USC Media Religion

WELCOME!

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Welcome to the website for the Knight Chair in Media and Religion. Our goal is to serve as a resource for journalists, including journalism educators and students seeking new models for covering politics, science, sex and gender among other key issues for the 21st century.

Key to that coverage is knowledge about religion, spirituality, faith and ethics. Commitments to these help explain why some people support political candidates for religious reasons and others seek biochemical explanations for spirituality. Why some men spend millions of dollars to film their religious vision while others submerge a cross in a jar of urine and call it art.Why some women dress modestly and others tattoo spiritual symbols over their bodies.

Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten predicted that successful newspapers would have more analysis and interpretation. That requires thoughtful coverage from knowledgeable reporters. We designed this website to assist all journalists, whether or not they're on the religion beat, to meet that goal. We post smart stories, useful resources, helpful ideas and, for students and educators, syllabi as well as book and film recommendations, and links to events. In addition to seeing what we've done, you'll soon be able to watch streaming video and (coming soon!) download our events as podcasts. In addition to content, we address media, too. Today's journalists work on multiple platforms, and the Web is a powerful tool for expanding and enhancing storytelling about beliefs and practices that may not fit into a traditional mainstream media pieces. (See the Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education for example.)

Here's what you will find on the site:

The Get: Need help writing about religion and (take your pick) politics, science, entertainment, sex and gender or the next big thing? This section has links to resources on all those topics. We'll feature websites, books, and films for starters. "The Next Big Thing" will take you to topics with buzz and "Web Work" will suggest resources and best practices for using new media. Under "Good Stuff" you'll find the best basic resources on religion, spirituality, ethics and values. If you have suggestions, please let us know!

The Scoop: What was smart (or not) about today's LA Times story on religion and Hollywood? Does Mitt Romney really have a Mormon problem? Why do we keep seeing faith versus science stories? My blog will examine BIG questions like these as well as some smaller ones: Which of the new "spiritual" television shows will stick? (Pushing Daisies definitely has the most hype, but is it the best? When will John from Cincinnati reveal himself? Who is the fifth Cylon?

The Story: We regularly post exemplarsand good readsto inspire journalists, students and visitors. If you find something that we should put up, send it in.

The Headlines: Since 2004, the Knight Program has hosted thoughtful and thought-provoking events. You will be able to watch the video or, in the near future, download the podcast of author and former lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend discussing religion and politics, the Jesus Camp filmmakers on depicting evangelicals, and scholars like Scott Appleby and Jack Miles (among others) on Pope Benedict XVI 's foreign policy options. If you live in Southern California or plan to visit, come to one of the lectures, panels and conferences we regularly sponsor.

The Classroom: Only a handful of journalism schools offer courses in writing about religion. But anyone can integrate a unit on it into a reporting and writing class. We've posted syllabi from the Annenberg School's journalism class "Sex, Hollywood, Politics, and Science: An Introduction to Covering Religion" as well as the Spring 2007 News21 class. You also can find syllabi for my classes on American Religious History and on religion and media. We hope to develop or link to e-courses and classes at other institutionsagain, send us your suggestions.

We're just starting so please email us with ideas and suggestions. There are already a growing number of websites and blogs that look at religion reporting and we hope to add to the good work they do by specifically focusing on resources for non-religion reporters (as well as those who cover the beat) and for journalism educators.

Welcome. Keep coming back and let us know what you'd like to see.

Pastor Dan is not alone

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Sam Freedman's recent Beliefs column on Pastor Dan raised the question of how, whether and when the web was or could be a rallying spot for religious progressives. Despite a lack of coverage from the mainstream media (MSM), a growing chorus of progressive Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and spiritual-but-not-religious folk are sharing strategies and ideas online.

In response to what they see as the misbegotten policies of the Bush administration and the religious Right, religious bloggers describe and enact an alternate relationship between religion and politics. As "Bob" of Iamachristiantoo.org writes. "For me my Christian faith demands my progressive politics." Bob and his colleagues at similarly motivated sites conduct a virtual roundtable on the day's issues. Some write austerely from an informed faith perspective, others blog passionately about religion gone wrong. They link to each other and like-minded communities, including rabbis at radicaltorah.org, Muslims at progressiveislam.org and evangelicals at sojo.net.

Unlike leaders of the Christian right whose media exposure made them celebrities, most of these bloggers are not household names. Although some like Jim Wallis and Rabbi Michael Lerner register on the MSM's radar, others prefer to operate below the surface. The "Faithful Progressive," reveals only that he is a lawyer in the Midwest and "Bob" writes he is a Lutheran layman. Still others, like Rachel Barenblat at VelveteenRabbi and Rev. Tim Simpson at PublicTheologian, cultivate a web persona alongside their "real" identity.

Bloggers like these ensure that much of today's liveliest debates and savviest commentary on religion and politics is online. Writing outside the MSMand free of its gatekeepersa wide range of contributors (pink, white and blue-collar, students, homemakers, clergy, people of color, Anglos, men and women) advocate, debate and organize around the crisis in Darfur, climate change and the 2008 presidential election. And despiteor maybe because ofthe MSM blackout, it's a growing and vital community. That's why when Daily Kos held its annual conference this year, almost all the Democratic candidates stopped by.

The blogosphere offers a new way to organize religious people into political communities. For better or worse, it plays to the traditional strengths and weaknesses of progressives. The blogosphere is grassroots and democratic, but it's also rambling, disorganized and undisciplined. You won't find talking points among the progressive religious bloggers, nor are there clear leaders. It's not a political movement that runs lockstep like the religious Right and there's no inkling it could be. On other hand, the web seems an ideal medium for the wide-ranging discussions, coalition-building and open- ended organizing that characterizes the left. This is a community in process made up of many different partsself-styled Heeb vegans and Episcopal deacons may not initially see what they have in common. But just as the virtual links bring small, once-isolated individuals and groups together so may subsequent political alliances lead to real world change.

Pastor Dan is far from alone. The genius of the web is that encourages many folks to join the conversation. The question is whether or not these virtual voices will develop a real world presence.

LOST and found: lived religion on TV

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Everyone loves a good story. We read everything from James Lee Burke to JK Rowling to Jane Austen because we empathize with characters who love, lose, suffer and triumph. Of course, many of our most compelling stories come from the Bible, and over the centuries men and women have read and recited it not only for its litanies of ancestors, esoteric wisdom or lists of laws but also for its vivid accounts of wanton violence, illicit sex, shattered hopes and unlikely heroes. We didn't need a movie to render the midnight madness of the ancient Hebrews dancing before a golden calf. Nor did we need a television mini-series to depict the evils predicted in the Book of Revelation. But great stories are Hollywood's stock in trade and in recent years, television has become the dramatic engine for narrativizing the moral, spiritual and religious dilemmas of contemporary North American culture.

Why and when did television supplant the Bible? Supplant may be too strong a word but television is the most accessible dramatic medium of our time. (Yes, the web will catch up soon.) Ninety-nine percent of American homes have television sets, and most people watch them. Moreover, Americans use the stories they see on TV to talk across racial, regional, class, ethnic and religious divides. You and I may not agree on the war in Iraq, but we can calmly discuss the social dynamics of Lost or the ins and outs of the presidential campaign in the final season of The West Wing. Likewise, we may be of different religions (or none whatsoever), but we resonate with the ethical and spiritual beliefs and behaviors that are emplotted and embodied on television dramas. (Did House really need to humiliate that kid? Did Meredith's near-death experience catalyze spiritual growth?) Faith, spirituality and ethics come across in dramatic intersticesa cop in the confessional booth, doctors debating a "do not resuscitate" directive or an elected official invoking God in a political crisis. Yet these small instances of what scholars call "lived religion" play a significant role in how we frame the spiritual, religious and ethical dimensions of our own lives.

Television drama offers a free zone to engage complex and timely issues. It's time out of timea regularly scheduled encounter with old friends whose problems seem as real as our own. In fact, many series in the post 9/11 world develop storylines and subplots driven by the most pressing issues of the day. What does evil look like (The Sopranos, Deadwood)? How do we live with death (Six Feet Under, Dead Zone)? How do our caretakers make moral decisions (House, The West Wing, The Shield)? What is a faithful life (Big Love, Lost, Battlestar Galactica)? Who will protect us (Heroes, The 4400, Saving Grace)? Weekly television dramaswith their unfolding stories, flawed heroes and heroines, and "ripped from the headlines" plot twistsoffer a window onto contemporary social concerns, and in many cases, the questions they invoke are clearly religious in nature.

Was Tony Soprano evil? Should he have died, faced judgment, repented? How many conversations did you have about New Jersey's conniving capo after the final black-out? Tony Soprano may not have made the world a better place, but his trials and tribulations led many of us to reflect weekly on meaning, morals and personal responsibility in today's world,

This fall a new crop of television programs tackle questions of meaning, morality and mortality. We've listed the new ones along with the old faithful. Reporters may want to look into who our newest heroes are, what's at stake in the new programs, and why we're so interested in the supernatural.

For a roundup of fall tv previews on the supernatural, see Fall TV Preview.

September 10

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Reporters and Democratic pols only recently found God, but after a long hot summer, the rest of us are back to guns and butter. According to the Pew Forum's "Religion in Campaign '08," voters are more concerned with the Iraq war and domestic problems than with "social" issues, such as abortion and same sex marriage. That may explain why Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are the current frontrunners, even though survey-takers rate them least religious among the leading contenders

And while many Americans are hesitant to vote for a Mormon, the Pew poll says they're even more reluctant to support an atheist or a Muslim. Mitt Romney received a standing ovation when he told a crowd that he was a man of faith. About that Mormon problem? Some of it has been stoked by journalists' trash talk, but a lot is just politics as usual.

For several thoughtful perspectives, check out the Chronicle for Higher Education on Mitt, Mormons and politics. (Unfortunately you'll need a subscription to read it.)

In case you can't get it, here's a sampling of what the Chronicle found online and in print:.

From Richard John Neuhaus, editor First Things: "Would a Mormon as president of the United States give greater credibility and prestige to Mormonism? The answer is almost certainly yes. Would it therefore help advance the missionary goals of what many view as a false religion? The almost is almost certainly yes."

From blogger Jarrett Kobeck: "There's an inherent hypocrisy to the debate circling around Romneyas if believing that Jesus appeared in the Americas is somehow more implausible than believing he appeared, resurrected from the dead, to that doubting fellow Thomas."

From Terryl L. Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (Oxford University Press): "Most ironic, perhaps, is the dilemma in which Mormons find themselves with regard to the community of Christian churches. After predicating their very existence on the corruption of all other Christian faiths ("I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong"), and asserting their claim to be its "only true" embodiment, Latter-Day Saints are chagrined when they are excluded from the very community of believers they have just excoriated."

On the other side of the divide, here's what the Democrats s said about their faith during the Iowa debates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7T-VMcl_10.

Most turned the question to a recap of their stump speeches. Only John Edwardswhom Pew respondees named as the most religious of the lotanswered with the sincerity that (one wants to believe) comes from an unscripted response.

September 14

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Covering holidays is a ritual unto itself. Food editors need new recipes for ham and pie; entertainment writers seek television/film/theatrical extravaganzas, and general assignment reporters pray for a priest/minister/rabbi or guru with something interesting to say. Not your plum assignments.

But Krista Tippett, host of Speaking of Faith, makes it look easy. For this Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year which began at sundown September 12 and ends sundown on the 14th, Tippett interviewed Rabbi Sharon Brous. Brous is the spiritual leader of Ikar, a Los Angeles congregation of mostly 20-year-olds. (Disclosure: I am a member of Ikar and I am not 20-something.) Tippett's interview moves gracefully between religion and politics, the personal and the political, the sublime and the mundane. Brous is a terrific talker, and Tippett keeps the conversation down to earth, anticipating the very questions I wanted to ask: what to do when confronted with Iraq, Darfur, climate change and global warming? Brous suggests we start small, reckoning first our behavior with friends and family. "It's all connected" she says, and then reminds us of L.A.'s 86,000 homeless men and women.

Tippett is an expert conversationalist. She is well prepared but also present for the encounter. And between the lines, you can hear stories yet to be done: 20-something religion, urban congregations and social justice, and the spirituality of progressive politics.

For a completely different experience, check out the heavy breathing in Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet's expose of Hillary Clinton's prayer circle. We've seen how most reporters handle religion and politics: you can watch their inane interviewing on YouTube. Joyce and Sharlet, however, have dug deep, writing an intriguing piece about Hillary Clinton's involvement with the Fellowship, an under the radar Washington prayer group.

Those who wonder "is she or isn't she" may be more confused after reading about Clinton's relationships with rightwing leaders. The authors write, "The Fellowship isn't out to turn liberals into conservatives; rather it convinces politicians they can transcend left and right with an ecumenical faith that rises above politics. Only the faith is always evangelical and the politics always moves rightward."

For anyone writing about shifts in American politics, E.J. Dionne's "The Liberal Moment" is a helpful read. Dionne does not address religion, but its role in American politics is implicit (as a linchpin in the conservative worldview and a question mark in a new liberal agenda) throughout the piece.

September 17

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Alan Greenspan's new book is having great play. The hookand a worthy one in these days of housing freefall and careening marketsis the current president's fiscal irresponsibility.

Faulting Bush for not exercising tighter budget control, Greenspan joins the list of former White House insidersRichard Clarke, David Kuo, Paul O'Neill and George Tenet, to name a fewwho have disparaged the president as soon as they can spell memoirs (and count dollar signs).

I'm glad that the truth will out, but why did Greenspan and the others wait so long to express their concerns? What did they say to the president when he carried out policies that were misguided if not downright wrong? Men and women who serve in government, especially in its upper tiers, have a duty to speak truth to power. That's the moral responsibility that accompanies political service.

Religion and politics? While the candidates answer fatuous questions (LINK TO MAHER ASKING OBAMA), I wait for all those in public service to answer a tough one: Who is your master and did you serve him well?

September 18

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Just who are evangelicals and what are their political goals? In the upcoming year, we'll hear a lot of speculation as a host of journalists, political writers and academic authors take a crack at the answers. The latest entry, God's Harvard by Hanna Rosin, debuted this week to mixed reviews (see New York Times and Buzzflash). Rosin's book is a closely observed study of Patrick Henry College, a training ground for religious conservatives committed to redefining American politics.

Over at Slate, Rosin and David Kuo are discussing the key issues that the book raises. . Kuo, an evangelical former White House staffer with his own book on politics and religion begins with two pointed questions: Are Patrick Henry students representative of American evangelicalism and do they really want to take over the world?

Rosin, a former Washington Post religion reporter, dances around the answersand for good reason. The news media paints the nation's evangelicals as a scary and monolithic force, bent on Christianizing the country if not imposing an outright theocracy. This is a great set-up for colorful, conflict-driven articles that quote Pat Robertson at his wildest. But is it good reporting?

As Rosin knows, and admits to Kuo, Patrick Henry is more a social experiment than a trend. Most of the nation's evangelicals are not planning a hostile takeover, and even the most gung-ho Patrick Henry graduates are mellowed by their experiences in the real world.

But scary hordes grab bigger headlines than small stories of regular folks whose faith leads them to staff soup kitchens, organize for labor reform or run for local office. Those religious Americans are trying to change the country, too. But don't expect to read the book anytime soon.

Will the Real Baptist Please Stand Up?

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

All the media brouhaha around John McCain: Is he or isn't he a Baptist, and yet so little attention to the Republican candidate who is the real deal. Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and second place winner of the Ames Iowa straw poll is a Southern Baptist preacher who left the pulpit to exercise "stewardship through public service."

Huckabee calls himself a "conservative who's not mad at anyone," which helps explain why he does as well with Jon Stewart (who wanted to know if he was really a liberal) as with "crunchy con" columnist Rod Dreher.

Whether chatting with Stewart or Chris Matthews, Huckabee is thoughtful, down-to-earth and funny. But he's forthright on the need for Christianity (tempered in some interviews as "religion") in public life as well as his opposition to evolution and abortion.

Despite his complexity (or maybe because of it) Huckabee has yet to win widespread media coverage. The Washington Post profiled him last month , but he's more visible onlinea favorite among right-leaning bloggers. Their elders may soon follow. James Dobson dissed Fred Thompson in a private email leaving Huckabee the last (real) Baptist standing.

Religion and Politics Saffron-Style

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Now that President Bush has imposed sanctions on the Burmese junta, the growing protests against the dictatorshipand the galvanizing role Buddhist monks have played in mobilizing public outrageshould get the coverage it deserves from the American media.

Until recently, domestic news outlets have provided desultory reportage on the first massive public protests in Myanmar since 1988. The demonstrations began in August when the country's military leaders raised the price of fuel 300 percenta devastating blow to legions of subsistence workers and the poor. But press here only picked up when Buddhist monks took to the streets. See, for example, today's New York Times article and Washington Post editorial. If you really want background on what's happening and why, you'll need to look at the BBC's coverage as well as clips from Asia and Australia.

American news outlets found photo ops when the "Saffron Revolution" drew thousands of demonstrators into the streets of Yangon, Myanmar's capital city, and other urban areas. But besides mentioning that Buddhist monks wear bright robes and are held in high esteem, there's little explanation of why they are protesting or the relationship between Buddhism and democracy. For that, see Professor Jay Garfield 's essay. Garfield, who is now at Smith College , argues that Buddhist moral and social theory are compatible with democracy, a position shared by the Dalai Lama along with Buddhist monks Thich Nhat Hanh and Thich Quang Duc. Quang Duc was the Buddhist monk whose self-immolation, on a Saigon street in June 1963, focused world attention on the corrupt South Vietnamese regime. Quang Duc's protest grew out of a long tradition of Buddhist activism against oppression. But reporters rarely contextualized his action within the political and religious dynamics of the time.

During the past decade, American journalists have seen the link between religion and politics play out in the Religious Right's incursion into presidential campaigns and the rise of values voters. We've also witnessed Muslims worldwide engage in various permutations of religion and politics. But as recent events in Myanmar prove, there are other, equally vital ways to understand what it means to do God's work in the world. In an article written last year, Australian historian Martin Stuart Fox explores how Buddhism interacts with politics in several Southeast Asian countries. His comments on Burma are prescient.

Given the escalating stakeson Monday, Aung San Suu Kyi was permitted to pray with the monks, the first time her detention has been lifted since 2003the coming weeks will be dramatic. What effect will Bush's sanctions have? Will the junta crack down on protesters? How will the monks proceed if they are successful (what will success look like)? There are many questions with few answers. But one thing is certain, religion is playing a key role in Burmese politicsand the process looks very different than it does here.

Red on Saffron: Burma Bleeds and Leads the News

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The Burmese junta's brutal smackdown of Buddhist monks and civilian protesters continues to headline American media outlets But for a deeper, fuller picture of events and the central role of the country's religious men and women, you'll need to track down international sources.

For the particulars of government raids on the monasterieswindows shattered by rubber bullets, religious objects in ruin, and monks bloodied and beatencheck out the London Times. At the Guardian's site, you can watch a monk describe the attacks on his monastery in Rangoon and then read about the junta's steps to seal off other Buddhist enclaves. For breaking news and a comprehensive context for the crisis as well as sidebars on everything from the impact of U.S. sanctions to the role of Buddhist monks in Burmese society the BBC is the place to visit. The Guardian also has "A brief history of monks on the march." Each of these sites links to protests on behalf of the monks in Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Australia. There's a lot more going on with the story than our American papers of record would have you believe.

Today's take home lesson:

1. American news outlets underestimate religion's public dimension and skimp on coverage of international news

2. Since most religious communities are transnational, events of a (relatively) small group of Buddhist monks in Burma can stir protest worldwide.

American news outlets are lost: How to cover news and still reap double digit profits? As journalistic competitors/colleagues around the world demonstrate, cutting back on content is not the answer. In fact, it's the problem.

Next for Burma's Monks

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Now that Myanmar's military junta appears to have quelled popular protest, and the daily news hook is the success (or not) of the UN's diplomatic mission, most domestic newspapers have given a journalistic yawn to Burma, running the story in the "A" section's hinterlands. (Important news? See coverage of Britney Spear's custody suit.)

That's too bad as key events continue to unfold, According to the Asia Times, the protest has revealed splits in the junta between hardliners and those who support a (somewhat) softer touch. Generals in the former camp may have been unprepared for the strong worldwide reaction against last week's crackdown. The capacity of new technology to collect and circulate information (see the opinion piece and photo gallery in the Washington Post by USC journalism graduate student Hanna Ingber Win describing the emails, photos and instant messages coming out of Burma during the recent protests) changes the political landscape in ways that some of the developing world's old-line leaders (or, for that matter, most American media corporations) barely understand.

Burma's old-line leaders may not have understood the impact of a wired world but, unlike many in the American media, they do get religion. Kudos where they are due, the New York Times did an admirable job of explaining the role of Burma's monks in the Sunday "Week in Review" section. The piece had a telling quote (unexplainedly buried) that summed up the pivotal role religion plays in Burmese politics. Political legitimacy, said Ingrid Jordt, professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, "comes from the potency and karma bestowed by the monks. They are actually the source of power."

This nugget explains why the monk's initial involvement in the protests galvanized their fellow citizens and why the junta's brutal actions against them effectively curtailed protest.

And what about those monks?

The BBC reports that 4000 have been detained and will be sent to prisons in the north of the country. Urban monasteries remain quiet, patrolled by armed guards. But the Asia Times also reports that many of the country's religious have been politicized by recent events. "After the military first assaulted monks near Mandalay, a new group emerged known as the All Burma Monks Alliance, which represents a younger, more radical segment of the Buddhist clergy. They have since urged ordinary people to 'struggle peacefully against the evil military dictatorship until it is banished from the land.'"

Back in August, when the protests began, the monks wanted the government to roll back the 500 percent increase in fuel prices (which, the Asia Times noted, had affected their alms collections). But now it's more than economic policy that the religious leadership seeks to change. We've missed this story before, initially underestimating the mullahs role in the 1979 Iranian revolution and the Roman Catholic church's centrality to Solidarity's success in Poland during the 1980s. (I won't even mention the Religious Right's political achievements here at home.) Maybe this time we'll keep our eye on the ball.

The Power of Love

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Timesonline has a absorbing interview with a Buddhist monk recently escaped from Myanmar. Speaking through a translator, Vida (who did not want to give his first name) explained how this summer's hikes in fuel costs took him from the monastic life to street protests. "We saw the people getting poorer and poorer and their troubles get bigger and bigger. We thought the monks could negotiate between the regime and the people and show loving kindness to both sides."

Now in Thailand, Vida plans on returning to Burma to topple the military junta. "They will not last much longer. The monks have the power of love but we need the international community too."

Does the News, oops the Universe, Have a Purpose?

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Usually a newspaper is just a newspaper. But other times, it points to something beyond its ephemeral self. Sunday's New York Times "Week in Review" is a case in point, encapsulating the problem of and solution to two of journalism's current quandaries. How to make readers care and how best to use new technology are the two biggies heading up most media managers' "To Do" lists. The "Week in Review" offered examples of both in-depth content and creative web workironically, it was a paid ad that did the heavy lifting.

The Sunday section was bookended by two pieces on religion and politics. On the front page, reporter Laurie Goodstein recounted the concern that some evangelicals feel about being taken for granted by the GOP. On the back opinion page, Jon Meacham used a John McCain interview to offer a civics lesson on the Founding Fathers' intentions. (Message to McCain: They were not establishing a Christian nation.) Goodstein's news analysis and Meacham's opinion piece were both accurate and intelligent as far as they went, but they don't take us very far. We've read variations on these for the past five, ten, fifteen years. At bottom, they're reworkings of the culture war narrative that dominates so much of our political and our religion-and-politics coverage. We all know what the problem is, who'll be quoted and how the ending will turn out.

But smack in the middle of the section, a two page ad, paid for by the John Templeton Foundation, presented a rarely raised (at least in the newspapers) problem, a host of unfamiliar voices and an indeterminate conclusion. (Full disclosure: I have never received support from the foundation. In fact, I'm turned down every time I ask.) By directing readers who wanted more information to its website, the Foundation demonstrated how new media could pierce through previously finite barriers of space and time to offer deep discussion on a range of ideas.

The spread reported answers (yes, no, unlikely, not sure, perhaps and I hope so) to a "big question:" weighing in on "Does the universe have a purpose?" a dozen scientists, theologians and Big Thinkers offered 250 or so words with the promise of more online.

Templeton has long averred that there are more than two sides to the conversation on religion and science. But despite funding academic research and journalism seminars, they've had limited success bringing that message to the public. In fact for much of the past decade, most journalists who wrote about the foundation's activities seemed to think it was a front for the religious right.

Now the foundation is trying a different tack, taking its new mission directly to the people. New media makes this possible, and my guess is that a lot of folks would like to read what astrophysicists, computer scientists, biochemists and philosophers have to say about purpose in the universe. Templeton reminds us that debates don't have to be reductionist. In fact, news coverage notwithstanding, most of us can handle (and in today's world need) a range of perspectives.

Science and Religion, cont.

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Intrigued by the Templeton ad in the New York Times "Week in Review," I decided to investigate which, whether and when news publications write intelligently, interestingly and insightfully about religion and science.

It's a few days old, but the best piece (okay the only piece) I found was in TimesOnline. Written by Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, it argues, "religion and science are like the two hemispheres of the brain, one analytical, the other integrative."

An elegant writer and thoughtful commentator, Sacks notes: "The current argument between 'religion' and 'science' is deeply unnecessary. It involves a caricature of religion and a parody of science. It is structured around a set of absurd oppositions between science and superstition, reason and revelation, knowledge and wishful thinking as if scientists and religious believers were incapable of realising the limits of their respective domains. We need both: science to tell us how the world is, religion (and philosophy) to tell us how it ought to be."

This may sound unrealistic to American readers who have witnessed the struggle between die-hard believers in both camps. Their take no prisoners attitude belies the notion of separate domains.

Yet, many other Americans may share Sacks' perspective. If so, another type of science and religion narrative might be in order.

If you've read an intelligent, interesting and insightful story on religion and science this month, please email it to us and we'll post it.

On a wholly other front138 Muslims leaders today sent an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian eminences worldwide. The letter calls on Christians and Muslims to find areas of commonality and work for peace. I'll be interested to see if the story is more than a one-day wonder.

Brain Drain

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Who knew that fundamentalists were wired differently? That's the argument made by Kenneth M. Heilman, a professor of neurology at the University of Florida, and Russell S. Donda, in the current issue of Tikkun. Heilman and Donda argue that the type of brain activity that promotes creative, open-ended thinking may not be common, possible or promoted among religious conservatives.

But the bigger problem is that Heilman and Donda's argument is based on one conjecture after another. Their contentions may eventually be born out by research, but in the meantime they make a lot of assumptions not least of all that fundamentalism reflects a less evolved brain.

"Do extremism and an unconditional adherence to religious dogma result from a failure of portion of the frontal lobe to fully develop, or if fully developed, to activate?" they ask, adding that some tests would suggest so. "This unqualified disdain for divergent beliefs, for personal interpretation and for creative theories like Darwin's theory of evolution, may indeed have at least a partial biological explanation: a reduced utilization of that section of the brain which has played such a vital role in humanity's creative advancesthe frontal lobes."

The reduced utilization of the frontal lobes, say the authors, gets folks "stuck in a doctrinal belief system" which is intolerant of alternative interpretations. Thus, cut off from the wellspring of creativity, fundamentalists cleave ever tighter to their rigid ideas.

As noted previously, much of this is speculative. But Heilman's and Donda's self-congratulatory tone turns a former metaphor into hard science: religious conservatives really are close-minded.

It's this kind of writing that perpetuates the notion that there is no neutral ground between religion and science. Even if further tests prove the authors right, there must be other ways to describe the mechanics of thought other than good (creative and questioning) and bad (rigid and absolutist). Heilman and Donda correctly note that IQ measurements, once thought to be determinative of intelligence, are now understood to measure one type of ability. We now know there are multiple types of intelligence, and the challenge is to nurture each of them.

Maybe Tikkun and like-minded readers don't want to see a third way to report on neurological breakthroughs. But it's time to try.

Seeking Spiritual America

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Late last month, Richard Prince's retrospective "Spiritual America" opened at the Guggenheim in New York City. The glittering array of sculpture, painting and photography, chronicling three decades of work, catches the shiny surfaces of America at its most banal: Playboy cartoons and Borscht belt gags, Sponge Bob Squarepants and naughty nurses, cowboys and cars line the museum's walls. (Here's an unauthorized look at the show.)

Reviews have been mixed; depending on how one feels about appropriation (Prince's stock in trade), irony (his longtime muse) and bricolage (his much-used method). But few have tackled what the show's conceit means to Prince or his audiencethat is, what, why and how might art have something to say about the nation's soul.

Some reviewers made a slight nod in that direction. Writing in the New York Sun, Daniel Kunitz wonders if Prince's "polished mirror reflect(s) something empty in the spirit of America." Likewise, John Haber, noting the irony of the title, finds it, nevertheless, "thoroughly dispiriting."

But there's little explanation beyond these embedded complaints, and the paper of record makes no mention at all of the rationale for the retrospective's title.

Thankfully, The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl lets it all hang out, noting the reference is to Prince's "1983 photograph of an infamous Garry Gross photograph, published by Playboy Books, in 1976, of a naked Brooke Shields, aged ten, her prepubescent body oiled and her face given womanly makeup. Prince applied the titlewhich comes from Alfred Stieglitz, who coined it for his 1923 photograph of a gelded workhorse's rear endto the work, to a show consisting of nothing else, and to the one off gallery in a Lower East Side storefront, that first hosted it."

Interestingly, the photograph is not given pride of place. In fact, it's a little hard to find, hung off the beaten track opposite a woman's bathroom. In the curator's notes, Nancy Spector refers to it "as a portrait of desperation," whichpimping a child's body as an intersection between innocence and experienceit certainly is. Still, as I looked (or looked away) from the image, I wanted to know more about why Prince had chosen spiritual America as an organizing theme.

It's easy to read into the exhibition. Photographs of Marlboro men, biker chicks, perfectly arranged rooms and sensuously displayed products reflect our soul's mediated desires. But the critique is a little too easyManhattan elite yet again skewers the massesfor comfort.

Perhaps reviewers take Prince's critique for granted: his work reveals the pretense, soullessness and dirty little secrets that make sport of our notions of a Christian nation. But I'd like to think there's more there. I'd like to hear from commentators who, understanding both art and religion in America, could say something, well, revelatory about this sobering rendition of our current spiritual state.

Seeking Spiritual America, part 2

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Late last month, Richard Prince's retrospective "Spiritual America" opened at the Guggenheim in New York City. I wondered earlier why so few critics addressed the religious aspects at the center of Prince's work: the commodification of desire, the sanctification of the ephemeral and the fear of mortality. But even if critics missed an opportunity to tease out a layer of meaning, the show easily could be widely seen (online and in print if not in person) and Prince's art is well-known.

Not all artists, especially those interested in spiritual America, are as fortunate. One of my favorites, Michelle Shocked, released a new CD last month that has received next to no attention. ToHeavenURide, Michelle Shocked 's new compilation, was recorded live at the 2003 Telluride Blues Festival. A mix of covers and original songs, gospel crossed with the blues, reggae and soul, the songs reflect Shocked's ongoing commitment to her Christian faith.

Shocked spoke with me about that faith awhile back. I wanted to know how a good old Texas gal ended up singing in the choir of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ,one of Los Angeles' biggest and best known black congregations. West Angeles has been home to Angela Bassett, Denzel Washington and Magic Johnson; it's a Pentecostal church with a conservative slantnot the place one would expect to find the free-spirited folkie-blues-rock singer and political radical. Shocked said she initially went to the church for the music, but when she found something else there, it became her spiritual home.

When we talked, Shocked was keeping her secular music career separate from her religious vocation. But when she discovered the Telluride tapes, made by a documentary crew, she decided she had something to share. "The Lord works in mysterious ways," she writes in a womanifesto, released with the CD. "Or at least that's been my experience."

If that's your experience, too, you my want to see Shocked on tour. She'll be traveling around the U.S. for the next few months. Let me know if you write about it.

Too Much or Too Little: Women and Religion

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Carla Power nails a major difference between Western and Islamic societies in the current issue of Time magazine. "What's decent to do in public," she asks, "display your sexuality or your faith?" Muslims have no problem praying in public whereas Westerners have tended to keep religion behind closed doors. On the other hand, we're comfortable baring body and soul to strangers but Islam defends personal privacy and propriety.

Power says the important lesson is that "Western societies are cultures of personal revelation and exposure, while Muslim cultures are traditionally structured around protecting honor and propriety." It's hard to disagree as far as it goes, but Power misses the larger point. The battle over public and private is largely fought over women's bodies, but the Western media's complicity in exploiting the female form makes the story difficult to report.

In the not-too-distant past, many Christians opted for plain dress and no ornamentationbelieving that worldly fashion was temptation, a path away from God. Many Jews, too, believed that simplicity was its own reward.

Times changein Western societies women's bodies now sell everything from soap to carsnot to mention newspapers and magazines. And religious women are now a market niche for high-end advertisers. Need a Hanukkah recipe or the back story on bagels, Jewish Living is looking for you.

So it's not altogether surprising that our news media fails to see why Western attitudes to the female body offend Muslims and objectify women. After all, the medialike the rest of the society, is market-driven. But what about in-depth reporting stories at the intersection of religion and gender?

I have the feeling that something's missing in this recounting of a rabbi's decision to defy the Catholic hierarchy. Rabbi Susan Talve is allowing her synagogue to host an illegal ordination of women priests. Is gender thicker than theology? Does Talve remember when her denomination ordained only men? What do Catholic laywomen think about a synagogue standing in for their own sanctuary?

