The Buddhist in your foxhole

September 23, 2009 By

UnclesamwantsyouRemember what I said about guilt? Well, this next post falls into that category.

It’s about Thomas Dyer, the Army’s first Buddhist chaplain. (This isn’t that surprising. When I profiled an Army chaplain back in 2005, I learned that of the 1,400 active-duty chaplains, only nine were Jewish, six Muslim and six Orthodox Christian.) The Memphis Commercial Appeal offers a fascinating newsmaker profile that opens with Dyer’s conversion:

For Thomas Dyer, there was fire and brimstone. “There was the idea that there’s an angry God and somehow you could really make Him mad.”

Dyer grew up fearing God. He was a Cumberland Presbyterian, then a Baptist. He had hoped religious conviction would lead to contentment. He attended seminary and preached as a Southern Baptist minister.

That seems like a lifetime ago as Dyer, 43, sits on a cushion in the shrine room of the Pema Karpo Meditation Center in Raleigh. Six statues of various Buddhas are positioned against the walls. His teacher, a Tibetan monk who founded the temple, listens as Dyer explains his exodus from the pulpit in search of nirvana.

“The question that arose in my mind is, ‘Why is there so much suffering?’ Christianity did not have a satisfactory answer. I wanted to be happy. The idea that we have to live with suffering until we die just did not make sense to me — the idea that God wants you to suffer so you can then enjoy heaven.” Dyer kept asking, “Is this all there is to life?”

What follows is a descriptive journey through Dyer’s religious past and present. The prose is rich, and there are plenty of great details about Buddhism:

He has left his boots at the door of the temple, but in the temple room he wears a standard Army camouflage uniform. Instead of a cross or crucifix on the right chest his uniform bears the “dharma wheel” insignia as a symbol of the Buddhist faith.

But, in a feature that is neither long nor short, the issue of unresolved theodicy is, well, unresolved. It’s left out like spoiled meat, casting a foul odor over the religion of Dyer’s foolish childhood.

Reader MJBubba, who brought the story to our attention, had this reaction:

The Commercial Appeal has run a few articles and opinion pieces each year that say Christianity has no answer. The fact that the majority of the Christian philosophers have addressed the issue with a very good answer that is borne out in the way the world works and provides hope and comfort to the grieving and hurting has not appeared in this paper that I can recall. We do get a steady diet of universalism in our local paper. No wonder so many people are confused. The paper seems to have an editorial position of wanting to chisel away at orthodox Christian faith. This article just fits into a longstanding pattern.

I can’t answer that. Discussing theodicy in a news article is like bringing up predestination in a college Bible study. It’s a difficult, tricky subject, and it can seriously distract the audience. And the reporter may have just thought it was better to pretend the elephant wasn’t there than to ask it to leave. If so, I’d advise against such an approach.

As for the Commercial Appeal, I’m not a regular reader. In fact, with special offense to my friend D Madd, I can’t stand Memphis. Sorry, Beale Street, but it’s a John Calipari thing.

But what I do know is that, building on the Commercial Appeal’s story, Bob Smietana of the Tennessean delivered longer feature much more likely to make your GetReligionistas happy. (And you know that’s what every member of the MSM strives to do.)

Smietana thinks big picture and looks at what Dyer’s deployment will mean at a time when the “military chaplaincy is facing all the complications that have affected American religion over the past 40 years.” He talks about the chaplaincy’s makeup, its requirements and responsibilities and its strict though not strictly followed prohibition on “the E-word.” That is the strength of this story.

But, and possibly because this story appears to have been enterprised from Commercial Appeal’s Dyer profile, the Buddhist chaplain is really just used for bookends. Dyer fills the first three paragraphs and the final four, and Smietana gets him to talk about how he will minister to soldiers who aren’t Buddhist. (I’m not sure how many Buddhists are in the Army; I’ve always thought of them as pacifists, even in Tibet, but that’s not really explored in either article.) This isn’t bad. It was just a bit disappointing.

Clearly both articles were written to serve different functions. They actually would have been great to run side by side — possibly even with the addition of a sidebar about theodicy. But three articles about the military chaplaincy? Talk about a prayer.

