Boooo! One-side story praising Halloween evangelism?

October 27, 2012 By tmatt

It would be hard to imagine anything more controversial, in the American of 2012, than the concept that certain sinful lifestyle behaviors can lead to people being condemned by God to spend eternity in hell. For starters, this would mean that the word “sin” can be applied to behaviors other than those judged intolerant by the editorial page board at The New York Times.

So, try to imagine my shock when I opened up my copy of The Baltimore Sun (the newspaper that lands in my front yard) and, lo and behold, there was a story on A2 about one of those “fright house” ministries that some conservative Christian ministries operate, for clearly evangelistic purposes, every Halloween. (Stop and think about this for a minute. Has anyone ever heard of a doctrinally liberal “fright house” operation? If there is one somewhere, that would be worth some coverage. I mean, what would the scary sins be in a Universalistic “fright house” ministry?)

So here is the shocker: This story was totally one-sided and biased.

What? What is so shocking about the Sun doing a biased story about a conservative Christian ministry?

I hear you. What’s interesting, this time around, is that the story was completely biased in favor of the ministry. This news report focused on a very controversial subject and (a) I would bet the bank that it omitted some of the most controversial details of this operation and (b) it contained not a shred of evidence that there are religious believers and nonbelievers who oppose this type of thing because they consider it — with good cause from their theological point of view — offensive and judgmental.

So this story offered a low-key version of the conservative side of a story linked to a very controversial doctrinal statement, in this day and age. It would have been a much better report if it had included the views of liberal Christians, unbelievers and, in this season, pagans.

What does this look like in print? Here’s the opening of this unusual public-relations piece:

Instead of a traditional Halloween haunted house filled with fog and ghoulish scenes, an outreach ministry in East Baltimore is offering stark glimpses into real-life issues, messages of hope and firm promises of help. The images portrayed at Reality House can be as haunting as any in a tale of horror, mostly because they are based on actual situations.

Within a 46-foot-long tent pitched behind the Patterson Park Library, visitors can check out scenes that depict social ills like drug addiction, suicide and teen pregnancy. The portrayals shed light on the consequences of poor decision making, according to Teen Challenge of Baltimore, a faith-based ministry that organized the program.

“This is about reality, which really can be scarier than any horror movie,” said Kenny Rogers, outreach coordinator of Teen Challenge. “This is the stuff kids live with in a society that is really scary for them. It doesn’t go away, like when you walk out of the movie.”

So what are the sins that are on display? There’s a seance. There are images of substance abuse, including references to alcohol and marijuana, and the tough life of a teen-aged single mother. There’s a row of graves “each marked with the deceased’s cause of death.” I would imagine there are some controversial social/political issues linked to those tombstones.

And the final message of hope? It would offend many, many Sun readers:

After about a 20-minute walk through the scenes, visitors exit the tent to see three crosses — emblems of Calvary — and to hear brief words from Scripture.

During a dress rehearsal Thursday, several neighborhood children approached the costumed actors, asking if they were real. … Belainta Crawford, 7, tugged on Christ’s beard and tried on a demon’s frightful mask before he matter-of-factly assured his 5-year-old sister, “He’s God and he’s the devil.”

Seriously, I wonder if anyone opposed this ministry operating this close to a public library. Is it on public land?

Before some readers freak out, I am not saying that it is always wrong for this kind of event to be held in a public place. What I am saying is that this is a topic that would — in many communities, and especially liberal Baltimore — cause fierce debates. So where is the rest of this story?

Does the Name “Theophilus” Violate the Establishment Clause?

October 21, 2012 By mollie

I got that headline from an interesting discussion at the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law. Odd question, right? Well, not so much. Before we look at the media coverage of the case that inspired the discussion, let’s quickly discuss the case.

The Nwadiuko family petitioned a New York Court to legally change their name to “ChristIsKing” — one word with capital a C, I & K as the start of each internal word. The parents are immigrants from Nigeria and formed the “Christ is Lord Evangelistic Association” in the 1990s. A couple of years ago, the father was arrested on the Staten Island Ferry for preaching to commuters and refusing a policeman’s request to clear an aisle. The mother was also arrested for similar reasons.

The major legal issue with name changes deals with the state’s interest in avoiding fraud or misrepresentation. U.S. courts have also recognized an increase risk related to terrorism. But when asking the state for authority, New York has given itself the authority to limit legal name changes “when the choice of name is bizarre, unduly lengthy, ridiculous, or offensive to common decency and good taste,” among other things. From Nawadiuko, 2012 WL 4840800 (N.Y. City Civ. Ct. Oct. 1, 2012):

The application in this case to have the family name changed to “ChristIsKing” … [should be rejected because i]t will result in person’s not holding petitioners’ religious beliefs to proclaim them when merely engaging in the common everyday act of calling another person by his or her name….

