysticism and community, not materialism and individualism; prayer and alms, not money and fame; the way of Thomas Merton and Mother Teresa, not that of Creflo Dollar and Joyce Meyer.

Now perhaps the young evangelicals depicted in this story don’t see their lives in those terms. But at the least, Simon should have probed their motives more.

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Filed Under: Evangelicals, Journalism, People, Religion, Worship

When controversy speaks for itself (updated)

January 22, 2008 By

jesuskrishnaLos Angeles Times reporter K. Connie Kang had another interesting story on the Godbeat or, in this case, the gods beat. Yes, the Episcopalians are involved.

It seems that the Diocese of Los Angeles hosted an interfaith service with Hindus at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral there on Saturday. Kang simply reported it without any analysis, which I think is good for an initial story on what turned out to be a rather controversial event. She described how a Hindu nun blew into a conch shell to begin the Indian Rite Mass. A band from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (aka Hare Krishna) chanted during the service.

The article is full of fascinating quotes from participants and observers:

During the service, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, issued a statement of apology to the Hindu religious community for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them.

“I believe that the world cannot afford for us to repeat the errors of our past, in which we sought to dominate rather than to serve,” Bruno said in a statement read by the Rt. Rev. Chester Talton. “In this spirit, and in order to take another step in building trust between our two great religious traditions, I offer a sincere apology to the Hindu religious community.”

The bishop also said he was committed to renouncing “proselytizing” of Hindus.

The comment went over well with the Hindu leaders who were honored during the service. I’m not sure how it went over with the Christians in Orissa and other Indian states. Kang also did a good job with play-by-play coverage during another part of the service:

All were invited to Holy Communion, after the Episcopal celebrant elevated a tray of consecrated Indian bread, and deacons raised wine-filled chalices.

In respect to Hindu tradition, a tray of flowers was also presented. Christians and Hindus lined up for communion, but since Orthodox Hindus shun alcohol, they consumed only the bread.

The sermon emphasized commonalities between Christianity and Hinduism, according to Kang.

Last week I noted that stories fail to explain why the Episcopal Church is so aggressive about property issues but not doctrinal issues. And with this story we have yet another example of why this needs to be explained by reporters.

For instance, Canon I.17.7 of the Episcopal Church (.pdf link here — see page 55) explicitly prohibits administering Holy Communion to unbaptized persons:

Sec. 7. No unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church.

And yet this service, hosted by none other than the Los Angeles Diocese, clearly offered communion to unbaptized people. Now let’s go to property disputes. The Episcopal Church’s argument for why it should retain the property in the disputes with the departed parishes is on the basis of another canon (Canon I.7.4 — page 40 of the previous link):

All real and personal property held by or for the benefit of any Parish, Mission or Congregation is held in trust for this Church and the Diocese thereof in which such Parish, Mission or Congregation is located. The existence of this trust, however, shall in no way limit the power and authority of the Parish, Mission or Congregation otherwise existing over such property so long as the particular Parish, Mission or Congregation remains a part of, and subject to, this Church and its Constitution and Canons.

Wouldn’t a story examining the disparity between which canons are enforced and which canons are not enforced be interesting? Put another way, why are some bishops free to violate some canons while other bishops are threatened with punishment if they permit their dioceses to even vote about whether to realign? I’m sure the Episcopal authorities have their reasons, but we need to hear what those are. Why aren’t reporters asking them to explain how this works?

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times made a major, major, major correction to this story. So major, in fact, that we may have to look at this in an another post:

FOR THE RECORD:

Hindu-Episcopal service: An article in Sunday’s California section about a joint religious service involving Hindus and Episcopalians said that all those attending the service at St. John’s Cathedral in Los Angeles were invited to Holy Communion. Although attendees walked toward the Communion table, only Christians were encouraged to partake of Communion. Out of respect for Hindu beliefs, the Hindus were invited to take a flower. Also, the article described Hindus consuming bread during Communion, but some of those worshipers were Christians wearing traditional Indian dress.

I’ve personally seen communion offered to non-Christians at Episcopal services in Washington and San Francisco. Others have publicly attested to the same — in the Los Angeles diocese and other locations. And, therefore, the questions I posed at the end of this post remain.