When the Western news media covers women and religion, it's usually too little gets too much and too much gets too little.

Women and Religion, continued

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Two women in two very different but similarly devout societies hope to lead their countries. But divergences in how the news media report on gender, religion and the intersection of the two in their campaigns is noteworthy.

Benazir Bhutto wants to form a national unity government in Pakistan. Hillary Clinton seeks the Democratic nomination for US president and then the office itself. Both women have been in politics long enough to know how the game is played.

The first woman leader of an Islamic state, Bhutto was twice elected Pakistan's Prime Minister and twice resigned under allegations of corruption. In exile since 1998, she returned home last month to participate in national elections. After initially being willing to work with President Pervez Musharraf, she broke off talks after he declared emergency rule.

Bhutto says very little about religion, and press accounts rarely refer to her faith, her feelings about faith or the opinions people of faith have about her. Likewise, the press rarely focuses on her gender (with the exception of her last stint as Prime Minister when, according to speculation, her husband was behind any malfeasance.) Rather, coverage centers on her political machinations and the corruption charges that continue to dog her.

Hillary Clinton, current US Senator from New York and married to former President Bill Clinton, has made religion and gender central to her campaign. For months, reporters have queried her Methodist roots and how they contributed to her social commitment. Likewise, they have repeatedly commented on her pantsuits, her haircuts and her decision to skew hawkish to allay any concern about her soft, feminine side.

Now, the punditswith the Clintons' blessingare playing the "gender card," claiming that Hillary's opponents are ganging up on a girl.

Ms. Bhuttorecently released from house arresthas not yet played the same hand.

Mitt Hit

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Death knells in the New York Times ("The Evangelical Crackup" and "For a Trusty Voting Bloc, a Faith Shaken") notwithstanding, the evangelical "crack-up" has been greatly exaggerated.

With seven weeks until the New Hampshire primary, bloggers and pundits are bloviating about if, when and how the Republican front runner can mollify his born-again critics.

Pundits note that despite Romney's substantial lead in the polls, a recent Pew survey found 52 percent of evangelicals don't think Mormons are Christians. Therefore, they assume, evangelicals won't vote for onea leap in logic that overlooks the growing number of true believers who support Mitt and urge their colleagues to do the same.

Nonetheless, what's an election without handicappers? At TNR, Jonathan Chait explicates "the wrong reason to hate Romney" (wrong reason: he's Mormon; correct reason: his faith-based politics) while The Atlantic has Ross Douthat on the right reason to hate Chait (he's an ignorant secularist)

Michael Scherer explains why some evangelicals think "a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan" and Josh Patashnik talks to Mormons disgruntled with Mitt's tepid depictions of their faith.

There's a tingly frisson underlying all these pieces, as if the writers are spoiling for a fight: make Mitt confess he believes really weird stuff or reassure the public that his religion won't influence his ability to lead. One way or the other, they're saying, fish or cut bait.

So why hasn't Mitt done the speech? Byron York, in a piece that raises more questions than answers, says the candidate isn't ready to clarify what he believes and how those beliefs influence him (or not)

The challenge for reporters, then, is getting Romney to explain how Mormonism does shape his vision of policy and governance. Whether or not Mormons are Christians is a theological question that, while salient to some, is not primary to many Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist and pagan voters. But how Mormonism influences Romney's stance on governmental checks and balances, gender equity, and national security matters to the entire country.

Appetizers and a Main Course

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600

I can only imagine what the Daily Sun (Conway, NH) reporter thought when he asked Barak Obama which three historical figures he would invite to a dinner party.

But if the reporter hoped for new insight into the candidate's psyche, he must have been bummed. Obama picked three safe bets: Lincoln, Gandhi and Jesus Christ.

Since one of the glaring omissions of the 2000 debates was a follow up question to candidate Bush's naming Jesus as his favorite political philosopher, perhaps this latest Jesus citing deserved further explanation?

Or maybe not?

Chit-chatting at a dinner party, no matter how inspirational it gets, is a casual encounter. Following a political philosophy indicates an intellectual commitment to moral principles. One question is an ice-breaker; the other a significant piece of information.

If and when reporters find that religion is seminal to a candidate's philosophy of governance and leadership, let's hope they remember the seventh question in the journalist's toolbox: Why?

Spin Cycle

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Not everything that happens is newsthat's why editors distinguish trash talk from information the public needs to know.

Apparently the distinction is murky at the Washington Post, which printed a piece on rumors that Barak Obama is a Muslim. While it might be justified to run a story explaining why the rumors have traction, repeating reports of bald-faced lies is no different than swift-boating. Moreover, it's bad journalism.

But it is nice and trashy, and editorsaware that religion is the new sexprobably calculated it had reader appeal. Plus it's a lot easier compiling all those negative quotes than reporting a nuanced piece.

The real religion and politics story du jour is Mike Huckabee's ascension in the polls. I won't say I told you so (Will the Real Baptist Please Stand Up?), but voters see him as an affable guy whose conservative beliefs have been integrated into his life's work and political vocation. That doesn't mean he's above using his Baptist creds to woo voters (see the commercial and some analysis here). This straightforward (or some might say crude) appeal is interesting to parse, and EthicsDaily.com provides a good start.

Huckabee, like Obama, appeals to people who don't agree with all his policies. That's because both men seem genuine and comfortable in their own skin. (Huckabee's sense of humor also helps.) But the new commercial may alienate some newfound friends even as it seeks to shore up the base. There's a good story in there about how politicians and interest groups spin religion (Exhibit A: Mitt Romney's new quota on Mormon Cabinet members). But it wasn't the one in the Washington Post this week.

Emerging News

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Synagogue 3000 has a smart new survey on emergent Jewish communities.

The authors place this new developmentpost-denominational spiritual communitiesin the cultural context of social networking, NGOs, and niche marketing. Reflecting these organizing and communication trends, emergent communities target an underserved population by providing goods and services that speak to spiritual and social needs.

The Jewish emergent phenomena is part of a larger movement that has galvanized Protestants and Roman Catholics, too. Theological differences notwithstanding, young adults within each of these faith groups seek a deeper, more authentic religious experience than what they found at their parents' suburban congregation or mega-church. Their communities highlight tradition, spiritual practice, and social engagement.

In the Jewish world, 80 functioning congregations have sprung up in the last decade. Many are in the usual placesNew York, Los Angeles and Boston, but others are in Seattle, Lynchburg and Boca Ratonas well as Zurich, Sydney and Toronto. Their membership is predominantly young (under 40), single, and Jewishly committed (e.g. strong interest in marrying a co-religionist). Some attend rabbi-led groups; others belong to minyanim that are less formally organized. None are particularly interested in reviving the building funds, bingo nights and shuls with pools that characterized an earlier generation. As the survey notes, "Whatever they are called and whatever they call themselves, they all seem to agree: they tend to avoid the terms 'synagogue' and 'congregation,' thereby signaling their interest in differentiating themselves from previous generations' regnant forms of local Jewish community building.

There are lots of places this story could go: the sociological implications of a religious trend that spans different faith traditions, the importance of arts and politics to members, changing patterns of religious leadership and the possible death knell for denominations. But other than the venerable Forward, the media has yet to discover the news.

Romney Talks, Blogosphere Squawks

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600

He gave it, the press got it, and now pundits are grinding it up.

The Speech, Mitt Romney's bid to explain his religion and its place in his politics, seems little more than a looking glass reflecting listeners' anxieties.

Did he go far enough in defining a credible the nexus of religion and politics? Or was his take on the Founding Fathers misguided? Did he credibly explain his beliefs? Or did he stop short of full, or at least an informative disclosure? Did he model religious tolerance? Or did he project a narrow-minded attitude toward non-believers? It's all floating around the MSM and the blogosphere in what should be a religionista's version of the proverbial candy store.

Some of the more thoughtful analysis of what this story says about religion and politics can be found at Getreligion.org. The site has a strong, religiously conservative point of view but its analysis is worthwhile for that reason. It's informed and provocative.

Also noteworthy is the work of reporters at ground zero. Peggy Fletcher Stack at the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a strong wrap-up of Mormon reaction to The Speech by rounding up a variety of voices not heard elsewhere. Likewise Wayne Slater at the Dallas Morning News had a straightforward overview of Romeny's talk. Writing from the buckle of the Bible belt, he could have delved a bit deeper into evangelical reaction, but neither did he pander to readers.

As Getreligion observes, the sturm und drang glosses over the real question: what's attributable to theology and what to politics in voter reaction to Romney. Or, phrased a little differently, what Mitt's real problem? Other Mormons have run for and held high office (Harry Reid, for one) without provoking religious warfare. The problem may not be Romney's religion so much as the way he has tried to triangulate his Mormon faith with electoral politics and the conservative evangelical vote. Maybe we'll see more on that story soon.

A Cultural Revolution?

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Good news, bad newsCommentary's got both in a data-rich essay with just-begging-to-be-analyzed religious resonance. Just 15 years ago, note authors Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin, our nation's social stupor and moral decline seemed inexorable.

Now America's not only back on track, but our young people think it's hip to be square.

The rates of violent and property crime have dropped dramatically, the welfare rolls have shrunk, teenage drug use is down, abortions have declined, and educational test scores have risen.

Andperhaps most heartening to the authors, "In attitudes toward education, drugs, abortion, religion, marriage and divorce, the current generation of teenagers and young adults appears in many respects to be more culturally conservative than its immediate predecessors."

Problems remain. The biggest is that the traditional nuclear family is in free fall. The number of marriages is down while cohabitation and illegitimate births are up. Our educated elites have lowered their rate of divorce, but the rest of the population ends legal unions with ease.

The authors cite enlightened social policies and changing cultural attitudes as the twin engines for positive societal change. And although they never mention religion as a driver of policy and attitudes, it's fairly obvious to anyone who has read the news for the past 15 years that faith and values have been central to the recent policies and changed attitudes that the authors hail.

Which leads me to a set of questions:

How solid are these statistics? (there are no footnotes or citation to show where they're from.)
Has religion been a factor in changing attitudes on crime, abortion, drug use, education?
How has welfare reform worked and does it play a role in the growing income gap between rich and poor?
What about studies that show young people to be more socially tolerant on issues ranging from homosexuality to religious difference?

If Wehner and Levin are correct, the Clintonites and Bushies helped direct a cultural revolution, but it doesn't feel as if 100 flowers are blooming.

Religious Sites

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600

A casual skim of today's news sets the religionista's heart aquiver. Both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times are awash with the workings of spirituality, faith and ethics. Yes, the usual political stories abound: Huckabee and Romney still derail serious policy reporting with the is-he-or-isn't-he-thereal-Christian-candidate storyline (which is neither savvy nor helpful reporting on the intersection of religion and public life). But there are also features on religion-themed documentaries ("Kike Like Me" and "Hard as Nails"), the problem of holiday suicide, "miracle" babies (a gay couple's in vitro child) as well as an update on New Life Church (scene of two homicides last week) and threats against the high priest of the Church of Satan.

But today I'm interested in travel, and both papers have stories on religious sites. Together they show the importance of background and context as well as the Internet's potential for providing both.

The Sunday New York Times' Travel section piece on Tikal was a beautifully written, elegantly photographed introduction to a Mayan holy place site in northern Guatemala. Ethan Todras-Whitehill provides a detailed picture of the site (a ruined city of seven temples) and some description of the Mayans who now use it for their religious rituals. He even describes a rite that occurred during one of his visits ("an anti-Columbus Day held annually to show the world that despite all the European had wrought, the Mayan people were still there.") But he never explains anything about the religion that inspired the complex and that is currently practiced there.

This is a strange and glaring omission, and I wonder why an editor did not catch it. It would be akin to writing about a visit to Mecca without mentioning the role of hajj in Islam and the religious rituals that surround the Muslim pilgrimage.

Fortunately the Los Angeles Times does not make that mistake in its front-page story on a local group's trip to the Saudi Arabian site. Ashraf Khalil, the Times reporter, is accompanying members of the Islamic Educational Center of Orange County on their journey, which will be reported in an occasional series, and he does a journeymen's job in explaining the challenges of preparing for the rigorous trip. (He also provides good context on the pilgrimage's significance in Muslim life.)

For those who want to know more, the Times' website offers Khalil's blog (an engaging first hand account of the experience), video, photos and an interactive map.

Even if Todras-Whitehill pled total ignorance about Mayan religious traditions (though it is hard to believe his guidebook would be so remiss), his editors could have pulled in some information on the website (which does have a slide show).

The future of the profession is in its capacity to integrate context and background into the newsproviding readers with the ability to know more than a 20-inch story can tell. At its best, the Web makes this possible with glorious results. Last summer, journalism students at Columbia, Berkeley, Northwestern and USC did a bang-up job plumbing the possibilities. Their stories on religious sites had depth and breadth. (Disclosure: I was an advisor on the project.) Now it's time for newspapers to realize they can't cut corners on the future.

Happy Holidays!

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Back when I was reporting, I dreaded the annual Christmas story. Each December 25, I was expected to lead the paper with a fresh, newsworthy and compelling feature piece. The first few years, I approached the assignment as a challenge. But after pouring my heart into investigations of the Star of Bethlehem, the Christmas tree, and the December dilemma, I had little more to give.

What might have re-inspired me was not a possibility: a story on oddball Christmas gifts. I even fantasized about my own What To Buy For the Faithfully Irreverent Top Ten Christmas list. But since no editor would countenance such a piece, I bided my time until now.

Back in October, the ASC Knight Chair elves began cataloguing naughty but nice items to share. We hope you enjoy our top ten, ranked in no particular order.

10. For the parched of spirit:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/74380?GT1=10645

9. For those with ears to hear:
http://www.myspace.com/evangelicals

8. For those with eyes to see:
http://www.mormonsexposed.com/

7. For Christians to explore their Jewish roots:
http://www.heebmagazine.com/mag

6. For the prepubescent set:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/73270

5. For last-minute tree trimmers: http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/search/display.var.1869149.0.dr_john_is_a_mini_marvel.php

4. For the politically correct:
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6375

3. For the politically incorrect:
http://shipoffools.com/kitschmas/index.html

2. For the Big Man:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7146447.stm

1. For the rest of us:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3053006.ece

The Knight Chair web staff is goin' fishin' for the holidays. See you in the New Year!

Missing Opportunities

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0600

How and why do establishment gatekeepers decide what to cover and what to skip? My vote for 2007's biggest news story is what the mainstream media missed.

Case in point is a story that broke at the end of the year: anti-Muslim remarks at a Rudy Giuiliani house party in New Hampshire. The Guardian, a British news source, broke the story, which was subsequently picked up by several online sites (see Gawker and Wonkette). A few mainstream outlets ran with it, but Rupert Murdoch's minions (see the New York Post and Fox News) gave the piece most play and the main motif of that coverage was casting the remarks as politics-as-usual.

But anti-Muslim remarks aren't politics as usual - and shouldn't be glossed over. Why would major newspapers that published unfounded slurs about Barack Obama forego real news about actual slurs? And what about the religion factor? We've read countless stories about the evangelical vote, but the Guardian story shows that Giuliani's supporters may constitute an anti-Islam bloc. Isn't that constituency worth some copy?

I can speculate on the underlying issues at play. Many news outlets are unwilling to cover anti-Muslim sentiment in the American electorate. It would air dirty laundry and could lead to even bigger problems of legitimating prejudice and providing fuel to Muslim anti-Americanism. Moreover, it would be unseemly to suggest a potential presidential candidate has built a base of nativist support.

Yet Giuliani's covert rallying of anti-Muslim sentiment is more significant than Huckabee's evangelical surge or Romney's Mormon "problem."

Until the mainstream media decides how, why and what to cover at the intersection of religion and politics, thank God for outside observers, bloggers and the still-independent press.

Keeping Secrets

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Let others dissect the press' mishaps in New Hampshire, overall it has been a good news week: two provocative pieces shed light on politics and religion and, by extension, how journalists' cover candidates' beliefs.

America's piece about Tony Blair's conversion to Roman Catholicism does an admirable job explaining the former Prime Minister's decision to join the Church. It also notes the differences between the U.S. and Britain when it comes to public avowals of faith. "If you are in the American political system or others, then you could talk about religious faith, and people say, 'Yes that's fair enough' and it is something they respond to quite naturally," he [Blair] tells the BBC. "You talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you're a nutter."

Actually, a lot of Americans think you're a nutter, too, though it's become a liability to say so. Worse, many who should say "fair enough" turn religious commitments into a battering ram. Ever eager for a pissing match, reporters jump on these stories to the detriment of providing informative coverage.

Journalist Austin Ivereigh addresses this state of affairs, noting that the Blair was wise to wait until he left office to formally convert. If he had not, "[t]here would be a host of questions: How can a Catholic oversee 200,000 abortions a year, appoint Anglican bishops, oversee British experiments on embryos, approve gay marriages? These are not questions asked of Anglican, atheist or Protestant prime ministers, because public opinion assumes they are not beholden in the same way to a higher authority."

Ivereigh continuesand here's where political reporters can consider how they might have turned John Kerry's 2004 "wafer watch" into a constructive discussion of personal faith and political judgment: "It is one thing to call Catholics in public life to account: to question how Judge Antonin Scalia can be in favor of the death penalty or how John Kerry of abortion. But it is another thing to call them hypocrites. To pretend to know what choices faced them, and why they took the decisions they did. Politicians are not lackeys; they must govern in favor of the common good in a pluralist society. If a Catholic can only serve in a government whose every act chimes with his conscience and with church teaching, he cannot be a politician."

Noah Feldman tills similar ground in a New York Times magazine piece on Mormonism . Feldman never fully answers his own question: "What is it About Mormonism?" But it would take a lot more column inches on the Church's history, theology and acculturation to penetrate its peculiar place in the American psyche.

Feldman does provide insight into why the Church has a PR problem (its don't ask, don't tell culture of secrecy is ill-suited to the harsh glare of a presidential campaign). Feldmanlike Ivereighlooks forward to a day when voters adopt a broader understanding of religion and politics. "Today the soft bigotry of cultural discomfort may stand in the way of a candidate whose faith exemplifies values of charity, self-discipline and community that we as Americans claim to hold dear. Surely though the day will come when we are ready to put prejudice aside and choose a president without regard to what we think of his religion."

Though it has nothing to do with politics, and fairly little on religion, Dana Goodyear's New Yorker article on Chateau Scientology is worth catching. Goodyear waxes lyrical on the historical, architectural and pop culture details of the Church's Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. Jenna Elfman and Kirstie Alley make cameo appearances, and there's the requisite Tom Cruise citing. But if you have any interest in what Scientology is and what its adherents believe, you're better off looking up an old Rolling Stone story which, for my money, is one of the best sources for this secretive American sect.

Keep the Faith

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Imagine if you will a news story about the Anglican Church that does not contain the words "gay," "schism" or "Lambeth."

No, it's not the Twilight Zone, it's the Guardian. But the piece does seem to reflect another dimension. Amidst myriad Christian and Muslim efforts to make nice (see the stories on BBC and AP), the head of the Anglican Church in Europe proposed to ordain a Muslim convert to the priesthood in Turkey. The decision seemed likely to reignite anti-Christian sentiments in the secular state: over the past 18 months, Turkey has been the scene of brutal attacks on Roman Catholic priests as well as Protestant teenagers.

Six local churches barred the bishop from using their sanctuaries for the ceremony, but he performed the rite in a Calvinist chapel.

Sadly, the story is too short. In this era of interfaith sensitivity and political correctness, what motivated the bishop to persevere? Where will the Turkish priest serve (the article mentions that "his proselytizing activities have caused controversy"). And doesn't the Archbishop of Canterbury have an opinion? If the great challenge of the 21st century is the absolute conflict of religious absolutes, then this story is a bell ringer.

You wouldn't know it reading the MSM or the blogosphere. Both the hip and the hacks are knee-deep in Tom Cruise and Mike Huckabee. I am not dismissing Huckabee's challenge to the Constitution. But so far there's a lot more heat than light on the topic. Cruise's defense of Scientology is a whole other matter. Let him keep the faith, there's a lot more important stories to be covered.

Happy Anniversary!

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Marking the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion, news outlets rolled out their annual whither Roe vs. Wade piece. The Los Angeles Times focused on the young generation of pro-life advocates, as did the Washington Post. Many regional papers followed a similar tack (see Richmond, VA's InRich.com and the Worcester, MA Telegram.)

Almost as popular were the pro-choice opinion pieces with a sadder but wiser message: abortion may not be the best alternative but it needs to remain safe and legal (Los Angeles Times and Alternet.com.

Given the recent spate of pieces heralding the demise of the religious right, one might expect some questions about the relationship between the movement's pall and the growing popularity of its central tenet. Has the mainstreaming of the pro-life message obviated the need for militant spiritual warfare or did the Right fail to capitalize on its success?

Equally intriguing, most articles missed an odd coincidence caused by the announcement of Oscar nominees on the Roe vs. Wade anniversary. There among the nominees for Best Picture was a paean to teen pregnancy, the sleeper hit Juno. Is this an example of popular entertainment reflecting or shaping public opinion? Did we collectively will Katherine Heigl and Ellen Page to have their babies or does the pro-life argument look better now that the cute girls have come on board?

Another commemoration this week, Martin Luther King's birthday, was equally gifted by the news gods. Barack Obama's speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church evoked the vision and vitality of some of the slain civil rights' leader's most stirring sermons. Most news outlets covered the event, but I could not find any reports that truly captured the candidate's vision and the crowd's excitement. If you saw one, send it so we can post it.

WWJD: A gospel of frames, context and subjects

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Stephanie Simon's piece on the new monastics first made me want to smack her subjects. Then I decided it was Simon who needed an intervention.

The article covers seven months in the lives of five evangelicals who pledge to live as Jesus would. Their group home, cramped quarters that prevent much privacy or down time, is supposed to help them adapt to a "continually more modest lifestyle.' But the adultstwo couples and a single man, five children and, over time, two additional residents, could not agree on salad dressing much less guidelines for tithing, sharing responsibilities and helping neighbors.

Simon doesn't help matters. An undercurrent of snarkiness peppers her reporting, and the narrative focuses on the group's failings. Early on, she writes, "theirs was a radical vision, but also a trendy one," an odd set-up for a movement that100 small communities notwithstandingis hardly sweeping the nation.

Simon appears to have visited the Billings, Montana group several times over a year, and the piece provides a sustained look at its struggles. Despite seeking a middle way between individual yearnings and their communal project, the 20- and-30-somethings feel frustrated. The story ends with one family leaving the group home before their yearlong initial commitment is over.

In GetReligion, Mark Stricherz praises Simon's detail and nuance. The piece is rich in detail but Simon misses an opportunity to plumb the sources of the new movement as well as the faith that motivates her subjects. Krista Tippett's story is a more in-depth examination of the new monastics as is
Christianity Today's Both of these pieces focus on the successes as well as the struggles of young people seeking to live out a religious commitment, and they contextualize the movement beyond calling it a trend.

It's always good to see a major news outlet devote significant space to a story about lived religion, especially when the story isn't driven by sex, money or hypocrisy. But doing the story isn't always enough. It's also important to have the right frame, the best subjects and the requisite amount of background.

Lifting a Veil

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0600

The complex intersection of Turkish politics and religion was captured this week in the New York Times' coverage of headscarves. The big news is that the Turkish government will lift its 11-year-old ban on head coverings worn by university women. However, headscarves must be tied loosely under the chin (no burkas, chadors or neck-coverings), and the ban still holds off campus.

Sabrina Tavernese writes: "A majority of Turks see the measuresubmitted Tuesday to Parliament, where it is expected to passas good for both religion and democracy.

"Here the country's most observant citizens have been its most active democrats, while its staunchly secular old guardrepresented by the military and the judiciaryhas acted by coup and court order."

Tavernese correctly points out that the issue is far more complex than many Westerners believe. One of her sources, a liberal Turkish law professor, explains the ban is a human rights issue; it would be similar to forbidding Orthodox Jewish students from wearing yarmulkes to class.

Nukhet Sandal is a Turkish doctoral student in International Relations at USC and an opponent of the ban. When I emailed Tavernese's story to her, she responded, "The coin has two sides. In my country, apart from the headscarf issue, no one has suffered because s/he is a Muslim. We are all Muslims. However, many people died or were punished in some form because they were not proper Muslims. I am happy that they found a solution to the headscarf issue but I am still very much worried for those other issues."

Those other issues, according to Sandal, range from couture (wearing mini-skirts or short) to law (criminalizing adultery). She also noted that the compromise, headscarves that tie under the chin, permits only the traditional Turkish style. In other words, the government sanctioned option underscores the nexus of religion and nationalism.

Head coverings will be a contested issue for a long time to come. And it's not the first time that women's bodies are a battleground for cultural clashes related to political power, as domestic debates over abortion and family values demonstrate. But it is significant that local concerns now play out on an international stage. That means outside observers, journalists especially, need to understand that many issues are at stake and that few conflicts are simply black and white.

Come Back Jack

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0600

I'm not the only one wondering what happened to Jack Bauer. The Wall Street Journal wants to know, too. Now, thanks to reporter Rebecca Dana, we discover he's another casualty of the war in Iraq.

24, which debuted shortly after 9/11, captured a cultural moment. Jack Bauer was more than the hero we needed, he was the answer to our prayers. No matter what terrorists, drug dealers, and recalcitrant family members threw at him, Jack struck back calmly, elegantly and with deadly force.

But by the sixth, and most recent, season, Jack's strikes became harder to condone. In fact, his tendency to break fingers, shoot kneecaps, and administer pain-causing drugs to elicit information seemed uncomfortably like, well, torture.

Before you could say "jihad," senior U.S. military officers began criticizing 24's portrayal of torture, the New Yorker ran a critical profile, and Fox network executives fretted that the series supported the policies of an out-of-favor administration.

"Ratings dropped by a third over the course of last year's sixth season," Dana writes. "Producers would later experience trouble casting roles, once some of the most desirable in television, because the actors disapproved of the show's depiction of torture. 'The fear and wish-fulfillment the show represented after 9/11 ended up boomeranging against us,' says the show's head writer, Howard Gordon. 'We were suddenly facing a blowback from current events.'"

Jack needed some work (and not just to fix those bloodshot eyes). Since last spring, the show's writers and producers have argued over whether to give Jack a guilty conscience, a shot at redemption, or a permanent place on the dark side.

What's interesting (besides Agent Bauer's fate and the open question of his return) is the cultural debate implicit in the series' decline. Is it a referendum on Bush policies in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib? Are American viewers weary of the suspension of civil rights and the implementation of racial profiling? Have we concluded that we, as a nation, cannot countenance torture? Big questions like these often are better understood and processed through television story-telling than by newspaper reports. In the quiet semi-darkness of our living rooms, we can allow in the jarring revelations and unsettling epiphanies that leap too boldly from the morning paper.

That's why Peter Steinfels had such an interesting story in Saturday's New York Times. Steinfels reported that pollsters only ask Republicans if they're born-again. Then they can tell journalists the percentage of Republicans evangelical voters, and several news cycles will probe the significance of religious voters to the GOP. But since no one asks the same question of Democrats, there's no way to gauge the role of religion for those voters; the assumption is they are secularists or worse.

If 24 has cultural resonance, then some, maybe many, evangelical voters may be thinking about the ethical dilemmas in which we, as Americans, find ourselves. Maybe some will vote Democratic this year, but we'll never know from the news reports. We'll need to wait and ask Jack.

A Welcome Site

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0600

If you haven't yet seen Religion Dispatches, take a look. (Full disclosure: I am on the advisory board.) The organizing idea is to provide information and analysis on a woefully undercovered topic. In its own words, the site, funded by the Ford Foundation, provides "a platform for expert, critical exploration of religion in the contemporary world for a general readership."

Simply put, they've asked a lot of great writers to post on the issues of the day. Opining on religion's messiness, Jeff Sharlet reminds us that its role in public life can't be resolved in a column, "Journalists, editors, scholars, my comrades on the God beat: Please don't tidy up the narrative of religion in America to conform to the demands of the election season op-ed pages."

Sound easy? Read the coverage on the evangelical move (or not) to the Democrats' column. Reporters have spent the last eight years telling us that evangelicals are a conservative monolith. Now they're voting for Obama? How, when, where and why could this happen? Editors want the answer in 750 words or less.

Equally compelling is a post on religion and science by biologist Arri Eisen. ("I don't buy this whole battleground thingus vs. them, science vs. religion, evolution vs. creation.") And there's a wonderful/horrible piece by Shabana Mir on wearing a headscarf in a Catholic high school in the 1980s. (Sister Rose did not like it at all.)

Religion Dispatches is exactly what we need now: smart writing about a crucial topic. Think about it: is there a hot button issue that does not intersect with religion, spirituality or ethics? Whether writing about politics, the environment, health care, medicine, science or education, the religious dimension should mess up any hope of setting down a simple story. Instead, the requisite tidy conventions and conflict narratives are introduced over and over, and they repeatedly fail to provide the information necessary to negotiate a complex world.

Almost a century ago, Walter Lippmann wrote that the crisis of democracy was, in actuality, a crisis of journalism.

"Everywhere today men are conscious that somehow they must deal with questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand. Increasingly they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available; and they are wondering whether government by consent can survive in a time when the manufacture of consent is an unregulated private enterprise."

Religion Dispatches wants to make facts (and subsequent analyses) readily available. It's a crucial task and a welcome site.

Time Is on Our Side

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0600

The March issue of the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/current, once the site is updated to the March issue) has three terrific stories that tackle religion in the contemporary world. Each is smart, well-reported and comes to a similar conclusion: Time is on our side as the world grows smaller and more interconnected, religious extremism gives way to more moderate perspectives.

Alan Wolfe argues the case in an essay on the "coming religious peace." Borrowing a page from John Wesley, Wolfe quotes the famous revivalist's prediction about religious enthusiasms: "I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any true revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger and love of the world in all its branches."

In other words, material success leads to religious moderation. But you don't need to take Wolfe's or Wesley's word for it. A smart chart, graphing the findings of a recent Pew poll, illustrates the relationship between wealth and religiosity in several dozen nations. With the exception of the U.S., fatter coffers lead to waning fervor, at least among the rising middle class.

Eliza Griswold's piece "God's Country," a look at the conflict between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, comes to a similar conclusion via a very different route. Thick with detail and illuminating interviews, Griswold says that the religious conflict can mask deep-seated economic and political problems. Nigerians who once co-existed now kill each other in a desperate struggle for resources as much as self-esteem: "When a government fails its people, they turn elsewhere to safeguard themselves and their futures, and in Nigeria, in the beginning of the 21st century, they have turned first to religion. Here, then, is the truth behind what Samuel Huntington famously calls religion's 'bloody' geographic borders: outbreaks of violence result not simply from a clash between two powerful religious monoliths, but from tensions at the most vulnerable edges where they meetzones of desperation and official neglect where faith becomes a rallying cry in the struggle for land, water and work."

Walter Russell Mead brings this all back home, predicting in "Born Again" that American evangelicals are becoming more moderate and more influential. (Yes, he knows he is bucking the current journalistic contention that evangelicalism is dead or dying.) Mead sees the movement headed to a more mature phase that will yield political clout through compromise and coalitions. That, in fact, is one way of interpreting the splintering of evangelical support among Huckabee, Obama and McCain. Or, as Mead writes, we're beginning to witness "a more pluralistic and less strident movement, more apt to compromise and less likely to be held hostage by a single issue or party."

Reassured that things are getting better in this best of all possible worlds, your thoughts now may turn to a vacation, If so, the Atlantic has one more story on religion for you. Francis X. Rocca describes his stay at the Abbey of the Holy Cross of the Valley of the Fallen. The monastery, built by Franco, welcomes visitors. But the monks expect guests to adhere to their schedule, which includes more prayer, silence and potato salad than Rocca had bargained for. Rocca made do, but if enough readers pour in with euros to pile on the collection plate, those monks may moderate, too.

Sunday Morning

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0600

I enjoy reading colleagues who dissect the ways in which journalists write about religion. GetReligion grows more comprehensive by the day, and TheRevealer's snarky charm makes it a must. We, too, occasionally offer kudos and critiques on daily coverage, but just as often, share "found" religion that makes for good stories. These artifacts, events and phenomena aren't religious by definition, but they spark questions, reflections and insights about ethical and spiritual concerns: Who am I? What holds meaning for me? How do I make the right choice?

On many Sundays during my twenties, these kinds of questions drove me out of my cozy Greenwich Village studio and up to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). There, I'd pose my spiky, solitary self before the agonies of Guernica, the subliminity of the Water Lilies or the abstract mysteries of a Rothko and contentedly ponder.

This past Sunday, it was déjà vu when I entered the light-filled space of BCAM, the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) . I felt like a twenty-something experiencing a rush of happy panic in the midst of MOMA's delights. (According to New York Times critic Roberta Smith, my reaction underscores some of the new museum's flaws.) Smith's cavils notwithstanding, the BCAM collection, contemporary as it is, makes clear the historical relationship between religion and the visual arts.

That relationship, sometimes stated and often visceral, runs through the museum's three floors. From Warhol's iconic idols to Jeff Koons' reliquaries to Cindy Sherman's self portraits, the questions "Who am I?" "What am I?" and "What do I believe in?" faced me down. Damien Hirst's dead lamb and pinned butterflies helped me "see" the relationship between religion, art and science that three years worth of study had never made quite clear. And Richard Serra's "Band" reminded me how significantly insignificant (or perhaps insignificantly significant) I am.