Filed Under: Godbeat, Middle East, Religion, World Religions

To do: “Sonogram, funeral plans”

September 6, 2009 By

large_babyinfantcaskets_upload_1There are two kinds of people in this world who cannot avoid wrestling with the term “theodicy” — clergy (especially hospital chaplains) and reporters who are committed to covering religion news.

It’s a theological term, obviously, and it gets used here at GetReligion from time to time. Here’s a crisp definition:

Main Entry: the*od*i*cy …

* defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil

This term certainly comes to mind when reading (and viewing) the materials in multimedia Dallas Morning News package about Deidrea and T.K. Laux and the birth of their baby boy, Thomas Gordon. I heard about this series (several links in that post), of course, through Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher and the Crunchy Con weblog. He knows painful, inspiring, stunning theology when he sees it, too.

There are journalism issues that we could discuss, such as why the unborn child is a “fetus” when medical personnel are in the room, but Thomas Gordon is an unborn child the rest of the time. I think reporter Lee Hancock did a fine job of not letting this kind of issue get in the way of the story. And what a story it is.

There are dozens of passages that I could cite and that’s just in day one. You are simply going to have to grab a box of tissues, and a Bible if that’s something you are comfortable doing, and start reading.

But here is a crucial passage, as these parents wrestle with the medical realities of rare chromosomal glitches called Trisomy 13 and 18. There is no way to avoid religious questions in this series, especially since the parents are devout Christians, and this is a case in which the word “devout” is demonstrated again and again.

Deidrea felt like she was having an out-of-body experience as she heard herself say that they’d already agreed to love any child God gave them.

The doctors’ careful phrases looped in T.K.’s head — “incompatible with life,” “usually fatal,” “option of termination.” If their baby wouldn’t survive the pregnancy, he blurted, why continue? How could they let their baby suffer and put Deidrea at such risk?

Hours later, Deidrea couldn’t sleep. Alone on their living-room couch at 3 a.m., she prayed: Why them? What now? How could she and T.K. come together — not apart?

She felt a flutter in her belly.

She mouthed the name that she and T.K. had settled on just before the sonogram that morning, what now seemed a lifetime ago. Thomas was for T.K., whose given name was Thomas. Gordon honored her grandfather, who died only weeks before she and T.K. learned that they were pregnant.

Thomas, she said to the darkness. Thomas Gordon Laux.

The movement in her belly was unmistakable. Thomas kicked hard. It felt like answered prayer.

There are many crucial players in the story, as well as the parents. They are surrounded by a strong religious community. There is a hospice nurse who is gifted — almost beyond words. The editors were granted permission to reproduce sections of the mother’s private letters to her unborn son (which, of course, made me think of the classic “Letters To Gabriel“).

Read it all, or try to. Then try again. It’s hard to do this kind of journalism, but this is what happens with journalists wrestle with real life.

Filed Under: Evangelicals, Journalism, Marriage & family, Science, Social Issues

Theodicy and forgiveness in Iowa

June 30, 2009 By

churchfront1Last week, an Iowa high school football coach was shot dead in the school’s weight room. Police charged a 24-year-old former player. The headline made Drudge but I quickly forgot the story and didn’t see much follow-up. Many people talk about the sports page as if it’s got the best writing in the whole newspaper. And they’re probably thinking of reporters like Josh Peter, an enterprise reporter with, of all outlets, Yahoo! Sports. He looked at the shooting and came up with a story about theodicy, forgiveness and the strength of tight-knit communities. Here’s how he began:

PARKERSBURG, Iowa – Not far from the cornfields, in the cool of the morning, Gary Hinders stood waist-deep in a grave. He held a shovel, just like the other four men who took turns digging, first through a foot-and-a-half layer of black dirt, then a mix of sand and clay and finally the stubborn hardpan.

Hinders paused.

“Never thought I’d be digging this one,” he said.

“Not in a million years,” one of the other men said.

“At least not for this reason,” added a third.