To permit this name change would be placing unwitting members of the public including public servants in the position of having to proclaim petitioners’ religious beliefs which may or may not be in agreement with that person’s own equally strongly held but different beliefs.

They give examples of how a government official might be compelled to shout out “ChristIsKing” at a court, a teacher might be forced to use the name of the child against his will, or an airport announcer might have to page the family during travel:

What petitioners are seeking here is in many ways beyond the First Amendment issues of [past Supreme Court cases barring religious speech by the government]. Petitioners will require persons who do not have the same religious beliefs as they do to be compelled to recite as a person’s name a statement of religious belief. In the United States we have the freedom of expression and the freedom to believe or not believe what we want, but we do not have the right to compel others to subscribe to our own firmly held beliefs….

The petitioners were asked if they would be demeaning Jesus’ name if they sinned. The court also worried that if the family visited Nigeria, they might be punished under Sharia there. So as odd as this case may seem, it does pose some very interesting questions about religious liberty. Even some people who thought the petition could or should be denied are highly critical of the judge’s Constitutional reasoning in this case. Others disagree with his appeal to Sharia.

Here’s the Associated Press lede:

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge has told a Staten Island pastor and his wife that they cannot take the Lord’s name in vain.

Here’s the New York Daily News:

Though shalt not take the name of the Lord as your surname.

As for the bulk of the stories, they’re just briefs and not full of much information. They certainly don’t bring up the Sharia angle but they don’t even provide balance or response on the establishment clause concerns.

This is actually a great hook for a discussion of all sorts of things, from the religious meaning of names in various cultures and the variety of different ways the Establishment Clause has been interpreted in lower courts to the influence of foreign laws on U.S. courts. I understand that the mocking approach will be taking by the tabloid press, but this is another example of how difficult it is to cover the variety of religious experiences in this country and religious liberty cases and their outcomes — big and small.

God-shaped hole in story on Hong Kong protests

October 15, 2012 By tmatt

Every now and then, when I a traveling, I discover another layer of torn-out articles for GetReligion review buried deep inside some pocket of my shoulder bag. It’s sort of like the analog, portable version of the gigantic digital tmatt “folder of guilt” in my email program that I open up from time to time.

You see, there’s just so much to write about and so little time. There are religion-news ghosts all over the place.

Consider, for example, that recent Washington Post story about the ongoing tensions between Hong Kong and its rulers on the Chinese mainland. There was no real news hook in this one. Still I appreciated the update, since I was fortunate enough to have attended a journalism conference in Hong Kong during the final days and, literally, hours before the 1997 handover.

As you would expect, I focused — in my writing for the Scripps Howard News Service — on ways in which that great city’s future unity with the mainland could affect human rights and religious freedom. Click here and especially here, if you wish, to see what I wrote way back then. The key, according to the people I interviewed in Hong Kong, was Article 23 of the Special Administrative Region’s Basic Law, especially the part stating that the city’s new leadership:

“… shall enact laws … to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition (or) subversion against the Central People’s Government, … to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies.”

Of course, to paraphrase a famous statement by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, during the apartheid era, one man’s street-corner evangelist is another man’s dangerous political activist. Anyone who has studied church-state history at the global level knows that governments often like to say that religion equals politics, when the religious believers in any way clash with the state. That’s a formula for conflict in the United States, as well. Ask Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Anyway, I was disappointed — to say the least — that the Post team included zero, zilch, nada, religious content in this story. Clearly, the goal of the story is to talk about tensions in Hong Kong about human rights. That’s clear, right up front, with its talk about protesters marching in the street waving flags “emblazoned with the British Union Jack.”

The number of people parading colonial-era symbols has been minuscule and doesn’t reflect any widespread hankering for a return of British rule. But, after 15 years as part of China, a population that is overwhelmingly Chinese and deeply proud of its Chinese heritage has increasingly come to view the rest of the country as a source of trouble, not pride, that needs to be kept at arm’s length.

Britain’s retreat from Hong Kong in 1997, which turned a “crown colony” into a “special administrative region of China,” marked a singular, triumphal moment in a historical narrative at the heart of the Communist Party’s legitimacy: only the party can “wipe clean the shame” of colonial-era humiliations and fully represent the national aspirations of all Chinese. Beijing used to denounce its critics here and elsewhere as “anti-communist” but now vilifies them as “anti-China,” an insult that turns any challenge to the ruling party into an assault on the Chinese nation.

What does this have to do with religion? That’s the question I would like to see addressed.

Why? Check out this crucial paragraph in this long news feature.

Promised a “high-degree of autonomy” by Beijing under a formula known as “one country, two systems,” Hong Kong still largely runs its own affairs, with the exception of defense and foreign relations. Despite growing complaints of self-censorship by journalists, Hong Kong retains a boisterous free press and has developed a booming niche publishing industry that churns out books and magazines on Chinese politics, largely for sale to visiting mainlanders who don’t believe China’s tightly controlled official media.

So things are going fine, except for those issues linked to “defense and foreign relations.”

