Dueling Christian coverage, or Ira Glass vs. National Journal

June 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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Above is a nice little snippet of an Ira Glass interview. Interview of Ira Glass, I should say. The popular host of public radio’s This American Life reflects on why the show does so much good coverage of Christians. It’s because the media do such a bad job of covering them otherwise, he says. He says the Christians he knows and works with — including the “fundamentalists” — are nothing like how Christians are portrayed in the media.

I knew GetReligion readers would want to see the interview.

It’s also a great introduction to a piece that ran on National Journal, yesterday. Many reporters passed it along to us, including one who added the note:

Those crazy Christians are at it again!

Praying!

About major decisions!

You get a feeling for the reportorial prowess on display, the nuance, the journalistic integrity, with the headline alone:

The Things That God Tells Politicians
Mostly, it’s to run for president. But every now and then, the almighty may intervene in a leadership coup.

Do you want to read on? Neither do I! But, this being part of the job and all, I guess we will. Here’s the top of the piece:

In early January, House Speaker John Boehner was in crisis. After a brutal fiscal-cliff slog, Boehner’s speakership was in serious doubt, and a group of conservative House Republicans were preparing to drive in the knife. But that’s when, according to a new Washington Post story, God intervened.

Barely 36 hours after the caustic [fiscal cliff] New Year’s Day vote, Boehner faced a coup attempt from a clutch of renegade conservatives. The cabal quickly fell apart when several Republicans, after a night of prayer, said God told them to spare the speaker.

This, of course, is not the first time that God has been said to have stepped into U.S. politics. Here’s a brief look at some of the almighty’s supposed prior forays.

I’ll spare you the rest, on account of it being too early for this much juvenile snark, but it goes on to make fun of other Republicans praying.

What’s your favorite part of this story? Is it how it perpetuates the stereotype that Democrats are all godless and Republicans are all fundamentalists? Is it the drive-by, Buzzfeed-worthy substance of the post? Is it the complete missed opportunity?

See, I’d love nothing more than a critical and thoughtful look at how politicians use religion — a story that broached whether they use religion to manipulate or advance objectives. I’d love to see one that didn’t assume prayer was just a ploy. I’d love one that didn’t sound like it was written by a former Talking Points Memo staffer (which, in this case, would be difficult since National Journal apparently hired this reporter after stints at … Talking Points Memo, Salon, etc.). Just about anything would have been better than this drivel.

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Filed Under: Baptists, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Journalism, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Two items of GetReligion biz (prayers for George, please)

March 3, 2013 By

Let me share two items with readers this weekend, both of a personal nature.

The first is personal, in that one of your GetReligionistas has been missing for a few days and his readers need to know why. Father George Conger recently had some serious spinal surgery and, while it went well, this is not the kind of thing that one recovers from quickly. He faces some pretty serious rehabilitation and it may be some time before he is his usual erudite, spunky self near a keyboard and a mouse.

So, those of you who feel comfortable with the word “prayer,” please offer a few invocations on our brother’s behalf. He has enough high-church blood in him to appreciate a few requests for the heroic prayers of St. George, I would think.

We will keep you posted, but know that this is not the kind of situation that you rush. Until then, your GetReligionistas will be working shorthanded (we’ve been down one scribe after the loss of Sarah Pulliam Bailey, as it was) for a while. So expect some days when there are only two posts, especially since I will be traveling for about a week, including a visit to New York City to lead a few seminars at this year’s spring College Media Convention.

Also, thank you for those who wrote kind notes appreciating my recent rather personal post about the coverage of the death of the great pianist (and Texas Baptist) Van Cliburn, one of my classical music heroes as a Southern Baptist preacher’s kid growing up in East Texas.

Thus, I thought I would share a big chunk of reflection on the pianist, published in The Washington Post Style section. It concerns an encounter with Cliburn in the late 1950s, when the father of writer Patricia Dane Rogers was dying of cancer in the family’s New York apartment. Her parents met the pianist at their doctor’s office soon after his world-shaking victory in the international Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow, which made him one of the most famous musicians in the world.