For all its shortcomings (Smith points out that the artists are mostly white men more representative of New York than Los Angeles), BCAM offers an opportunity for awe and Aha moments! That's not a bad way to spend a Sunday morningjournalist or not.

Race, Gender and Religion

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0600

In a passionate online opinion piece, Kavita Nandini Ramdas asks when the Democratic aspirants for president use their outsider perspectives to address global problems.

"The next president needs the ability to demonstrate the inner courage and conviction that comes from owning his or her 'otherness.' As a woman and a mother Hilary Clinton could bring insights and perspectives no other President in US history could have brought to the negotiating table of war and peace. As the stepson of an Indonesian Muslim and the son of a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas, Barak Obama manifests what it means to be a global citizen. What is at stake in this election is not merely the historic first that would be accomplished if either a black man or a woman became the next US president. What is at stake is the fragile future of our shared world."

Ramdas uses race and gender to discuss how the two Democratic candidates could direct much-needed attention to underreported global problems. She cites, for example, "an epidemic in rape in conflicts from Nepal to Chiapas to the Democratic Republic of Congo," "the widespread murder of educated women in Iraq by religious extremists, and the fact that women own 1% of the world's assets while providing two-thirds of its labor."

I am frequently asked about the current coverage of religion and politics: Is there more or less? Is it better or worse? There is more on religion this election cycle, but quantity is not the same as quality. Quality goes beyond gotchas, conflicts and testimonials to explore how, where and why ethical concerns and spiritual yearnings come into play. Ramdas' piece suggests there are religious threads that underlie pressing problems of race and gender, and that the willingness to be an agent for change can be an ethical and spiritual commitment.

The question for coverage is how to turn these elusive threads into concrete questions for the candidates. Both Clinton and Obama have made much of their religious convictions. But can they be pressed to explain how these convictions influence their perspectives, and hopefully their actions, on global problems of race and gender?

Happy Easter

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

If a child has ever asked you what Easter has to do with the Easter bunny (there is an answer and here's where to find it, you can appreciate the difficulty of reporting and writing the annual Easter Sunday story. Reconciling popular holiday customs with the theological mystery of the resurrection is not an easy assignment. And trying to find a new angle on either end is all the more hare-raising. (My spell check hasn't failed me, it is an Easter pun.)

Unlike Christmas, where some levity is allowed, Easter isn't appropriate for breezy human interest pieces or top ten lists. But as I rediscovered this year, it can be mixed with tried-and-true genres, including the weather story, the business story, and the food story. There also can be interesting hybrids (such as the food-and-business story), topical stories (think of the environmental impact of all those candy wrappers) and stories that remind us why the religion beat used to be called "kooks and spooks." (Note Coca-Cola is a sponsor - "it's the real thing.")

Then again, for those with basic questions, the straightforward Q&A works well. The Times Online featured ten things you didn't know about Easter, and the first one had me. I didn't know that the word Easter comes from the goddess Eostre, who was associated with the Spring equinox and whose symbols were the hare and the egg. (Another derivation is the Old English Eastre, which means from the East.) And then I found a very helpful article that answered the one question the Times Online missed: Why is Easter a month earlier than Passover this year when the two usually coincide?

Of course, there's a weekend more of stories to comeand a goodly number will be on Easter. If I were an enterprising reporter, and wanted to pursue my own hybrid, I'd track the religion and politics beat. What will the Rev. Jeremiah Wright say about crucifixions, resurrections and new beginnings, and what might the Clintons, Obamas, and McCains glean on similar subjects?

Faith and Faithfulness

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0600

The Party Faithful, Amy Sullivan's new book is a must-read for academics, journalists and just about anyone interested in the recent entwining of American politics and religion. In lucid, elegant prose, Sullivan explains where we are today (or were pre-2008) with Republicans claiming to be God's Own Party while atheists, secular humanists and other others found safe haven in the Democratic party.

Sullivan begins her account of how the Democrats lost the religious vote in the early 20th century, providing colorful details about the emergence of fundamentalism, the rise of neo-evangelicalism and the sad case of Jimmy Carter. By 1980, the great migration of white Southern evangelicals to the party of Lincoln seemed a foregone conclusion. Pushed out by liberal causes and identity politics, once die-hard Southern Democrats were pulled in by the traditional values rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and his Republican friends. Unmoved by this mass defection, Democrats then ushered Catholics out.

At the nub of these shifts was the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe vs. Wade, that legalized abortion. Abortion would become central to the politics of the next three decades the beating heart of the Right's crusade for traditional values and the cherished prize of feminists and the Left. Sullivan argues that these sharp polarizations are fading: younger evangelicals see a need to address other issues, and many mainstream Democrats are comfortable calling for abortion to be "safe, legal and rare."

If Sullivan is right and Hillary Clinton's, Barack Obama's and John Edwards' ease with their own religiosityand careful formulation of their support for abortionsignals the faithful that the Democratic Party has room for them, too. That's significant because notwithstanding the recent Pew poll, which found number of Protestants and Catholics was down while the religiously unaffiliated were growing, evangelicals and Catholics can swing an election.

Reporters who want the full scoopwho did what, when, where and howshould read Sullivan sooner rather than later. The Party Faithful will provide helpful context for covering the next eight months.

Over at the New Yorker, Honor Moore has a fascinating piece about her father, Bishop Paul Moore, Jr. The piece is interesting because Moore explores the nexus of her father's spirituality and sexualityand how little she knew or understood either one. It is only when her father passes away that she comes to meet the man who had been his lover for 30 years. She learns from him that a sermon that had been pivotal in her acceptance and appreciation of her father was not at all what she had thought it was. On the night the sermon was preached, Bishop Moore mistakenly believed his longtime lover had died of AIDS.

"I had been at that service and it was during the sermon that night that I'd felt my father transfigured in the power of his preaching. It was also that night, years before the discovery of his hidden life, that, feeling the love coming from him as he preached, I had decided to accept who he was, to take the love he gave when he was his truest self, when he was preaching. Now I'd learned that my father had preached that night believing a man he loved had died."

Is it possible to read this piece outside the context of the current state of the Anglican communion? Or maybe it's simply a story of a father and child. I'm curious to hear what others think.

THE WIRE Gets Religion

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0600

When I first asked David Simon to speak in my media, faith and Hollywood class, he was pleasant, polite, and surprised. The Wire, he emailed back, doesn't draw on religion. Its dramatic cues come straight from Greek tragedy. No matter, I replied. Its themes, stories and characters are religious enough for meWhat is my responsibility to others? Can I make things better? Why am I here? What do I care about? These are the demons plaguing Bunny Colvin, Cutty Wise, Bubbles, and Jimmy McNulty. And Simon, a former colleague at the Baltimore Sun, is equally passionate about the questions.

I would have loved The Wire even if the first season wasn't shot in my old neighborhood. (How many times did I rewind just to see if that old grey building was really my house?) The series felt real in ways that highlighted the falseness of almost everything else on television. It wasn't just the street language or the mixed race cast or even the portrayal of urban devastation. Rather, Simon's approach had more in common with journalism than entertainment: he wasn't about to tidy things up in an hour (or 50) by allowing the good guys to win and making the problems all go away.

In its depiction of post-industrial capitalism, The Wire brings to life horrors that many would prefer not to see. Speaking to USC students and faculty this past week, (yes, he did come) Simon explained that this season shows how the media helps to obscure the view. "Watching a TV drama to get the truth, that's the real joke," he said.

Hour after hour, year after year, The Wire portrays seemingly intractable waste, corruption and ineptitude. It felt like it did when I reported in Baltimore, and it reminded me why I got out so fast.
What I didn't understand then, and what The Wire reminds us now, is that the problem isn't Baltimore, it's a society rich in religious rhetoric but surprisingly short on follow-up. David Simon doesn't have to put religion in The Wire: it's impossible to watch and not wonder what Jesus would do.

The Wire ends March 9, but its storylines will continue running in most of our cities. David Simon's soon-to-be classic series will be available on DVD.

Seven Up

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

No surprise that the Vatican's update of seven deadly sins is an incisive indictment of capitalismthis Pope, like the one before him, sees our economic system as spiritually corrosive. The new list isn't substantively different from the old one, but it puts a fresh face on some all-too-familiar abstractions. So pride is manifest as genetic manipulation and envy is morally debatable experiments; gluttony means too much money and lust is drug trafficking and consumption; greed leads to inflicting poverty and sloth causes environmental pollution; anger, well, that leads to violating fundamental rights of human nature.

Hedonism, narcissism, rampaging selfishnesssounds integral to the plotlines for a lot of popular entertainment not to mention the staple of the daily news. But rather than wrestle with what sin looks like in 2008be it on the campaign trail, the medical beat, the science corner, or the business page, many American news outlets made light of the story or relegated it to blogs. TV news favored the former solution and newspapers the latter

All in all, few American news sites carried comprehensive features on the list as did the BBC, Times Online, and the Sydney Morning Herald, to name a few.

Okay, the Vatican condemning sinful behavior is not a news flash, but the frame it providesspecifically, engaging the contemporary world in a collective reconsideration of systemic and personal sinis noteworthy. We forgive our peccadilloes all too easily, which is why the Vatican wants a wholesale return to confession.

It's early in the week so perhaps we'll see more on how American Catholics are responding to the new list and whether it can serve as an impetus to greater self-examination. It also would be interesting to tie this latest missive to the Vatican's recent pronouncement that gender neutral language is impermissible for the rite of baptism. (In other words, "Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer" cannot replace "Father, Son and Holy Ghost.") http://www.religiousintelligence.co.uk/news/?NewsID=1693.)

The Pope is waging his own culture war, and his sights are set on several American heresies. Whether or not individual Catholics are comfortable espousing a male-gendered Trinity much less copping to the 21st century versions of mortal sins is the question. But according to market theories of religion, the Vatican may be onto something. Religious groups with stringent demands and strict doctrines differentiating believers from outsiders attract more adherents than those that accommodate to the secular culture. Given the Pew Forum's recent findings about the precipitous decline in American Catholicism, the Pope may have the message right.

Sunday School

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Back in the day, my editors sent me to church every Sunday to see if I could find any news. I'd spend all day Friday working the phoneslooking for a Sunday sermon that might have some bite. Then I'd head to church and pray that I didn't have to write a story that had nothing newsier than First Baptist's annual offering for foreign missions.

I swore that once I'd established my creds, I'd never ever cover Sunday sermons again. The real religion stories took place Monday through Friday in classrooms, courtrooms, boardrooms, and smoke-filled backrooms.

Looks like I was wrong. The controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barak Obama's former pastor, suggests that my editors in Raleigh were onto something.

What they were onto was the gotcha storythe perfect storm of religion, politics and hypocrisy. They were hoping to catch a clergyman (they were mostly men in Raleigh during the mid-1980s) saying something that may have been heard one way within the church family ("There's Pastor Joe on his soapbox again...") and very differently when quoted in the newspaper ("That minister is a left-wing loony!").

Accordingly, the avalanche of stories about Rev. Wright's remarks raises three very thorny questions for the public (I'll get to the actual people in the pews later.) The first: What are we to make of black anger spoken from the pulpit? The second: What is the appropriate response of congregants (political candidates or not) to that anger? The third: Are congregants responsible for their ministers' remarks?

In a speech Tuesday, Obama offered a "Yes, but" response. He clearly criticized Wright's most egregious remarks, but he also recalled the pastor whose message of love, hope and courage drew him to church and helped him to become a Christian. He alluded to the distance between sermonizing and practice by contrasting Wright's fiery words to his respectful behavior toward people of all races and religions, "As imperfect as he may be, he is like family to me.... He contains all the contradictions--the good and the bad-- of the community he has served diligently for so many years."

News stories and blogs have focused on the third question, and many criticize Obama for remaining in Wright's church. Are the stories justified? According to surveys, many Americans believe that religious commitment is essential for political candidates, so it follows that his/her spiritual formation is fair game for reporters.

But apply the principle equitably and consider the context (Is this a political connection or an ongoing relationship?) When Mike Huckabee was still in the race, he deep-sixed sermons from his ministerial days and few reporters tried to discover why. Likewise, John McCain has been backed by the Revs. Rod Parsley and John Hagee, but their inflammatory comments on Islam, Catholicism and liberal groups like Planned Parenthood haven't stirred much comment. Hillary Clinton is a longtime member of two conservative prayer groups, but few reporters have pursued her ties to The Fellowship.

Bottom line: Is it worse for Obama to remain in his church home than for McCain to accept Parsley's support, or for Clinton to pray with a secretive, politically conservative group? Most stories assume Obama is more culpable. Why? The conclusion ignores a central fact of church membership: Few believers agree with everything their pastor says. As MJ Rosenberg writes, "He is my spiritual advisor not my political advisor." Insofar as Wright was an advisor to Obama's campaign, what was the substance of his advice for the political arena?

Question two asks, "What should Obama have done about Wright's remarks?" Obama first distanced himself from Wright's remarks and then from Wright himself. Typically, candidates say they don't agree with everything a religious leader says and that's that. But it hasn't been enough for Obama. That's because the key issue here isn't religion as much as race, which brings us to the third question.

Ezra Klein nails this with his observation about "normalized extremism: "The Biblical extremism of a rabbi or a pastor is an acceptable extremism (e.g. Hagee and Parsley), while the racial anger of Jeremiah Wright is disallowed."

White America is still not ready to face the legacy of racism, much less the ongoing anger of some/many African-Americans. As Michele Norris noted Sunday morning on Meet the Press, what was spoken in Wright's church was "not altogether different from what many people are hearing at this moment in churches all across America."

The irony is that Obama may well be a product of Wright's churcha political leader who has taken the legacy of anger in a different direction. But before accepting someone who wants to overcome the suspicion and resentment on both sides, we need to know more about blacks and whites are thinking, feeling and experiencing. Tracking that story would mean more than sifting through a few Sunday sermons, but it would be key to understanding race, religion and politics in the 21st century.

[Check out Election 2008, USC's "Special Resource for Journalists" for more on this issue.]

Losing Their Religion

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

How great to drive to work Monday and catch Morning Edition's interview with REM. The seven-plus minute feature (with extras online) was tagged to the release of the band's 14th album, Accelerate.
After a promising tease, "the rock group REM isn't exactly religious but religious themes keep creeping into their lyrics," lead vocalist Michael Stipe confessed that he came from a long line of Methodist ministers, and guitarist Peter Buck added that as Southerners they "swim in a sea of faith." (What next I wondered: Would this explain their 1991 hit "Losing My Religion?")

Host Steve Inskeep tried to stay on point, asking about the lyrics of "Houston," a song Stipe wrote about the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and "Living Well is the Best Revenge," the new CD's opening track. (I had attributed the aphorism to F. Scott Fitzgerald but turns out he got it from George Herbert, the 17th century Welsh poet and priest, which does turn things around.) But either Inskeep didn't push hard enough or the band didn't want to go very deep. So instead we learned Stipe thinks the Religious Right has twisted religion, that Buck comes from a long line of non-believers and that bassist and keyboardist Michael Mills attended church because he liked the music (actually those two last ones were online revelations.)

Don't misunderstand, I liked the segment, I stayed in my car just to hear it all. But why the disconnect between the intent and the actuality? (The story is headlined, "REM Tackles Songs of Faith and Revenge.") That Stipe believes the Right misuses religion and that our national response to Katrina wasn't very Christian isn't new news the band has been among the most politically progressive, activist and outspoken for years. I wanted to know what happened when he ended that line of Methodist ministers, what Buck meant by "swimming in a sea of faith" (and how it affects their music) and which churches Mills visited most (and why).

I did learn what "Losing My Religion" was about but for that I had to go to Wikipedia. Remember all the religious imagery in the music video (angels, Hindu deities and Tevyes)? Turns out it was just poetic license. Stipe said the phrase referred to losing one's temper and that the song is about unrequited love. Maybe the group's been doing bait and switch on the religion angle for awhile.

Sunday Sermonizing

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Two types of stories emerged in the wake of Barack Obama's March 18 speech on race, religion and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. One focuses on politics, the other on religion. Guess which gets more attention?

Data from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press indicates that the speech "is arguably the biggest political event of the campaign thus far" with 85% of the public saying they've heard something about it. Many voters disliked Wright's remarks but their feelings about the pastor did not affect their support for Obama, a finding corroborated by other polls. So if nothing really changed, why is this still a story? Probably because the tangled web of race, religion and politics is too good for media and the blogosphere to give up especially when candidate Clinton is happy to keep it alive.

By comparison, the religion story is still developing. In many churches and synagogues, Obama's speech inspired sermons, meetings and discussions about race. In some instances, the focus is homileticsand where Wright's sermons fit in the tradition of African American preaching. According to the Chicago Tribune, "while the rhetoric may come across as harsh, experts say its goal is to convince bitter skeptics that reconciliation is indeed possible." In San Francisco, pastors across religious, political and racial lines said Obama's speech "offered an opportunity to be open to others' experiences without automatically triggering the shame, guilt and strife such conversations usually entail." And during a meeting of black ministers in Fort Worth, Wright was praised because he "dared to unwrap the flag from the cross." (Another fascinating take on the speech and, by extension Wright's words, was a Washington Times article on the generation gap among African Americans)

These themes reflect realities that don't usually make page one or get airtime on the evening news. The San Francisco story includes perspectives on race from an Asian church, the Forth Worth piece tackled theology, and the Chicago article went deep into the prophetic tradition in African American preaching. In each case, reporters are lifting up examples of how faith, belief and practices intersect with daily experiences and, by extension, enable churchgoers to consider the role of race in American politics and their own lives.

For many white Americans, especially in Southern churches, there's a feeling of déjà vu. When northern and southern Presbyterians, split since 1861, reunited in 1983, confronting racism was part of the process. Twelve years later, when the Southern Baptist Convention 'repented of racism," members sought to confront an unhappy legacy. But it's one thing to apologize for racism at a time, place and manner of your own choosing. It's another to thing to begin a discussion when the oppressed start the dialogue.

Obama's speech is a milestone, whether it represents the end of his campaign, the beginning of his presidency or the state of race relations in the 21st century. It also offers a historic opportunity for American religious groups, one that deserves continued coverage.

TGIF

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500

For two years I've taught a class called Religion, Media and Hollywood: Faith in TV that explores the ways in which television dramas embody lived religion. Lived religion encompasses the daily practices of faith and belief, and according to religion scholar Robert Orsi, it "cannot be separated from other practices of everyday life, from the ways human do other necessary and important things or form other cultural structures and discourses (legal, political, medical and so on. Nor can sacred spaces be understood in isolation from the places where these things are done (workplaces, hospitals, law courts, homes and streets) from the media used to them, or from the relationships constructed around them."

Television dramas provide a window onto lived religion because their legal dilemmas, medical quandaries, and familial tribulations occur within long narratives arcs that permit us to develop relationships with characters. Their stories instruct, inform and inspire. When Jack Bauer tortures his own brother, we know his moral corehoned through sacrifice, suffering and uncompromising loyaltyremains intact. When Gregory House announces that he is God in the Princeton-Plainsboro hospital, we understand that his subsequent suspension of conventional medical ethics will be a desperate bid to save a dying patient. And when Grace Hanadarko strips down for yet another round of meaningless sex, we apprehend her struggle to overcome a childhood that ended with her priest's caress.

Very few people think that television has any religious meaning (unless you count televangelists, televised stories and the odd PBS documentary). But that's because they're not paying attention to how, what and why they watch. Even as growing numbers of Americans question traditional religion, the desire to find meaning, feel connected, and experience wonder remains. So, too, does the instinct to revel in stories that lay out our lives in larger-than-life dimensions. For this reason, I suspect the Bible stories, like many of our own most resonant narratives, were ripped from the headlines, and why television has become our society's central storyteller.

Which brings me to Battlestar Galactica. I am amazed that so few students have watched it (much less grownups). But I assure them that once they get over the cheesy name and the sci-fi label, they will be hooked. This is a show that tackles religion and politics head-on, upside down and in-between. From its initial premisemonotheistic robots decide that polytheistic humans have lost God's favor and deserve to dieto its questioning the morality of waterboarding, suicide bombing and cultural annihilation, BSG tackles the ripped-from-the-headlines stories that most series don't dare touch.

After a year-long hiatus, the series returns April 4 for its final season. Looming large are questions including: What constitutes being human? Whom can we trust? How do we create a just and peaceable society? In what can we believe? (And that's leaving aside the more basic issues of sex, power and who has the biggest guns.)

For newcomers and returnees, Salon had a great introduction and a helpful recap. Wired also welcomed BSG back as did newspapers nationwide from Los Angeles to New York.

If you want more than a 750-word story, check out "BSG 2007: The Politics, Poetics and Philosophy of Battlestar Galactica," a one day symposium, whose papers you can access through Google Scholar. Or the Battlestar wiki for in depth scoop on plot, characters, religion and culture. Or the scores of fan sites where presequels, sequels, new myths, romances, games, and videos delve deep into the mysteries, battles and sexual entanglements that the series doesn't have time (or probably the inclination) to develop.

Battlestar Galactica takes religion seriously. Not in the nicey-nice, New Age Touched by an Angel way or the X-Files woo-woo, something's out there, supernatural style. Rather, in BSG, belief, faith, conviction are front and center for a people who have lived through a holocaust and are seeking a promised land. On the way, they encounter false prophets, great temptations, merciless enemies and their own short-sighted, stiff-necked, self-absorbed arrogance.

Sounds like a good story to me.

To hear executive producer Ron Moore's talk to my class, click here.

ABCs

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In the April issue of First Things, Edward C. Green and Allison Herling Ruark offer their own journalistic intervention. In "AIDS and the Churches: Getting the StoryRight," Green, a medical anthropologist who directs the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and Ruark, a research fellow there, offer a withering critique of a 2007 Georgetown University report on the churches' response to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

According to Green and Ruark, the problematic report, "Faith Communities Engage the HIV/AIDS Crisis," is significant because it "reflects the thinking of many international organizations, including many of the faith-based organizations that respond to AIDS. This thinking is often drastically out of sync with the culture and the values of the beneficiaries. The Georgetown report claims to explore "development issues from the perspective of faith institutions, but in fact this report betrays a deep ambivalence about whether faith communities, particularly Christian churches, are part of the problem or part of the solution to AIDS."

The article cites evidence that supports the efficacy of the ABC strategy (see Avert.org and USAid.gov) ) in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi among other nations. It also challenges "politically correct" assumptions that cite systemic problemssuch as gender inequity, political instability, economic hardshipsas a significant factor in the spread of AIDS in poor countries as opposed to applying "old-fashioned" (a.k.a. politically incorrect and religiously conservative) remedies that call for "sexual responsibility, behavior change and morally based messages." Or as the authors neatly sum up, "What the churches are called to do by their theology turns out to be what works best in AIDS prevention."

I'm an agnostic in this realm: I don't know enough about the issue to say who's on target and who's off the mark. I do know that First Things is smartly written, elegant and erudite, but way right of my own opinions. Nevertheless, this issue is too important to dismiss, which is why I welcome the discussion sparked by Green and Ruark. The mainstream media could do a lot more digging into the global HIV/AIDS crisis, and particularly the work of religious individuals, groups and NGOs in trying to stop its spread. How do religious workers negotiate religion and politics, theology and experience, cultural differences, systemic evils and individual choice? The explosion of faith-based development and relief work is both an important and underreported storyand a colorful, dynamic, complex one, too. It also has political ramifications as President Bush has been a strong proponent of ABC, providing substantial support for its implementation (see the Washington Post and ABC News).

So let's move the story forward. We all know that Bono and Rick Warren have made significant contributions to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, but who else is doing what with whom? Is it really as easy as ABC or do we need a higher calculus?

On a totally different wavelength, check out two fascinating stories about alternative religions. NPR's Day to Day is doing a three part series on a 1960s polygamous commune and TimesOnline had an absorbing first person piece about a blend of shamanism, Christianity and hallucinogens that's spreading worldwide. In both instances, reporters do a nice job of telling a story rather than judging, dissing or dismissing.

Updating Edward Said

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500

A boffo conference, a grad student with a Washington Post byline, and a brand-new journalism school director - we're having a good week here at USC Annenberg. Yes we're proud of J-student Lilly Fowler and we're excited to welcome Geneva Overholser, but we're giving pride of place (at least for reporters, policy-makers and researchers) to Friday's gathering "Re/Covering Islam: who, when, where, why and how the news mediates religion and politics."

The conference is open to the public and if you'd like to join us, here's the agenda and how to RSVP.

Re/Covering Islam is organized under the auspices of the Religion, Identity, and Global Governance project at USC, a Luce-funded initiative that "seeks to increase America's capacity for international understanding with new focus on deepening public understanding of religion as a critical but often neglected factor in policy issues throughout the world." To that end, Friday's speakers will look at the ways in which American and Arab language media help to construct Islamic identity and the impact of these representations on politics,public diplomacy and public opinion.

The morning's first panel focuses on Islam and Muslims in Arab-language news media, with special emphasis on new media. A second panel explores the circulation of images and their impact on the public. Following lunch, a final panel examines coverage of Islam in the (mainstream) American news media.

Introductory remarks will be made by Peter Kovach, UCLA's Diplomat in Residence; Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland will deliver the keynote speech; and USC's Philip Seib will offer closing comments.

While we're gathered in Los Angeles, a similarly-themed seminar is ongoing at the University of London. "Framing Muslims" is a collaborative network of American and European scholars interested in the "cultural, artistic, structural and legal structures which 'frame' contemporary debates about Muslims in the West."

Last but not least, a USC/UCLA- led project with links to the Middle East made news this past week. The Israeli-Palestinian Archeology Working Group Agreement, hammered out over three years, was announced in Jerusalem. Notes the Chicago Tribune, "With a nudge from American colleagues, Israeli and Palestinian archeologists have drawn up a blueprint for sharing their intersecting cultural heritageif and when peace comes to the Holy Land, where scholarly objectivity is often drowned out by nationalist passions." Lynn Swartz Dodd, one of the two principal sponsors of the talks, is a member of USC's School of Religion.

The Color Purple

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Haven't heard much about culture war lately, but that's likely to change when both the presidential candidates are in place. Obama vs. Clinton is a sideshow; in the coming slugfest, it will be blue state vs. red statewith cringe-inducing sound bites that make all Americans seem silly.

John Marks and Craig Detweiler are ready. Marks' and Detweiler's new film Purple State of Mind, seeks to bridge the color gap by modeling intelligent conversation between friends. Detweiler, a filmmaker and author who co-directs the Reel Spirituality Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary is an evangelical. Marks, a novelist, journalist and former 60 Minutes producer is a non-believer. When the two men were college roommates in the 1980s, both were Christians. But they parted ways and, over the past 20 years, headed in very different directions.

Purple State of Mind begins where most friendships end - with the recognition of real differences. Marks and Detweiler filmed four conversations over the course of a year that reveal deep disagreements. The two persevere, affirming their mutual respect as well as desire to find a way through the cultural chasm that divides many Americans.

The filmmakers hope their documentary will spark additional conversations. On Monday April 28, we'll screen it at USC Annenberg and hear from Marks and Detweiler about lessons learned regarding themselves, each other, and our nation's true colors.

Rites and Offenses

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In "Young Gay Rites," a New York Times Sunday magazine story, Benoit Denizet-Lewis artfully renders the attractions of marriage for young gay men. Profiling several Boston-based couples, Denizet-Lewis suggests that the under-30 crowd is creating a new norm that (hopefully) blends the best of gay and straight relationships. Ready to commit and to publicly affirm their devotion, most of the pairs plan a ceremony for friends and family. We learn what they wear and whom they invite, but we never hear about the role of religion in their lives. The absence is noteworthy since homosexuality has been both a contested arena for many religious traditions and yet many members of the LGBT community have strong ties to their faith. Given the political and religious right's appropriation of heterosexual marriage as basic to society's well-being, the decision of gays to embrace seems more than a simple lifestyle choice. Perhaps, as the religious right contends, Boston is a secular humanist haven, but I'd still like to know if religious rites/rights factor into the young gay unions that the Times described.

Elsewhere in New England, Aliza Shvarts, a Yale senior, probed the intersection of religion, politics and free speech with an art project that purportedly included blood from an either a self- induced miscarriage or menstruation. Writing in the Yale Daily News, she explained, "For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation . . . is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood." Yale administrators did not find the piece poignant; they forbade its exhibition unless Shvarts confessed it was a put-onsomething she refused to do. The controversy generated a fair amount of buzz as Shvarts managed to offend proponents on both sides of the abortion debate as well as religious folk, feminists, fellow students and bloggers. But it also roused First Amendment advocates who weathered previous wars over objets d'art including "Piss Christ" (a photograph of crucifix in a glass of urine) and "The Holy Virgin Mary" (a collage splattered with elephant dung).

What's interesting to consider is why works of art loom as threats to religion. As a counter-cultural force, religion is offensive: the prophet Hosea wed a prostitute, Jesus attacked the moneylenders and Siddhartha Gautama (who became the Buddha) abandoned his wife and child. Outrage is often the first step to justice, compassion and enlightenment, but apparently not in New Haven.

Might some evangelicals feel outrage on visiting Daniel Radosh's website? As online testimony for his new book Rapture Ready! the site is a miracle of kitsch, commercialism and great links. We learn that the book, a self-proclaimed "perfect blend of amusement and respect" for the "often hidden world of Christian pop culture" reveals the artists, artifacts and experiences that propel the $7 billion faith-based industry. Be sure to check out the candy, comedians and holographic eye witness glasses (as well as a wonderful clip of Victoria Williams on Jay Leno).

Reading about Radosh and Shvarts raises a critical question: Where's the line between amusing and offensive? Radosh will sell a lot of books while Shvarts becomes a pariah. One pokes fun and the other draws blood. My sense is that in reporting on the two, the mainstream media defines religion as commodifiable (which is socially acceptable: those 3-D glasses are cute) or confrontational (urine, feces and blood are unacceptable). But urine, feces and blood are part of the body, which in many religious traditions is part of God's creation. Perhaps witness wear is too, but the case is shakier.

Faith, art and commerce collide but instead of understanding whyand how the news mediates our perspectivesI'm left with the feeling that, as in Denizet-Lewis' article, something's missing.

Where's the beef?

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Remember that scene in the "Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy pulls back the curtain and finds that the great and terrible Oz is really a small, balding man? Veteran journalist Christine Wicker makes a similar discovery in her new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation.

A Southern Baptist by birth, and still a self-described evangelical, Wicker decided to investigate conventional wisdom about the numerical strength of America's moral majority. What she found should embarrass the secular media almost as much as it should evangelical leaders. The National Association of Evangelical's claim to represent 30 million souls? Wicker says the actual number is closer to 4.5 million. The Southern Baptist's Convention's estimate of 16 million members? Try a quarter of that number.

In her own words: "The idea that evangelicals are taking over America is one of the greatest publicity scams in history, a perfect coup accomplished by savvy politicos and religious leaders, who understand media weaknesses and exploit them brilliantly,"

Reviewing the book in Mother Jones, Debra Dickerson notes how those savvy politicos and religious leaders exploited a gullible (and religiously naive) press corps, "Having been handed a ready made story line by the thou-shalt-not brigades, the media became transfixed by a phenomenon they couldn't fully fathom but felt bound to report on." That's not to say that the Religious Right did not exert influence, rather that its success had more to do with creative spin than Christian soldiers.

Wicker's book is a quick read that hits a happy medium between anecdotal reporting and statistical analysis. She also explains her personal interest in the story and current ambivalence about her cradle faith community. (Disclosure: Wicker is a friend and I blurbed the book.)

If you want to read more about the press' capitulation to the Religious Right's narrative, you can look online for "Back to the Future: Religion, Politics and the Media," an essay I wrote for the September 2007 issue of America Quarterly. (The journal requires a subscription, but if you can get it online or in your library, this special issue "Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States" has many excellent articles.)

Religion Round-up

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The Pew Forum's recent study, "Religion in China on the Eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics" begins with a reminder that religion remains a factor even in one of the world's most secular nations.

"On Aug. 8, 2008the right day of the eight month of the year '08at exactly 08:08:08 p.m. the summer Olympics are scheduled to begin in Beijing. The day and hour for the start of the Olympics was chosen for its good fortunea widely held belief in Confucianism and Chinese folk religions."

By American standards (which are unusually high among developed nations), religion is not a significant factor among the Chinese: only 31% deem it very or somewhat important in their lives. However, given six decades of a repressive policy, those numbers are, according to Pew, surprisingly high. Moreover, they represent a large number of people, "nearly equal the estimated number of religiously affiliated adults in the U.S."

Accordingly, the 1-plus % of the Chinese population that identifies itself as Muslim equals some 20.3 million peoplea population almost as large as Saudi Arabia's. (More to the point, as one of China's ethnic minorities, Muslims are not bound to the one-child per family policy.)

Notwithstanding the fervid prayers of some Olympic contestants, religion probably won't be a major story during the summer games. But the Pew Forum's findings are worth remembering: A growing number of urban, educated, 20-something Chinese men and women are increasingly interested in the topic.

More on religion: a story last week from the Columbus Dispatch reported that United Methodist congregations "could share pastors and combine churches with a Lutheran denomination under a partnership approved by the denomination last week." (The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will need to okay the agreement at its 2009 conference.)

The reasons for the partnership, assisting small and struggling congregations, is obvious. But Methodists and Lutherans, despite their shared Protestant identification, hold very different notions of authority, polity, ecclesiology and theology. More than 20 years ago, sociologist Robert Wuthnow's classic The Restructuring of American Religion posited that education, mobility, and socioeconomic factors were trumping theological differences among American Protestant denominations. Some took Wuthnow's argument as proof text for the culture war, but it also explains the softening of theological boundaries among the mainline and the triumph of pragmatics (shrinking budgets) over dogmatics.