Thinking back to 1997, that leads me to ask this question: When it comes to “foreign relations,” are the Chinese authorities starting to get entangled in relations between, let’s, Catholics and the hierarchy in Rome? There are plenty of reasons — millions and millions of them — for Chinese Catholics to worry on that front. And when it comes to self-censorship, how are Hong Kong’s other religious leaders doing these days?

The bottom line: Find me a land in which journalists are worrying about freedom of the press and I will find you a land in which religious believers have good cause to worry about religious freedom. The equation works the other way around, too (and more journalists need to ponder that).

So what’s the state of religious liberty in Hong Kong? Are any of those flag-waving protesters concerned about that? I’d like to know, how about you?

IMAGE: Inside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Hong Kong.

Define ‘evangelical’ … Give three examples

October 3, 2012 By tmatt

Late one night last week, while I was attending a journalism conference in Kiev, I plunked myself down in the wifi zone in the hotel lobby and pounded out a quick post about at topic that your GetReligionistas have been discussing ever since the cyber-doors opened at this here weblog — the fact that hardly anyone knows what the word “evangelical” means.

For me, personally, one of the touchstone moments in this debate was the day I spent with the Rev. Billy Graham — on behalf of The Rocky Mountain News (RIP) — shortly before his 1987 Rocky Mountain Crusade in Denver.

I wrote about that interview at the time, of course, and once again in a 2004 column for the Scripps Howard News Service (“Define ‘evangelical’ — please”). To understand where I am coming from, here is the top of that column:

Ask Americans to rank the world’s most influential evangelicals and the Rev. Billy Graham will lead the list.

So you might assume that the world’s most famous evangelist has an easy answer for this tricky political question: “What does the word ‘evangelical’ mean?” If you assumed this, you would be wrong. In fact, Graham once bounced that question right back at me.

“Actually, that’s a question I’d like to ask somebody, too,” he said, during a 1987 interview in his mountainside home office in Montreat, N.C. This oft-abused term has “become blurred. … You go all the way from the extreme fundamentalists to the extreme liberals and, somewhere in between, there are the evangelicals.”

Wait a minute, I said. If Billy Graham doesn’t know what “evangelical” means, then who does? Graham agreed that this is a problem for journalists and historians. One man’s “evangelical” is another’s “fundamentalist.” …

Long ago, Graham stressed that this term most be understood in doctrinal terms, if it is to be understood at all. He finally defined an “evangelical” as someone who believes all the doctrines in the ancient Nicene Creed. Graham stressed the centrality of the resurrection and the belief that salvation is through Jesus, alone.

I thought it was crucial that Graham thought this subject was a minefield for journalists, among others, and that he thought it was important to seek a doctrinal answer to the question. It is also, of course, important to note that evangelicals are found in a wide variety of pews, which means there is no one body of people that has the authority to define the borders of this particular niche in the world of Protestantism.

This subject fascinated me, as someone who grew up in the world of free church, non-creedal Protestantism (Southern Baptist, to be specific), yet has gone on a doctrinal pilgrimage that took me out of Protestantism into ancient Orthodox Christianity.

As my recent post made clear, I am convinced that the definition of the term “evangelical” (if there ever was one) has become more and more blurry over the years. I also know that, as a non-evangelical, I am not in charge of defining it. Trust me, I am clear on that.

However, mainstream journalists — for better and for worse — have to use this term as clearly as possible and, as Graham said, this means asking doctrinal questions. That’s the kind of journalism issue that we explore here at GetReligion, since this is a journalism site about religion-news coverage, not a religion site about any one particular religious body or movement.

In this case, the majority of responses to my post were irrelevant, focusing on claims that I was trying to say who is and who is not an evangelical. Thus, I spiked as many of these comments as I could, with limited wifi in Ukraine and a packed schedule as well.

Of course, it mattered that I framed my post as a discussion of whether “evangelical” remains the best word, or combination of words, that journalists could be using to describe a very controversial figure in the tense arena of Protestantism in America — the Rev. Brian McLaren. Thinking back to the Graham interview, I suggested that it would be helpful for journalists to ask doctrinal questions when writing about the emerging-church leader and offered three questions (the so-called “tmatt trio“) that I have used through the years in many, many interviews with Christians on both left and right. Thus, I wrote:

Let me stress, once again, that these are questions that — working as a mainstream religion-beat pro — I found useful when trying to get the lay of the land on disputes inside various Christian flocks, on the left and right. The whole point to was to get information about doctrinal basics and, in our era, these are some hot-button subjects in a wide variety of groups. The goal is to listen carefully as people answered or, on many cases, tried to avoid answering these questions.

Many readers thought that, with my three doctrinal questions, I was trying to define who is and who is not an “evangelical” — when the post specifically said that was not the point. What I was arguing was that journalists, like it or not, have to seek out doctrinal information when deciding when to use and when not to use religious terms that are linked to doctrine. I realize that some people define “evangelical” in terms of cultural niches and norms, but — as Graham said — you eventually end up talking about biblical authority and doctrine.