Months later, when it was obvious that her father’s illness was terminal, Cliburn offered to come over and play for him.

Did they have a piano?

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Filed Under: Announcements, Baptists, First Person, Music, People, Radio & TV Tagged With: , , ,

Christmas carol wars on the DC Metro — not

December 20, 2012 By

Anyone who spends much time on subways and other forms of mass transit knows that a whole lot of religious stuff goes on while people are moving from home to work. I’m not just talking about the people with their sports pages and copies of 50 shades of hades or whatever.

Lots of people on the Washington, D.C., Metro spend their commuting time doing studying their Bibles. Years ago, one of my students did a feature about the stash of Bibles that the Metro staff maintains so that people who have accidentally left them on trains can retrieve them. Also, I am sure that some of the folks sitting in silence with their eyes closed are praying and you see the occasional sign of the cross gesture.

The key word here, however, is “silence.” Many commuters are open to talking to one another, even about religion (it happens to me all the time, depending on what book or magazine I’m reading), but other folks covet their peace and quiet, even when not in the “quiet car” on the regional train lines.

Everyone learns the rules. However, I’ve always enjoyed the mass-transit experience, all the way back to my journalism and graduate-school days in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., a twin cities area with a great bus system. I jumped on the Blue Line there during a visit 20 YEARS after my departure and the bus driver remembered me as a regular on the route. Can you imagine that?

All of this is to say that I really enjoyed The Washington Post Style feature about a local pastor who has been part of my commutes here in greater DC for more than a decade. I have always know this man as the Korean pastor who sings classic Christian songs, or plays them on his trumpet, outside Union Station. Some of his favorites are “Amazing Grace,” of course, as well as “Just As I Am” and “How Great Thou Art.” He must have worked in a Billy Graham crusade somewhere.

As it turns out, he has another branch of his public ministry this time of year. Is he part of the “Christmas wars”? I am sure that some believe that he is.

On a crowded morning train on Metro’s Orange Line, Fisher Yang, 50, of Centreville, gets his share of jeers, eye rolls and smiles.

Yang, who is the pastor of a church in Shenandoah County, sings Christmas carols two days a week during the morning rush hour on Metro’s five subway lines. Starting at Vienna, he makes his way along the Orange Line toward downtown and then switches onto Metro’s other train lines, singing all the way.

Wearing black corduroy pants, a red and blue plaid flannel shirt buttoned up to the neck and a cross with the pattern of the American flag pinned on the lapel of his sport coat, Yang stepped onto a train, his chest puffed up in anticipation, and made his announcement.

“Good morning. Excuse me. Can I have your attention, please?” he told riders on Monday morning. He cleared his throat and belted out in a bass voice all the verses of “The First Noel,” No. 123 his English-Korean hymnal.

At each station, he sprinted from one rail car to another and started his routine again. He goes so quickly between rail cars, sometimes he loses track of which direction he’s going on the system, he said.

On a crowded Orange Line train leaving Rosslyn, a few riders looked up from books or the ground, rolled their eyes and then looked away.

This is not easy work, as it turns out. The story contains the telling detail that he is currently using his fifth hymnal, because some riders have taken copies away from him and ripped out many of the pages.

The story also asked one of the first questions that jumped into my mind in this litigious age, especially since the Metro is the kind of environment in which a train driver can cause controversy merely by saying the words “Have a blessed day” over the intercom.

Metro’s chief spokesman, Dan Stessel, said Yang’s not violating any policy. In 2010 there were flash mobs singing Christmas carols on some Metro trains.

“If you’re standing on a train and you happen to be singing instead of talking, it’s not something we’re going to regulate,” Stessel said.

So what is missing from the story?

Well, for starters, I would assume that, under the Associated Press Stylebook, this man should have been called “the Rev. Fisher Yang.” Sometimes I think that folks at the copy desks of our major newspapers have decided that Protestants, especially ethnic clergy, are not really ordained.