Not a bad way to set a scene. The story has plenty of civil religion — of the sports variety. For instance, the football field where Aplington-Parkersburg High School football players competed is called The Sacred Acre. That might have something to do with the storm from last year. In May 2008, a tornado destroyed 288 homes — including Coach Thomas’, killed 9 people and ripped through the school, including the football field. After the storm, people congregated on the field.

But it also has actual religion. Let me highlight a few of those parts. Peter explains that the coach’s murder will test the community even more than it was tested by the tornado that ripped through town:

Hinders, a God-fearing man in a God-fearing town, is among residents who believe it’s no accident the tornado spared all eight churches in Parkersburg. Nor does he believe it’s a coincidence that Thomas – a man known as much for his deep faith in Christianity as for his two state championships and record of 292-84 over 37 seasons – was gunned down.

“You couldn’t pick anybody bigger in this town to shoot,” said Hinders, 60, who has been the town clerk here for 27 years. “That’s evil. . . .

“It’s spiritual warfare. Satan and God are fighting, and in the end I believe God will win.”

The man who is charged with shooting Thomas, Mark Becker, is a crystal meth addict. His family and the coach’s family attend the same church. They’re all friends, in fact. The coach had been trying to help the young man with his troubles in recent months.

Peter visits First Congregational Church where Thomas served as an elder:

Sunday morning, police chief Chris Luhring stood watch outside of First Congressional [sic] Church – where the Thomas and Becker families attended. Usually, there were two services. But now there was one – at 9 a.m.

Five rows from the back, there they were, the Beckers.

The back pew was open until moments before the service started. That is when the Thomas family arrived.

Brad Zinnecker, the head pastor, called on God’s mercy for a congregation that had its “guts ripped out.” He spoke of Thomas, recalling a man who could be so fiery on the sideline and yet so measured in church. And some of the worshipers quietly wept.

He prayed for the Thomas family. He prayed for the Becker family. He prayed for forgiveness during the hour-long service, and it already had come. The Thomases and Beckers had spoken earlier in the week, people close to the families said. And the coach’s younger son and wife urged people to pray for the Beckers, who would gain no closure when Ed Thomas’ casket was lowered into the ground.

Elsewhere in the story people are quoted talking about how Thomas emphasized forgiveness.

The piece is long. It covers a lot of ground. But Peter naturally (and seemingly effortlessly) weaves the faith of this town’s inhabitants throughout the story. He not only gets the meaty religious quotes but he puts them in context so that readers unfamiliar with the religious views can still understand. Excellent work.

Image of First Congregational Church, Parkersburg.

Filed Under: Evangelicals, Godbeat, Journalism, Marriage & family, People, Sports

May her memory be eternal

November 20, 2008 By

Angels in a cubeThe theological term is “theodicy,” and, as I have said before, this concept is woven into many religion-news stories for at least two good reasons.

The basic question is this: Where was God? The most common variation is: Why did God allow this to happen? Or, for those who know their publishing history: Why do bad things happen to good people?

This ancient theological puzzle constantly affects news because (1) disaster and tragedy are part of this sinful, fallen world and (2) the word “why” remains part of the whole “who, what, when, where, why and how” equation at the heart of hard-news reporting.

Of course, it is also possible to wrestle with these big eternal questions in first-person, confessional journalism. Click here to see one A1 example from the Los Angeles Times not that long ago and then here to see some of the reaction to it.

I thought of this while reading the latest “Stairway to Heaven” column by Julia Duin at the Washington Times. It takes quite a bit to make me tear up on my commuter train, but “Requiem for Susan” did just that. This is wrenching, highly personal journalism, but it is journalism.

You need to read the whole thing, but know that it focuses on the shocking death of one of Duin’s friends — Susan Shaughnessy, executive assistant to the provost for the John Paul II Institute at Catholic University. What took the life of this young woman?

She’d gone to a doctor, complaining of the flu and headaches, and was sent home to rest. After she went to bed the evening of Oct. 25, she never woke up. Her frantic housemates rushed her to the hospital, where doctors discovered Susan’s autoimmune response to a freak virus had wiped clean her brain. The technical name is acute disseminated encephalomyelitis. A neurologist from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., told the family her case was the worst he had seen. None of the doctors held out any hope.