Why discuss this topic? Why not let the people in question self-identify themselves? Journalists often have to resort to that, but it simply doesn’t solve all of the journalistic problems that will come up on the religion beat.

As Timothy Dalrymple of the Patheos leadership team noted, in reaction to my post:

Some suggest that self-identification is the only definition available to evangelicals, in the absence of a Pope or a teaching magisterium. If a person calls himself an evangelical, who are you to say otherwise? Well, I don’t think that’s true. My Pagan friend Star Foster — not that she would want to, of course — could not simply decide to call herself evangelical and we would all have to throw up our hands and say, “Well, nothing for it, I guess. If she says she’s an evangelical, she’s an evangelical. Wish we had a Pope!” That would be ludicrous.

Another interesting response came from McLaren himself, in a blog post that — in many ways — got the point of what I wrote. He called it, “An interesting discussion, somewhat peripherally about me …” Here’s a key point:

I think it’s fair to say that Terry’s original piece implied that one can identify a bona fide Evangelical (or smoke out a covert Mainline Liberal Protestant) based on three questions:

(1) Are biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this event really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

(3) Is sex outside of marriage a sin?

Terry’s three (actually five) questions make perfect sense to him, I’m sure. I suppose a simple “yes” answer to each means passing the Evangelical test. But to me his test questions are too interesting to simply pass or fail. They are jammed full of so many assumptions that they defy a simple yes or no. … As I say in my new book, it’s very hard to understand a different paradigm from the outside.

The problem, of course, is that I stressed that my questions were (a) not about defining who is and who is not an “evangelical,” whatever that word means, and (b) that the goal is not to seek a particular answer, but to listen to what believers — on the left and right — say in response and to gain insights and information from their answers or even their attempts not to answer.

Thus, for example, McLaren’s statement — which he develops in his blog post — that my question No. 1 is actually two questions, that, “Are biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate?” is a different question than, “Did this event really happen?” is an interesting response, one that would certainly lead to some interesting follow-up questions by the journalist asking it. Ditto for “Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone?” being different than, “Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?”

In this day and age, asking these particular these questions often lead to interesting answers and interesting silences. That’s why I remain convinced, as a journalist, that they are helpful questions for journalists to ask when seeking doctrinal information to help them make decisions when doing journalism about trends and disputes among liberal Protestants, Pentecostals, traditional Catholics, progressive Catholics, the Orthodox, genuine fundamentalists, emergent whatevers and the stunningly wide variety of folks who gather under that vague, vague, vague umbrella called “evangelicalism.”

So be careful out there.

Blunt, messianic language about the Rev. Moon

September 2, 2012 By tmatt

I will be the first person to admit that I did a double-take when I saw the short, one-line New York Times front page headline — online and iPad, at this stage — for its obituary for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Evangelist, Dies

For a moment, I honestly thought that the old Gray Lady had identified Moon as an “evangelical.” Instead, we have to settle for “Evangelist,” with a large “E” for some unknown reason. Perhaps the large “E” is a hint at his divinity claims? Moon was his own evangelist?

The whole key to this story is captured much better in the Times headline atop the actual obituary, which has the kind of depth and polish one expects when a newspaper is writing about a 92-year-old world leader. This story has been in storage for quite some time now, in other words. That headline stated the key fact well:

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, 92, Self-Proclaimed Messiah Who Built Religious Movement, Dies

It is hard, I would imagine, to write the obituary for a messiah.

Thus, what is the key point in the story? That’s when it is time to back up that blunt statement in the headline and in the lede, that Moon was a “self-professed messiah.” Here is the key material on that score, starting nine paragraphs into the text:

In its early years in the United States, the Unification Church was widely viewed as little more than a cult, one whose polite, well-scrubbed members, known derisively as Moonies, sold flowers and trinkets on street corners and married in mass weddings. In one of the last such events, in 2009, 10,000 couples exchanged or renewed vows before Mr. Moon on a lawn at Sun Moon University near Seoul.

Such weddings were the activity most associated with Mr. Moon in the United States. They were in keeping with a central tenet of his theology, a mix of Eastern philosophy, biblical teachings and what he called God’s revelations to him.

In the church’s view, Jesus had failed in his mission to purify mankind because he was crucified before being able to marry and have children. Mr. Moon saw himself as completing the unfulfilled task of Jesus: to restore humankind to a state of perfection by producing sinless children, and by blessing couples who would produce them.

While many stories will focus on Moon’s famous mass weddings, the key is for journalists to clearly state the doctrinal and theological importance — literally the messianic importance — of those rites.

Jesus failed; Moon would succeed. This meant, of course, that from the viewpoint of traditional faiths, Moon was a heretic or worse.