But, oh man, is this a major error. I’d love some more context for how this correction came about and where things fell apart. Please let us know if you know anything.

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Mainline, World Religions, Worship

Spare the rod, spoil the congregation

January 20, 2008 By

bannedI love the way the Wall Street Journal covers religion. Rather than focus on political-religious stories as so many other media outlets do, the Journal frequently looks at stories about actual religious life. Many readers sent along Alexandra Alter’s fascinating analysis of church discipline:

On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. “And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P.”

Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff’s officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs.

The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey’s real offense, in her pastor’s view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he’d charged her with spreading “a spirit of cancer and discord” and expelled her from the congregation. “I’ve been shunned,” she says.

The online article has some great multi-media features. You can actually hear the the 911 call as well as an interview with constitutional law professor Doug Laycock, who discusses the legal implications of church discipline. There’s also a brief history of shunning and excommunication. Here are the nut graphs:

Her story reflects a growing movement among some conservative Protestant pastors to bring back church discipline, an ancient practice in which suspected sinners are privately confronted and then publicly castigated and excommunicated if they refuse to repent. While many Christians find such practices outdated, pastors in large and small churches across the country are expelling members for offenses ranging from adultery and theft to gossiping, skipping service and criticizing church leaders.

The revival is part of a broader movement to restore churches to their traditional role as moral enforcers, Christian leaders say. Some say that contemporary churches have grown soft on sinners, citing the rise of suburban megachurches where pastors preach self-affirming messages rather than focusing on sin and redemption. Others point to a passage in the gospel of Matthew that says unrepentant sinners must be shunned.

I cannot say enough how pleased I am that this topic is being covered. But my problem with this article is the same problem I have with how with excommunication and church discipline are always portrayed by the media. It is always presented as horribly unkind, unloving and unchristian.

My church body practices discipline and while I can’t say I’ve been witness to it terribly many times, we are taught about it regularly. We are taught that it is to be done in love for those who have lapsed into serious sin or error that might destroy their salvation. And the primary purpose isn’t to get rid of a member but to bring the erring member to repentance and back into full communion. And, in fact, the vast majority of the times I’ve seen church discipline carried out, this is exactly what happens — and usually pretty quickly. I know it’s not as salacious to write about, but I think this is the more traditional view of church discipline and should be included in a story about the topic.

Let’s look at that last line of the excerpted paragraph again. It is not untrue. There is a passage in Matthew that says unrepentant sinners should be treated as a heathen. But immediately preceding this passage is the parable of the lost sheep, where Jesus says, “Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” And then immediately after that passage you have Jesus reminding Peter of the obligation to forgive his brother “seventy times seven” times. Not that these are the only verses about church discipline, but the context is pretty clear.
churchdiscipline
The article gives many examples of how church discipline is carried out in American churches. Examples of unrepentant sin range from adultery to gossip. Alter also explains some of the legal skirmishes that have arisen out of church discipline cases.

The article begins and ends with Caskey’s case. Alter presents her in a most sympathetic light:

When [church discipline occurs], it can be humiliating. A devout Christian and grandmother of three, Mrs. Caskey moves with a halting gait, due to two artificial knees and a double hip replacement. Friends and family describe her as a generous woman who helped pay the electricity bill for Allen Baptist, in Allen, Mich., when funds were low, gave the church $1,200 after she sold her van, and even cut the church’s lawn on occasion. She has requested an engraved image of the church on her tombstone.

The sympathetic description goes on for several more paragraphs. There are also two pictures of her — one in front of glowing stained glass and another of her reading her Bible. And for all I know, Caskey is a saint who has been horribly wronged. But it’s all very one-sided. All my life I have been blessed with the most wonderful fellow parishioners. But I know enough to know that people don’t stop sinning when they become 70-year-old grandmothers. Fact is, all the best gossip at my church comes from the over-70 crowd. Just kidding. The other problem with the Caskey case — and the others mentioned in the article — is that it’s equivalent to saying that all discipline of children is bad because some parents beat their kids. That’s just not a fair way to treat the subject

Anyway, the article is very detailed and interesting. Alter has the history of shunning, a discussion of the various ways churches handle removal of members, and information on how many Protestant churches practice it. It’s definitely worth a read.