I also wanted to know more about why Yang does this, using his time and gas money to get into DC from a church more than 60 minutes West of the Beltway. The story quotes a few people on the Metro reacting to his work. I would like to know what the head of his deacon board thinks of this work, which he has been doing since 1998.

The pastor gives a logical quote, theologically speaking — “God wants me to sing in front of him. … It doesn’t matter what other people think.” Still, I’d like to know more about his contacts with believers, as well as unbelievers.

The story ends like this:

Yang said he became a Christian when he was a young boy in South Korea after “volunteers from the Salvation Army evangelized to him.” He said he’s partial to “The First Noel” because it “spreads the Christmas message.”

Just as he finished the chorus, a woman got up from her seat, clapped, and gave him $1. He’s received money before — although he said he doesn’t solicit money.

“I love to tell the story because I know it is true,” he told her. “Thank you. And Merry Christmas.”

Reading this story also made me flash back to something I witnessed on the Orange Line back in 2000. I tried to write this for the Style section, but editors there thought it was too, well, religious. I then turned a shorter version of the piece for Scripps Howard, with the title “Just another voice on the Metro.”

The context: Minutes after rolling away from the Capitol South station, an elderly African-American woman began preaching:

“God’s grace is real, but that doesn’t mean you can just keep on sinning and sinning and sinning,” she said, gazing straight ahead. “God is watching all the time. God sees all of you. … Our God is a Holy God.”

People kept their eyes down, reading their newspapers and paperbacks. A young black woman across the aisle giggled. “Oh no, it’s church,” she whispered to a friend. New riders glanced around in surprise, as they boarded the crowded car. But no one challenged the preacher or asked her to stop.

“God doesn’t ask that much of us,” she said. “He wants us to love each other and take care of each other and follow the commandments that are in His Word. Is that too much to ask?”

A youngster listening to rap on headphones said, “Preach it, sister.” Surely the collision between the pounding music and the sermon was causing a storm in her head. At first she was amused. Then she began shooting daggers at the preacher with her eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said the elderly woman. “You’re saying, ‘How are we supposed to know how we’re supposed to live?’ … You know what the Bible says: ‘For God so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.’ You all know that verse, right?”

No one answered.

“Sweet Jesus is all the guide we need. But God also gave us his Word. You open up your Bible and read it and tell me that God hasn’t made himself perfectly clear how we’re supposed to live. The Bible is God’s book. There’s no other book like it. Some of you may go to church and you may read your Bible. But have you ever let it get inside you and change you? That’s what I’m talking about. We’ve got to change on the inside. We’ve got to change how we live.”

I turned this into a commentary on mass-transit life and, in particular, this city’s vibrant African-American churches and believers. Of course, that Orange-line train was rolling out into Prince George’s County — the home of many, many black megachurches.

The last thing this preacher said, after the train reached its destination, was her thesis: “If one person hears the Word, then this is worth it. Just one person.” She was the last person to exit.

Welcome to mass transit.

Anyway, the Post piece was a good one. I would be interested in knowing the reactions of GetReligion readers to that piece. Was it funny? Inspiring? Both?

IMAGES: From the Panabasis photo blog.

Filed Under: Godbeat, People, Race, Religion, Worship Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Dancing alone in that D.C. Franciscan hermitage?

December 18, 2012 By
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Back in my Rocky Mountain News days, I covered an ecumenical gathering in Boulder, Colo., focusing on contemplative prayer and meditation. One of the main speakers was a leader at the Nada Carmelite monastic community — part of the Spiritual Life Institute — located in Crestone, Colo., at on the western face of the Sangre de Christo mountains.

During the question-and-answer session, the mother abbess was asked why she kept insisting that her prayers and meditations were focused on the person of Jesus Christ, and not on her own spirit, her own soul, her own personality. Why, she asked, did she keep insisting that the Divine was outside of herself.