“I don’t blame those people who call us heretics,” he was quoted as saying in “Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church” (1977), a sympathetic account by Frederick Sontag. “We are indeed heretics in their eyes because the concept of our way of life is revolutionary: We are going to liberate God.”

The Times story focuses on the many different elements of this controversial figure’s life, from religion to politics and on to business, real estate, higher education, the arts, movies and, of course, journalism (through The Washington Times and numerous other outlets).

But one more time: What about that claim in the headline? Here is how this very long and detailed piece ends:

One of the more bizarre moments in Mr. Moon’s later years came on March 23, 2004, at what was described as a peace awards banquet held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington. Members of Congress were among the guests. At one point Representative Danny K. Davis, an Illinois Democrat, wearing white gloves, carried in on a pillow one of two gold crowns, which were placed on the heads of Mr. Moon and his wife.

Some of the members of Congress who attended said they had no idea that Mr. Moon was to be involved in the banquet, though it was hosted by the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, a foundation affiliated with the Unification Church.

At the banquet, Mr. Moon stated that emperors, kings and presidents had “declared to all heaven and earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity’s savior, messiah, returning lord and true parent.” He added that the founders of the world’s great religions, along with figures like Marx, Lenin, Hitler and Stalin, had “found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons.”

That last sentence is a theological blockbuster, but the Times didn’t really attempt to nail down its meaning.

The Washington Post, however, went all the way on that point:

His stated ambition was to rule the world and replace Christianity with his own faith, which blended elements of Christianity, Confucianism and Korean folk religions. … To much of the outside world, Mr. Moon undercut his credibility with grandiose statements. “God is living in me and I am the incarnation of himself,” he said, according to sermon excerpts printed in Time magazine in 1976. “The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world.”

And then, later in the obit:

In fact, according to Mr. Moon’s sermons, Jesus also had spoken from the spirit realm and recognized Mr. Moon as the savior of humankind. So had Buddha, Muhammad and Satan, among others. Mr. Moon claimed he had found a wife for Jesus and blessed the couple’s marriage.

One must assume that these sermons are available in text and/or audio form. I, for one, would like to see the direct quotes that support the claims in that powerful paraphrased quote.

One other question lingered as I read these early reports (and trust me, I am sure that the second-day coverage will include more wrinkles): What did Moon say, as he grew older, about the messianic significance of his own death?

About Jay Grelen

July 28, 2011 By Bobby Ross Jr.

The powers that be tell me that I must introduce myself as the new GetReligionista.

Where to start? My name is Jay Grelen and, while I am not a religion-beat specialist, I may be the only reporter in the history of the journalism racket who has been ordered by a newspaper editor to put more God into a story for a major-market mainstream newspaper.

That story goes like this. As I was finishing up a feature I had written about a street preacher for the Denver Post in the mid-1980s, my boss ordered up a revised version of my text that was so specific the guy could have used it in his street ministry.

The young evangelist walked the 16th Street Mall in Denver, and he was a frequent passenger on the 16th Street Trolleys to Nowhwere. He was gentle, winsome, his brown hair longish but clean, often preaching but never yelling, and highly visible. A natural subject for the sort of people-centric stories that I prefer to write. So I visited with him over several days and at least one mighty fine fried-catfish po-boy (yes, in downtown Denver) and wrote a story.

As always you must when you write about God for a newspaper, you must be careful that you not include too many words about God.

So in telling the story of this apostle’s journey from his upper middle class home up north to his current mission, I was careful. Too careful, as it turned out. When my boss called me in to discuss the story, her primary question concerned one sentence I had written, which was that our young preacher had come from a church-going home but not a “Christian home.”

“How can that be?” she asked.

So I walked her down the basics on Romans and the road to salvation, virgin birth to resurrection, everything but quoting John 3:16.

To which she replied: You need to explain all of that in the story.

So I did.

What’s the point? In my 30-something years in the news business, since my antediluvian graduation from Louisiana Tech, I have found ignorance about things religious among my newsroom colleagues far more often than malevolence. Some co-workers have been hostile, which is not unique to the news business though more consequential; many more, however, simply are without a fact-based clue, which sometimes manifests as hostility in conversation.

More than one editor has told me that I put too much God in my stories, although none ever has redacted God once I had written Him into a story. (I still prefer to capitalize the pronouns.) You see, an editor who insists upon accuracy and thoroughness can’t very well argue that a writer should ignore the facts and language of faith if they are clearly part of a person’s life.

When religion is part of a person’s story, the reporter must note it. Otherwise the report is incomplete, if not dishonest. Facts are facts. Motives are motives. I should also add that never, ever has a reader of my work complained because I think that it’s important to “get religion” in news coverage.

My life and writing, of course, are informed by my life as a Southern Baptist — cradle-(and likely)-to-grave. I am genetically Texan (but never have lived under the Lone Star state) and grew up way Southern. My beautiful young adult daughters have enjoyed the same advantages — Southern and Southern Baptist.