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Filed Under: Evangelicals, Godbeat, People, Religion, Worship

Covering Obama’s spiritual guide

January 19, 2008 By

JeremiahWright 01 01I was wondering what it would take to get some more mainstream media coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s United Church of Christ pastor. Wright has been mentioned in quite a few opinion columns and tabloid publications recently for his race-based preaching and teaching. But mainstream media coverage has been lacking. So it was nice to see an article by the Baltimore Sun‘s Michael Hill about Wright and the attention he’s been receiving:

The connection [with Obama] has thrown a spotlight on some of Wright’s more controversial remarks in a church that advertises itself as “unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian” – at times espousing a black liberation theology that can sound as exclusionary as Obama’s message is inclusionary. He has also equated Zionism with racism.

On Sunday morning – amid intensified crossfire between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama over the use of race in the Democratic presidential campaign – Wright was preaching from the Gospel of John, using his powerful style to link the story of the loaves and fishes to a contemporary political message.

Man should not put limits on what God can do, but that’s what people always do, he told the crowd. Just as God made five loaves and two fishes feed thousands, God has provided liberators for blacks in the past – from Nat Turner to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and now Barack Obama.

I think it’s funny that the reporter says Wright’s message “can sound” exclusionary but Obama’s message “is” inclusionary. Anyway, not knowing what black liberation theology is, I can only surmise that the example given of it is representative. The article also quotes Wright saying that Bill Clinton did to blacks what he did to Monica Lewinsky. Yikes!

Just this week Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen complained that Wright’s church magazine gave Louis Farrakhan its person of the year award. They said he “truly epitomized greatness.” In the article, Obama distanced himself from his preacher, while also confirming his affection for the man. Hill’s story did a good job of explaining where that affection comes from:
barack obama audacity of hope

The candidate’s 1995 book Dreams From My Father depicts Obama’s decision to join Trinity United as a fundamental step in affirming his identity as an African-American. Obama’s mother was white, he was raised in large part by her parents and he spent much of his youth in Indonesia with his mother’s second husband. He only met his father, a Kenyan, once.

Obama took the title of his more recent book, The Audacity of Hope, from the first sermon he heard preached by Wright, whom Obama met while working in Chicago as a community organizer.

In Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote of his reaction on hearing that sermon in 1988: “In that single note – hope! – I heard something else: At the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and the Pharaoh, the Christians in the Lion’s Den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church on this bright day seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.”

Where the story is weaker, I think, is in the relative lack of thoughtful criticism about Wright’s preaching. Hill does a good job of speaking to people who defend Wright but not those who aren’t so keen on the content of his preaching. In fact, the only critic quoted — and for only a few words — is avowed atheist Christopher Hitchens.

One paragraph that struck me was this one:

Wright, who is about to retire, took over Trinity United in 1972. It was an odd black congregation, since the United Church of Christ is a mainly white denomination, predominantly in New England, that traces its ancestry back to the Puritans. Over the years, it developed a liberal reputation based in part on the independence of its individual churches.

The United Church of Christ was formed in 1957 through the merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church (itself a merged church, as the name implies) and the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches. It is not untrue that some of its ancestry lies with the Puritans — but its heritage is much richer than that. People always seem to point out the Puritan ties, but not the E & R. Or maybe I just remember this because my mother was baptized at an E & R church and confirmed at a UCC church. The UCC also descended from the Pilgrims who established Plymouth Colony.

Anyway, I think the article was necessary — the mainstream media silence about Wright was odd considering how many newsworthy comments he’s been making lately. What do you think is appropriate coverage for this pastor? And how do journalists cover him when he’s been reticent to work with the media?

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Jews without God

January 16, 2008 By

atheist Reporter Manya A. Brachear of The Chicago Tribune had a fascinating story on her hands: a young Jewish movement that does not worship God. Brachear’s story began this way:

When Rabbi Adam Chalom stands before the Sabbath flames and sings the Hebrew blessing to welcome Shabbat, there is no mention of God.