Brooke Adams, the polygamy correspondent for the Salt Lake Tribune, was on On the Media this past week to discuss coverage of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Noting that some media outlets give less than a full picture of the controversial sect, she said some members of the group attend college, use the Internet and empower women.

"The problem is that we hear so little from this community over the years and we hear mostly their characterizations put out by critics or people who've left the community," she told interviewer Bob Garfield. "And what you can see when you're there at the ranch is that these women were pretty outspoken about their making a choice to live this way."

Adams is right: people should be able to speak for themselves and there are usually more than two sides to every story. She is correct to remind us that we rarely hear the perspectives of women from the group. That said, any social arrangement that permits adults to have sexual relations with children is wrong, and I wish Bob Garfield had asked her what community members said about that.

Not My Family

Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Two new books on American evangelicalism wield a one-two punch to news coverage as usual. In The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, Christine Wicker argues that a solid bloc of "values voters" is as real as the Easter bunnynot only are evangelicals a diverse lot but their numbers are much lower than their leaders claim. In his forthcoming The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Jeff Sharlet demonstrates there's more to faith-based politics than compassionate conservatism or Mike Huckabee.

(Disclosure: Sharlet is a colleague and friend whose work on The Revealer I have long supported and who also has supported mine.)

Sharlet and Wicker remind us that good journalists take nothing for granted. Numbers lie, statistics conceal and sources tell us what they think we want to hear (or what they want us to know). Most answers need follow up questions and many stories require context for full understanding.

Sharlet goes deep into context for his thoroughly researched and engaging book about "fundamentalism's avant garde." The Family is a loose network of politicians, businessmen and military leaders worldwide who share a commitment to Jesus, power and biblical capitalism. Sharlet tracks the development of their affective, individualistic faith from Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney to The Family's current leader Doug Coe. Likewise, he reveals their handiwork in far-flung political machinationsincluding regime change in Uganda, civil war in the Philippines and dictatorships in Latin America. Here at home, the group is best known for its sponsorship of the National Prayer Breakfast, but their web of relationships facilitates influence from the Oval Office to inner-city streets.

Sharlet's book may be both too subtle and too scary to have the impact it should. He is, in effect, offering an alternative American narrativeone that places radical religion at the center of our national story. That religion, a 'gentle and militant, conservative and revolutionary" elite American fundamentalism, "responds in this world with a politics of noblesse oblige, the missionary impulse married to military and economic power." It's a powerful theory that, if Sharlet is correct, has enabled an ideological coup d'état that is hidden, he notes, in plain sight.

This book deserves to be read by every and any journalist. It's a primer for what reporting can and should be. Sharlet weaves first hand reportage with historical research and archival work. He connects dots, sees the big picture, and finds the telling detail. He is neither balanced nor objective, but a mainstream media whose guiding principle is not to offend can overrate those qualities. Hewing to an older journalistic tradition of speaking truth to power, Sharlet is not afraid to be offensive. His compelling story seeks to upset and unsettle in the best tradition of muckraking reporters.

We're All Episcopalians Now

Tue, 27 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

"Turning Away from Jesus: Gay Rights and the War for the Episcopal Church" (link currently malfunctioning?) in the June issue of Harper's gave me the chills. It was that good.

The magazine sat on my desk for over a week. I'd look at the cover (a detail from a Prague altarpiece), and put it down, loath to read yet another piece about the Episcopal sex crisis. Thanks in no small part to the mainstream media, homosexuality has been the defining issue for Episcopalians (as well as Methodists and Presbyterians) for the past 20 years. As a result, mainline Protestantism's (potentially) prophetic voice has been drowned out in the debate over who can sleep with whom and still do God's work. Yes, it's a big deal but so is the war in Iraq, public education, the environment, New Orleans, poverty and the imperial presidency. At times, I wonder if it's an easier fight than the ones with less obvious (depending on your side) heroes and villains,

Evidently Garret Keizer agrees: "How does a Christian population implicated in militarism, usury, sweatshop labor, and environmental rape find a way to sleep at night? Apparently, by making a very big deal out of not sleeping with Gene Robinson [the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, a gay man, whose election to the episcopacy is the focal point of current divisions between so-called liberals and conservatives domestically and abroad]. Or on the flip side, by making approval of Gene Robinson the litmus test of progressive integrity, a stance that I have good reason to believe would impress no one so little as Gene Robinson."

In his quest to understand why homosexuality is dividing the church communion, Keizer speaks with African prelates, Anglican parish priests and American laity. He contextualizes his search by considering history, theology and sociology. Amazingly, and in spite of his own affinities, he is able to discuss all sides with deep sympathy and respect. But he decides that the current crisis is, at best, a sideshow or, at worst, a distraction from vexing problems whose solution would require more than arms' length indignation.

For that reason, the church's predicament holds a mirror to society's shortcomings: "Yes, the eucharist has meanings peculiar to Christiansbut it also can be taken as a universal symbol of how any community shares its wealth, its bread and wine, what the old socialists used to call the roses and the bread. The consecrated wafers placed on the tongue or in the upturned hands of the faithful, one per person and all the same size, have a secular equivalent in the basic allotments of health, education and welfareof life, liberty and the off chance of happinessthat every citizen at the common table can expect as his or her due. If the obvious implications don't make you squirm, if they fail to explain why I resolutely refuse to apply the word 'left' to the progressive side of 'the gay debate' in my church or to just about any debate going on outside the church, then nothing will."

What do we owe each other? What constitutes communion and community? Keizer pushes so hard on religious questions that they turn into secular conundrums. His beautiful, provocative pieceI hardly do justice to his eloquence and thoughtfulnessconfronts the church's sex crisis by taking that confrontation one step further to demand "Why?" His answerwe're all Episcopalians nowwas unexpected, unwelcome but not entirely unjustified.

Recycle Roundup

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Good stories can always be recycled, and David Brooks' recent column, "The Neural Buddhists," is a case in point. According to Brooks, neuroscience demonstrates that "transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain." Notwithstanding religious differences, research shows that "people around the world have common moral intuitions" and "are equipped to experience the sacred."

Bottom line: Brooks predicts a rise in "new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation." For some, that's heresy; for othersthe growing ranks of religious "nones," it's descriptive.

The column struck a nerve; when I checked Google blogs, there were 273 listings mentioning it. Some hated it; others loved it; still others wanted more discussion. (This week's "Does Science Make God Obsolete"Templeton's two page New York Times' spreadsounded a similar theme. Would that there were a few less white men opining.)

Where can you go with the Brooks column? Depending on time, space and resources, a reporter could check out scientific journals, interviews researchers, find clergy who also are scientists, and scientists who are theologians. Perhaps it's a person-in-the-pew piece or a trend story on the growing interest in meditation or a look at a clinic where the research is ongoing.

Opening up in a different, more challenging direction is the Times' Week in Review columns on Israel and the Palestinians. Three pieces approach the topic from very different angles, but they share a key word "catastrophe." Jeffrey Goldberg's take, "Israel's American Problem," sees a catastrophe looming if American leaders don't help facilitate a two-state solution. In "The Birth of a Nation," Ruth Gruber recalls a potential catastrophe when the US State Department sought to scuttle President Truman's recognition of Israeli sovereignty. Elias Khoury describes the situation of Palestinian refugees as an ongoing catastrophe. None of these writers question Israel's existence, but each raises the question: "What next?"

The question stymies most of us, journalists included. The situation is so fraught that an ill-chosen word or poorly vetted quote can cause irreparable harm (not just to the situation but also to one's career). Yet, here, too there are alternate ways of looking at stories with an eye to enlarging their scope and public understanding. What's up with J Street, a new alternative to AIPAC? Have any of the Americans who had settled in Gaza and were forcibly removed from the Gaza Strip three years returned to the US? What does the new generation of American Muslim activists propose for the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate? (I focus on domestic angles assuming many reporters cannot go to the Middle East.)

Lots of interesting stories also appear outside the New York Times; last week one of my favorites was on NPR. Julie McCarthy gave listeners seven minutes in heaven a fascinating look at Bolivian missions that have revived their Baroque music heritage. McCarthy revealed how 18th century Spanish Jesuit missionaries left behind music that the indigenous people made their ownand howwith the help of a Polish musicologist and priest. Bolivians have restored old manuscripts, rebuilt old instruments and revitalized an astonishing example of musical hybridity. Recycling possibilities? Next year's festival in Bolivia.

Texas Ra(u)nch

Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Admit it: you were surprised by the unanimous Texas court ruling that the state had insufficient warrant to remove children from the Yearning for Zion ranch (A.K.A. polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' compound) in Eldorado.

If so, you were hardly alone. For weeks, headlines have trumpeted the under-age sex, teenage pregnancies and forced marriages that appeared to be the sect's stock-in-trade.

The court, however, found little hard evidence that minors were in physical danger or were victims of abuse. The children were members of a group with an unusual belief system. But the Texas court, in line with earlier Supreme Court decisions, ruled that unusual religious beliefs are not cause for state action.

How could this happen? Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate, compared the Texas takedown to goings-on at Guantanamo Bay.

"In both cases, government actors hurled themselves at a problem with the best of intentions. The prospect of averting just one more terror attack, or protecting just one more molested child, has a way of making all those technical details seem trivial. But both cases have been plagued by glaring errors of fact and identification: Names and ages and association were all jumbled up, hearsay and double hearsay piled up in place of real evidence."

Other commentators agreed. Noted CNN's Jeffrey Toobin: "It was difficult to find out what was going inside that compound, and there was certainly ample grounds for suspicion, But it's a good thing that the courts insist on a very high bar for the decision to remove children from their parents."

As expected, comments on the blogosphere runs the gamut but most support the court's decision. Some because it affirms parental rights; others because it adheres to Constitutional standards. In
Reynolds v. US, the 1878 Supreme Court case that outlawed polygamy, the justices cited Thomas Jefferson's distinction between religious belief and the actions that derived from belief. The former was protected under the First Amendment; the latter were not if they violated the laws of the state. The Texas court upheld the distinction between these two and found Child Protective Services had not proved the FLDS engaged in unlawful actions.

In a rush to judgmentand hastened by the lure of salacious storytellingmany journalism outlets did not uphold a standard of balance much less objectivity. How will they follow up the story? We'll wait and see.

Weekend Update

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Reporters today have it so good! (Ha! Just wanted to see if you were paying attention,)

But seriously, the Internet has revolutionized the practice of journalism in ways besides the debate about whether bloggers can be "real" reporters. More significant, and definitely a more useful focus, is the availability of resourcesideas, issues, insights that there was no easy way to access as recently as a dozen years ago.

This means, as many have noted, one person can have a major impact on the news cycle. On Religion Dispatches, Bruce Wilson explains how he did just that by posting a video of Pastor John Hagee on YouTube. Wilson notes that the story had "languished" on his own website, Talk To Action, until Huffington Post ran with it. You know what happened next.

Now check out Wilson on "Manga Messiah" a comic, he calls, "a training manual" for the next pogrom against the Jews. The comic was published by Tyndale Housealso responsible for the block-buster Left Behind series which probably believed it was producing a culturally relevant rendering of the Synoptic Gospels I leave it up to intrepid reporters to suss out who's right.

But Biblical controversy is nothing newas the Chronicle of Higher Education demonstrates in an elegant "he said, she said" update on the Gospel of Judas. Reporter Thomas Bartlett looks back at that bombshell 2006 story that had New Testament scholars declaring Judas a hero rather than a villainous betrayer. Bartlett goes over the back-story of how the Gospel of Judas was lost, found, and commodified by National Geographic and a hand-picked scholarly "dream team" that released a documentary and several books that mainstreamed this revisionist perspective.

"But almost immediately, other scholars began to take issue with the interpretation.... They didn't see a good Judas at all. In fact, this Judas seemed more evil than ever. Those early voices of dissent have since grown into a chorus, some of whom argue that National Geographic's handling of the project amounts to scholarly malpractice. It's the perfect example, critics argue, of what can happen when commercial considerations are allowed to ride roughshod over careful research."

Riding roughshod puts it mildly. According to April D. DeConick, the "dream team" mangled a key translation whose correct meaning undermines their entire premise.

"It had to do with the word 'daimon,' which Jesus uses to address Judas. The National Geographic team translates this as 'spirit,' an unusual choice and inconsistent with translations of other early Christian texts, where it is usually rendered as 'demon.' In this passage, however, Jesus' calling Judas a demon would completely alter the meaning."

News outlets who rushed to cover the initial story haven't done as much follow-up. Thanks to Bartlett for the update.

Also thanks to Lauri Lebo for her new book, The Devil in Dover: An Insider's Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-town America. Lebo covered the "Dover Trial," (Tammy Kitzmiller et al vs. Dover Area School District et al) that challenged a public school district's requirement to teach "intelligent design" (ID) theory alongside evolution. The parents, arguing ID was religious perspective and that teaching it violated the First Amendment's "no establishment" of religion clause, won. Lebo covered the trial for the York Daily Record, and Religion Dispatches asked her about the book's "most important take-home message."

"These First Amendment cases aren't just the subject of dispassionate courtroom debate. They are intensely personal. We are a nation founded on democratic principles. So, I think, we have this innate sense that teaching children both sides of a debate is a quite reasonable compromise. "

Most reporters would agree unfortunately, there are usually more than two sides to every debate and some of the sides can be off point, irrelevant or misinformed. How do we, as teachers and reportersdecide what's what? Lebo doesn't say, butas all these stories suggestreporters (and news consumers) have a hard time getting beyond binaries.

Re/Covering Islam

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I was going to start off with a ringing endorsement of Lawrence Wright's piece "The Rebellion Within: An Al Qaeda mentor rethinks terrorism" in last week's New Yorker. But that was before I found Tom Heneghan's Faithworld post on the French "virginity lie" case.

If, like me, you have been unaware of this oh-so intriguing story, here's the recap: A French Muslim couple sought a civil annulment when the husband discovered his wife was not a virgin. His legal grounds were that she lied about an "essential quality" (i.e. virginity) necessary for marriage. French law permits annulment if one partner hides an "essential quality," but, in the past, these have been more akin to a criminal record or a past marriage.

When news of this case and the "essential quality" cited to dissolve the marriage made headlines, many French citizens were outraged. Says Heneghan, "Politicians, feminists and human rights activists immediately demanded the ruling be overturned." That's because it sets back women's rights in several ways :

"It violates a woman's privacy by making virginity a possible criterion for marriage.
"It violates sexual equality because no proof is asked of the groom's virginity.
"It introduces a religious concept of the virgin bride into the secular marriage contract.
"It treats the bride like merchandise in commercial transaction."

But the couple doesn't want an appeal, which would force them to resume a failed marriage. And French leaders aren't sure whether this is an issue for the courts or the legislature to decide. Moreover, who should, or could, decide whether virginity is an "essential quality"?

I love this story because it has so much resonance for Americans interested in chastity and abstinence. The story probably couldn't happen here (we don't have anything quite like the "essential quality" loophole in our annulment laws), but the narrative of gendered expectations probably occurs more often than many of us expect.

Then, what to do with the scorned bride who instead of championing her sexuality said, "I don't know who decided that they would think for me. I haven't asked for anything. I feel like I'm hallucinating." I wonder, too, how this would play out in our press. For sure we would have heard whether or not the bride wore a scary veil or, worse yet, a black (as in a very dark, concealing, sinister black) burqa. (See Elaine Sciolino's recent piece on a female Al Qaeda propagandist if you want an example of how clothes can become symbols and women's bodies serve as battlefields.)

Heneghan doesn't write the piece (which is technically a blog or column) as if it were a "Muslim story" and there are no subtle tags (references to veils etc.) to influence a reader. Rather, the story points out fundamental questions that religious orthodoxy poses to the secular state: What to do when God's law contradicts man's law? Who wins, but maybe more important, who gets to decide?

Religion and International Relations

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Since creating a course on American religion and foreign policy, I've been scouting out resources, several of which are worth sharing. The Council on Foreign Relations has a (fairly) new religion initiative that provides updates, resources and conference calls. Last month, its backgrounder on religion in China was a helpful snapshot, especially if you lacked the time for the meatier package prepared by Pew.

Another source, especially for reporters seeking stories, is the list of grants made by the Luce Foundation as part of its Religion and International Affairs initiative. (Disclosure: USC received one of these grants for its Religion, Identity and Global Governance project, which funded my course.) Support for research and materials on the International Religious Freedom Act; the role of African-American religious groups in foreign policy; religion as a tool for reducing international conflict (I look forward to that one), and women, religion and globalization will provide much-needed resources and background.

Santa Clara University also is supporting a new web site that was created by political science professor Eric. O. Hanson. Hanson's aim is to provide an introduction to global religion, ethics and politics for students, diplomats and researchers. His site looks at the interplay between religion and politics as well as its specific manifestations in different countries and regions. There's also helpful background on many world religions. Hanson does not mention journalists as part of his clientele, but the site's straightforward navigation and accessible descriptions make it an excellent resource for those last minute questions about religious groups in Malaysia or the politics of Daoism.

Of course, religion and international relations is not the same as
religion and American foreign policy (see Foreign Affairs and Carnegie Endowment) But both have been under-studied, under-researched and under-appreciated areas. Current trends in domestic and global politics indicate that reportersas much as diplomats, politicians and academicswill need to be conversant in each.

If you have any suggestions for resources, please send them.

What's Happening

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Just because it's a quiet week on the campaign trail (no religious faux pas or embarrassing endorsements), lacking, too, in clergy scandals and faith-based conflagrations, don't assume God's on summer break. There's still a lot for enterprising journalists to cover.

The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan's much-maligned new movie, sounds much more interesting now that I know it's about religion. Thanks to the blogosphere no MSM review I saw had this angle the film can be read as an extended argument for religious faith in general and intelligent design specifically.

"Night was inspired by reading Albert Einstein's biography and discovering Einstein had rejected religion at first until he saw 'the hand of God' in the gaps between scientific explanations. In The Happening, Shyamalan tries to recreate this surrender to faith by saying sometime you just can't explain it when shit happens."

When asked about the religious faith that inspired him, Shyamalan was "vague." But Annalee Newitz, writing at io9 was not. Her review argues that the movie supports not only intelligent design but also male headship in a traditional Christian family.

Lest you think io9a sci-fi sitegoes off the deep end, look at the interview with Shyamalan in "Scientific American." Here the director sounds less a candidate for the Promise Keepers than for a drum circle:

"There is something that binds everything. To keep looking for that, that drive is almost the holy grail. I can totally relate to that on an intuitive level. That's somehow tied to some mystical thingI don't know if mystical is the correct word. It's beyond logic; it's the evidence that all things come from one simple thing."

I still don't plan on seeing the movie, so you'll have to tell me whether or not The Happening is one simple thing, but I might just delve into the theological side of The Boss. The Gospel according to Bruce Springsteen, from Asbury Park to Magic" is a book I wish I had written (albeit with a different title). Author Jeffrey B. Symynkywicz is a Unitarian-Universalist minister who (if the press release is to be believed) engages Springsteen's religious and political themes in an intelligent and accessible manner. Reading excerpts on Amazon, I did find the style accessible (easy rehashing of Bruce's bio with musing on his music) and the content reminiscent of a semi-hip Sunday sermon:

"The song 'Backstreets' also reminds us that we are born as children of the holy fire, children of the Spirit. But the ways of the world often separate us from our blazing birthright. To find enlightenment and passion again, we must escape the word and head for the desert. For the outskirts, for that place awayin this song, 'an old abandoned beach house."

Of course, Bruce isn't the only musician with Big Things in mind: Miley Cyrus' godmother also sings about sin and salvation. Backwoods Barbie, Dolly Parton's new album, is a familiar mix of noble women, cheatin' men, and a forgiving God. Says reviewer Susan Wunderlink, "Her songs put forward Christian spiritual elements like faith and prayer, but Parton has never been one to get specific about theology." (Hmmmight there be a piece on the Bible, the Boss and the Backwoods Barbiesin and salvation from Nashville to New Jersey?)

The folks behind Church Basement Roadshow do get specific about theology, and since they were good enough to show up at my synagogue Saturday morning (noshing not davening), I wanted to end this update on religion and culture with a mention of their project.

Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt and Mark Scandrette are three leaders of the emergent church movement. (For those unfamiliar with this theological/social perspectivewhich began among evangelicals but has found resonance among Jews and Catholics, I recommend Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger's Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Culture. Gibbs and Bolger provide an academic overview, but Jones, Pagitt, Sandrette and host of others have their own books, too.)

The roadshow purports to be a 1908 revival (with a 2008 message) that reminds audiences of the power and glory that led Spirit-filled revivalists to hit the sawdust trail. I missed the roadshow when it played in Los Angeles, but the music, costumes and old-timey shtick appeal to the historian in me. The journalist who also abides would have liked to know who's in the audience (is it reaching beyond the emergent community), how the "boys" negotiate between kitsch and commitment, and whether the 1908 message works today or succumbs to nostalgia. Rather than another story on "oh those strange emergents" who (a) live communally; (b) behave counter-culturally; or (c) are insufficiently ChristianI'd like to see coverage of this creative bid to recapture history in service of the present moment.

An American Dream

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Just a generation ago, Americans were up against an unwinnable war, an unpopular president, and a faltering economy. Prices were up, wages were down and a shortage of oildue as much to the manipulations of domestic producers as an Arab oil embargocreated a crisis of confidence. Neither Gerry Ford, an amiable Republican, nor Jimmy Carter, a managerial Democrat, could provide a national vision that healed and inspired.

Ronald Reagan, campaigning against Carter in 1980, asked Americans a simple question: "Are you better off now then you were four years ago?" He appeared to offer an answerless government, more military strength and a return to traditional values. (As he famously told an evangelical gathering in 1980, "You can't endorse me, but I endorse you.")

Reagan's actual successes can be debated, but the perception of his presidency, at least among a majority of Americans, is that he restored the United States to its former glory. When he introduced his 1984 campaign tagline, "It's morning again in America," voters agreed, re-electing in a lop-sided 49-state sweep.

There are many parallels between the mid-1970s and today. It's more than the war, the economy and the out-of-touch leaders. Americans took stock of their world and felt helpless: the environment was degraded, women's roles were in flux, and traditional values seemed in decline. Perhaps as a result, religion appeared on an upswing. Gurus' followers grew, evangelicals enlarged their flocks, and mainline denominations, criticized for being more socially-oriented than spiritually-minded, saw their numbers dive.

Reagan was able to capitalize on a cultural moment of change and uncertainty by providing a vision of continuity, a message of hope, and an assurance that the best was yet to come. If you study Reagan's record, you'll see he got some things right, but many others wrong (remember Grenada, Iran-Contra and Reaganomics). But he led Americans forward after almost a decade of feeling stuck, rearranging the political landscape, for better or worse, with a dream of a middle Americawhite, middle-class, God-fearing and hard-workingat its center.

All this seems pertinent when I read media accounts about Barack Obama and the hope he engenders across racial, religious and regional lines. Andrew Sullivan eloquently described Obama's appeal in his December 2007 piece, "Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters." It's not that Obama has an answer to every woe, but he holds the promise of a new morning.

Ronald Reagan's success is a reminder of the power of symbols His accomplishments, most significantly helping to bring an end to the Cold War, must include his re-visioning of the American dream. Re-visioning our collective identity requires a new synthesis of national pride, economic promise, and religious purpose, and we seem past due. The question is: whose vision will inspire us, what will it look like and can the media "see" it as it happens?

The just-released Pew Forum survey on American religious life provides the raw materials for understanding where the nation is headed. How reporters use the data to probe the emerging religious and political landscape, and our emergent national dream, will be fascinating to see.

Islamicism and Western Diplomacy

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Geneive Abdo's article in the new issue of Foreign Policy is likely to make a lot of people mad. "False Prophets" is only available to subscribers, but you can read a Q&A that outlines many of her ideas.

Abdo argues that efforts to build cultural bridges between Americans and Muslims are misguided. Rather, she wanted to engage the Islamicist critique of the West since these ideas, propelling groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, are likely to influence the Middle East's future leaders. But that's not what happens, as Abdo writes:

"Almost as soon as the project began, though, a fear of political backlash proved to outweigh any potential for mutual understanding. At a meeting in Qatar with a 20-member committee composed of former ministers, diplomats and scholars, the question of whether the views of Islamicists would be part of the alliance's work was raised in public discussions. One of [former Secretary-General Kofi] Annan's special advisors decided that meetings with Islamicists would amount to scandal for the United Nations. For me, the reversal was one of a few defining moments in my understanding of the risks the institution was willing to take.

"More profoundly it exposed the philosophical divide within the alliance: Was the best way to deal with extremism through a head-on political approach or an indirect cultural one? Is it better to engage directly with Islamicists and learn firsthand their grievances and convictions, or to create Hollywood films for the Muslim masses in the hopes of changing perceptions of the West and vice versa?"

The latter approach won out, and a great many institutions and organizations, large and small, have jumped on the cultural diplomacy bandwagon. But very few of these efforts, according to Abdo, are involved in the hard work of understanding a truly other point of view.

Abdo's argument flies in the face of what most Americans believe: Don't negotiate with your enemy. (Barack Obama's taken a lot of flack for saying he would meet with leaders of states such as Iran and Cuba.) However, it's instructive to recall what one American president said at the height of the Cold War.

"Some say it is useless to speak of peace or world disarmament, and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitudes, as individuals and as a Nation, for our attitude is as essential as theirs....

"First examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many of us think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war in inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces that we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are made manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man."

Those words are from a June 1963 commencement speech at American University delivered by President John F. Kennedy. His charge, that we face down our own doubts and find new solutions within ourselves, sounds jarring at a historical moment when our leaders claim the high road and trust God to make things turn out right.

New In/Sites

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Not long ago, David Crumm, a former colleague on the religion beat, began Read the Spirit, an online hub for developing "spiritual connections between people of faith."

Now he's added an especially timely feature to his eclectic mix of reflections, reviews and resources. Our Values is the brainchild of Wayne Baker, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan. Baker developed the site in collaboration with Crumm as a way to explore civic values. Every day, Baker introduces a hot-button topic and asks visitors to comment. (Monday's topic is Christian license plates; last week's included polygamy, marriage and Hillary Clinton.) The responses will be used in the design of a major survey on Americans' Evolving Values.

"Not only will it help to define the content of the coming survey," Baker said in a press release, "It represents a new, 'open source' approach to research that is based on the 'wisdom of the crowds' rather than only the insights of a small group of academics."

This experiment bears watching as yet another example of how crowd sourcing can change what we know and how we know it. In the next few days we'll have a direct link to Our Values in the GET section so you can visit the site and let us know what you think as as journalist and/or citizen.

Jello Cathedrals and other Wobbly Constructs

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The fiction of values voters dies hard. How else to explain so many stories seeking to handicap the evangelical and Catholic vote?

Will they, won't they, do they, don't theyit's hard to parse how, which and when "religious" factors motivate voters now that the universe of religious issues has grown from abortion and family values to encompass the environment, the economy, the war in Iraq and AIDS policy. But this begs the question: were there ever any values voters swayed solely by concern for a greater good?

Over on the Immanent Frame, John Schmalzbauer offers a nuanced view of the many mansions within the evangelical house: "the Obama/Dobson debate gets at the same issue [evangelical diversity] by exposing the myth of the evangelical vote. The deep divisions in the evangelical house can be seen in the contrasting reactions to the controversy, suggesting that it may be more accurate to speak of multiple evangelicalisms rather than a monolithic movement."

Schmalzbauer offers some fascinating statistics to make his point: "the percentage of younger evangelicals identifying as Republican fell from 55 percent to 40 percent in 2007. Likewise the circulation of Focus on the Family's newsletter dropped from 2.4 million copies in 2004 to 1.1 million today. Compare this with the 600,000 people on the subscription list for Sojourners and the prospects for a progressive evangelicalism begin to look a little brighter."

Jeff Sharlet, whose book The Family is now #31 on the New York Times bestseller list, would argue that differentiating progressive from conservative evangelicals is a sideshow; the real story is about a secretive fundamentalist elite who have stealthily moved the US rightward for more than six decades. Sharlet uses the term fundamentalist not to conjure a caricature of Bob Jones or Jerry Falwell, but to capture the vision of the movement's "desire for a story that never changes, a story to redeem all that seems random, a rock upon which history can rise." Yes, all that and "an expansionist ideology of control better suited to empire than democracy," too.

I've already recommended The Family but as a steady stream of articles still asks whither the religious vote, I once again wonder if news outlets are missing the point. If Sharlet is even half right, the religious vote doesn't really matter, they've already won.

On a less serious note, my favorite religion story this week is on St. Paul's Cathedral. The angle is the intersection of science, art and religion. Oh, yes, and jello. Take a look at what could be the best religion story of the year.

Cover Me

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The most interesting finding in a new survey of media coverage of religion in the primary campaign didn't have anything to do with Muslims, Mormons or mainline Protestants.

Rather it was the predominance of "horse-race" coverage. When researchers at the Project for Excellence in Journalism reviewed16 months of primary campaign coverage across media platforms, they discovered few stories on the foreign policy issues (2.6%), fewer on race and gender (2.1%) and fewest on religion (1.9%). The largest chunk of reporting, 81%, was about strategy, handicapping and who did what to whom.

This triumph of style over substance isn't a surprise but it helps explain why the country is in such a mess. Iraq, the current mortgage crisis, violations of human right at Gitmo? All of these can be explained, at least in part, by the public's short attention span. WMDs? Invade Iraq. Ridiculously easy credit? Buy a McMansion. Worried about heavily-bearded men? Do like Jack Bauer.

Our predilection for quick and easy may also explain why the study found that substantive spikes in religion coverage occurred when the press had an obvious story. Note the uptick following Mitt Romney's "Faith in America" speech and the similar rise during the Obama-Wright affair. Since John McCain has been fairly free of religion-related controversy, there's been little about his. (For some reason, the Hagee contretemps was not widely covered.)

Religion has several strikes against it. Besides being complex and complicated, it's liable to offend. Witness this week's brouhaha. At last count there were more than 1400 articles about the New Yorker cover.

What's interesting (and thanks to colleague Peter Mancall for pointing this out) is that an earlier cover, showing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in bed together, both reaching for the red phone, did not generate much conflict. Heaven knows we've imagined our public leaders in compromising positions, and we've seen enough images of interracial couples that the shock value has worn off. But we haven't seen many images, much less satirical ones, of Muslims so the new cover packs a punch. Religion is the new sex the taboo topic that we don't know how to discuss in public.

All this to say: I'm betting that religion will play an increasingly larger role in campaign coverage. The current issue of Newsweek does an excellent job of fleshing out Obama's spiritual odyssey in ways that take him and his faith seriously. (One can only hope that the 12 percent of the public that believes he is a Muslim will read it.) The New Yorker story about Obama's political rise in Chicago is a good companion piece. The man may be a seeker but he is first and foremost a political animal.

At Work in the World

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

It's not exactly new newsbut the New York Times has an eye-popping update on abusive labor practices at a Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant.

In case you missed itin May, federal immigration officials raided the nation's largest kosher plant, Agriprocessors, Inc. in Postville, which had employed almost 400 illegal immigrants, almost two dozen of whom were also under-age. The Times' Sunday story offers recently uncovered details about the gruesome working conditions and illegal labor practices inside the plant.

For those of us who remember the initial coverage of the Postville story, it's a far cry from that early narrative of heartwarming pluralism on the prairie. Back then the Orthodox Jews who took over a boarded-up plant in a dying town were initially viewed with suspicion. But the prospect of new jobs and new residents eventually won over many locals.

Turns out the natives were right.

For links to pro and con coverage on the Postville, see Steve Sailer's excellent round-up, written when the raids went down in May.

So, is this a religion story? Since the owners of the plant, the plant itself and the purpose of the plant are all religious the story begs the question. Moreover, the wrongdoing in this instance seems particularly heinous given the context. On the other hand, reporting on this as a "special case"religious group goes bad!would undercut the valid news angles, specifically immigration and labor violations.

One way to get at the contradiction that arises between religious intent (laws of kashrut) and capitalist imperatives would be to examine what happens when religious practices become commodified. I doubt Orthodox Jews would be the only true believers whose practice didn't square with their teachings. Although this kind of analysis would not be appropriate in a news story, it would make for a good blog or think piece. It also squares with the kind of push back we've asked for in political coverage. (If Jesus is your political mentor, how does that square with your policy decisions?)

As it turns out, the Times Monday story got at some of these issues. Clergy and activists marched at the plant to protest working conditions. Among the demonstrators were several rabbis seeking to "revise kosher food certification to include standards of corporate ethics and treatment of workers." Maybe more follow-up in the Jewish press?

Elsewhere see Alternet. Two interesting stories: Robert Scheer on the media and his new book about American empire and an inside look at Pastor Hagee's Christians United for Israel conference.

And, in the category of potentially positive, under-reported religion stories, check out this meeting of Christian and Muslims scholars and leaders. The gathering, taking place at Yale Divinity School, is a next step for The Common Word Project.

This initiative, launched last year by Muslim scholars, seeks discussions of shared values between Muslim and Christian leaders. Ultimately, these explorations would trickle down to the masses. Can it work? And, more to the point, is it a story? (Imagine the newsroom pitch: Here's a hot one religious leaders and theologians jawing about love of God and love of neighbor.) And yet, this is religion at work in the world slow-moving, oblique and seemingly, frustratingly, out of step, off-tune and irrelevant to contemporary standards of newsworthiness. And yet the potential for a truly big story.