I’ve worked as a reporter and columnist in a host of cities, mostly in the South, and I am currently busy on the copy desk of the Arkansas Democrat. The editors have approved me writing at this blog, but I will be avoiding — of course — critiques of my own newspaper (Hello Frank “Bible Belt Blogger” Lockwood) and others in the immediate vicinity. In other words, I remain active in the mainstream.

When I’m not writing, I’m riding a bicycle or washing driveways and houses with high-pressure streams of water. My mid-life red convertible is a 4,000 psi power washing rig in a little sideline biz I call the Bigfoot Storytelling, Sweet Tea & House Washing Society. (Think Charles Kuralt washes America and I do have big feet — size 14.) I enter the GetReligion family at the invitation of Terry Mattingly, whom I have known since the days he worked for the other paper in Denver (which, by the way, didn’t survive Terry’s departure and has since closed).

I had read tmatt’s work as the religion editor at the Rocky Mountain News for four years before I actually met him. In October 1989, Madeleine “Wrinkle in Time” L’Engle visited Denver for a conference; for a reason long-forgotten, Terry and I interviewed her at the same time, an interview I remember for having met two writers I admired. Not only does Professor Mattingly not remember that meeting as our first, tmatt doesn’t even recall that I was there at all. (Editor’s note: The reality is a bit more complicated than that and there is a tape recording of the session. ‘Tis a mystery.)

But I’m here now, with fresh ribbon in Mama’s old Royal manual typewriter, to join in pleading the case: Journalists who want to thoroughly and honestly write about real people and real events in the real world need to get religion.

The word “United” makes a difference

February 9, 2009 By tmatt

Churches are such complicated things.

If you look in the Associated Press Stylebook, the entry for the Churches of Christ starts like this:

Approximately 18,000 independent congregations with a total U.S. membership of more than 2 million cooperate under this name. They sponsor numerous educational activities, primarily radio and television programs.

Each local church is autonomous and operates under a governing board of elders. The minister is an evangelist, addressed by members as Brother. … The churches do not regard themselves as a denomination. …

Well, they also have colleges and universities, but that’s another issue. Anyone who knows the churches of the Sunbelt will also note the absence of the crucial words “a cappella.”

You see, this gets really complicated, as you can see on this information page that goes out of its way to state, in bold text, that:

The churches of Christ are not affiliated in any manner with the denominational church known as “The United Church of Christ”.

So what is the United Church of Christ? That’s a liberal mainline Protestant denomination that has been in the news for several rather obvious reasons in recent years. Can you say “Barack Obama“? How about “Jeremiah Wright“? And then there are those “God is still speaking” advertisements.

Back to the AP bible. On the page across from the Churches of Christ entry is another one for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) that notes:

The body owes its origins to an early 19th-century frontier movement to unify Christians. The Disciples, led by Alexander Campbell in western Pennsylvania, and the Christians, led by Barton W. Stone in Kentucky, merged in 1832. The local church is the basic organizational unit. National policies are developed by the General Assembly. …

Now this is another liberal mainline church, although there are many local churches — this is true in the UCC, too — that are quite traditional and even evangelical in their approaches to doctrine. It’s a congregational thing.

However, the Stylebook leaves out another piece in this puzzle that’s in the middle, which is a large cluster of churches that are usually called the independent Christian Churches.

What’s the problem? You see, the Churches of Christ, the independent Christian Churches and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) are all part of the Stone-Campbell movement. And to make matters more complicated, the Disciples have a history of close ties to the UCC, as part of the radically congregational wing of the ecumenical movement.

No wonder newspaper copy desks get confused. I am sure that we will get comments noting that I made errors in what I have just written (“Is the “I” in “independent Christian Churches” upper- or lower-case?”). It’s alphabet soup, with doctrinal and ecclesiastical spices.

Nevertheless, it’s important to try to get things right. Which brings us — finally — to the obits for the controversial social activist Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity. Several of the stories that moved at the national level made simple, clear references to this remarkable entrepreneur and activist being rooted in the “Church of Christ.” Here’s a typical reference, from the Houston Chronicle:

By the age of 29, Fuller was a millionaire. Success brought stress and tensions in his relationship with his wife, formerly Linda Caldwell, whom he had married in 1959. His wife left for New York City and Fuller followed. After long discussions, they decided to sell almost everything they owned and give away the proceeds.

In 1966, Fuller became a fundraiser for Tougaloo College, a small, church-funded and predominantly African American school in Mississippi. He soon moved his family to Koinonia Farm, a 20-year-old multiracial, religious commune in Americus, and developed business plans for the group. He spent two months in Africa with the Church of Christ.

Or the Washington Post:

In 1966, Mr. Fuller became a fundraiser for Tougaloo College, a small, church-funded and predominantly African American school in Mississippi. He soon moved his family to Koinonia Farm, a 20-year-old multiracial, religious commune in Americus, and developed business plans for the group. He spent two months in Africa with the Church of Christ.