When word went out last Saturday that the family was disconnecting her respirator, I rushed to Fairfax Hospital’s neurological intensive care unit. She lay, silent, one hand clasped about a rosary. Her hands were warm as I held them. Her parents, brother and Eduardo sat there, numb.

“God had a reason for this,” a friend told me later over the phone.

“No, He didn’t,” I responded. “This was the devil.”

Who was responsible for the fact that Susan, who wore a long, sweepy red dress as maid of honor at a friend’s recent nuptials, will never attend her own wedding? Was it her doctor, who could have noticed something was gravely wrong? Was it God or Satan who structured — or interfered with — Susan’s body so it would attack itself thus?

Read to the last line. Please.

I hope the Times finds a way to get this piece noticed out front on the website, with its spinning cube that displays the top four stories of the day. This is not conventional journalism, but it raises issues that will hit readers right where they live and die.

Filed Under: Catholicism, First Person, Godbeat, Journalism, People, Worship

Theodicy hook in Hagee finale

May 25, 2008 By

237HageeFlagSince I have been following the whole Sen. John McCain media drama with the Rev. John Hagee, I thought I’d try to comment on the latest act.

However, the coverage has — for the most part — been politics and politics and more politics. But then I saw veteran Washington Times religion writer Julia Duin’s report on how Hagee’s comments about Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust and Israel went down in different corners of the Jewish community. Too make a long story short, Hagee has Jewish friends, which does not amuse his many, many Jewish critics.

Here is Duin’s crisp summary of the quotes that sparked the latest hires.

At issue was Mr. Hagee’s reference — in a late 1990s sermon and in his 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown” to Adolf Hitler being a “hunter” used by God to force Jews to emigrate to Israel.

In a reference to the Book of Jeremiah, whose author predicts a scattering of the Jewish people but saying God would bring them back to the promised land, Mr. Hagee says in the sermon: “How did [the Holocaust] happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.”

Duin had the key response quotes, of course. To radically understate the matter, there is a “theodicy” issue here.

However, most American news consumers will run into this off-beat story via Eric Gorski of the Associated Press, since he has the big quote too. Here’s the key section of his wire report on the Hagee press conference about his split with McCain.

Hagee on Friday said he in no way condones the Holocaust or “that monster Adolf Hitler.” …

Hagee left it to Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg of Congregation Rodfei Shalom, a modern Orthodox synagogue in San Antonio, to provide an explanation of his offending comments. Standing with Hagee at the news conference, Scheinberg called it “ironic and absurd” that Hagee’s words were twisted and labeled anti-Semitic when Hagee was lecturing on one Jewish perspective of the Holocaust.

“Pastor interpreted a Biblical verse in a way not very different from several legitimate Jewish authorities,” Scheinberg said. “Viewing Hitler as acting completely outside of God’s plan is to suggest that God was powerless to stop the Holocaust, a position quite unacceptable to any religious Jew or Christian.”

In other words, we are back to questions that have driven many, many debates in post-Holocaust Jewish ethics and theology. Did God allow the Holocaust to happen? Why did God allow the Holocaust to happen? Is the birth of Israel a sign of God’s mercy following a Holocaust rooted in human freedom? Etc., etc.

Here’s my question: Did you see these religion-angle quotes in your local media? For a fuller treatment of the controversy behind this debate, check out the Crunchy Con discussion of an early flare up, courtesy of Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher.

Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism, Evangelicals, Judaism, Politics

Listening for questions in the weeping

May 13, 2008 By

china mapIt’s a saying that I have heard repeated time and time again by people who study China or work there on issues of human rights: Anything that you want to say about religion in China is true, somewhere in China.

You want persecution of minority religions? Check. You want look-the-other-way toleration of minority religious groups? Check. You want gigantic underground Pentecostal house-church networks and loyal-to-Rome Catholic parishes? Check. You want strict enforcement of laws that push believers toward the state-recognized religious bodies? Check.

So where did this gigantic earthquake hit, on the religion-in-China map?

So far — in my rush through the New York Times reports — I have not seen the kinds of, yes, theodicy questions that you would expect to see in stories about a similar tragedy in predominately Christian or Islamic settings. So if there are people there crying out to God, what are they crying out and to whom?