Radical Nuns and Conservative Bishops

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Within the world of religion reportingthat is, reporting on religionthe story of the week, if not the summer, has been the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Primates. Held every ten years, the meeting gathers members of the global Anglican Communion in Canterbury, England, the Communion's titular home, for consultation, collaboration and fellowship.

Someone living in a cave, totally unplugged from all forms of media, might not know that this year's meeting was shadowed by talk of schism. Many bishops from the developing world (the global South) are outraged by the growing acceptance of homosexuality among the Episcopal Church in the United States and similarly liberal Anglican outposts. The 2003 decision by the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire to ordain an openly gay man as bishop brought their dissatisfaction to a crisis point.

Since the Conference ended Sunday August 3, you can read scores of blogs, articles and analyses of what did and did not happen at Lambeth. As you pick and choose among these, check out an article in America, the Jesuits' weekly magazine.

Writing from a Catholic perspective, Austen Iverleigh opines that the problem is ecclesiological not doctrinal, and commends Archbishop Rowan Williams' attempts to hold the communion together. This is in contrast to opinions from the two "sides" which tend to paint Williams as an appeaser at best, but more often as a coward.

For most Americanshyper-individualistic to a faultthe idea of sacrificing for a greater good is not a natural turn of mind. But Iverleigh raises significant questions about what the purpose of organized religion should and could be.

Religion's social roleone that we're more comfortable commenting on hereis more explicit in other stories this week. Consider religion and science: "Religion may have helped protect ancient humans from disease," according to a new report by two scientists from the University of New Mexico. "Although religion apparently is for establishing a social marker of group alliance and allegiance, at the most fundamental level, it may be for the avoidance and management of infectious diseases."

That would be news to many in Hollywood who, whether from the left or the right, consider religion an infectious disease. The Weekly Standard has an in-depth story about a new movie from a conservative director that has a new spin on religious liberals. (If the writer, Stephen F. Hayes is correct, conservatives in Hollywood are about as rare as collectivists in the Anglican Communion.) David Zucker, the auteur behind Airplane! and The Naked Gun! Is finishing up a film that makes fun of Michael Moore, lefties and opponents of the war on terror. This may not sound like a premise for a comedy but it does have some big names and, according to Hayes, big laughs. For example:

"In the film, a rotund comedian named Rosie O'Connell makes an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor to promote her documentary, The Truth About Radical Christians. O'Reilly shows a clip, which opens with a pair of nuns walking through an airportas seen from pre-hijacking surveillance videobefore boarding the airplane. Once onboard, they storm the cockpit using crucifixes as their weapon of choice. Next the documentary looks at the growing phenomena of nuns as suicide bombers, seeking 72 virgins in heaven."

If you're scratching your head, maybe it's time to return to old-fashioned, follow-the-money journalism. That's not something you find a lot of in religion coverage, mostly because the money is so hard to find. That's why Erik Gorski's recent piece on televangelist Kenneth Copeland is a stand-out. Gorski is following up on Sen. Charles Grassley's Senate Finance Committee investigation of financial accountability at six evangelical ministries. He deserves kudos for a job well done.

More Civil Religion

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The morning after Rick Warren's presidential forum, Salon dubbed him the event's "real winner." But as the days pass, it's increasingly difficult to distinguish winners from losers in Saturday's faith-based revival of civil society.

Did McCain have an unfair advantage? And what did Warren really know of McCain's whereabouts? (If the Times is correct, McCain wasn't in a "cone of silence.") Was Obama too thoughtful? Or did his purpose-driven BFF give him a shot at the elusive white evangelical vote?

You can track pundits across the blogosphere debating these and more substantive issues raised at the church. (Don't bother looking in the legacy media, because you won't find much.) But I'm interested in what Warren did and did not do and why we should care.

Warren said he wanted to model a new and improved civic discourse that demonstrated we can "disagree without demonizing each other." By offering ample time to answer value-laden questions, he hoped to elicit a deeper, fuller, and truer picture of the candidates than the media usually provides.

Although good in theory, the practice was far from perfect. Warren seemed more intent on moving through a litany of questions than in probing his guests. Rather than push back on changed positions, bad decisions, and ethical dilemmas, he moved along. When McCain said his first marriage was his greatest moral failure, Warren could have asked why and how? Likewise when McCain stated his unequivocal pro-life position, Warren might have raised his support for stem cell research. (Even when McCain alluded to this later, Warren let it be.) Likewise, how did Warren allow Obama's quip about his pay grade go unchallenged? And couldn't he have asked the Illinois senator for more specifics on Iraq, welfare reform and taxes?

True civil discourse requires engagement. Warren had a shopping list. Given his venue, his expressed intentions, and his relationship to both men, he had a responsibility to speak truth to power or, in simpler terms, to ask tough questions.

Of course, it's a bit hypocritical to criticize Warren for what most reporters don't and won't do. But he did set himself up by promising to do what the media doesn't: push, probe, and penetrate.

If Warren didn't demonstrate a new model for civil discourse, he did provide a new face for evangelicalism. He is central casting's conjuring of the not-your-father's-Jerry Falwell pastor. From his trim goatee to his larger-than-life size, Warren embodies the same cool/compassionate, hip/square persona that made Oprah America's confessor. Warren's committed to ending abortion and saving stem cells but he's also concerned with climate change and adopting orphans. His easy embrace of both Obama and McCain bestowed blessings on two candidates who've hardly been evangelical poster boys. Just as significant, their presence in his church hallowed his role as a political playerand his message that faith and politics are entwined.

The legacy media needs to take note: How will Warren's enhanced standing play out in the evangelical world (already James Dobson seems to be chafing) and beyond? Now that Warren has an entrée with both parties, what will he seek after the election?

Similarly what does Warren's forum say about religion, politics and the media? One possibility is that voters want new models for debate and discourse, coverage and content. The blogosphere's lively and democratic interchanges reflect this impulse. There's less resistance to religion online and more appreciation for novelty, irreverence, and the next big thing. Just as citizen journalists are calling for a new kind of reporter, Rick Warren is calling for a new kind of discourse (including political coverage). The fact that the presidential candidates went along is noteworthy.

Civil Religion

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Rick Warren "takes on the world" or so says Time magazine.

The famously purpose-driven pastor is not only aiming for global PEACE (promote reconciliation, equip servant leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, educate the next generation), but also hopes to "redefine presidential politics". To that end he is hosting Barack Obama and John McCain this week at his 23,000-member Saddleback Church in Orange County, California.

"These are friends of mine that happen to be very different in leadership style, philosophy and background," Warren said [to the Orange County Register]. "I would like America to get to know them the way I do and make a decision based not on campaign ads that tend to caricature the other guy. I'm going to ask questions that are very different from a lot of the debate and town hall forums." (Disclosure: I am quoted at length in the article.)

Both Time and the Register's stories raise salient points about covering religion and politics this year. Time's piece brings up issues of tone and balance, while the Register's suggests untapped possibilities.

Time praises Warren as the prototypical "new evangelical" leader. Reaching beyond the Religious Right's "control-the-body" issues (gay marriage, stem cells, and abortion), Warren has embraced a broad set of social concerns, including the environment, poverty and HIV-AIDS.

Warren's energy, intellect, compassion and vision make him sound like a better candidate than the ones already in the presidential race: "He is a natural leader, a pathological schmoozer, insatiably curious and often the smartest person in the room."

Bottom line: Does Warren really walk on water? Since his PEACE outreach began in Rwanda in 2005, almost 2,000 volunteers have tackled health and development issues there. But according to one USAID-funded worker, the "purpose driven" volunteers have had little impact on the nation's deep-rooted problems.

When Warren hears the criticism he laughs, saying Time's reporter spoke to the "wrong guys." Working through churches produces change that Western-style measurements can't identify. In other words, Warren's following God's plan, which can't be judged by human standards.

When reporter David Van Biema tweaks Warren, he glosses over the pastor's emerging model for being religious in the 21st century world: "Warren may not aspire to global mogulhood, but he is clearly near giddy over occupying a globetrotting catalyst status normally reserved for ex-Presidents." The line says a lot about Warren, but does not begin to probe his influence and impact.

Time pulls its punches by using descriptive language. Words like "giddy," "coronation," and "sales pitch," elicit images that undercut the positive picture that the magazine otherwise elaborates. Likewise, the magazine's attempt at "balance"is Warren really accomplishing anything?is not seriously engaged. What are the measures for success in working in countries like Rwanda? Are there different standards for secular and spiritual outreach? Has Warren developed benchmarks for his programs? The questions are salient, especially as the number of religious NGOs grows.

Time's middle of the road approach seeks to satisfy all readers. Warren sounds like a great guy but the zingers are hidden in plain sight for those who can see them. Attempts at balance fall short, and most surprisingly, the article fails to place Warren in historical context. By adopting a broader social agenda, is he seeking to realign American evangelicalism with its 19th century roots? Evangelicalism has a long tradition of melding religion and politics in the service of creating a better world (at least according to its lights). How does Warren see himself in regard to this tradition?

The Register's more modest coverage of the upcoming Saddleback Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion raises questions about covering religion and politics. How does a reporter approach the forum? (And do you send your religion or your politics person?) Is this a vital experiment that can help redefine what the public wants and needs to know about candidates? Can a minister preside over a "civil" discussion? Will candidates reveal aspects of their identities that go beyond sound bites and moments of scripted compassion?

Warren is correct: current political coverage neither tells us what we want or need to know. I am happy to give him an opportunity to show the media how to do it better. I hope, for our sake, he succeeds.

Round 'em up!

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Can I complain? School's starting here and it's still impossibly hot. It's hard to write lectures when you're sweating. But the good news is that a new crop of graduate students will soon be practicing press criticism. The better news is that will enable us to update more frequently.

Unlike my colleague at Get Religion, I found no fault with Amy Harmon's story on a high school biology class in Florida. Writes Mark Stricherz, "My problem with Harmon's story was its presentation of evolution. It posits scientific consensus on this idea. Is that true? I have my doubts. Three years ago, Michael Powell of The Washington Post wrote a fair minded and balanced story about Philip Johnson, the father of the intelligent design movement. Harmon's story does not address those doubts."

That's exactly the point: Intelligent design is not scienceat least according to recent court decisions. As Harmon notes: "The Dover decision ... dealt a death blow to "intelligent design," which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone, and has been widely promote by religious advocates since the Supreme Court's 1987 ban on creationism in the public schools. The federal judge in the case called the doctrine "creationism relabeled," and found the Dover school board had violated the constitutional separation of church and state by requiring teachers to mention it."

Kudos to Marty Kaplan, a USC colleague, for his Jewish Journal piece on race and religion in the Obama campaign. Marty argues that the widespread misconception that Obama is (or was) Muslim is a way for white Americans to express discomfort with his race.

"The Muslim issue is a way to talk about race without talking about race, and without having to squirm about saying that race is not an issue. To enough voters that it matters for the outcome of this election, Muslims are as other, if not more so, as blacks."

I'd meant to give a shout out to Marty last week when he tackled quantum physics, string theory and the God particle. In both instances, his eloquence and insights sucked me in and left me the wiser for it.

Lastly, anyone who doubts the importance of abortion to American politics has been snoozing for the last 30 years. So I'm wondering why so few legacy media outlets made much of the pro-life sentiments at the Democratic Convention in Denver. M.Z. Hemingway took note of the goings on in the National Review Online as did Electa Draper at the Denver Post. But few others did.

That's too bad because the Democrats decision to (finally) allow alternate voicesBishop Charles E. Blake of Los Angeles spoke against abortion during a prayer service and Sen. Robert Casey referenced his opposition during a convention speechare surely noteworthy (even for those who deem it too little too late).

Count Down

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Count Down

Rodney Stark likes to throw curve balls, and his new book What Americans Really Believe continues the trend. In this new outing, Starke takes on Robert Wuthnow, the pre-eminent sociologist of religion, and other prominent scholars who, by his lights, skew questions, misinterpret data and otherwise downplay salient findings about Americans' religious beliefs and behaviors.

Stark and his colleagues at Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion asked the Gallup Organization to do three surveys of U.S. religion between 2005-2007. Comparing results with polls done 40 years ago, Stark lifted up two key aspects of American religious lifestability and diversity.

To demonstrate stability, Stark argues that denominationalismfar from dying out, as Wuthnow and others predictedis alive and well. Liberal groups have lost members, but children of the unchurched often return to conservative congregations. Likewise, churches are not really "losing" their youth (teens and 20-somethings always go off before returning), and membership rolls are not plunging. On the contrary, a record 69% of us belonged to churches in 2005.

Similarly, Stark finds we're a mystical lot, many of us have heard God's voice or witnessed healings, and many more describe ourselves as both spiritual and religious. I've long suspected that the dichotomy between the two was more a media creation than an on-the-ground reality.

Most interesting is the finding that most Americans conceive of a God who is more concerned with the world's well-being than with punishing human sin. The strong partiality for a loving and compassionate God may help explain why Americans are (more or less) tolerant of others' beliefs (though we tend to be suspicious of unbelief) and assume there is a real heaven that isn't restricted to Christians only.

Is it possible to extrapolate political predilection from theological leanings? If so, a message of hope should have more resonance than one rooted in anger and fear. The fall-out from the Democratic and Republican conventions should tell that tale, but the news media may not be listening. The media have never been partial to theology, especially when it gets in the way of a good story.

Diane Winston

What's in a Prayer?

To pray or not to pray?

That was the question an evangelical magazine publisher faced after he was asked to give the benediction at the end of the opening night of the recent Democratic National Convention.

In the end, Cameron Strang, founder of the young adult-oriented Relevant magazine, skipped the prayer, saying he didn't want to pick sides. Instead, he asked his friend, author and speaker Donald Miller, whether he was up to the task. Miller gladly obliged.

The Associated Press, CNN and Fox News reported on Strang's initial acceptance and later refusal to cover the convention. But surprisingly, the AP and Fox News reports only had a brief reference to the prayer by the far more well known Miller, whose autobiographical book Blue Like Jazz has sold more than a million copies. The CNN report did not mention Miller at all.

If the mainstream media had probed a little deeper, they would have uncovered a revealing online discussion about the role of religion in public life.

Though several online commentaries gave Miller props for his prayer, some complained that he focused too much on the Democratic Party platform, while others took him to task for saying that Jesus gave his life to illuminate the forces of injustice (rather than that Jesus died to atone for the world's sins). As could be expected, many folks also complained that Miller had sold out by praying at an event hosted by a political party that supports abortion rights.

Miller, a pro-life Democrat, told Christianity Today's Sarah Pulliam in a video interview that he wants Democrats to understand that he "will not be in their pocket." He also stated in a written online interview conducted by Pulliam that he felt many evangelicals have made themselves beholden to the Republicans, who have talked about making abortions illegal but have proved powerless to curb them.

A few days after Miller's appearance in Denver, Dr. Joel Hunter of Northland Church in Orlando, Fla., raised the abortion issue in his DNC benediction. Hunter, a Republican, asked for God's blessing on babies and children as well as for the poor, sick, enslaved and persecuted.

Despite the fact that he addressed abortion, many evangelical bloggers took Hunter to task for asking convention attendees to close the prayer in accordance with their own faith traditions, while he prayed "in Jesus' name." Some You Tube comments said Hunter's decision negated Jesus Christ's claiming to be "the way, the truth and the life."

The static around the convention prayers highlights the complications that occur when faith and politics collide in the public life of a democracy. It's a relationship that has challenged evangelicalism in the past when many of its leaders aligned themselves with the Republican Party, and it will surely challenge Democrats in the future as they begin to court younger left-leaning evangelicals.

To borrow an old evangelical cliché, many church leaders will be trying to find ways to be "in the world, but not of the world," and it will likely be a tough tightrope to walk.

Jonathan Partridge

Palin and the Pentecostal Surge

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

By Tara Graham

Republican presidential nominee John McCain is a long-time Episcopalian who now claims to be Baptist, despite having never been baptized in a Baptist church. This, in addition to McCain's reference to certain leaders of the Christian-right as "agents of intolerance" in 2000, has produced a degree of skepticism amongst evangelical conservatives about McCain's spiritual and political footing.

Many argue that McCain's selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate was a strategic move to gain favor with the Republican Party's evangelical base. Palin currently attends the Wasilla Bible Church and has a reputation for maintaining a strictly conservative stance on many controversial issues, including abortion and homosexuality.

Taking the bait, many of the mainstream media stories regarding Palin after the Republican National Convention focused on her religious credentials. Sunday's edition of The New York Times featured a rather run-of-the-mill story on Palin's place of worship, devotion to prayer, and emphasis on the biblical tradition. Fox News discussed the positive impact of Palin's faith on the Republican ticket. The Associated Press and Time, however, looked beyond the present and into Palin's religious past.

Apparently, someone's been playing a game of Pentecostal dodge ball.

Although born into Catholicism, Palin was baptized into a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church as a teenager. The Associated Press reports that when asked about her early Christian roots, Palin sidesteps the Pentecostal label by maintaining that she has attended "non-denominational churches" throughout her life.

Why the dodge? "The public still perceives [Pentecostals] as sectarian and uncompromising, and those traits will not help Palin's image," Grant Wacker of the Divinity School at Duke University told the Associated Press.

Amy Sullivan supports this position in Time by arguing that Palin's extreme religious conservatism may even polarize younger evangelicals and independent swing voters who hold more moderate policy views.

Mark Stricherz of Get Religion could not disagree more with Sullivan, however. He first questions Sullivan's methodology by noting that there is no hard data to support the position that Palin will scare off the young evangelical and swing voting blocks, and goes on to report that Pentecostalism is one of the largest denominations within evangelical Protestantism hence, the voter support is there for the taking.

Supporting Stricherz's claim, the World Christian Database reports that Pentecostals now represent at least a quarter of all Christians, ranking second only to Catholics. And the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life claims that Pentecostalism and related spirit-filled movements are among the fastest growing.

All of this begs two questions: If too little religion isn't presidential enough, and too much religion isn't presidential either, then how much religion does a politician need? And if Pentecostalism is indeed on the rise, what role might it play in the political discourse and election outcomes of the future?

David Pepper, the pastor of Church on the Rock, a charismatic congregation in Wasilla, Alaska, told Charisma magazine that Palin's candidacy has inspired much of his congregation to get involved in electoral politics and vote.

Just as the evangelical movement became a major player in the political arena of the 1970s and '80s, the global Pentacostal movement will certainly be a force to reckon with in the 21st century. Alaska governor Sarah Palin is proof of that.

As for that game of dodge ball Palin doesn't stand a chance.

Tara Graham is an Annenberg Graduate Fellow and online journalism M.A. candidate at the University of Southern California.

Latino Evangelicals for McCain/Palin

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

by B. Adriana Venegas-Chavez

Now that Hillary Rodham Clinton has dropped out of the presidential race, Republican nominee John McCain is in a good position to secure a significant portion of the coveted Latino voting bloc. Most of Clinton's liberal Latino supporters have switched over to presidential nominee Barack Obama, and more conservative Latinos, many of whom did not agree with McCain's liberal conservatism, were simply going to stay home in November, as USA Today reports. That's until McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate.

Alaska Governor Palin is a conservative evangelical who adamantly opposes abortion and gay marriage, as the Boston Globe tells us. Two stances that the Latino evangelical population fervently supports.

In an interview with Dallas Morning News editorial columnist William McKenzie, Rev. Mark Gonzales, who chairs McCain's national Hispanic advisory council for Hispanic evangelicals, said, "Even though [Palin is] not Hispanic, or from the part of the country where many Latinos live, she resonates with her everyday life story and her values.

She's pro-life and pro-family, and that's what connects her to Latinos." Gonzales continues, "Family issues resonate no matter where you are. She's going through a tough situation at the moment, and this will bring out compassion for her. There's a struggle going on as well in Hispanic families, often because of immigration."

According to a Pew Research poll, "Latinos, who now comprise about 6 percent of the overall evangelical Protestant population in the U.S., are similar in many ways to their white evangelical counterparts when it comes to religious beliefs and practices." The difference is that Latino Evangelicals tend to be even more conservative than white evangelicals. For instance, 86 percent oppose gay marriage, compared with 79 percent of white evangelicals. And 77 percent of Latino evangelicals think abortion should be illegal, compared to 61 percent of their white counterparts. In terms of mixing religion and politics, 62 percent say their religion influences their political decision.

That was clear in 2004, when 56 percent of Latino evangelicals voted for George W. Bush, up from 44 percent in 2000, according to a Pew Hispanic poll.

Despite the Republican Party's lack of popularity among Latinos in general, and even though some are still deciding whom to vote for--Latino evangelical Richard Ramos, who voted twice for Bush, told Newsweek, "It's a really tough decision for me"--conservative Latino evangelical leaders are quickly mobilizing their followers to support McCain and Palin.

Rev. Luis Lopez, Assemblies of God Pastor, Chairman of the Florida Hispanic Clergy Association and CONLAMIC Vice-President, said, "Gov. Sarah Palin is a successful and talented politician. What matters most to us, is that Sister Palin acknowledges God in her life and her personal testimony affirms her true values and assurance of a strong Woman of Faith."

What's most important about conservative Latino evangelicals is that they can be the deciding factor in states that will likely decide the 2008 election. As Reuters reports, the "numbers are concentrated in key swing states that could go either way in November like Colorado, New Mexico and Florida. So in a close election they could be a key vote in both battleground states and battleground faiths."

Amid all the criticism McCain has received in choosing Sarah Palin as his partner, this should be very good news for the Republican ticket. But will conservative social values or progressive immigration reform ultimately sway Latino evangelical voters? Stay tuned!

B. Adriana Venegas-Chavez is an M.A. candidate in the print journalism program at the University of Southern California.

Being Religulous

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

by Jennifer Hahn

Bill Maher is thanking God for Sarah Palin. His new film "Religulous" which skewers Western religious traditions as at best laughable, at worst apocalyptic, and never deserving of a place in politics is set to debut amid speculation that our vice presidential nominee, a Pentecostal, may have at some point spoken in tongues and makes policy decisions based on "God's will."

Maher wants us to believe that the world is made up only of secular rationalists, as he calls himself, and religious fanatics like Palin and the subjects of his film. If the press falls into the trap of simply agreeing with Maher or dismissing him, we will miss an opportunity to intercede with a more nuanced discussion of faith and politics in this country. Not all religious people are irrational, thinly-veiled theocrats, just waiting to impose their bizarre beliefs on the rest of us.

But Maher shouldn't be dismissed entirely. One need look no farther than 9/11 to see that religious fanaticism can lead to horrific things, and he's right to challenge an America in which once "you say the world 'faith,' the debate is over no matter what incredibly nonsensical, destructive, ridiculous tenet comes out of your mouth."

Early reviews of the documentary, set to open October 3, impress in their ability to get beyond Maher's rationalists vs. fanatics construct without totally dismissing his point. The Chicago Sun Times' Jim Emerson cleverly observes that Maher's "smart-ass tone sounds as dead-certain, smug, smarmy and self-righteous as Jerry Falwell or Ted Haggerty" and finds the film guilty of "the same kind of distorting selectively that Maher (rightly) accuses religion of promoting."

Still, Emerson also seems to admit that Maher's project of tackling "dumbness and narrow-mindedness," is worthwhile, even if the film "too often stoops so low that it practices what it preaches against."

Noel Murray of The Onion's A.V. Club challenges Maher's black and white view of religion by taking him to task for not being "quite fearless enough to interview or lay into the multitudes of moderately devout folks who use their religion as a cultural signifier and a way to make a difference in their communities." But he also sees value in some of Maher's critiques, calling the film's montage of religions worst moments in the past 20 years "thrilling."

Though Maher's goal is no doubt to provoke, hopefully coverage of his film will not totally dismiss him for his bravado, but take his critique as a jumping off point to make more intelligent points about religion and politics in this era of Palin.

Jennifer Hahn, whose work has appeared in Ms. magazine and Los Angeles CityBeat, is currently a master's degree candidate in specialized journalism at USC.

Unmasking the Intention Behind the "Unmasking" of Obama

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

By Nicky Loomis

In last Sunday's New York Times, op/ed writer Nicholas Kristof said the accusations that Barack Obama is a Muslim aren't so much religious slander as they are an attempt to "Otherize" the Democratic candidate.

Writing from "a sense of personal responsibility," Kristof pointed his finger at journalists who serve as enablers of this subtly racist strategy.

Kristof aptly points out that in trying to prove that Obama is a Muslim, "Muslim" itself becomes a negative. "As it that in itself were wrong," he says.

In a Pew Research Center survey released last week, 13 percent of registered voters said Obama is a Muslim, compared with 12 percent in June and 10 percent in March. What's more, the study found that only half of Americans polled know for certain that Obama is a Christian.

The religious mudslinging becomes a political tool to disguise underlying racism towards the candidatea tactic that Kristof calls an attempt to "de-Americanize" Obama.

Journalist Marty Kaplan described this "de-Americanization" in a column titled "But he's a Muslim!" that ran in The Jewish Journal a few weeks ago:

"To enough voters that it matters for the outcome of this election, Muslims are as other, if not more so, as blacks. A Muslim running for president of the United States may just as well be the Manchurian Candidate, with al-Qaeda, the Palestinians, the Saudis, your-Islamic-bad-guys'-name-here, playing the role of the brainwashing North Koreans nefariously plotting to plant one of their own in the White House."

Though Kristof underscores that McCain himself hasn't raised doubts about Obama's religion, in a recent TV ad sponsored by the McCain campaign, Obama is implicated not as a Muslim but as the Antichrist, as images of parting seas are paired with a voice-over declaring, "It should be known that in 2008, the world will be blessed. They will call him 'The One.'"

Some bloggers have picked up on this idea. One blog -- Is Barack Obama the Messiah? -- even sells T-shirts and pins with "Messiah 2008" stamped above a photo of the candidate.

In a recent posting on Beliefnet.com, Mara Vanderslice, an evangelical Democrat who started Common Good Strategies, a consulting firm that helps Democrats reach out to Christian communities, describes the McCain ad as playing to the basest elements of human nature. Vanderslice, who was the Director of Religious Outreach for the Kerry-Edwards campaign and the first national religious outreach liaison for a presidential candidate, scorns the McCain ad:

"This ad implies that those who plan to support Senator Obama are looking for a new savior or replacement MessiahHow low can we go? It shows the McCain campaign is willing to make a mockery of our faith to feed people's fears."

Vanderslice touches on the most intriguing aspect of the ad why would the McCain camp misappropriate religious imagery for political gain? What advantage outweighs the risk of offending viewers for whom talk of a Messiah is serious business?

Kristof hits the nail on the head:

"Religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it's not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate's skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian."

When Obama appeared on ABC's "This Week," he tried to address the rumors about his being Muslim, sarcastically mentioning what he called "My Muslim faith." Within hours, that segment of the interview was posted on YouTube under headings such as "Proof Obama is a Muslim."
Journalists, Kristof says, must do more than simply enable the racist impulses behind these political narratives.

"Journalists need to do more than call the play-by-play this election cycle. We also need to blow the whistle on egregious fouls calculated to undermine the political process and magnify the ugliest prejudices that our nation has done so much to overcome."

Whether those prejudices are religious or racial or both reporters need to see through the coding and stop writing stories that perpetuate the problem.

Nicky Loomis, whose work has appeared most recently in The Los Angeles Times, is currently a master's degree candidate in specialized journalism at USC.

Obama's New Message for a Faith Tour

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

By Brooke-Sidney Gavins

Barack Obama's camp recently told Christianity Today that it is beginning a new faith tour called "Barack Obama: Faith, Family and Values Tour." This time around the campaign has enlisted evangelical surrogates such as author Donald Miller and other pro-life Democrats on a swing through the battleground states. Yet despite previous faith-based tours and new "Believer for Obama" merchandise, a recent University of Akron poll revealed that Obama hasn't made any inroads among evangelical voters.

The Democratic Party realizes it needs the support of undecided voters in swing states such as Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Florida. To secure these votes, the Obama team must win over centrist evangelicals and mainline Protestants who live in those areas. But it's an uphill fight.

According to the University of Akron poll, "White evangelical Protestants favored McCain over Obama 57 to 20 percent, with 22 percent undecided. At the same point in the 2004 campaign, white evangelicals preferred Bush over Kerry 60 to 20, with 20 percent undecided."

The numbers show that history may be repeating itself. However, the study was conducted between June and August 2008, "which was before both parties' conventions and before McCain named Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate." There may be time left for the Obama team to fine-tune its message to voters who were inspired by the display of faith at the Democratic convention (or who are dismayed by the selection of Palin, whose not-so-centrist beliefs might alienate moderates).

The Obama campaign official told Christianity Today that the candidate's last faith-based tour was more of a fact-finding mission, but his new effort will focus on "why people of faith and values support Obama." Surrogates like pro-life Democrat Tim Roemer and Professor Doug Kmiec of Pepperdine University will address audiences at community centers and discuss to Obama's and Biden's stances on hot button evangelical issues.

Although increasing dialogue between evangelicals and Democrats is a smart strategy, the University of Akron poll suggests that the Obama team may want to spend less time talking about topics, such as abortion and gay marriage, about which they can't win over evangelicals.

Still, if the 2004 race serves as a history lesson, Obama cannot win by only securing what John Green, the political scientist behind the Akron polls, calls the "modernist evangelical vote those with less traditional beliefs and practices."

Rather, the Obama camp may need to find common ground with evangelicals whose positions on abortion are also connected to more traditionally Democratic social justice and environmental issues like poverty, global warming, education and peacemaking.

According to an article in Yes! Magazine, "There is a growing number of evangelicals creating an alternative to an evangelical political platform long dominated by hot-button issues such as gay marriage and abortion." This group includes evangelical Rev. Joel Hunter, who gave the closing prayer at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and is author of the book, A New Kind of Conservative. Although these evangelicals are not giving up their socially conservative beliefs, like other Democrats, they are concerned with social justice too.

"As a movement progresses and matures," Hunter told Yes! Magazine, "it begins to define itself by what it's for instead of what it's against. It starts to think of pro-life in terms of life outside the womb as well as inside the womb."

A social justice message might also help the Obama camp reach out to minority evangelicals. According to a 2004 poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Inc. for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and U.S. News & World Report, "While white evangelicals considered socially conservative moral values their first priority (37%), 41% of black and 34% of Hispanic respondents placed a different moral issuethe economyfirst."

Instead of simply repeating its commitment to "reducing abortions"a strategy that is unlikely to win the hearts of evangelicals, the University of Akron poll suggeststhe Obama campaign would do well to emphasize the points of commonality between the Democratic party and the leading edges of evangelical movements that are focusing on social justice and environmental concerns. Whether Obama can fine-tune his message, and how it will sound to the ears of a younger (and more diverse) generation of evangelicals, remains to be seen.

Brooke-Sidney Gavins is an USC-Annenberg Dean's Scholar and an M.A. candidate in the broadcast journalism program.

Apocalypse at 8 p.m.

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I knew I liked "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," but it wasn't until I read Ginia Bellafante's New York Times piece that I understood why.

The Fox drama makes another run at the Terminator franchise that debuted inwhen else?1984. In a career-defining role, Arnold Schwarzenegger displayed an almost charming relentlessness that, according to some, served him well during recent deliberations on the California state budget.

This time around, terminators come in more diverting shapes and sizes, including the ubiquitous Garrett Dillahunt (who as Jesus played for the other side of the Manichean divide in "The Book of Daniel" ) and pixie-ish Garbage singer Shirley Manson.

Bellafante explains that "The Sarah Chronicle Connors," which focuses on the heroic efforts of a single mom to safeguard her son (so that he can save the world from tyrannical machines) captures our current apocalyptic moment.

"In contrast to 'Heroes,' another series about pre-empting apocalypse," Bellafante writes, "there is nothing cartoonish about 'Sarah Connor.' The sense of foreboding is relentless and the mood unbroken by moments of comedydark, light or middling. . . The 'Terminator' franchise originated with a messianic bent, but 'Sarah Connor' aggressively expands the theology. Like '24,' also on Fox, the series plays both to the left and the right, nodding to the humanistic notion that it is in man's power to change fate but offering a Christ figure to alter the course of history."

That Christ figure, Sarah's son John Connor (note the initials), is surrounded by religious imagery. His father is a mysterious figure who, overcoming time, travels from the future to impregnate Sarah. Sarah herself is a militant Madonna convinced that her son is the savior of humankind. Another member of the crew, a "good" terminator sent from the future to protect them, goes bad and betrays John. But rather than disable the mechanical turncoat, as Sarah wishes, John experiences an outpouring of love (agape, we hope) that puts the machine back on track.

Perhaps Sarah Connor is for semi-secular quasi-humanists what Sarah Palin is to folks who take their theology neat (no twist): a heroic mother with an aura of chosen-ness who's hell-bent on saving humanity. Pretty women on a mission, they're ready to blow up whoever stands in their way.

Sarah P. is more attuned to divine mysteries, although Sarah C. looks better in black. They both know their way around guns and toss their dark locks to get what they want. It's not surprising that I have the same reaction when I watch either one: their struggles depress me. Sarah Connor is fighting an apparently omnipotent enemy, but I tune in on Mondays to watch her fight against the apocalypse. On the other hand, Sarah Palin's ready for the Second Coming. She's heard the Word, got the blessings and is prepared to lead you and me into the fray.