For starters, she said, the reality of the Holy Trinity and a transcendent God is at the heart of Christian theology. Deny that and you have denied the faith. Plus, she added, “I have never enjoyed dancing alone.”

I will help to keep that quote in mind while reading the recent Washington Post Style section feature about the urban hermitage that has been opened by the Franciscan brothers of urban Washington, D.C. Here’s the top of the story, which sets the tone for this three-pronged news feature:

The headline in the monthly Ward 5 newspaper described what sounded like an antidote to the nonstop iPhone-checking, list-making, ladder-climbing, goal-setting, Washington mind-set: “Refuge for the Metropolitan Hermit.”

The article described a postage stamp of a cabin, urbanely designed and gloriously sunlit, standing alone amid four acres of maples and white oaks on a protected hilltop you’ve probably never seen, although it’s in the middle of the city. Dubbed “the hermitage” by the brothers of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Northeast Washington, the space has no WiFi, TV or radio, and its occupancy limit is one.

It’s been booked nearly solid since it opened in October.

Now, I called this a three-pronged story for a simple reason. On one level, it’s a story about this unique and interesting hermitage. On another level, it’s also about the noisy crush of urban life and the challenges faced by those trying to flee it, even for a brief period of time.

So far so good. The problem, from my perspective as an orthodox and Orthodox Christian, is that the story also seems to have assumed that all theories, doctrines and methods of contemplative prayer are one and the same or, at the very least, they are all seeking the same end.

The journalistic question this story raised for me is whether that this story accurately represents the beliefs and ministry of this hermitage and the brothers who operate it. More on that in a moment.

The strength of the story focuses on that second point, with the Style team reaching out to its core readers, those urban folks trapped in their noisy ruts. This is the “we” in the story, the assumed point of view.

What do we complain about more these days than the tyranny of constant stimulation? Our attempts to tune out the outside world — the occasional radio-less drive to work, the concerted decision to leave the phone at home for a few hours — are often ineffectual. It has come to this: True solitude is such a rarity in our modern lives that we have to buy it — or, in this case, rent it for $70 a night.

But it turns out solitude isn’t that simple. Although participation in silent retreats is on the rise, many of those preparing to spend time at the hermitage said they were so unaccustomed to unstructured time alone that they made to-do lists — then feared they were doing “solitude” wrong and scrapped them. They agonized over what to bring and wear and eat, as if they were traveling to an exotic land.

Michelle Harris-Love, a neuroscience researcher, wife and mother who lives near the monastery, was happy to pay $140 for two nights at the hermitage. But as the days drew closer, a stressful question surfaced. “I thought: ‘How am I going to fill my time?’”

This is a serious question.

The Catholic University architecture students who designed the RV-size space worked to envision the needs and rhythms of tenants who were unplugged. They were asked to turn off all their own devices and spend an hour alone and silent. Of the 12, only three were able to do it.

This explicitly Catholic context is then linked to a larger trend in American culture, broadly defined, which is the interfaith quest for silence and peace, as represented by the rising numbers of people attempting spiritual retreats of various kinds.

Various expert voices are marshaled to help flesh out this perfectly valid story. However, things get interesting — some would say distressing — when we jump into the history of the Franciscans.

The 350-square-foot hermitage was the idea of brothers whose order is named for Saint Francis, the legendary Catholic preacher who ditched his wealthy upbringing in pursuit of a material-free life of contemplation. Typically hermitages — the word means a place for someone who wants to live in seclusion, usually for spiritual reasons — are in remote areas, but the Franciscans wanted to create one in the middle of the city.

The 42-acre monastery grounds lent themselves to the project; the property sits on one of Washington’s rare hilltops and feels almost Mediterranean. Its main building is a huge Byzantine-style church built in the late 1800s and modeled after Istanbul’s 4th-century Hagia Sofia. Its grounds include sprawling rose gardens tended by a 100-volunteer guild and the four-acre wooded hillside that is home to the hermitage. Although 20 friars live in the monastery, the property emphasizes aloneness, its design intended to facilitate contemplation of the inner self. (For the Franciscans, such contemplation ideally deepens one’s relationship with God.)