With that vague reference, I think most readers would assume that Fuller was part of the conservative, non-instrumental Churches of Christ or perhaps the independent Christian Churches. But it’s hard to understand the man or his remarkable story without knowing that he was, in many ways, a man of the left who managed to motivate a wide variety of people, including armies of evangelicals. You also need to know this information in order to know why he was so controversial to so many people.

Thus, it matters that, in the biography “The House that Love Built,” you can read:

After much prayer and consultation, Millard and Linda took a bold step. … As missionaries with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and in association with the United Church of Christ, the Fullers would implement Partnership Housing in parts of Zaire.

Yes, churches are complicated. But the names matter, because doctrines matter if you are trying to understand the lives of the people who live by them.

Fuller was a remarkable and complicated man and, if you want to tell his story, it helps to understand some of the details of the faith that drove him.

Activists agree on means, but not on ends

July 4, 2006 By Douglas LeBlanc

by Doug LeBlanc
Editor, Anglican Voice

posted April 21, 1999

NEW YORK — Activists will press the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in 2000 to authorize Church blessings for gay couples, even as those activists debate among themselves what such blessings would signify.

About 200 people attended the second Beyond Inclusion conference held on April 15-18 at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan.

Like the first Beyond Inclusion conference — held in April 1997 at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif. — this year’s conference consisted of a few plenary papers and several smaller workshops.

Those who presented papers and those who responded with questions agreed that they should press on in their campaign for a blessing rite. The activists agreed less, however, on whether they seek a blessing of gay marriage, or a monogamy-free blessing.

The activists’ commitment to political action was most vivid during a workshop led by Kim Byham and Byron Rushing.

Byham, who has led Integrity’s pro-gay legislative efforts at General Convention since 1988, suggested that 2000 might be a time for turning the legislative cheek.

Legislation for blessing gay couples could easily pass the House of Deputies, but its chance of passing in both houses is “virtually nil,” Byham said.

“It might be a question of timing, about when we should cash in our chips,” Byham said. “It might catch the other side off guard, and it would put us in conformity with the House of Bishops.”

Conference participants were having none of Byham’s idea, which Byham said he raised strictly for the sake of discussion.

“We have always figured out a way to pray together and to vote,” said Rushing, a Convention deputy since 1973 and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives since 1982. “There is nothing wrong with politics. There is nothing wrong with voting.”

“I think we have to be stronger than ever, more courageous than ever and more direct in putting something before Convention,” said the Rev. Patricia Ackerman of New York, Director of Communications for Integrity, the Episcopal Church’s best-known gay caucus. “Marriage needs to be a right in more ways than one.”

“I think it’s important that we win this. I would like to see it in 2000. We do not welcome if we do not bless. It’s that simple,” said the Rev. Susan McGarry of Ann Arbor, Mich.

“This is not the time to go quiescent,” McGarry said. “The Right wants to make us Other so they can murder and they can kill us.”

Louie Crew, who founded Integrity as a newsletter in 1974, stressed that how the movement handles the debate is more important than the timing of a victory.

“I hope we will give compassion and love to those who disagree with us. I have met with the most outspoken of our opponents. I have not met one that wants to murder us,” Crew said. “If we feel they have done us wrong, they are already forgiven from the same source that we are forgiven.”

‘Not safe and easy’

Earlier in the conference, participants applauded suggestions that blessings should not, in the words of feminist author Mary Hunt, “limit our relational creativity.”

“For justice’s sake, we do not want to develop a model that merely mimics heterosexual marriage,” said the Rev. Dr. Renée Hill — Senior Associate for Peace and Justice at All Saints, Pasadena. Her remark drew vigorous applause.

“The issue should be access and choice, and not compulsion,” she said, receiving more applause.

“How open have our discussions been about the variety of lifestyles?” McGarry said in response to Hill’s address. “We’re really not talking about one way of living.”

Urvashi Vaid, Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, made a similar point during a panel discussion mostly devoted to broad political strategies.

“How do we make ourselves appealing when we really are unsettling to the heterosexist order?” she said. “We’re not a safe and easy movement. Our acceptance will require society to rethink sex, sexuality, patriarchy and family. . . .We can say all we want, ‘Include us, we’re just like you’ — but people hearing us know better, and we know better.”

The Rev. Canon Juan Oliver of New Jersey — a plenary speaker at the first Beyond Inclusion in 1997 — expressed concern that a blessing rite could denigrate other homosexual relationships.

“I don’t think we should be naive about ritual. The minute you enshrine something in liturgy, its opposite suffers,” he said.

Hill agreed: “One of my worries about making something official in the Prayer Book is, how does that become the master’s tool?”

Some critics of current marriage practices advocate that couples first have their marriage recognized by a government agency, such as a justice of the peace, then have the union blessed by the Church in a separate ceremony that has nothing to do with marriage licenses.