It is a real struggle to work through this story, in particular, that ran with the headline, “‘No Hope’ for Children Buried in Earthquake.” This focuses on the collapsed school in Dujiangyan where hundreds of children are dead:

Little remained of the original structure of the school. No standing beams, no fragments of walls. The rubble lay low against the wet earth. Dozens of people gathered around in the schoolyard, clawing at the debris, kicking it, screaming at it. Soldiers kept others from entering.

A man and woman walked away from the rubble together. He sheltered her under an umbrella as she wailed, “My child is dead! Dead!”

As dawn crept across this shattered town … it illuminated rows and rows of apartment blocks collapsed into piles, bodies wedged among the debris, homeless families and their neighbors clustered on the roadside, shielding themselves from the downpour with plastic tarps. The earthquake originated here in the lush farm fields and river valleys of Sichuan Province, killing almost 10,000 people and trapping thousands more.

Click here for the longer Times report containing even more basic facts about the tragedy. But the story, again, lacks a second layer. It’s that “Why?” question that would be asked in some cultural contexts, but not in others.

Is that a statement about China? This part of China? Mainstream media assumptions about China? Are the people simply weeping, with no cries to the heavens for answers? Is that kind of silent acceptance — that that is the reality on the ground in China right now — a piece of some larger religious or secular view of life and death?

I have questions. I’ll keep looking for some answers. Right now, if you search Google News for “China, earthquake, God” this is what you get. Notice the reactions from Iran and from Catholic leaders. Notice that Los Angeles Times report on earthquakes as expressions of the “wrath of God.”

The silence is unnerving, to me. Then again, I am a traditional Christian in a culture where the “Why?” question would be automatic.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Islam, People, World, World Religions

A haunted story, handled just right

April 16, 2008 By

11516One of our goals here at GetReligion is to find stories in mainstream journalism that are “haunted” by religion ghosts, which we define as a clear religious element or theme that the reporters and editors either didn’t notice or simply ignored.

We have also been known, from time to time, to take a shot or two at the masters of snark — the team that produces the Washington Post‘s Style section.

So it brings me great pleasure to point GetReligion readers toward a story in that Style section that is, indeed, haunted by faith issues and reporter Tamara Jones saw them, reported them and wove them into the story just right. Bravo.

The entire Virginia Tech massacre story was haunted. I suspected that right away and other religious details quickly emerged. Now, it is a year later and Jones took a familiar route to an anniversary feature story, profiling one of the victims who survived the carnage — the often interviewed witness Derek O’Dell.

There is a strong faith element in this story. It does not dominate the story, but the big theological question is not hidden. The theological question, of course, is linked to theodicy — as are many other stories (click here for a sample) linked to horrible events in our world.

What struck me, as I read this story, was that Jones allowed religion to play a normal role in this young man’s life. She did not spotlight it and it would have been strange if she had. A sample:

Derek discovered two more holes in his fleece jacket, most likely from the bullets fired through the classroom door as he held it shut. He tried the jacket on; one of the holes was over his chest. He fingers the silver cross he always wears, a gift from his girlfriend; it was the only shield, he thinks, between a bullet and his heart. A Catholic, he remembers asking his priest why his life was spared that day, what this all meant. It’s a mystery of faith, he was told.

Here’s another image, where the faith element fits in at the end of another symbolic story, one that begins with yet another emotional issue facing Derek O’Dell’s family:

Roger O’Dell had undergone successful surgery for ocular cancer the year before, and Derek had been anticipating the university’s annual Relay for Life fundraiser for months. The overnight marathon fell on the Friday after the Monday massacre. His parents tried in vain to talk Derek out of going. Beneath his jacket, a small photograph of each of the five people killed in Room 207 was pinned to his sling, and mentally, he checked off another name each time he circled the track. This is Lauren’s lap, that was Nicole’s lap, Mike’s lap, Maxine’s, Herr Bishop’s. Luminarias lit the field, arranged to spell the word CURE. As the night wore on, the candles were rearranged, and Derek saw the new message they spelled: HOPE.