Do journalists understand the difference between art and lifeand the relationship between religion and politics? If so, we need more digging on Sarah P's notions of spiritual warfare and their implications for real life decisions. Also needed are more reflective pieces on why we're turning to big bad mamas to mitigate free-floating apocalyptic sensibilities in our over-polluted, terror-crazed, bankrupt world.

Diane Winston

Spiritual, But Not "Religulous"

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The following text is from author Jennifer Hahn's current posting at Religion Dispatches.

"Religion must die for mankind to live." So concludes Bill Maher in his new documentary Religulous, in which he travels the world interviewing religious zealots in an attempt to alert humanity to the apocalypse-ushering absurdities of their beliefs.

On the one hand, the film, directed by Larry Charles of Borat fame, is a super-funny and much-needed intervention for a world increasingly beholden to religious fundamentalism. The problem is that Maher purports to show that all organized religion, not just fundamentalism, is "detrimental to the progress of humanity" and he falls short.

"I get this criticism a lot," Maher told The New York Times. "It's a pet peeve of mine, because I'm confronted with this notion that 'Oh yes, you only go after the extremists, and by doing that you make religion look silly.'" But, Maher counters, "Anyone who's religious is extremist."

While such a black-and-white view of faith may infuriate some, I'd be happy to hear Maher out. But by the time he exhorts moderate religious people to realize that their solace comes at a "terrible price," the film's seconds away from the credits. He's had so much fun eviscerating easy targets like an actor portraying Jesus at a holy land theme park that he fails to prove his more interesting thesis: that moderate religious people enable the intolerance and violence perpetrated by their more fundamentalist fellow believers.

It seems Maher's two primary goals for the film to be funny and to actually convince people to abandon religion are often at odds with each other. I have no doubt that sometime atheists such as myself will find Maher shriek-out-loud hilarious, but it is unlikely that his film is going to change the minds of any committed believers. (Actually, it's probably more likely to inspire galvanizing rage in the Palin-loving portion of the electorate just weeks before the election.) For instance, Maher somehow gets an ex-gay minister to agree to an interview and the two men actually end up having an interesting conversation. Of course, Maher can't help himself and when hugged by the "formerly" gay man asks him if he got a hard-on. I'll admit it I laughed. But any minds Maher might have actually managed to pry open with this exchange were probably firmly slammed shut again thanks to the boner comment.

The truth is, Maher is preaching to the choir and the choir may be rolling on the floor, but their amusement will have no affect on the majority of people in this country that firmly, unapologetically, believe in God. He is so very right that the 16 percent of Americans that are not affiliated with any organized religion need to come out of the closet and take back their fair share of the political process. Hopefully he'll inspire some of his fellow travelers. But what Religulous won't do is convince believers because as any evangelist knows, pissing people off does not generally lead to conversion.

But Maher has also said the film's goal is to start a conversation and, in this regard, he seems to have succeeded. It's high time someone vocally challenged an America in which, as Maher has pointed out, once "you say the word 'faith,' the debate is overno matter what incredibly nonsensical, destructive, ridiculous tenet comes out of your mouth." People of faith should be held accountable for their beliefs, especially when they insert these beliefs into public life. Beliefnet.com which Maher has parodied with his Disbeliefnet.com - wisely doesn't dismiss Religulous (actually it's crawling with ads for the film) but instead implores its readers to "prove Maher wrong" on its discussion boards by explaining "how faith, or your spiritual practices, has made you a better person or your world a better place." If Maher can't succeed in converting extremists to agnosticism, perhaps his film can at least bring moderate religious voices more prominently into the discussion.

Interestingly, many of these more moderate voices are offering up the "spiritual, but not religious" stance as a rebuttal to Maher. As Heretic_for_Christ puts it: "Of course religion is bad. God is real to me as a spiritual presence in my life, but religion is a man-made construct based on the preposterous notion that a set of ancient writings akin to a printout of Beliefnet postings is the holy and infallible word of God."

For the record, Maher says he has "no problem with spirituality." What I think he fails to understand is that many people who belong to organized religious groups actually view themselves as spiritual rather than religious, probably because they associate religion with the same kind of bigotry and violence that Maher does. Actually 40 percent of Americans use this phrase to describe themselves, according to a 2007 Gallup poll. Meaning, perhaps, that they don't take the stories of their particular faith literally and don't just subscribe to whatever nonsense is coming from the pulpit. There's a difference between official doctrine and how the majority of people live their faith on a day-to-day basis. And Maher paves over this difference. Sure, a small proportion of Christians, Muslims, and Jews take their holy texts as literal word-for-word instructions and thus find it hard to coexist with others. But as the Onion A.V. Club's Noel Murray so wisely points out, Maher isn't "quite fearless enough to interview or lay into the multitudes of moderately devout folks who use their religion as a cultural signifier and a way to make a difference in their communities."

I have a sense that Maher is aware of this but he knows that a film parsing out the differences between various groups of believers would not be as provocative or as funny as a sweeping condemnation of all of them. (Well, Western ones at least. There's no mention of Eastern religious traditions in the film). Obviously, a sober PBS-style treatment of the subject would not inspire the kind of widespread discussion of the role of faith in Western culture and politics that "Religuous" will. So, yeah, the film is perhaps unfair in lumping moderate religious folks with extremists (though if Maher wants to make a sequel proving the validity of this claim, I'll watch). But by doing so, he provokes the majority of Americans to think critically about what they believe and how it impacts our world. The best thing that Religulous could do is inspire more moderate religious folks to assert their claim on the word religious, wresting it free from the stranglehold of misguided extremists.

Jennifer Hahn, whose work has appeared in Ms. magazine and Los Angeles CityBeat, is currently a master's degree candidate in specialized journalism at USC.

Looking Beyond the Split

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

By Jonathan Partridge

A slew of media outlets relayed more tales of Anglican angst this weekend, as the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh became the second diocese to break off from the Episcopal Church.

By an overwhelming majority, Pittsburgh's clergy and laity opted to realign with the theologically conservative Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in South America.

At least a dozen outlets covered the activities of the Pittsburgh diocese's vote on Saturday as well as the drama leading up to that event. That included Bishop Robert Duncan's deposition by the Episcopal Church last month and the church's 2003 ordination of openly gay bishop Gene Robinson.

Still, it will be interesting to see if media interest continues as the diocese comes under the oversight of the Southern Cone province. If coverage of the Fresno, Calif.-based Diocese of San Joaquin's split in December is any indication, readers should expect to see little follow-up.

That's a shame.

As a former member of a mission church in the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, I have talked to parishioners there who are unhappy with the general direction of the Episcopal Church but are equally unhappy with the new diocesan leadership, which they describe as "power hungry."

Such perspectives have not appeared in the mainstream media, which has seemingly forgotten that bishops, priests and pundits are not the only people affected by church-wide splits. The New York Times wisely jumped on a story this week about a potential dispute over church property within the Pittsburgh diocese, but reporters also can find additional news fodder if they take time to talk to individual parishioners.

And while it is important to explain the theological differences that have led to the recent split, media outlets should be wary of how pundits characterize those variances in belief.

For instance, the New York Times stated that the debate is "driven by theologically conservative leaders who believe the church has turned away from traditional biblical teachings on issues like whether Jesus is the son of God and the only way to salvation."

While this may be a fair characterization of the views of conservative critics within the Episcopal Church, a more thorough reporting of the facts would also note that the Episcopal Church officially acknowledges the divinity of Christ. Meanwhile, teachings on homosexuality vary among parishes. However, the church passed a resolution in 1994 that generally prohibits people from being excluded from worship and governance of the church because of sexual orientation.

It also would be helpful to get commentary from historians about Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's statement that schism often has been "seen as a more egregious error than charges of heresy" within Anglicanism. Her statement may be true, but it certainly deserves further questioning.
Meanwhile, media sources who cover international news should continue getting perspectives from Anglicans in Africa. After all, most church-goers in the nearly 80-million-member Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal Church, now reside on the African continent. Robinson's election as bishop has stirred up quite a bit of controversy within the Anglican Communion, making this far more than an Episcopal Church story. The New York Times and Reuters, among other outlets, have included African voices with a wide range of views on homosexuality in past stories. Continued coverage in that vein is necessary to put the story in a global context.

Another interesting angle could be a story on what Episcopalians think of the Apostle Paul's mandate against Christians suing one another. How do they justify turning to the secular courts to resolve property issues?

Most of all, careful follow-through will be needed as the dioceses of Fort Worth in Texas and Quincy in Illinois consider realigning with the Southern Cone province next month.

The Most Rev. Gregory Venables, archbishop of the Province of the Southern Cone, said in an interview at the Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference this summer that it is important to ask "Where do we go from here?"

Journalists should watch how Anglicans reply to that question in the coming months. Intense local and global coverage will be necessary to accurately chart the course the Anglican Church is taking.

Jonathan Partridge, former managing editor of The Patterson Irrigator in Patterson, Calif., is a graduate student in the specialized journalism program at the University of Southern California

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Mystery of the Catholic Vote

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

By Andrea Tabor

Going to Mass on "Respect Life Sunday" is always an uncomfortable experience for me. When the priest starts in on his "respect life" homily, the pews begin to creak as parishioners fidget nervously. I've seen my mother walk out of church, or refuse to attend Mass when the annual pro-life service comes around. So when I realized that yesterday was going to be that Sunday, I was glad that I had gone to church alone.

Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and I aren't the only Catholics who feel uncomfortable. According to a Georgetown University study, 58 percent of us support a woman's right to a legal abortion. 41 percent believe that human life is sacred from conception to natural death. So I suppose 1 percent of us are caught in the middle. A tense situation? I'd say so.

Yesterday, Respect Life homilies were delivered not just at my parish, but across the country. A letter from a local bishop, which equated abortion with homicide, was read aloud at every Mass in Scranton, PA. (Imagine the creaking in those pews!) But it seems that Respect Life Sunday won't be the last we hear from the Roman Catholic clergy between now and Election Day.

Archbishop Raymond Burke, a senior American clergy member at the Vatican, has called the Democratic Party a "party of death." Pro-choice lay Catholics promote the Democrats' platform on social justice as a more Christ-like approach to policy.

The candidates themselves seem to be adding to the tension. McCain's (perhaps misguided) strategy is to appeal to Catholics by emphasizing pro-life issues. Obama's approach downplayed abortion to reach out to the quiet 58 percent who fidget in their pews.

But after Biden's gaffe on Meet the Press, the candidates are even more cautious. Both Biden and Pelosi caught heat from U.S. bishops for what they viewed as a flawed stance on abortion.

But for all the embarrassment and back-paddling of both politicians, they haven't actually suffered much damage at the polls.

Still, squabble between bishops and Washington, which is dominating coverage in the press, seems to be falling under the radar of Catholic voters. A recent Pew study showed that less than 10 percent of Catholics say that Church teaching informs their votes.

The Catholic vote has always been a bit of a mysterya curious electoral creature that defies party lines. Official Church teachings oppose abortion and gay marriage, while promoting health care reform, welfare, and an end to war. But as the Pew study suggests, Catholics themselves may revere the Church but not vote according to its teachings.

Instead of focusing on the American Catholics who will cast ballots in November, the press is caught up in the Church's official statements from the Vatican. In the process, one of the most politically significant voting blocs may be slipping through their fingertips.

Andrea Tabor is a Master's degree candidate in journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

Whose Beautiful City?

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In a much ballyhooed cover story, Newsweek proclaimed 1976, "The Year of the Evangelical." But 32 years later, many coastal Americans still aren't sure who these believers are, what they want and whether they should be worried about them. Attuned to these concerns, members of the Civilians, a New York City-based acting troupe, traveled to Colorado Springs, the erstwhile evangelical mecca, for answers.

The result is a performance art hybridtheatrical journalism or journalism as theater, a genre mined in the 1990s by Anna Deavere Smith and more recently the Tectonic Theater's "The Laramie Project." The Civilians' offering, "This Beautiful City," extends these earlier efforts by adding songs to the mix. Given the subject matter, and the centrality of music to contemporary Christian ministry, this turns out to be a smart, if surprising, choice.

In 2006, several Civilians spent ten weeks in Colorado Springs interviewing scores of evangelicals, atheists and others in between. They chose the city because it was home to several large and nationally important evangelical institutions as well as similarly conservative military sites, including Army and Air Force bases, NORAD, the U.S. Air Force Academy and prominent defense contractors.

The combination of zealous Christians and ardent patriots made the city a good spot to plot the intersection of religion and politics. As Civilian Brad Heberlee told the Denver Post, the actors' goal was "to responsibly explore how faith intersects with public life, and ultimately, how that reflects what's happening in our country."

Coincidentally, the sex-and-drugs scandal that toppled the Rev. Ted Haggard erupted during their stay. Haggard started the now 14,000 member New Life mega-church in his basement. Along with Focus on the Family, James Dobson's ministry, New Life is a pillar of the local evangelical establishment.

The people who built these pillars likewise dream of raising up a beautiful city; some say a "city on a hill." But as the play makes clear, their notion of beauty in based on a kind of Christian regimentation that would incorporate evangelical notions of piety (lots of it), family (one man and one woman) and morality (mostly monitoring other people's sexual preferences). Haggard's fall underscores their folly, but the play's take-home lesson is that the vision endures and the project continues. For those of us in California, it's currently called Proposition 8.

As a piece of journalism, the play feels less like an act of discovery than a heavy-handed roll-out of religious clichés: the silver-tongued black preacher, the tongues-speaking, big-haired blonde and the potty-mouthed atheist all have their say. Other attempts at ethnography likewise fall flat.

The city sits at the base of Pike's Peak, and periodic appearances by park rangers remind tourists to stay on the right path, respect the unknown and enjoywithin limits. It's a didactic effect that doesn't help the drama, much less provide investigative insight. The play strives for balance, but it lacks a narrative that explains who evangelicals are, what they want and whether "we" should be worried.

As a work or art, "This Beautiful City" lacks a dramatic center. Ted Haggard's rise and fall could do the trick, but the play would need to be slimmed and trimmed. That said, the music is good, the stagecraft is nifty and some of the set pieces are a delight to watch. The youth ministry's ferocious interplay of music and lights almost sent me to the amen corner. Likewise, a string of post-Haggard emails set to music gave new life to clichés of both outrage and forgiveness.

The Civilians have it right: All Americans need to understand the deep historic and currently explosive relationship between religion and politics in our country. Their impulse to bring these issues to life through representations that go deeper than traditional journalism is understandable. So instead of complaining about how, whyor even if"This Beautiful City" fails, I instead challenge journalists. How can you do it better?

Diane Winston

Gay Priest Punished...Why, Exactly?

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

by Kyla Cullinane

The Los Angeles Times reported that Father Geoffrey Farrow, the priest at a parish that primarily serves Cal State Fresno, was suspended from his job. But the Times story neglects to ask some important questions about the dismissal of Farrow, who also told reporters that he is gay and who used his pulpit to speak out again Proposition 8, a measure that would outlaw gay marriage in California if it passes in November.

According to the article in the Times, it was Farrow's opposition to Prop 8, which would amend the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, that cost the priest his job. And he's not the only Roman Catholic cleric in California who wants gays to be able to marry. Father Steve Niskanen, who leads a church with an activist bent, according to a 2004 LA Times article, offered the same criticism of Prop 8 on the same day as Father Farrow. Niskanen, however, did not receive the same degree of attention from the media.

Maybe that's because the Farrow story was about more than just Prop 8. Just before his Mass, Farrow gave a TV interview during which he admitted he was gay. Is that why he was suspended? Or because he used the pulpit to express his pro-gay views and his opposition to Prop 8? And is he celibate or sexually active? None of this is clear in the LA Times article.

Instead the reporters let Farrow frame the issue in his own words: ""How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives? I am morally compelled to vote no on Proposition 8." The reporters never offer details about Prop 8. Instead, they leave unchallenged Farrow's claims that both Prop 8 and the Church are antigay, which is what numerous gay media outlets, including As Good As You and the Advocate, would also have us believe.

The LA Times reporters speculate as to why Farrow was suspended, although they are unclear what his official status is now. They quote Farrow's letter from his boss, Bishop Steinbock, which says, "Your statement contradicted the teaching of the Catholic Church and has brought scandal to your parish community as well as the whole Church." Steinbock also admonished Farrow, who has used his blog to challenge the Church's teaching on homosexuality, against "using the Internet as a means of continuing [his] conflict with the Church's teaching."

But we're left to wonder: Which teaching of the Catholic Church did Father Farrow contradict? What, exactly, is the source of the conflict? And what is the position of the Church on gay priests anyway? The reporters need to be clear.

When it comes to the basic issue of the Church's position on Prop 8, we can turn to the California Catholic Conference website, which gives the official public policy statement of the state's Catholic Bishops, who unanimously support Proposition 8. The LA Times article also neglected to mention that point.

And to what degree are Catholic parishes across the state engaged in this debate? That could be an interesting story in itself. The reporters do mention that Farrow's parish is divided on the issue. But what's the nature of the division, and how many parishioners are opposed to the official position of the Church?

One parishioner says, "We are going through changes right now in society and the Church needs to recognize that." What changes? How should the Church respond to those changes? We desperately need some follow up here.

The reporters for the Times might take a look at a recent survey from the non-profit group Faith in Public Life which shows that about half of all young Catholics support same sex marriage. Maybe that shift is what we're seeing play out in Farrow's parish. We'll never know until some sharper reporting is done.

Kyla Cullinane is an Annenberg Fellow in the Master of Specialized Journalism program at USC. Previously, she worked as a prime-time television news anchor in Texas.

Fear-mongering, Muslim-slinging and Obama as Enabler

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

by Tara Graham

While addressing a crowd of supporters at a town hall meeting in Minnesota last Friday, John McCain was compelled to set the record straight when a woman took the mic and said, "I can't trust Obama. I have read about him and he's an Arab."

"No ma'am. No ma'am," said McCain. "He's a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That's what this campaign's all about. He's not [an Arab]."

The rampant rumor, which was first published at FreeRepublic.com and later perpetuated through a "cyberwhisper" campaign attributed to Andy Martin, has followed Obama throughout his presidential campaign. And although McCain's willingness to stop and correct the falsehood is refreshingas he and Sarah Palin have done little up until this point to quell cries of "Kill him!" and "Terrorist!" (in reference to Obama) during recent rallieshis response to the rumor falls short. It seems to imply that Arabs are anything but decent people and responsible citizens.

McCain could have said that there's nothing wrong with Arabs, or with Muslims for that matter, but he didn'tand that's a problem.

Let's rewind to 2006 when Keith Ellison was voted into the House of Representatives to serve Michigan's Fifth District. He was the first Muslim to hold a seat in Congress, and this achievement was celebrated around the world.

Osama A. Siblani, the publisher of The Arab American News, told The New York Times that he considered Ellison's victory "a step forward" because it gave the Muslim community a "sense of belonging."

"It [also signaled] to the rest of the world that America has nothing against Muslims," said Siblani. "If we did, [Ellison] wouldn't have been elected."

Fast forward to the present-day and we find a completely different sentiment: Folks are refusing to vote for Obama because they think he is a Muslim and, in turn, has a terrorist agenda up his suit sleeve.
What happened between 2006 and 2008 to radically change the American perception of the Muslim population?

Some argue that Americans are taking issue with Obama's "secret" Muslim religion as an indirect way of rejecting his race. When McCain expressed his discomfort with the notion of a Muslim in the White House during an interview with BeliefNet a little over a year ago, James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute, argued that McCain was merely pandering to the religious Right.

So are we to believe that these anti-Muslim sentiments are not genuine, but are merely the means to achieve some other end? Yes and no.

In response to suffering poll numbers, the McCain campaign recently began baiting Obama backlash by pushing his association with William Ayers, a former domestic terrorist with the Weather Underground.

In addition, Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists." And McCain campaign ad pinned the junior senator from Illinois as "too risky for America."

The aim was to make Obama guilty-(of terrorism)-by-association, but the strategy backfired. It not only reinforced people's misunderstanding of Obama as a practicing Muslim (as intended), it also brought genuine fear of Muslims to the surfacealong with the explosive outbursts, booing, and death threats we're now hearing at McCain-Palin rallies. I choose to believe that these blatant displays of intolerance and hate were never intended.

But, for the record, Obama hasn't been helping the situation.

Back in June, the Obama campaign reportedly restricted two Muslim women wearing headscarves from sitting behind the senator at a Detroit rally so that the women wouldn't be photographed or filmed in the background of news coverage from the event. Obama also declined Rep. Ellison's offer to help him campaign in Iowa back in December and later in North Carolina.

If the McCain campaign insists on reinforcing incindiary ideas about Arab and Muslim Americans through fearmongering, then the Obama campaign needs to insist on a change in the current mistreatment and scapegoating of the Muslim population. For lack of a better strategy, the Obama camp has resorted to ignoring this group altogether, which only feeds into the Republican game and leaves many Americans, including the lady at McCain's town hall meeting, living in fear and loathing of each other.

Where's the "change" in that?

Tara Graham is an Annenberg Graduate Fellow and online journalism M.A. candidate at the University of Southern California.

The (Lavender) Elephant in the Room

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

by Jennifer Hahn

On October 20, proponents of Prop 8, a California ballot measure to amend the state's constitution to forbid gay marriage, released the second in a series of ads alleging that if the measure fails to pass children will be forced to learn about same-sex relationships in school.

"Yes on 8"'s new ad features a real Massachusetts couple who sued their school district because their son's second-grade teacher read the class a book about two princes who marry each other. "We tried to stop public schools from teaching children about gay marriage," says the husband. "But the court said we had no right to object or pull him out of class."

The mainstream media have done a good job of reporting why it is highly unlikely that California schools will force students to learn about gay marriage. Many stories point out that the state education code does not require schools to teach anything about marriage unless they voluntarily offer comprehensive sex education. In this case, they must "teach respect for marriage and committed relationships." Other journalists reported that California has a stronger "opt-out" provision than Massachusetts, enabling parents to pull their kids out of any lesson they don't like.

But what's missing is an examination of the fundamental premise behind these ads: that even mentioning gay marriage in public school is tantamount to teaching kids to shoot heroin.

To be fair, even the "No On 8" campaign has been hesitant to take on the premise that teaching kids about gay marriage is any different than teaching them about straight marriage. Its response to the ad merely says that Prop 8 "will not affect teaching in schoolsIt's time to shut down the scare tactics."

But Prop 8's supporters can only be accused of using scare tactics if their opponents agree that the mention of gay marriage in schools is "scary."

Instead of just reporting the official lines of the Yes/No On 8 campaigns, journalists could dig a little deeper to expose the unspoken assumptions on both sides of this issue. It seems to me that the teaching-gay-marriage-in-schools narrative is a thinly veiled way of raising the tired idea that gay people are somehow trying to recruit children to their "immoral" lifestyle. An astute reporter would press the "Yes On 8" campaign to be clear about their real meaning and force the "No On 8" campaign to explain why they won't confront this bigotry head on.

Ann Rostow, a columnist for The San Francisco Bay Times, takes both sides to task for their failure to address what the gay marriage debate is really about:

"Throughout this campaign, we have once again hid the face of the same-sex couples and given a free pass to those in the middle of the electorate who are uncomfortable with gay relationships. Instead of challenging that atavistic premise, we have nodded our collective heads and said something on the order of 'Hey, we understand that gay couples make you a little queasy, but for God's sake don't write us out of the constitution.'

You know what that message actually means? It means that it's just fine to feel queasy. It implies that we ourselves feel queasy in a way. We can see your point! It's a losing strategy and it has lost us every same-sex marriage election, save one (Arizona 2004) that we've ever fought."

This is the kind of analysis that should inform reporting. Obviously Rostow's is an opinion column, and I don't expect journalists to wax poetic about their personal feelings in this campaign. But hers is the type of critical thinking that reveals what's going on below the surface,. Good reporters push their sources. They can't just parrot the official line on either side of a controversy, especially when both groups are attempting to cover up what's really at stake.

Jennifer Hahn, whose work has appeared in Ms. magazine and Los Angeles CityBeat, is currently a master's degree candidate in specialized journalism at USC.

A Reckonable Force?

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

by Jonathan Partridge

Many pundits talk about Arab Americans as if their patriotism should automatically be questioned. That's particularly the case for those who criticize U.S. policies.

But a glimpse at some of the issues that Arab Americans feel are important in the upcoming presidential election largely reflect those of the general population.

A poll of the nation's Arab American population released last month shows that the economy was the top issue of concern among those surveyed. Does that issue sound familiar?

How about the war in Iraq? Health care reform?

All these concerns are shared by Arab Americans and Americans as a whole.

The main distinctions between the views of Arab Americans and the general populous tend to consist of concerns about civil liberties issues, Middle East peace and a desire for a self-sustaining Palestinian state.

That's not to say that all Arabs think alike. For instance, Lebanese Christians often have concerns about political strife in their native country. And some Arab Christians from Egypt and Lebanon have expressed concern about Sen. Barack Obama's family background, largely because of religious persecution they received in their native lands.

Political experts may want to pay heed to such nuances, as the Arab American community grows and becomes more politically involved. After all, Arab Americans have one of the highest voter registration rates in the country, Arab American Institute public affairs manager Nadine Wahab reportedly told Voice of America last month.

Some say the diversity among Arabs will prevent them from organizing on a national level and that powerful Jewish and evangelical Christian lobbies will prevent them from having any clout. A recent feature on the American Public Media radio program Marketplace touched on some of these challenges.

Still, it will be intriguing to see if Arab Americans can promote more widespread interest in issues such as Palestinian statehood and civil liberties. Both Obama and Sen. John McCain have sought the Arab American vote in Michigan this year, according to The Detroit Free Press. And Salon has written about how McCain's difficulties with Arab American voters could cost him in certain swing states. Both of these accounts only touch on the diversity among Arab American perspectives.

Could Arab Americans become a reckonable political force in the coming years? It is certainly possible. Those who pay attention to politics would be wise to keep an eye on this potential trend.

Jonathan Partridge, former managing editor of The Patterson Irrigator in Patterson, Calif., is a graduate student in the specialized journalism program at the University of Southern California.

True Love Waits...But Not for Long

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

If you wondered why evangelicals were unfazed by news of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, "Red Sex, Blue Sex" in this week's New Yorker will be a revelatory read.

"During the campaign," writes Margaret Talbot, "the media has largely respected calls to treat Bristol Palin's pregnancy as a private matter. But the reactions to it have exposed a cultural rift that mirrors America's dominant political divide. Social liberals in the country's 'blue states' tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter's pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in 'red states' generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn't choose to have an abortion."

Talbot's informative piece bypasses the done-to-death abstinence-pledge stories to focus on recent research about linkages between religion and teenage sexuality.

Highlighting findings by sociologist Mark Regnerus, Talbot reports that "religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex but a poor one of sexual behavior, especially among teen-age evangelicals." Specifically, 74 percent of white evangelical teens don't believe in sex before marriage, but this same group is more sexually active, and at a younger age, than Mormons, mainline Protestants and Jews. They're also less likely to use contraceptives.

Regnerus identifies a new "middle-class morality" among well-off teens who, surprisingly, are not from socially conservative homes. Members of this smart, successful and ambitious cohort would rather be safe than sorry; for them, unprotected sex is "a moral issue like smoking or driving a car without a seat belt."

Talbot's article raises a host of issues and ideas ripe for reporting: how religion affects attitudes about sexuality, what types of religion influences sexual behavior, and how sex functions in an ecology of aspirations (for teens without prospects, marriage looms larger than for those who expect a fulfilling and remunerative career).

Bristol Palin may be a distant memory after next week, but the meaning and repercussions of teen-age pregnancyand the role of religion in sex, marriage and childbearingwill be an important story for years to come

Diane Winston

Hard News (and a little Voodoo) in the Big Easy

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Politics, science, sex and Hollywood were the topoi I used for teaching religion reporting, until this fall. Inspired by the Obama campaign and challenged by colleagues who called for mainstreaming race and ethnicity in the curriculum, I revamped my course.

The result--"Covering Race, Religion and Culture"--was a bid to capitalize on the presidential election and to attract students who might not otherwise care about issues of faith and values. To further sweeten the pot, I decided to organize a class field trip over a long weekend. Where to? That was obvious. What better place than New Orleans to report on the intricacies and entanglements of religion, race and culture in the U.S.

Eight graduate students, half of whom had left fulltime journalism jobs to enroll in Annenberg's new specialized journalism master's degree program, went with me to New Orleans in late October. They'd spent several weeks researching their stories and setting up interviews, but most were unfamiliar with the city. Our local guide gave us a crash course on post-Katrina politics along with a van tour of the city. We met with demographers, religious leaders, reporters, community activists, and cultural archivists. We spent time in Ronald Lewis' House of Dance and Feathers, Vaughn's Lounge and the Voodoo Museum. Students dropped in and out of activities to pursue their stories. Their results range from an update on the post-Katrina music scene to the problems of homelessness.

As the stories are published and posted, we'll link to them. For now, you can read student blogs describing how they got the stories, and view their photography and videography. They've spent the past few months telling readers how to write stories; here's your chance to tell them how they did.

Diane Winston

No Easy Answers

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Jonathan Partridge

When I headed off to New Orleans, my idea for an article seemed simple enough. I wanted to write about the changing face of homelessness in the city and learn what faith-based groups were doing to solve the problem. I quickly learned, however, that there is nothing simple about homelessness.

More than 60 homeless-related agencies work with Unity of Greater New Orleans, a local agency that uses federal money to support the city's homeless. So, which groups should I profile and what should be the story's focus? In the end, most of my interviews were with representatives and clients of two local shelters: New Orleans Mission and the Ozanam Inn. I also profiled a nonprofit citizens' group called the Desmond Project and spoke with a representative of Unity.

Interviewing some of my sources for this article was challenging because of the sensitive nature of the subject matter. It felt awkward to put homeless residents on the spot. I sometimes thought to myself, How would I feel if I were down on my luck and someone wanted to make me the face of New Orleans' homeless population?

Surely, it was important to tell their stories, but I didn't want to exploit them. Moral quandaries abounded. I decided to focus my photographic work on people who were in recovery or who were volunteers. Any homeless people whom I did not get permission to photograph could only be in the background of photos.

Some interviewees were eager to share stories of their recovery or the difficulties of life on the streets. Other folks were cynical. One man I talked to said I would not be able to get the story I wanted while I was wearing the button-down blue shirt that I had donned. If I wanted to really understand the homeless population, I would need to spend 21 days on the streets dressed like the homeless, he said.

In the end, I found that there was no easy way to resolve homelessness or to write about it. I'm left with many questions, but with a passion to learn more.

Post Katrina Stress Disorder

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By B. Adriana Venegas-Chavez

Before leaving for New Orleans, I wanted to write about the art created post-Katrina. I discovered two exhibitions at the New Orleans Museum of Art that focused on life in the city after the storm. I thought it would be interesting to delve into what people were creating in a city that was still recovering from a disaster. One of the exhibitions titled "Rethink, Renew, Revive" was created with three photographs from the immediate aftermath of Katrina and three photographs of New Orleans today. The other exhibition, "Coping with Katrina," utilized art created by children who participated in the Hyogo-NOMA Art Therapy Initiative.

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After I arrived in New Orleans and checked out both exhibitions, I thought they were extremely interesting, but when I talked to Holly Wherry, the art therapist in charge of the Hyogo-NOMA program, I realized that the exhibition she put together with the kids was almost like a cry for help. Although the kids in the program have shown improvement in their behavior and communication skills, Wherry is one of only nine art therapists in Louisiana, and the only art therapist working with kids in public schools in New Orleans.

I decided to focus on telling the story of this exhibition. I interviewed Wherry extensively and also talked to her intern, Alethia Picciola, who works closely with all the kids as well. I also interviewed Jim Mulvihill, NOMA's director of communications, to get a sense of how the exhibition came about and what the public reaction was when it opened. Because of privacy agreements, I was unable to speak to the kids, but I was able to get their stories through Wherry and their art. Once I got back to California I was able to contact two pediatric professors from LSU who were working closely with Wherry, but they were unable to get back to me before our first deadline. And I did some research on art therapy and how it has helped kids who have survived other disasters such as 9/11 and the Asian Tsunami.

Homegrown Voodoo: A Louisiana Legacy

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Tara Graham

When I decided to report on voodoo, someone else in the class mentioned that she was also considering the idea, but didn't want to risk getting herself hexed in the process. This struck me as odd.

If voodoo is the hogwash most people make it out to be, then why the fear?

Could these Louisiana voodooists know something we don't? Could their religion be as legitimate (and as potent) as any other? Could the face of voodoothe dolls, the needles, the snakes, the potionsbe a hyped-up distortion of something a little more sacred?

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I hit the pavement in New Orleans to uncover the real religiosity, if any, behind the practice of voodoo in Louisiana. Patrick Polk, an expert on folk religion at UCLA, argued that New Orleans voodoo is all for tourist consumption. Journalist Jason Berry warned that the locals, even if they practiced voodoo, probably wouldn't own up to it.

While I was out and about on the evening we arrived in town, however, I asked the first person I sawthe doorman at Vaughan's Nightclub if he knew anything about voodoo.

"Yeah--my old lady," he said. "She does the voodoo, but not me. I'm a Christian."

He mentioned that his girlfriend participates in an annual neighborhood ceremony to cleanse the street of bad spirits.

From that point forward, I decided to ask every New Orleans native I encountered on the trip about local or family traditions they participate in or that they remember observing while they were growing up. Most folks had a story or two to share.

The executive director of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce mentioned that when a cold or flu bug hit the family, his grandparents would keep a concoction of herbs and onion in a Mason jar behind the front door. The general manager at the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum recalled watching folks sweep their front porches with red brick dust every morning to dispatch any ill will, or gris-gris, that may have settled in overnight.