“We are constrained by marriage-ism,” Rushing said. “Clergy in the Episcopal Church need to get out of the business of being agents of the state.”

Mixed feelings on leaders

Both Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and the House of Bishops drew some criticism during the conference — but some speakers defended Griswold as well.

The Rev. Michael Hopkins, President of Integrity, said in a sermon on April 15 that being at the Lambeth Conference “is a large part of why I joined with the leaders of Beyond Inclusion and The Oasis in reacting so strongly to the recent suggestion by the Presiding Bishop and the House of Bishops that we take a break from voting on issues related to sexual orientation.”

Hopkins said that suggestion conflicts with a 1976 General Convention resolution that says “Homosexual persons are children of God and, therefore, have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance and pastoral concern and care of the Church.”

“I smell the closet,” Hopkins said. “I smell the Church reneging on its 1976 statement. This Church has had 25 years to figure out what calling homosexual persons ‘children of God’ means! I ask a simple question of the House of Bishops and the Episcopal Church: ‘What part of “full and equal claim on the love, acceptance and pastoral concern and care of the Church” do you not understand?'”

Juan Oliver said current thinking is that “either you fight or you’re nicey-nicey.”

“We should be prepared to redefine what it means to be good boys and girls,” he said. “I will not let anyone — not even the Presiding Bishop, not even the House of Deputies” make that definition.

“No one can determine what a good Juan Oliver is.”

Byham praised Griswold for his response to an open letter from seven archbishops (and a former archbishop), who asked the Presiding Bishop to bring the Episcopal Church into compliance with the Lambeth Conference resolution on sexuality.

In response, Griswold and all the members of his Council of Advice invited the archbishops to “come and see” how the Episcopal Church is “testing the spirits” on how to care for its homosexual parishioners.

“I don’t think it would have been possible to have had a better response to that letter,” Byham said. “It really was a brilliant way of calling their bluff.”

Comparing struggles

The Rev. Al Halverstadt Jr. and his wife, Susan Weeks, led a workshop on “Surviving in a Conservative Diocese,” based on their experiences in the Diocese of Colorado. Halverstadt is rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Denver.

Their workshop attracted participants from conservative dioceses, such as Dallas, Ft. Worth and Tennessee, but also from dioceses such as Connecticut, Indianapolis and Virginia.

A considerable portion of the workshop consisted of the same horror stories, motives-gauging and venting that occurs when conservatives compare scars with other conservatives.

Workshop participants complained about dioceses redirecting their funds away from the Episcopal Church Center, bishops using “shaming” techniques against vocal liberals and bishops who will not take a clear stand on either side of the sexuality debate.

Insisting on “the closet” (secrecy) for gay clergy is “screwing up our ability to spread the Gospel,” one priest from the Diocese of Dallas said in an angry moment.

Halverstadt eventually called on the workshop participants to see past their frustrations.

Halverstadt said he has celebrated ten blessing services for gay couples during his years in Denver.

“St. Barnabas has grown rather than diminished. A church in Boulder is going to do holy unions, and I can name two other priests who have done them — with the bishop’s knowledge,” he said. “I would like us to recognize that we can be a people of hope, and not get legislated into despair.”

Halverstadt spoke of “the depth of loving extreme,” which he defined as “being willing even to die for the other.”

“I think Beyond Inclusion simply has to do with the Cross,” he said. “Where do we meet the Cross in meeting with people who are different from us?”

“It’s a basic Christian responsibility,” said Katie Sherrod of Ft. Worth. “You can’t abuse your bishop and then expect your bishop to want to hear what you have to say.”

A quiet Alpha presence

Conservative and liberal tensions existed even in the location of this year’s Beyond Inclusion conference. St. Bartholomew’s, while affirming its homosexual parishioners, also is home to Alpha North America.

The Alpha Course, an evangelistic program in basic Christianity, came in for criticism during the 1997 Beyond Inclusion, and it bears an “Asbestos Alert” warning on Louie Crew’s comprehensive website.

Alpha’s central materials do not address homosexuality, but in one supplemental text, Searching Issues, Alpha Course author Nicky Gumbel endorses the idea that homosexuals can change their orientation. When Beyond Inclusion speakers or materials mentioned that idea at all, they rejected it as harmful, or as a tool of the religious right. (One flier, for instance, bore the title “The ‘Ex’ Files: Resources for Challenging the Ex-Gay Movement.”)

Roy Burrowes, a Beyond Inclusion participant and a member of the St. Bartholomew’s strategic development campaign, stood behind a table of Alpha fliers during one of the conference breaks.

Burrowes said no Beyond Inclusion participants had complained to him about Alpha. He added that St. Bartholomew’s adapts Alpha to the liberal urban parish’s ethos.

“We offer unconditional love,” Burrowes said about his parish, citing Jesus’ words in Luke 12 about the Great Commandment being the most important. “Preaching the sermon is one thing. Acting on it is another.”