Weak and fatigued by the time the event ended just after dawn, O’Dell was amazed to hear that another student had run an entire mile for each victim of April 16. He caught up to offer congratulations to the stranger. “Man, that was incredible, how did you do it?” O’Dell exclaimed. His voice catches even now, repeating the answer a year later.

“It was easy. I had 32 angels running with me.”

I was impressed with another image in this story, a non-religious theme that still provided a wonderful emotional structure for parts of the feature. This young man is a chess player and, now, his life is like a match in which he is having to move the pieces of his life very carefully, just to get by, then to try to heal.

Faith is one of the pieces in that match. This Post story played that piece very well.

Filed Under: Academia, Catholicism, Journalism, People

A tale of the undead

March 9, 2008 By

RoadtoCanaABC’s Good Morning America had a bit about author Anne Rice the other day that caught my attention. Rice is the best-selling American author of vampire tales who has recently written a couple of religious-themed books:

After becoming a born-again Christian, Rice stopped writing about vampires and dedicated herself to religious themes.

Rice, a former atheist, returned to her Catholic roots, and her newest book, “Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana,” is her second book devoted to Christianity. The book follows Christ’s life beginning with his last winter before his baptism in the Jordan River and ending with the miracle at Cana.

Oh dear. Apparently nobody in the story production at ABC knows that born-again Christian is not really a phrase to use for a Catholic.

The phrase “born again” comes from Jesus. “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” he says in the Gospel of John.

But the phrase is used differently by traditional Christians and evangelical Protestants. Let’s see how the Religious Newswriters Association defines the term:

born-again: Theologically, all Christians claim to be born-again through the saving work of Jesus Christ; they just disagree over how it occurs. Catholics and Orthodox, for instance, say it occurs in the sacrament of baptism, which frequently takes place when the baptized person is too young to recall it. Evangelical Protestants emphasize being born-again as a personal, transformational experience that involves a deliberate commitment to follow Christ. Because the term tends to associate someone with a particular religious tradition, do not label someone a born-again Christian. Rather let the person label themselves, as in, who calls herself a born-again Christian.

Of course Lutherans and other sacramental Christians believe that spiritual rebirth occurs via baptism. Still, the style recommendations of the Religion Newswriters Association are sound. And I don’t think Rice calls herself a born-again Christian. An article in World magazine a few years ago explained that she was raised in the Catholic Church and attended parochial schools in New Orleans:

At age 18, while attending San Francisco State University, Anne broke with her childhood faith. Her apostasy, she says, resulted from exposure to a wider world: “I stopped believing that [the Catholic Church] was ‘the one true church established by Christ to give grace.’” She also stopped believing in God. . . .

But in 1998, she gradually began to feel again the press of God: “I began to be more and more concerned with my relationship with God in my books. I wanted to be in the company of God, in the company of the drama . . . what we can know, what we don’t know, what we believe.”

She began attending Mass again and participating in sacraments. In 2000, her husband agreed to remarry her in the church: Despite his own atheism, “he was very supportive about my writing [Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt], and he was fine with me going back to the church. It surprised him, but not that much. I don’t think I had ever stopped talking about God.”

That doesn’t sound like someone who identifies as a born-again Christian. For a better treatment of her religious views, you might read a November 2005 profile in January magazine, where she discussed her views on theodicy:

I felt I had to ask Rice about God. I know people who, having endured great tragedy, feel abandoned by God. Over the years, Rice has lost a daughter and a husband, and has had her own brush with death at the hand of diabetes. I wanted to know if she had ever felt abandoned.

“I’ve never felt abandoned by God, really,” she said. “I felt that I abandoned him when I lost my faith as a young woman. Though I’ve suffered the loss of a daughter, a husband, and of course both parents, I have not ever seen these things personally. They are ‘what happened.’ I think it’s entirely possible that God might have been very sad when my daughter died. I believe Divine Providence is the fabric of the universe. God is with the person who dies in a car accident, just as he is with the person who survives. We can’t guess what his plan is. I see that throughout the Old Testament.”

Rice is a fascinating woman with an interesting story to tell. Too bad some in the mainstream media are so bad at telling it.

Filed Under: Books, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Pop Culture