As I spoke with more and more locals, I realized that New Orleans voodoo does indeed existbut not on Bourbon St. It's a little more homegrown and a little more nuanced than the souvenir hawkers, cemetery tour guides, and local voodoo queens let on.

This is why, I reason, folks fear voodoo in the first place. We are frightened of the unknown, and New Orleans voodoo is very much an insiders' religion. Buying a voodoo doll and a how-to hex booklet at the local gift shop simply won't cut it. Trust me, I tried. Instead, one has to be born into the tradition and grow up inside it to truly understand the role of voodoo in the everyday lives of Louisianians.

That was the story to tell.

Christ, Crack and Katrina: Reporting on Faith-based Addiction Treatment in New Orleans

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Jennifer Hahn

My original idea for this story was to report on how churches in New Orleans were explaining the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in terms of God's will a sort of on-the-ground investigation of the "problem of evil," if you will. But after a few weeks of trying to get in touch with many church leaders with very little success, I had to scrap this idea at the last second and come up with something fast.

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I remembered reading that mental health problems had increased dramatically in New Orleans in the aftermath of "the storm," as Katrina is known there. In class, we had read Times-Picayune reporter Chris Rose's collection of post-Katrina articles, 1 Dead in the Attic, in which he chronicles his own mental unraveling and substance abuse problems against of the backdrop of the hurricane's aftermath. I started to wonder whether there were any studies out there showing that Katrina had led to an overall increase in drug or alcohol abuse. So I Googled something like "Katrina and New Orleans and Addiction" and found a University of Michigan study showing an increase in alcoholism, particularly among those who had experienced trauma as a result of the storm. A few other studies confirmed these findings for other commonly abused substances as well.

I also knew I wanted to incorporate a religion angle into the story. We'd recently done some reading about faith-based initiatives, and I started to wonder whether the government was funding any addiction treatment programs in New Orleans through faith-based organizations. I did some more fishing online and learned about a program called Access to Recovery (ATR) that President Bush had put into place in 2003. Louisiana happened to be one of the 14 states and one tribal organization to initially receive grants from the administration through its Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Based on a voucher system, ATR allows individuals to seek addiction treatment with government funds at an approved facility of their choosing, whether faith-based or secular. After a little more sleuthing, I found a power-point presentation that the Louisiana Office of Addictive Disorders had put together to explain their ATR program. I got in touch with them, and they gave me the contact information for a number of faith-based facilities in New Orleans that accepted ATR vouchers.

I went into this story with a lot of pre-conceived notions about whether the government should provide funding to faith-based organizations. Visiting some of these programs and speaking with addicts and pastors face-to-face about the powerful role that faith can play in recovery allowed me to see things in a different light. I'm still not sure where I stand on the issue of government funding, but I have a much richer understanding of what faith-based programs can contribute and I hope that my article can provide this to my readers as well.

Oh, and in the end, I managed to get some of my theodicy questions answered by the religious leaders running these programs. After all, you can't really talk about drug addiction and faith-based treatment without somehow addressing the problem of suffering. I got some very interesting responses, which I hope to elaborate in another story.

Music Keeps a Storm-tossed City's Roots Intact

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Nicky Loomis

In writing about New Orleans, I was interested in understanding whether Hurricane Katrina had diminished the vitality of the city's famous music scene.

Three years after the storm, jazz clubs and juke joints are alive and well and perhaps more important than ever to the city as it continues to rebuild itself. From the French Quarter to Frenchman Street to the neighborhood of Tremé, music pours out of bars and into areas both thriving and struggling.

On any given night, legendary jazz musicians such as Henry Butler or Ivan Neville can be seen playing in their favorite haunts. The setting is always intimate, the musicians approachable. The more musicians I spoke to, the more I began to realize how close they are to each other.

Many of the performers I interviewed said that closeness comes from growing up together, from learning to play the trombone or the bass guitar at neighborhood gatherings when they were young.
And while many neighborhoods remain half-empty, music continues to be an important legacy that each generation passes on to the next.

Though an estimated 75 percent of the city's musicians have returned, bands have decreased in size, and some members are still unable to afford to come home.

The community of musicians has been supportive of its own during difficult circumstances, and many grassroots organizations, such as Sweet Home New Orleans and Habitat for Humanity's "Musicians Village" have provided steady outreach.

To some musicians, Katrina is the defining influence on their music these days. Yet for most, the killer storm is a blip in the history of a city that has withstood the test of time. The music, then, keeps the culture of the place intact.

Healing the Most Vulnerable Citizens of Broken City

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Kyla Cullinane

It started with a phone conversation.

"The real story that no one is really covering is the fight to reopen Charity," explained journalist and New Orleans native Jason Berry.

I called Berry to find out more about Catholic Charities' Operation Helping Hands project, but by the end of his passionate monologue, he had convinced me that I must look into Charity Hospital. Berry gave me a brief summary of the situation: most of the poor, who happened to be African-American, relied on Charity for their healthcare. With the hospital closed, they were left with few choices.

Berry mentioned that two citizens' groups were actively fighting to reopen Charity, which seemed like the beginning of a compelling narrative. Sister Vera Butler and community activist Brad Ott were leading the campaign to bring healing to a broken city. Sister Vera saw Charity's closing as a class issue; Brad thought it was a race issue. While they cited different reasons for getting involved, their goal was and is the same: to make sure poor African Americans in New Orleans have access to quality healthcare at a properly staffed public hospital.

As I delved deeper into Charity's closing, I found another valuable source: Dr. Lance Hill of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University. An expert on race relations, he has studied David Duke extensively as well as the racial composition of New Orleans post-Katrina. He was not sure whether the motivations behind the closing of Charity were racist, but he did see the impact of racism in the consequences of the city's plan. He felt the hospital's closing was part of a larger scheme that effectively prohibited poor African-Americans from returning to the city after Katrina.

Hill pointed out that in New Orleans, before Katrina, the majority of the poor people were African-Americans Who were often living paycheck to paycheck and relying on Charity for free or reduced healthcare. After Katrina, when jobs and healthcare virtually disappeared and rents soared, many in the African-American community felt banished, Hill explained. Even if they wanted to come home, for many a return to the devastated city was not economically possible. Hill also says white liberals feel uncomfortable talking about race because they encouraged poor African Americans to stay in other cities.

Others, like Sister Vera, are less comfortable pointing to race as a reason behind Charity's closure. She pointed out that poor white people are also impacted by the loss of the hospital. Because race is an especially divisive issue in New Orleans, she feels it is counterproductive to bring up racism in the movement to provide affordable healthcare to the city's poor.

Race and Politics in New Orleans

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Brooke-Sydney Gavins

I initially began my investigation into race and politics in New Orleans by examining a small niche group, Creoles, who are of mixed racial and ethnic heritage. I wanted to examine whether Creoles of Color (African, Spanish and Caucasian/French) would identify with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's mixed heritage. And further, I wondered whether this identification would lead Creoles of Color to vote for him. I was also curious as to how their French Catholic background would affect their vote. Would their religious beliefs make them tend to choose McCain? Or would their complex ethnicity dispose them to more closely identify with Barack Obama?

After investigating my topic, I ran into difficulties finding Creole sources. In addition, the Creoles that I pre-interviewed basically identified themselves as black, and they were all voting for Barack Obama. The story became blacks voting for a black man, which wasn't very interesting.

Next, I widened my topic a bit by focusing on African Americans and politics in New Orleans. Several of the sources that I had developed for my Creole story were experts on the city's racial politics, so I was able to use them in my new story too.

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Once I hit the ground, I immediately re-confirmed all my interviews and began looking for signs of politics all around me. One of the stories that I also covered was an early voting event, which featured local hip-hop artists and New Orleans bounce music. Although the event was a great idea, it wasn't well attended. The musical acts were mostly playing for each other. And the major bounce music draw, DJ Jubilee, didn't even show up. DJ Soul Sista, a prominent dee-jay in New Orleans, also didn't attend the event. And the second line leading to City Hall was not well organized and very small. I obtained several interviews from the hip hop artists in hopes of finding a bigger hook, but did not find one. With low attendee turnout and Obama's low profile in Louisiana, the story fell a bit flat.

After speaking with several sources, however, I learned that the 2nd congressional district race was a real-life example of the pitfalls of voting based on race. I also realized that Obama was a less potent figure in Louisiana because the state traditionally fell into the Republican camp. Louisiana would side with McCain, although Obama could win in the New Orleans area only.

So I decided to focus on the pitfalls of voting based on race and juxtapose that issue to the challenges that Obama has faced due to his race. Since the beginning of his historic presidential bid, Obama has encountered people who would not vote for him simply because he was black. The story captured various racial challenges distinct to New Orleans, such as the perceptions of racial prejudice during and after Katrina; a majority-minority city with predominantly black leadership until the years after Katrina; the battle for power between whites and blacks; the ascendance of Hispanics, a new minority; and residents voting for candidates because of their race.

Visit Pop&Politics to check out the story based on Brooke-Sidney's reporting in New Orleans.

Journeying Into New Orleans' Necropolis

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Andrea Tabor

The oldest operating cemeteries in New Orleans are almost as old as the United States itself, dating back to the late 18th century. They have survived citywide plagues, the Civil War, and innumerable natural disasters. So asking how the cemeteries had weathered Hurricane Katrina didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense at first.

What had the storm wrought in cemeteries within the city limits? I knew from my preliminary research that in New Orleans there were few sensationalized accounts of caskets creeping up from underground, as they had in outlying parts of Louisiana. But just as the rest of New Orleans had been deeply impacted by Katrina, so were those who care for some of its most distinctive landmarks.

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I had arranged for a private tour of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 on my first morning. Joyce Cole was my guide, and I knew right away, watching her drive through so many different cemeteries and seemingly knowing every plot, that she was going to be the frame for my story.

Later that day, I went to Tulane University to speak with a geographer and a geologist who explore the unique soil composition of New Orleans, which makes the above-ground cemeteries necessary in the first place. I learned about the problems that were inherent in the city before Katrina, how the city developed, and the everyday challenges associated with living a mile above the nearest bedrock. Some of the highest ground in New Orleans has been used for cemeteries, which spared them from the worst of the flooding during Katrina. Some of the city's safest and most valuable real estate has been occupied for two centuries by the dead, while much more perilous neighborhoods have spring up around it.

I didn't include quotations from these two sources in my story. Nevertheless, the information I gained from them helped me see beyond the generalities. After that first day in New Orleans, I knew what I still needed to get and with whom I needed to speak. Most importantly, I knew which questions to ask.

What's Catholic Guilt Got to Do With It?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Tara Graham

While crowds all over the world cheered Barack Obama's historic presidential win, a South Carolina priest advised his congregants to make a mad dash for the confessional before partaking in communion if they supported the pro-abortion candidate in the recent election.

"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation," wrote Rev. Jay Scott Newman in a Sunday bulletin for St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville.

The Greenville News ran a story about Newman's remarks in the Thursday paper, along with the headline, "Priest Advises Penance for Obama Vote." Once the Associated Press picked up the story three days later and pegged it with the headline, "SC Priest: No Communion for Obama Supporters," newspapers and websites around the world followed suit:

"Priest: No Communion for Obama Voters"

"Catholic Priest to Obama Supporters: No Communion for You!"

"Vote for Obama? No Communion, Priest Says"

In less than 24 hours, Newman's inbox was clogged with thousands of e-mails. Some were approving and others were not, but most importantly, all were responding to headlines that misrepresented the facts.

"The AP story and, perhaps worse, the headline attached to the story gave the impression that I intended to deny Holy Communion to anyone who voted for Barack Obama last week. This, of course, is absurd," wrote Newman in an e-mail to the editor of the Catholic Exchange.

The central issue at stake for Newman was abortion, not Obama. Many headlines missed the mark on this point. They also oversimplified Newman's message.

In order to ready oneself for the Sacrament of Holy Communion and avoid offending God, the Catholic Church teaches that one must first confess and repent one's mortal sins: "Whosoever is holy, let him approach. Whosoever is not, let him repent" (Didache 10).

If "receiving or participating in abortion" qualifies as a mortal sinwhich, according to the Catholic Answers website, it doesthen voting for a candidate who supports abortion does too.

The Catholic Church has long been ridiculed for instilling a deep-seated guilt into its followers. But while Newman was arguably doing exactly that by encouraging his parishioners to prepare for Sunday communion by repenting for (directly or indirectly) voting in favor of abortion rights on election Tuesday, the press turned his prescription for penance into a categorical punishment: "No Communion for You!"

Headlines that sensationalize religion may sell papers or attract online traffic, but they also tend to misrepresent the larger values at play and overlook the fine print in declarations of religious faith and practice.

"When I wrote it, I had no thought that [my column] would be read by anyone other than parishioners of St. Mary's or out of the context of everything that has been taught and preached here, from the pulpit or in writing, over these seven years," Newman remarked in this past Sunday's bulletin. "And yet that was precisely the result of the distortion of my words by the Associated Press."

The antidote to Catholic guilt is the Sacrament of Reconciliation. For want of a better story or out of sheer ignorance, most of the headlines misrepresented Newman's intention. He wasn't merely pointing the finger of blame; he was pointing his parishioners toward the nearest confessional.

There is an intimate relationship between sin, repentance and communion in the rites of the Catholic Churchand understanding that relationship makes all the difference in telling this story.

What Critics Aren't Seeing in "Twilight"

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Jennifer Hahn

"Twilight" might be this year's most religious film but you wouldn't know that by reading the reviews. It's no secret that Stephenie Meyer, author of the series of teen vampire romance novels on which the film is based, is a Mormon. Meyer readily admits that her lifelong membership in the Church of Latter Day Saints has had an important influence on her work. Yet, somehow, critics of the film version of her first book, which debuted to $70 million in ticket sales this past weekend, completely and utterly overlooked the religious themes that make the flick much more than a silly rehearsal of the tired boy-meets-girl teen melodrama.

In case you're still unfamiliar with the "Twilight" story: Teenage Bella moves to Forks, Washington, to live with her dad. Then she meets the preternaturally pale and brooding Edward Cullen, one of a motley family of equally blanched children adopted by the local doctor (who couldn't resemble a youth pastor more). The two leads fall in love, and eventually Bella figures out that Edward is not merely odd; in fact, he's a vampire who is insatiably horny sorry, thirsty for Bella's blood.

Edward can't ever let himself "lose control" with Bella because he might, as Roger Ebert put it, "sink his fangs in just a little, and not be able to stop." You see, Edward and his family form a unique coven of vampires who have sworn off human blood. Instead, they satisfy themselves with a sanguine Ensure sucked from the necks of four-legged animals.

For the most part, critics have dismissed "Twilight" as superficial and stale, the kind of media offering that might follow Gossip Girl on the CW --"a slog of adolescent angst," as the AP's critic put it. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times even went so far as to summarize the film in teen text message speak: "OMG he's SO HOT!! Does he like ME?? Will he KILL me??? I don't CARE!!! :)" Perhaps this is because Dargis wants to collapse the film's complex moral quandaries into the simple idea that "there's something worse than death, especially for teenagers: sex."

If this were really what the film was about, Dargis would be right to claim that "the story's moral undertow keeps dragging [it] down." But if she'd just look a bit deeper she'd see that the film is as much an exposition on free will (it takes place in Forks, Washington, after all) as it is propaganda for abstinence until marriage. The film's "moral undertow" is actually what makes it brilliant.

"I really think that's the underlying metaphor of my vampires," Meyer told Time magazine in April. "It doesn't matter where you're stuck in life or what you think you have to do; you can always choose something else. There's always a different path."

As William Morris of the Mormon arts and culture site A Motley Vision points out, the Mormon concept of free will or agency is a distinctive feature of the faith. Though he's not sure Meyer does the best job of exploring it, Morris, unlike other critics, at least notes the presence of the question of agency in Meyer's stories. Morris says he wishes the media would focus on themes like this when talking about Mormonism instead of obsessively covering the Mormon's-can't-even-drink-coffee story, which reduces their faith to a summary of "what we don't do rather than what we believe."

Those critics that caught the abstinence theme (and shockingly, there weren't many of them) did little more than ridicule or dismiss it. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune wrote, "True to Meyer's Mormon beliefs, there is neither hanky panky nor panky nor anything resembling a third or even a second base between Bella and her dreamboat." But Phillips, like other critics, fails to see the absolute genius of this plot point. Meyer deserves credit for achieving something next to impossible: She makes abstinence sexy.

Not surprisingly, the only journalist to really dig past the forbidden love story into the sometimes profound religious subtext of the film was Religion News Service's Steve Rabey, who took the time to call an expert on Mormonism to figure out what this movie is really about.

"[A]nyone who is familiar with the Book of Mormon can also discern deeper theological themes, from the Mormon reinterpretation of the Fall of humankindto the theme of overcoming natural man, which we can see when Bella wrestles with her desires and decides not to become a vampire," Jana Riess, author of Mormonism for Dummies, told Rabey.

Maybe it's unreasonable to expect film critics to be up on the fine points of the Book of Mormon but that's not all the mainstream media are missing. There's a heavy helping of sexism as well as religious naïveté factoring into these reviews. Again and again, critics remarked that teenage girls would "surely squeal with delight" at the film's bloodthirsty star, Robert Pattinson. But why is it so difficult for reviewers to see that teenage girls might love this franchise just as much for its thoughtful treatment of the existential and religious dilemmas with which they struggle?

Jennifer Hahn, whose work has appeared in Ms. magazine and Los Angeles CityBeat, is currently a master's degree candidate in specialized journalism at USC.

Muslim Sisters Fighting Back

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Kyla Cullinane

Many American legacy media sources have reported that one of Malaysia's most prominent Islamic bodies banned the practice of yoga. On Saturday, the National Fatwa Council issued a non-binding legal decision declaring that Muslims in Malaysia risked being corrupted by yoga's Hindu influence.

The fatwa received coverage by the AP, which disseminated its reporting to CNN and Fox News, where the story was at the top of web pages. It seemed like another tale of What-are-the-Muslims- going-to-do-next?. While that's not surprising, I was amazed by how many reporters in this country overlooked the backlash that followed the yoga ban.

By portraying Muslims as crazy yoga-banning extremists, the American press is overlooking the more interesting fact that Malaysian Muslim women are fighting against the fundamentalist ruling.

International news organizations in Malaysia, England, France and Indonesia covered that dimension of the story well. According to the foreign press, there are many Islamic scholars, doctors, yoga practitioners and Muslim womens' rights groups (yes, they do exist) actively speaking out against the fatwa. Our legacy media mentioned that some people in Malaysia opposed the council's declaration, but they did not examine the reasons behind the opposition movement or give it any context.

Because the concept of fatwas is foreign to many Western audiences, the American press needs to give a better explanation of the practice. How common are fatwas? What do Muslims generally think of them? From the AP story there's no way to know. One Malaysian article suggests that the conflict over yoga illuminates a clash between Islamic fundamentalists on the National Fatwa Council and the majority of Malaysian Muslims. If that is true, the American legacy media lost a golden opportunity to enrich our understanding of Islam instead of pandering to stereotypes.

Malaysia's National Fatwa Council is no stranger to controversy. In October, the council issued another edict banning women from wearing pants because council members believed that women who wore them were beginning to behave like men.

Contrary to widespread Western assumptions, Muslim womenindeed, most Muslims--are not passive victims of repression who take their orders from fundamentalist mullahs. In Malaysia, Muslims of both sexes are speaking out to protect their civil liberties. It's too bad their voices and the voices of others like them are rarely heard in the American press.

Kyla Cullinane is an Annenberg Fellow in the Master of Specialized Journalism program at USC. Previously, she worked as a prime-time television news anchor in Texas.

Were the Mumbai Terrorists Muslim?

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Brooke-Sidney Gavins

Last week's terrorist acts in India's financial capital left more than 180 people dead and 280 wounded. The Indian and European press is reporting that the violence has sparked widespread debate as to whether the terrorists should be considered and referred to as followers of Islam, but most of the American coverage of the attack is oblivious to what could potentially be a remarkable transformation in the Muslim world.

Immediately after the attacks, several Bollywood stars began to blog about the problem of associating Islam with terrorism. OneIndia web site reported that actor Aamir Khan wrote that terrorists are neither people of religion nor people of God.

"When will these politicians realise and admit that terrorists have no religion," wrote Khan. "Terrorists are not Hindu or Muslim or Christian."

Further, Khan attributes their actions to mental illness, not Islam.

"They are people who have gone totally sick in their head and have to be dealt with in that manner," Khan wrote in his latest blog.

Another Indian news outlet, Rediff India, interviewed Idris Ali, the president of All-India Minority Forum, shortly after the attacks. Ali is well known in India's Muslim community as an advocate for minority and Islamic issues as well as a harsh opponent of anti-terrorism laws. When asked about the relationship between the events in Mumbai and Islam, Ali said:

"What we must realize is Islam never propagates violence. The word Islam is derived from aslama, which means submission to the supreme power. And submission can never be achieved through bloodshed. Those 10 bloodthirsty men who slaughtered innocent Mumbaikars cannot be the followers of Islam. Had they read the Quran, they would have waved olive branches and not automatic guns."

Echoing the thoughts of actor Khan, Ali also said, "Fanatics have no religion, terrorists have no creed. The only religion that radicals follow is carnage."

Many Indians and Islamic believers not only refuse to call the terrorists Muslim but have also denied the dead gunman burial in their cemeteries because in their eyes the men who committed these acts are not Muslims.

In a recent article on India's NDTV web site, Abdul Razzak, the president of Dawat-e-Islami, an international movement for the propagation of the Quran and Sunnah, is quoted as saying: "The killing of innocents is against Islam. They are bringing shame to 25 crore (or 250 million) Muslims of India. These men are not Muslims. Why should we give them place anywhere? There is no place for them in our hearts and in our cemeteries."

Despite the fact that this movement to disown the Mumbai terrorists is widespread and gaining momentum in the Muslim world, most of the commentators in the U.S. are calling the events an Islamic attack. Michael Rubin, author of the National Review Online's blog The Corner, typifies the dismissive tone of many of the American journalists who at least acknowledge the debate.

"While it's fashionable to argue that terrorists in Mumbai do not act out of religion," Rubin writes, "but are simply misguided, the fact of the matter is that they justify their actions in Islam."

Rubin and the rest of the American media tend to argue that our focus should be on how terrorists describe their beliefs and not on whether their supposed fellow travelers recognize those beliefs as their own.

"For the purposes of policy and security, religion should be what its practitioners believe it to be rather than what academics or outside commentators say it is," said Rubin. "It is much more important to determine how terrorists are brainwashed in madrasas, than passing judgment on whether what they believe conforms to what academics believe Muslims should believe."

Rubin's comments betray a contradiction at the heart of our attitudes toward religion generally and Islam in particular. Millions of Islamic practitioners are telling us that the terrorists aren't Muslims, but outside commentators like Rubin are telling us (and people like Aamir Khan and Idris Ali) that they are. This contradiction points toward a fundamental misunderstanding of how religious movements work. At best, this means that writers like Rubin will continue to offer commentary that doesn't reflect the greater religious and political implications of identifying Islam with terrorism. At worst, it means that the curse of mutual incomprehension between America and the Muslim world will persist for some time to come.

(Undead) Heroes for Our Time: The Vampires of HBO's "True Blood"

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600

By Nicky Loomis

"Twilight" grossed $138 million worldwide as of this past weekend and HBO's True Blood has become the network's biggest hit since The Sopranos. It may be time to shroud the TV in garlic--vampires are back in a big way.

Vampires are a Rorschach test for our sexual sensibilities"[N]o writer, from Bram Stocker on, has captured so precisely what sex and longing mean for a young girl," Caitlin Flanagan writes of novelist Stephanie Meyer, on whose series of books the film "Twlight" is based. But the comely undead have also historically represented a rejection of faith as religious outsiders, as evil spirits, and even as the devil incarnate in some cultures. Modern-day vampires have evolved with the times, though, representing a struggle with faith rather than a rejection of it.

They have always been "extraordinarily elastic metaphors" Adam Sternbergh observes in a recent New York magazine article.

"A werewolf represents our subdued animal instincts," Sternbergh writes. "Zombies stand in for mob psychosis. Frankenstein gets trotted out to represent technology versus mortality. And vampires well, they can represent pretty much everything else."

Considering that they're trying to hit this moving target, it's no surprise that the media continue to miss the mark on the current vampire zeitgeist. But by simply musing about the kaleidoscopic qualities of modern-day vampires, critics are missing a chance to sink their teeth into some serious writing about how an age in spiritual flux deals with its aspirations and anxieties.

Of all the recent vampire narratives, HBO's True Blood, based on the "Southern Vampire" series of books by Charlaine Harris, most clearly illuminates the connection between our fascination with the undead and the current religious climate in this country. The opening credits in the show makes an explicit link to religion, with a montage that pans from a woman being baptized in a lake in one shot, to a burning cross, to a woman half-naked in lingerie in another.

In the hands of True Blood's creator, "American Beauty" auteur Alan Ball, the toothy trope takes shape as an allegory on contemporary queerness--vampires "come out of the coffin" and push for a "vampire rights" amendment that causes uproar among Christian rights groups.

In a recent New York Times article, Alan Ball explicitly ties the resurgence of the vampire to contemporary shifts in attitudes around homosexuality: "Certainly it's very easy to look at the vampires as metaphors for gays and lesbians...But it's very easy to see them as metaphors for all kinds of things. If this story had been done 50 years ago, it would be a metaphor for racial equality."

Importantly, Ball isn't choosing to imagine a world without faith; instead he creates a troubled world awash with equally troubled expressions of faith a clear parallel to modern-day America and ratchets up the tension between religious groups and the vampires in the show.

With all of this primal emotion in play, it's no surprise that True Blood can be shocking, and Ball works to keep his storytelling graphic and visceral. In one episode, a character undergoes an exorcism and is freed from her "demons" as she writhes and convulses next to a spiritual healer in the back woods of Bon Temps, Louisiana.

A recent Beliefnet blog post describes the hyperventilating storylines in the show as "bordering on the depraved," yet these dramatic religious themes are inevitable at a time when millions are eager to de-mystify the occult and former "fringe practices" like Pentecostalism are now at the cultural and political center of society.

In one response to the show, Salon.com TV writer Heather Havrilesky has no patience for what she sees as overworked religious themes lurking in the shadows of Ball's creation. She finds a better representation of current religious sensibilities in the vampires and the misfits that than in the holy-rolling antics of the characters who oppose them.

"Enduring the terrible Southern accents on this show is bad enough," Havrilesky writes, "without a clichéd herd of Bible-thumping fundamentalists to drag us through every worn-out stereotype in the book. The nice thing about Sookie and Sam and Tara and Bill, after all, is that they're new to us. We're not sure what drives them or what they're capable of just yet. In contrast, those old familiar saccharine smiles and cries of 'Praise Jesus!' are just a few clicks away on TBN at all times. To most of us in this country, evangelical Christian shenanigans are old news. When it comes to the second season of this sultry, suspenseful vampire tale, let's hope Alan Ball sticks to some fresh blood."

But it is precisely Ball's coupling of left-coast curiosities and square-state fervor that makes True Blood such a useful mirror for our times.

Ball has found something revelatory in vampires a potent kind of magic that Anne Rice, that most famous chronicler of vampires, has now rejected. Rice, who describes her rediscovery of conventional faith in Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, decided that there's no room for her old friends in her new life.

"[Vampires] represent a world without faith," Rice declares in New York magazine, "a world in which alienated souls are wandering in the darkness, and that's how I felt all those years when I was without faith. And I don't feel lost anymore."

Though Rice seems to believe she was faced with a choice between a heretic's sense of alienation and the feeling of security that often comes with an assent to orthodoxy, Ball succeeds at depicting a world of spiritual ferment where entirely new configurations of belief can emerge. That's what makes his show so satisfyingand that's also why the metaphor of the vampire is a good pointer for cultural observers who are eager to know which way religious trends are heading.

Reading Between the Lines

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Barack Obama, in the first newspaper interview since his November 4 victory, revisited two defining topics of the campaign: race and religion.

Eschewing blogosphere blather as to whether or not his election represents a new day in American race relations, Obama was characteristically pragmatic.

"The biggest challenges we face now in improving race relations have to do with the universal concerns of Americans across color lines," he told the Los Angeles Times. "If we are creating jobs throughout the economy, then, you know, African-Americans and Latinos, who are disproportionately unemployed, they're going to be swept up in that rising tide.

"I think that, more than anything else, is going to improve race relations."

Undoubtedly, race relations fare better in a strong economy. When all hands are at work, there's no time for finger-pointing and the insidious identity politics that deflects energy from solving systemic problems. So if Obama opted for practicality in addressing race, did he likewise sidestep contentious religious issues?

It's hard to know from the Times story.

Obama told reporters that he would use his full name--Barack Hussein Obama--when he takes the oath of office.

But what does that signify? Here's where decisions entailed in reporting, writing and editing get interesting. In the Los Angeles Times story, immediately after the paragraph noting Obama will use all three names, the president-elect is quoted as saying, "I think we've got a unique opportunity to reboot America's image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular."

Sothat suggests he is signaling that he is proud of (well, at least at peace with) his Muslim heritage, right?

Keep reading. Further down in the article, Obama insists that using "Hussein" is not "a statement."

"I think the tradition is that they use all three names, and I will follow the tradition, not trying to make a statement one way or the other," he said. "I'll do what everyone else does."

Come on, Mr. President-Elect: You can't have it both ways. Are you rebooting America's image or simply following a historical script? Perhaps you were quoted out of context? If so, which statement explains your decision to use "Barack Hussein Obama" at the inauguration? It makes a better story to use the reboot quote after the news. But is the future leader of the free world sending a message, or did pragmatism compel him to follow tradition?

Race and religion may not be determinative political variables. In fact, a new poll indicates neither was key in Obama's election. But they do carry symbolic weight, cultural significance and social relevance. Understanding the difference between these factors and political clout is something many reporters failed to do in the recent election (See: coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright). Let's hope there's better days aheadbeginning with clarity about Barack Hussein Obama's inaugural intentions.

Diane Winston

Bah Humbug!

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Call me Scrooge, but I just don't want to see or hear another story about finding the "Christ" in Christmas, plumbing the spiritual upside of the recession or tracking the newly fervent faithful. (I won't link to these stories but you know who you are.) There's nothing wrong with these pieces except they hide the real issues that plague our public life and economic well-being.

Questions and concerns about how and what the news media covers hit me when I saw an article in the Daily News, Egypt's self-styled "only independent newspaper in English," headlined "Business Beat: 'Mastercard Can Be Very Islamic' Exec Says."

That is news to Muslims who believe that Sha'riah, Islamic religious law, prohibits participation in business ventures or financial transactions that charge interest. But, since Muslims make up almost one-quarter of the world's population, many financial institutions are trying to figure out how best to serve this population and still observe the spirit of the law. For example, last year a Pakistani bank issued that country's first Islamic credit cards in consultation with Islamic financial experts.

According to the Daily News, Egypt's large population and "cash-based economy" make it an attractive target for debit products. But here's the paragraph that caught my eye:

"The banking system in Egypt is relatively shielded from the [current financial] crisis, analysts say, because it has not adopted the complex derivatives at the heart of much bad debt. The sector's loan-to-deposit ratio is generally quite low, meaning most banks have plenty of cash on hand to weather the credit squeeze."

In other words, Egyptian banks are healthy, and Egyptian citizens aren't drowning in debthence, a business opportunity if you're a credit card company looking to "sell" debt in a market where people don't already have a lot of it.

No matter how you see the winter holidaysas a season for buying and spending, spreading good will or sowing on peace on earththere's a hook for this story. Why is there a financial crisis and what is our role in creating and extending it? Why would a religion set guidelines for a moral economy and do its followers have anything to teach us? And last but not least, WWJD if offered a MasterCard? Now there's a story.

Diane Winston

Stuff for Your Stocking

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Last December, to acknowledge the holiday season, I recalled writing the dreaded (and frequently dreadful) Christmas story. This time around, I wonder how many more of those we'll see. It's been a bad year for journalists and journalism, but I'm not going to hawk any sad stories--just a top ten list of holiday presents for my fellow hacks. In no particular order:

10. For those in need of a post-holiday buzz:
Cappuccino Menorah

9. When the publisher wants a word with you:
WWBD T-shirt

8. A small token for your favorite editor:
Non-raptured Mousepad

7. For that extra special gift:
Rosary Credit Card

6. For the man in your life:
Joan Doll

5. For the other man in your life:
Bratz Doll

4. When writing the Prop 8 story:
I Heart Mormon Boys T-shirt
(Scroll past the Mormon Beefcake calendar)

3. For multi-media platform multi-tasking:
Shiva Watch

2. For your Christian friends:
Jesus Pops

1. For everyone else:
Intentional Chocolate

Please note: We'll be doing a lot of merry-making (and not so much blogging) until the first week of the new year. Stay tuned!

And a Happy New Year to You!

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600

The gifts are all gone and 2008's best list lists are, well, so last year. Well, maybe not this one mention (and he's right, dear readers, we do need a new name). What's new and noteworthyor, better yet, what's not yet noted as newsworthy? Some thoughts on the stories brewing at the start of the New Year.

After endless boring reports about atheist eliterati like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett, I was delighted to read that non-believers are taking it to the streets. Literally. The first ever atheist ad campaign in Britain was launched this fall, and the fundraising went so well that this month the campaign plastered signs on some 200 London buses. Plus another 600 buses will carry the "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life" message throughout England, Wales and Scotland.