Chalom believes there are no prophets. He preaches that only hard work yields miracles. And until science unlocks life’s mysteries, his most honest answer to why people are here and where they go when they die is, “I don’t know.”

God has nothing to do with it.

Interesting, huh? Brachear notes that the movement, Humanistic Judaism, reveres culture and ethics rather than God. It sounds like more than a few Christian congregations I know of.

To put the movement in context, Brachear gave readers this helpful statistic:

Chalom contends that the integrity and emotional resonance of Jewish traditions are what appeal most to American Jews. According to the American Jewish Identity Survey of 2001 by the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, about half of the 5.3 million Jews in the United States identify themselves as “secular” or “somewhat secular.”

Alas, an interesting story line and a helpful use of statistics were its only valuable traits. Otherwise, the story was rather shallow and uncritical.

For one thing, Brachear’s story had an obvious Biblical analogy: the story of the molten or golden calf. I think she should have asked Rabbi Chalom whether he saw any parallels between his movement and that of the Jewish people waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain top. For example, does he think that his members are worshiping a molten calf and if not, why not?

For another thing, Brachear’s story was uncritical of Chalom’s theology. While it’s difficult for a reporter to question an educated religious figure, Brachear defers to Chalom in a pre-Watergate era sort of way:

– Chalom says that his movement is “keeping people Jewish.” Really, how so?

– Chalom does not believe in God. Why not? Does he consider himself an agnostic or atheist?

– Chalom never mentions that God establishing a covenant with the Jews is the very foundation of the three great monotheistic religions. How can he overlook this fact?

Look, Brachear likely was under time restraints with this story. She probably didn’t have much time to report and write it. But the fact that a Jewish movement proclaims independence from God is a big deal. How about waiting a day or two to report it out?

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Choir leader abruptly exits parish (silence)

January 14, 2008 By

TrinityWS GalCaseWhat do you know, there is a Roman Catholic parish on Manhattan called Holy Trinity.

I mention this not-so-obscure fact, because there was this really strange little story in the New York Times the other day that opened with this reference:

Owen Burdick, the organist and music director at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, who significantly improved its musical offerings and became a major fixture on the early-music scene, abruptly left his job on Monday after 17 years.

The church, one of the city’s wealthiest and most prominent religious institutions, did not release the news publicly until asked about Mr. Burdick’s departure by a reporter on Friday.

When you are dealing with common church names — like Holy Trinity — journalists are supposed to put the name of the denomination in the first reference so that readers will not be confused. Right?

Now, I realize that, when it comes to life in certain circles in New York City, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church has more money and power than God. Most Times readers in that zip code would get the reference, I would assume. However, I am sure that this particular newspaper has readers in other parts of the country who care about music and/or religion.

Meanwhile, there is the story itself — which is built on the assumption that the director of music at this parish is a major figure in the local arts scene. I do not doubt that. However, might the director of music also have something to do with worship? With the content of the parish’s services? The story is completely, utterly silent on this.

This is strange, since Trinity Episcopal has been known to make news with worship as well as with its money. Was Burdick, for example, part of the famous “clown Mass” at this church? (Does anyone know if this famous YouTube clip is from Trinity? I cannot recognize the sanctuary.)

But the article treats this as a mystery involving an employee at an arts institution, with just a hint that there might be something strange going on. And there is my point. Is the something strange — the word “abruptly” is in the lede, after all — financial, artistic, legal or, heaven forbid, religious?

There is no way to know, since the story does not offer a clue.

Mr. Burdick’s departure comes as he and the Trinity Choir were preparing for a Jan. 29 performance of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers with the Rebel Baroque Orchestra. The choir and orchestra have collaborated on a number of well-reviewed early-music performances, including an annual “Messiah” in December. …

A separate parish choir provides music for services and church events. WQXR-FM, the radio station owned by The New York Times Company, broadcasts some of the choir’s performances.

So the “Trinity Choir” is a different choir than the “parish choir” that leads worship? So the concerts are not “church events,” or are the worship services not the same as the “church events”?

Very confusing. Maybe this isn’t a religion story at all. If so, that would really be strange.

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Godbeat, Music, Worship