This website has many informed Catholic readers of various stripes. Thus, I would like to ask them to chime in as I ask one or two basic questions.

First and foremost, which description best describes St. Francis? Was he a “preacher” or was he someone whose ministry primarily focused on “contemplation”? I know some Franciscans and I have written about members of contemplative orders, such as the Carmelites. These are not the same ministries. The brothers in D.C., for example, describe their work this way, stressing that:

… 800 years ago, the Roman Catholic Church entrusted the guardianship of the Holy Land and other shrines of the Christian religion to the Order of St. Francis. This work has grown to include support of schools and missions in the Holy Land, as well as care for refugees and other needy people throughout the region.

The Franciscan Monastery in Washington, D.C., sustains this 800-year mission of the Franciscan Friars in the Holy Land through education, fundraising, recruiting vocations, promoting pilgrimages and providing pastoral ministry locally to religious and lay Catholics and to all of good will.

Also, it is rather strange to say that their spirituality focuses on the “contemplation of the inner self,” even if — the Post hastens to note the order’s narrow Christian vision — the purpose is to deepen “one’s relationship with God.” I thought that the primary purpose of self examination, in Franciscan and Catholic thought, was to lead to repentance of sin and, ultimately, to a state of thankfulness and union with a forgiving God. The goal, as the Carmelite abbess said, is the opposite of dancing alone.

In the end, I was left wondering about the purpose of this beautiful urban hermitage. This is a fascinating news story about a fascinating and timely subject. Still, I was left asking: Did the Post team get this right or not? Were the views of the Franciscans accurately reported or not?

Filed Under: Catholicism, People, Religion, World Religions, Worship Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Man prays in airplane aisle, for no particular reason

November 9, 2012 By

Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.

That was my first reaction when I saw several versions of this bizarre little story from the tense world of airline travel, especially in the skies around Washington, D.C.

This is one of those cases in which I really need to ask GetReligion readers to look at the whole story. Trust me, this will not take long. This is all of the CBS News item.

DENVER – A United Airlines flight from Denver landed safely in Washington, D.C. after its crew declared an emergency, reportedly because a passenger began praying in an aisle.

According to KUSA-TV in Denver, the plane was escorted by military jets after the crew declared the emergency. The plane landed Thursday at Dulles International Airport.

The Denver TV station says the crew made the decision because a male passenger started praying in the middle of an aisle.

United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy says a passenger on flight 662 from Denver to Washington wasn’t following flight attendant instructions for landing.

What in the world is going on here?

I mean, it’s pretty easy to figure out what is going on in this incident. Readers are, I assume, supposed to figure out that a man prostrated in the aisle during one of the five periods in the day in which practicing Muslims are supposed to face Mecca and pray. This is not the only possible interpretation of what is going on, but it is the most logical explanation.

The question, for me, is why the reporter didn’t simply provide that information. Have we reached the point where people cannot mention Islam in connection with security-issue stories, even when that is a fact readers need to know to understand an event in the news? Surely Muslims would not be offended to know that this man was trying to pray.

And then there is the issue of the jet fighters. Did anyone else want to know, if the crew had enough time to call for military intervention, how long it took for this incident to unfold? Why not simply provide a few words that give that detail?

As a Baltimore-Washington area flyer, I also know that another factor almost certainly played a role in this case. Was the airplane flying into Reagan International? If so, passengers are required to stay in their seats for the final hour of the approach. Did this man, while trying to pray, violate that law? If so, why did he stay prostrated after finishing his prayers?

Or did he stay prostrated? I suspect that he began to pray in the aisle, then the crew ordered him to return to his seat. He refused to do so and, thus, they called for the fighter jets. It would have been nice to have known if the man voluntarily returned to his seat after completing his prayers.

All of these questions could have been answered in, oh, two sentences. Why not provide the basic details?

Filed Under: Islam, Religion, Worship Tagged With: , , ,