According to the Telegraph: "Ariane Sherine, a writer who first thought of the atheist bus adverts, said: 'You wait for ages for an atheist bus, then 800 come along at once. I hope they will brighten people's days and make them smile on their way to work.'"

So will it be a year of smiles for the faithlessor, perhaps, the faithful? A lot depends on the economy. Religion didn't fare particularly well during the Great Depression. Despite the seeming need for alternative realities, church attendance didn't swell in the 1930s. At the end of last year, though, some evangelical churches said attendance was growing, and many pastors spoke of the need for spiritual affirmations amidst the financial freefall.

I'm watching this story because Americans' religious response to the economy says a lot about the nature of belief, creed and community in this country. Ever since the Puritans landed, Americans have found novel ways to sanctify getting and spending--notwithstanding what the Bible has to say about rich men, camels and the eyes of needles. We've also had an ambivalent attitude toward those in need, never sure whether they're blessed or cursed, saints or sinners.

How churches square biblical teachings, American values and new economic realities will say a lot about the present changes and emergent trends. I'd start by looking into what's being preached and what's being practiced. Where are resources directed and who is deemed worthy of help? What questions are believers asking and what answers are religious leaders offering? Bottom line: How, what and why will individual and corporate religious commitments shift vis-à-vis social concerns, political issues, and moral stands when less really is lessand more is not an option.

I wonder, too, who will be smiling (more or less) when the smoke clears from Gaza. As important as covering who's winning and why, Americans need reporting on how religious communities herebe they Jewish, Muslim or Christianrespond when religious entanglements become politicized and political entanglements become sacralized. I'd like to read a story about American Jews who love Israel but question Israeli policy (and who aren't savaged by other Jews for their opinions). Or what about one on American Christians who view Israel as something other than (1) a pariah state, (2) a mission field, or (3) the backdrop for Armageddon. Or maybe on American Muslims and Jews modeling new relationships?

How to find these stories? I'd look for chinks in religious, philanthropic and communal groups: new ways of looking at longstanding problems, young leaders offering alternative visions, and philanthropists supporting new models. These stories need to be teased out online or pursued on the groundvenues far from the politicos, pundits and PACs that have dominated the discourse for far too long.

And this is just a start; there's much more: whither Rick Warren, Anglican schism, gay unions andlast but hardly least, the Obamas on Sunday mornings? But before succumbing to the pursuit of the obvious, let's not forget the stories beneath, behind, above and below what we're seeing on economic and political fronts. That's what good reporters always doand covering religion in 2009 will demand nothing less.

Diane Winston

Biased, Balanced or Benighted?

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600

What do people want from the news? The question struck me when a friend, recently returned from Israel, complained about the biased coverage of events in Gaza.

I'd asked her what it was like to be caught up in the year's biggest story, and she launched into a critique of American reporting. In short: Israel is in the right, but worldwide press reports portray it as callous and culpable. The very next day, the New York Times ran a story capturing her perspective and its pervasive hold on Israeli public opinion. According to reporter Ethan Bronner, "the Israeli news media are not so much determining the national agenda as reflecting it."

Like my friend, most news consumers value reporting that mirrors their view of reality. If their opinions are confirmed, then the coverage is objective. But if the story is at odds with their outlook then it's obviously distorted.

In other words, news consumers make it hard on reporters who are doing their jobsthat is, seeking balance and neutrality.

As difficult as it is for readers to untangle the knotted skeins of culpability, victimhood, aggression and self-defense in Gaza, it's also hard to report and write about them. Choosing which story to pursue and what sources to interview is complicated when your decisions convince readers that you're either benighted or bonkers.

Reporters' choices construct the news in ways that many of us, much of the time, prefer to overlook. But in situations like Gaza, where partisan passions are strong, mundane news decisions are held up as evidence of media bias. Ask an angry reader about press standards of objectivity and evenhandedness, and it's possible Jack Bauer might get higher marks for observing the Geneva Conventions.

Last week, the New York Times ran a front page story (and four related articles) on the plight of the Samouni family. Thirty members of this extended clan died during an Israeli campaign in their neighborhood.

"The story of the Samouni family has horrified many since Red Cross officials on Wednesday publicized their discovery of four emaciated Samouni children trapped for days in a home with the corpses of their mothers. The Red Cross said the Israeli military denied its paramedics access to the area for several days after the ground invasion began on Jan.3, part of the offensive against Hamas that Israel says is intended to stop the firing of rockets into southern Israel."

Some readers felt it was right for reporters to cover the human cost of Israeli aggression; others lambasted the paper for taking wartime acts out of context. Did the New York Times find a balance? Here's Al-Jazeera's take on the plight of the Samouni family. But when I searched online Israeli sources (Jerusalem Post, H'aretz and Yedioth Ahronoth) as well as some American Jewish ones (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Forward), I struck out. (I didn't look for coverage on blogs, broadcast venues or news portals but it would be instructive to see who said what and how.)

Happily, there are readers who come to stories with a (fairly) open mind. In a recent Jewish Journal column, my colleague Marty Kaplan artfuly illustrates the intellectual whiplash that occurs when you engage both sides of a dilemma.

Kaplan implicitly suggests that in a case like Gaza, where all reporters are suspect, the best alternative is to monitor as many news sources as possible. So if your mind isn't already made up or if you're willing to peek at alternate perspectives, there are scores of informative news organizations, bloggers, and NGO and academic sites. Moreover, the front page of the New York Times, or any major American newspaper, is only the tip of their coverage. Check this out for a range of perspectives or this for daily briefings.

Usually I think it's helpful to look at how reporters shape stories by their selection of narratives, sources, and even word choices. But when it comes to the Middle East, news consumers need to quit blaming the messenger.

Diane Winston

Obama Meets Adama

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Most of the time I look to TV for diversion. When I'm weary of war, bank failures and Bernie Madoff, there's always something to give me hope. Hiro saves the cheerleader, Derek saves Meredith, and House saves almost everyone at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital. But this week is different. This week I'm watching the news to forget.

Battlestar Galactica is back; and all the love, hope and hoopla emanating from Washington D.C. can't save me from the fleet's despair: Their dream is dead. But it does raise a reality-based concern: How to hold onto our vision and how can the press help?

For four seasons, BSG focused on the audacity of hope. Humankind was nuked, survivors hunted down, and good people felled by very bad things. But religious faith, political courage and belief in the Promised Land kept hope alive. Alas, when the much-pummeled pilgrims found their City on a Hill, it turned out to be a heap of radioactive rubble. Cut to booze, brawls and gunplay.

Back here in reality-land, it's (almost) morning in America. An eight-year nightmare is over, but that doesn't mean we can slip into another reverie. I like Bono and Beyonce as much as the next person, but the international situation is tense, an economic crisis looms, and we're fixated on outdoor concerts and inaugural balls. Sure, we can be happy that the Bushies are gone, but let's balance faith in change with the hermeneutics of suspicion. What can we realistically expect of our new government? How do we hold it accountable? And why did we allow ourselves to get into this mess in the first place?

That's where the press corps comes in. An absence of critical thinking, in-depth reporting and sustained investigation facilitated the nation's acquiescence to the Iraqi War, the suspension of civil liberties, the denial of human rights and an obscene lust for money. Some reporters, columnists and bloggers spoke truth to power. But in the wake of 9/11, many others were cowed by fear of appearing unpatriotic. (And even if they weren't, their corporate owners were mindful of the proper parameters for debate.)

 So at the very moment when we need a critical press, not the Dallas cheerleaders, the mainstream mediadesperate for eyeballsserves up what (it thinks) we want rather than what we need. We need unpleasant facts, horrific narratives, and ghastly truths. We need to remember that the press has a key role in safeguarding democracy and that doesn't always include rooting for the home team.

After his own bout with drink and despair, Admiral Adama offered a new vision to his fleet: We don't need the Promised Land, but we do need to unite and push forward. Obama has been saying as much, but I'm not sure the press is listening. It's echoing the words, but it's not getting the message: we're on a long, hard journey.

In his 1986 book, Exodus and Revolution, Michael Walzer described that journey as a slow slog of compatriots:

"We still believe, or many of us, do, what the Exodus first taught, or what it has been commonly been taken to teach, about the meaning and possibility of politics and about its proper form:

"--first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt;
--second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land;
--and third, that the way to the land is through the wilderness.

"There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching."

Marching together through the wilderness, we'll need the press to help make sense of what we see. It won't always be entertaining, but it is journalism.

Diane Winston

Southern California Muslims Battle Islamophobia in a Post 9/11 World

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600

J517: Final Investigative Reporting Story
by Brooke-Sidney Gavins

Terrorism. Terrorists. Since the planes flew into the World Trade towers on September 11, 2001, these words have become almost synonymous with Islam and being a Muslim. For many Islamic believers in Southern California, the aftermath of September 11 didn't result in physical harm or even personal attacks, although there were some incidents. Muslims in Southern California express a different pain the hurt of having their religion constantly associated with terrorism and violence.

From the front page of the daily newspaper to the broadcast channels on television, Southland Muslims said they feel the effects of this post 9/11 characterization of the religion that they care for and believe in deeply. For many, the Islam depicted in the media rarely resembles the one they practice.

"This event had a lot of effects on everybody, especially Muslims," said Idris Traina, the President of the Board of Directors of the Islamic Center of Hawthorne, California. "The media associated this event with Islam, not a group of people who were terrorists. That's the problem. That's the stigma that happened with 9/11, and it has had a large effect on Muslims here and everywhere."

Traina, who is also a member of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California estimates there are more than a half a million Muslims in the Southland. He admitted there isn't an official census of the Muslim community, but used the figure given by the Islamic Shura Council that compiles this information. The Council, which started in 1995, is an umbrella organization of Southern California mosques and Muslims organizations.

The Islamic leaders and Muslims of Southern California expressed a consistent response concerning their present life after September. Essentially, they think their lives are plagued with a persistent misunderstanding of their religion due to Islam's repeated association with terrorism. And many Southern California Muslims think America has developed an anti-Muslim sentiment or Islamophobia, which can be seen in the mainstream media.

"Too many Americans associate Islam with terrorism and extremism," said Malik El-Amin, a 33-year old African American Muslim. "The American public is much more aware of Islam now than before 9/11, but the awareness derives almost entirely from negative stories, stereotypes and misconceptions."

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey in 2007 found that "public attitudes about Muslims and Islam have grown more negative in recent years." Thirty-five percent of Americans polled expressed a negative view of Muslims in 2007, up from 32 percent in 2004 and 29 percent in 2002.

In addition to negative impressions, "twice as many people use negative words as positive words to describe their impressions of the Muslim religion (30% versus 15%)," according to the 2007 Pew Report. The survey also found that "fanatic", "radical" and "terror" were the most frequently used words to describe Islam.

The American association of the Muslim religion with words like "fanatic" and "terror" serve as examples to what many people now call Islamophobia, which has become a recognized form of intolerance alongside Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism since the 2001 "Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance."

The Council for American and Islamic Relations (CAIR) defines Islamophobia as "unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam." CAIR is America's largest Islamic civil liberties group and has 35 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding."

With regard to Islamophobia, the CAIR organization thinks "this fear and hostility leads to discrimination against Muslims, exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political or social process, stereotyping, the presumption of guilt by association, and finally hate crimes."

"Now there is often an assumption in political discussions that I sympathize with terrorists," said Malik El-Amin, a 33-year old Muslim actor in Los Angeles who said he is often stereotyped. "More people assume that my views are intolerant of other perspectives. I run across this assumption much more now than I did before 9/11."

Muslims in Los Angeles and across the nation think Islamophobia is increasing.
"Islamophobia continues to rise, assisted by a veritable cottage industry of extremists who pontificate with great certainty about the cause-effect relationship between Islam and terrorism, when none exists," said Parvez Ahmed, the Chairman of the CAIR Board.

CAIR along with the independent media watchdog organization, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), point to a link between Islamophobia and messages presented in mainstream media.

"In the last seven to eight years, America might have gone a little bit backwards on Islamophobia and tolerance towards Islam," said Steven Randall, a senior analyst at FAIR, who examines the media's role in Islamophobia. "Anti-Muslim bigotry can be seen in mainstream media."

The 2007 Pew report also found that "the biggest influence on the public's impressions of Muslims, particularly among those who express an unfavorable opinion of Muslims, is what people hear and read in the media."

And "about a third of the public (32%) including nearly half of those who offer a negative opinion of Muslims (48%) say what they have seen or read in the media has had the biggest influence on their views."

"Islam is under attack to a certain extent by certain members of the media," said Galal El-Kholy, a board member at the Islamic Center of Southern California, which has an estimated 5,000 Muslim attendees.

Steve Randall, Isabel Macdonald and the members of the Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting organization characterize this attack as the media "smearing" the name of Islam. The organization recently published a six article series about Islamophobia. Their October 2008 issue is called "Smearcasting: How Islamophobes spread fear, bigotry and misinformation."

Randall, who researched and co-wrote "Smearcasting," said one of the report's goals was to expose the widespread acceptance of Islamophobia, which now permeates mainstream media.

"Liberal media groups, like NBC and Disney, are sponsoring this hate, which is the reason why we coined the term 'smearcasting,'" said Randall.

The report gives examples of well-known media executives and journalists, like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly of Fox News and Glenn Beck formerly with CNN, giving Islamophobia or anti-Muslim views on major American media outlets.

One of the biggest examples the "Smearcasting" report cites of the media supporting Islamophobia is the September 2008 distribution of 28-million copies of the movie, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West (2006)" on DVD to Americans across the country through 70 different media outlets, including dozens of newspapers ranging from the St. Petersburg Times to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The report also mentions the adoption of the term "Islamofascism" by politicians and the mainstream media.

"The pairing of 'Islam" and 'fascism' has no parallel in characterizations of extremisms tied to other religions, although the defining movements of fascism were linked to Catholicism indirectly under Benito Mussolini in Italy, explicitly under Francisco Franco in Spain," said Boston Globe columnist James Carroll. "Protestant and Catholic terrorists in Northern Ireland, both deserving the label 'fascist,' never had their religions prefixed to that word. Nor have Hindu extremists in India, nor Buddhists extremists in Sri Lanka."

Southern California Muslims point to the unequal application of the term terrorist to their religion and not to others.

"It's wrong to associate religion with terrorism," said Traina, an Arab Muslim who moved to America more than 30 years ago from Libya. "People are not calling America's war with Iraq and Afghanistan 'Christian terrorism,' even though Bush used the word 'Crusades' with the Iraq war."

Bakr El-Tawansy, a member of the Islamic Center of Southern California disagrees with Islam's association with terrorism.

"You can't stick all terrorists with Islam," said El-Tawansy. "Terrorists have no religion."
The 2007 Pew report shows that Americans view the Islamic religion as different from other religions. "Fully 70 percent of non-Muslims say that the Muslim religion is very different from their own religion, compared with just 19 percent who say Islam and their own religion have a lot in common," according to the report. This viewpoint has increased over recent years; only 59 percent viewed Islam as very different from their own religion in 2005." These numbers are up from 52 percent in November 2001, immediately following the September 11 attacks.

"They think Muslims are bad people, but that's because most people are ignorant and don't educate themselves about the religion and the people that follow it," said African American Muslim Sabah El-Amin, when asked how she felt Americans viewed members of her faith. "Ignorance is America's curse."

Almost 60 percent of Americans surveyed in the CAIR 2005 Poll on American Attitudes Towards Islam and Muslims said they "are not very knowledgeable" or "not at all knowledgeable" about Islam. The survey even found that 10 percent said Muslims believed in a sun god.

The 2007 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey had similar findings. In the individuals polled, 58 percent said they know little or nothing about Islam's practices.

Although the CAIR organization said Islamophobia could lead to an increase in hate crimes against Muslims, Islam practitioners in Southern California have seen a decrease in hate crimes in 2007. According to the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, hate crimes against Muslims decreased 73 percent from 2006 to 2007. And hate crimes targeted at people of Middle Eastern descent remained approximately the same, comprising only 1 percent of the total hate crimes in Los Angeles. Similar results were also found in the hate crime reports of Orange County.

Southern California Muslim believers say the crime is media's depiction of Islam.

"The way Islam is described in the main media, when I hear it, I say 'this is not the Islam that I know,'" said Traina, whose mosque in Hawthorne, California serves up to 4,000 Muslims. "The media twists everything to make Islam bad. When they talk about Islam, I feel like by their definition, I can't be a Muslim if I think of how they describe Islam."

Traina and other Muslims in Southern California think the lack of knowledge about Islam is one of the main reasons for Islamophobia. Several Muslims think education and dialogue is the key to changing the tide of anti-Muslim sentiment.

"It is incumbent upon Muslims to do the bigger share," said El-Kholy. "We must continue opening up and being accessible to those who want to understand Islam. It is our main responsibility."

Although she feels there has been a lot of damage done already, Sabah El-Amin still has a glimmer of hope that the American perception of Islam can be improved.

"Ideally, it would have to start with each individual wanting to educate themselves, and for the government and the news to stop spreading fear about Muslims," she said.

Randall of FAIR in addition to Islamic leaders in Southern California think the media and journalists should educate themselves on Islam and unpack rumors about Muslims.

"The media should come to us and ask what we stand for," said El-Kholy. "They should be informed. A lot is uninformed and they are doing the public a great disservice."

Based on his understanding of the growth of Islamophobia, Randall of the FAIR organization doesn't see the tide turning towards a more sympathetic and tolerant view of Islam any time soon.

"I don't think there is a lot of hope at this point because things look pretty grim," said Randall. "I don't know what more Muslims can do. They are being blamed for so many things."

However, El-Kholy, a member of the board of directors for the Islamic Center of Southern California remains hopeful.

"I think Muslims can work towards overcoming Islamophobia by having more communication between us and the American people," said El-Kholy. "We are all Americans and believe in the freedom given here."

To illustrate his point, El-Kholy presented a story from his days as a lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio. He recalled the judge's words on a case he was involved in concerning a first amendment ruling after the court had closed the proceedings to the press.

El-Kholy said, "So the judge says 'democracy dies behind closed doors.' And then a lady in the audience spoke up and said, 'It's not democracy only that dies, religion also can die behind closed doors."

"I couldn't agree with you more," El-Kholy said, "So, let all the walls come down."

Purpose Driven Whacking

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Like the busy critters in a whack-a-mole game, Rick Warren bobs up faster than his critics can bop him down again.

Just since this summer, Warren popped up with his church-based candidates' forum, pre-election support for Proposition 8 capped by a comparison between gay marriage and incest, a keynote address at the Martin Luther King Day Commemorative Service at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church and the invocation at the Obama inauguration.

And that's not counting all the stories about Warren's work in Africa (or for another take on it), his mega-best seller and his global ambitions.

For both bloggers and reporters, Warren is, well, a godsend. Some people hate him, others love himand neither side is shy about expressing its opinion. Not surprisingly, Pastor Rick is catnip to the media. After Obama selected him to speak at the inauguration, endless news cycles examined, analyzed and opined on why Obama did it, who'd benefit, what Warren would say, where the GLBT community would go, when Warren would don Billy Graham's mantle, and how the country would react if he used the "J" word.

Dismissing all the palaver, regular folks didn't much care. A Gallup poll on the eve of the inauguration found a majority of Americans didn't have an opinion about Obama's choice of Warren, 39 percent approved of it and only 9 percent were unhappy. The bottom line: "News media accounts . . . reflect more of the vocal positions of interest groups than an opinion that is shared by the majority of the American public."

Now Warren has a new plan to directly reach that majority. This week, Purpose Driven Connection (PDC), a quarterly magazine debuts. Published by Readers Digest Association, it arrives on a multimedia platform that includes a magazine, DVDs, workbooks, and access to a new social networking site, marketed as a Christian Facebook. Hoping for a broad market, the package has a $29.99 yearly fee that is discounted to $19.99 for congregations. Retail outlets will offer the magazine alone for $9.99.

PDC's initial run is about 500,000, and the publisher hopes to hit one million by year's end. Despite the weak economy, backers hope that Warren's popularity will make the magazine a must-have for evangelical homes. Unlike most glossies that focus on getting and spending, PDC's content is faith-driven. Articles in the first issue explore what the Bible promises for hard times, reaching the hip hop generation, tattooed bikers, and an "exclusive" interview with President Obama.

Warren's fertile field may be Readers Digest's next big market: the target audience looks like Millennials and Gen X, and if it's youth-oriented, Boomers won't be far behind. Most obvious: will it work, for whom, what's the next step and whither the social networking piece? The 10-pages available on the Website featured almost all-white faces. They were young, tattooed and half-nakedbut I only counted one Asian (and no other non-Anglos) among them. The lay-outs were bold and image-driven with very little copy.

If this succeeds what are the ramifications for the publishing industry: New delivery systems? Alternate content? More celebrity projects? And what does it bode for the continuing interpenetration of religion and public life? Warren isn't launching Guideposts or Christianity Today, he has a mainstream market in mind that crosses, or even erases formerly sacrosanct boundaries of denomination, theology and praxis.

So, today's question: Can we get beyond the Good Rick/Bad Rick narrative? Warren's popped up again with a new idea that could turn around the publishing industry as well as the religion world. I know mallets are poised to strike, but maybe it's time for a different game. Anyone ready to grab the brass ring?

Diane Winston

Doing it in Denmark

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Before delving into the good stuffsex, sex and more sexlet's take a step back and ponder the big picture. Thanks to Phil Zuckerman, we can do that.

Zuckerman, a professor at Pitzer College, writes about religion and society in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Acknowledging that faith in God can motivate men and women to creative, selfless and noble acts, he also says it plays a part in "tension, violence, poverty, oppression, inequality and disorder." But Zuckerman's not taking sides. "Rather," he says, "I simply wish to soberly counter the widely touted assertion that without religion, society is doomed."

Citing Denmark and Sweden as exhibits A and B, Zuckerman reports that both have low murder rates, high happiness scores, and little religious affiliation. In fact, according to one researcher, Denmark, not Disneyland, is the happiest place on earth!

"Belief in God may certainly give emotional and psychological comfort to the individual believer especially in times of pain, sadness or uncertainty and history has clearly shown that religious involvement and faith in God can often motivate individuals or cultures to promote justice and healthy societal development. But the fact still remains that it is not the most religious nations in our world today, but rather the most secular, that have been able to create the most civil, just, safe, equitable, humane and prosperous societies. Denmark and Sweden stand out as shining examples. The German think-tank Hans-Böckler Stiftung recently ranked nations in terms of their success at establishing social justice within their societies; Denmark and Sweden, two of the least religious nations in the world, tied for first."

Keep that in mind while reflecting on the coverage of some of the big stories this past week. First up-- the buzz on Alexandra Pelosi's "The Trials of Ted Haggard" followed by news that he had a sexual relationship with a young man in his congregation. This surfaced because the leaders of Pastor Ted's former church did not appreciate the fallen minister suggesting on film that he'd been un-Christianly cast out. From their perspective, it had been very Christ-like to cover up his indiscretions with the simple proviso he leave town.

Hard on the heels of the Haggard story was news that the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles "launched a federal grand jury investigation into Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in connection with his response to the molestation of children by priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese." Columnist Tim Rutten thinks it's a weak case but that hasn't stopped the story from spreading. Still, its legs can't compare to news of the birth of octuplets to a woman who has six children -- that story has racked up almost 2000 news hits 1400 more than Mahony and 600 over Haggard.

My point? Sex sells and journalists seem to relish nothing more than gay religious sexhow else to explain the excessive coverage of a slight documentary about a pitiful man. Unfortunately pandering to prurient interests won't save the news media. Likewise the Mahony story needs to move beyond its sensational starting point. Does the attorney general have a case and, if so, how does it reconfigure the relationship between church and state? Given the Catholic contingent on the Supreme Court, this could have interesting ramifications.

Sex, too, lies at the heart of the Suleman story, even though, the babies were conceived with a sperm donor in a fertility clinic. I understand why so many people are obsessed with this story: it's extreme in ways that challenge conventional understandings of family and responsibility. But the drive to uncover any/everything about the mother seems equally immoderate. Could we pull back from prying on her and consider instead the ethical, medical and social questions that the situation poses for the rest of us?

Zuckerman has a point: religion can work for good or ill, and there are other paths to achieve a just society. One of those paths leads through the stories we tell about ourselves. What lessons do we repeat? What types of behaviors do we lift up? Journalism is all about selecting stories and choosing how to tell them. This week I'd like to see how they do it in Denmark.

Diane Winston

We're No Angels

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Unlike wannabes from Wall Street to Hollywood, aspiring reporters don't lust for fame or fortune. Their goals are lofty: Speak truth to power; comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Most journalists are true believers and they want to make a difference. At least, that's how they start out.

But where do they end up? And the follow-up: Where might they rather be?

The two stories most likely to dominate the news for the foreseeable future are the recession and the Middle East. In the past, key aspects of these stories have been blurred, marginalized and missed. No need to recount the coverage of WMD, Dubya's "mission accomplished" or the mortgage boom, when we can just as easily consider reporting on the bank collapse or the fate of Afghanistan.

Are you reading stories that speak truth to Wall Street's power? I am not talking about the lifestyle changes that a $500,000 salary cap might require. (Can schaudenfraude alone explain why this is the New York Times' most emailed story?) Nor is Bernie Madoff the only villain. I'd like to know more about men like John Thain, Robert Rubin, Richard Fuld and the culture of greed, entitlement and soullessness that they helped to create. (Okay, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, it's a culture that these captains of industry did not create but did nothing to change.)

And what about Afghanistan? According to Richard Holbrooke, head of the administration's Pakistan and Afghanistan clean-up crew. "I've never seen anything like the mess we've inherited." But while the New York Times reports that Obama and company are disenchanted with President Karzai, the paper says he "has successfully presided over the transition of the Afghan state from the devastated, pre-modern institution it was under the Taliban to the deeply troubled but largely democratic one it is today."

So who and what to believe?

Would that journalists would reclaim the idealism that motivated them in the first place and tell stories that more accurately reflect our world. That won't be easy because the same corporate interests that strangled the economy also hold sway at our nation's pre-eminent news organizations. In some newsrooms, these interests are experienced as limits to what, which and how stories are told. An editor doesn't have to say "No," because reporters understand what will or won't make the cut.

How to get past those restrictions is a challenge. Speaking truth to power is hard to do at home, but it is the most important religion storythat is, if you count social ethics as a spiritual goodtoday.

Diane Winston

Sweet Somethings

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Valentine's Day on a money diet? Light on oysters, jewelry, and champagne, heavy on cupcakes, chocolates and Prosecco. Since I'll be wearing those valentine pounds for the next few months, I'm taking extra time to chew over stories of lust, love, sex and romanceas well as their fraught intimacy with religion.

No better place to begin than Paul Elie's profile of Rowan Williams, the embattled Archbishop of Canterbury. Many inside and out of the Anglican Communion have been surprised by Williams' seeming diffidence on the subject of sexuality. Rather than press for full inclusion of the GLBT community, as his writings suggested he might, Williams seems to have retreated. Elie's elucidation of Williams' theology of grace explains his positions on both sexuality and the church.

(It's a long quote but it elegantly sums up the debate over homosexuality and illustrates why Williams' perspective is radical.)

"The sources of Christian strictures on homosexuality are many: passages in the book of Genesis and the letters of St. Paul; church traditions and customs; the notion of men and women as sexually complementary; the teachings that the only place for sex is within marriage and that the essential purpose of sex is the begetting of children. Over time, many of these strictures have been eased, if only informallythrough readings of the Bible that acknowledge it as a selective, time-bound document, say, or through a view of sex that acknowledges all the good things about it inside procreation. Some thinkers have sought to argue that the prohibitions against homosexuality are theologically unsound. Others have sought to show them as petty compared with Jesus' concern for oppressed people in the Gospels (which have nothing to say about homosexuality). Traditionalists, in response, treat homosexuality as a slippery slopearguing that any easing of the prohibitions against gay sex will undercut the broader Christian view of sexuality, disfiguring not only the institution of marriage but 'the nature of man . . . created in the image of God,' as Pope Benedict put it in a now-notorious address in December.

"Williams took a different approach, focusing on the concept of grace. From a sex scene in Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, he drew a definition of grace as beautiful and convincing as any I know.

There may be little love, even little generosity, in Clark's bedding of Sarah, but Sarah has discovered that her body can be the cause of happiness to her and another. It is this discovery which most clearly shows why we might want to talk about grace here. Grace, for the Christian believer, is a transformation that depends in large part on knowing yourself to be seen in a certain way: as significant, as wanted.

"From there, the essay has the inevitability of a proof in philosophy. Gay people, too, deserve to be wanted sexually--deserve the body's grace. The full expression of this grace through sexual relations takes time and the commitment of the partners to come to know each otherthrough the commitment of marriage or something like it. Sexual fidelity is akin to religious fidelity'not an avoidance of risk, but the creation of a context in which grace can abound.' For the church to stand in the way of such relationships, straight or gay, is to stand in the way of God's grace."

Besides illuminating Williams' theology of sexuality (you'll have to read the article for more), Elie describes why Williams' apparent backpedaling is a reasonable course forward. (Elie adds more on the topic here.) Eschewing the breathless sound bites, sports metaphors and demise-of-the-denomination scenarios that have turned the "gay issue" into a long-running soap opera, Elie shows why the Archbishop of Canterbury measures progress differently than Rev. Williams did. All in all, "The Velvet Revolution" is an exemplary piece of writing that manages to educate, delight and inspire. That's all the more impressive since the topic has devolved into sensationalist fodder for most of the press. (For another perspective, see this. The critique and subsequent comments, illuminating a conservative take on the profile, demonstrate how difficult it is to write a story that satisfies a discerning but often partisan readership.)

For those who would persevere in promoting thoughtful coverage, the Pew Forum has posted a helpful resource. A new survey on religiously mixed relationships can be used to contextualize any number of stories on love and romance in the postmodern era. Why are Hindus the least likely religious group to marry outsiders while Buddhists are the most? Is it a surprise that Jews, evangelicals and historically black Protestants have the same percentage of mixed marriages? (The survey counts a Methodist-Lutheran union as mixed, whereas many Jews might say a Jewish-Christian union takes "mixed" to a wholly different level.) Still the data suggests a wealth of ethnographic articles as well as the nub of a nifty nut graf.

Building on Elie's piece and the Pew survey, there may even be a way to intelligently revisit the new evangelical sex-craze stories. Ever since Rev. Ed Young Jr. sermonized about the beauty of Christian "sexperiment," reporters have mined this seemingly oxymoronic story. But I haven't seen a serious secular media piece on evangelical theology of the body or similar reflections in other faith traditions. Hmmthat's a series of stories that would go well with a box of See's soft centers.

Diane Winston

Art Therapy Post Katrina

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

J517: Reporting on Religion
Final Investigative Story
by B. Adriana Venegas-Chavez

Art Therapy Post Katrina

   NEW ORLEANS As the third anniversary of hurricane Katrina passed by, people in New Orleans continue to help rebuild homes, schools, churches, and entire communities, and others are working to help children regain mental stability.

   Art therapist Holly Wherry, along with the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) and the Prefecture Hyogo, Japan, is working to establish the Hyogo-NOMA Art therapy Initiative in public schools. This program will help children in New Orleans learn how to express their feelings and cope with trauma through art. However, the program, although successful with the children, is already facing challenges. Wherry is one of only nine certified art therapists in Louisiana and the only one working with kids in public schools in New Orleans.

Wherry explains that "Mental health issues are only now surfacing in many children. And these issues will take a long time to resolve. It is so important to consider the large impact Katrina has had on the community and how children are still adjusting and re-adjusting."

In the aftermath of Katrina, families and their children spent the majority of the time focusing on coming back to their city and finding or rebuilding a home. They were concerned with finding their lost relatives and finding jobs. No one had the time or the energy to deal with the internal damage or become each other's support systems. It was as if everyone stored away their trauma to help their families survive physically.

More concerning is that children who were in their first years of elementary have only recently come to understand the extent of the damage Katrina had on their city, "A lot of the schools have identified their 5th grade group as having more problems. That means that they were in 2nd grade when it happened and now they have more understanding," Wherry said.

The first time Wherry worked with a group of kids this semester, she was astonished at the emotion, "I had 10 kids in the group and when I told them that this was a safe place where they could express their feelings, all of them started crying. All 10 of them," she said. "It was the first time I had seen this but they all just needed to cry."

Art therapy, says Wherry, gives children a safe place where they can learn to express their trauma in different ways. It gives kids an avenue to express themselves freely without the restraints of their underdeveloped vocabulary. According to the American Art Therapy Association, "Art is a natural form of communication for children because it is easier for them to express themselves visually rather than verbally. This is particularly true for children who have experienced a traumatic event such as Hurricane Katrina."

And more so for children in New Orleans who experience all types of art as a part of growing-up. Alithea Piccola, an intern working closely with Wherry said, "New Orleans is an artistic city. Art is something that is part of their daily life. It's their culture. Especially music, many kids can express themselves better with music because they grew up with parades and second lines. We try to incorporate a lot of this."

Another hurdle to overcome is the academic intensity. Children missed two years of regular schooling and the priority of the state is to get them at grade level. Some schools have extended their days to more than eight hours without recess. "Schools are so academically rigorous kids are forced to behave and be quiet during school hours that they forget how to talk to each other," Wherry said. "Kids will walk around the table to get markers or other materials instead of asking someone to pass them. They just don't know how to talk to each other. They have to relearn this.

Thus far, the semester-long program has been completed in two schools, John Dibert Elementary and Edward Hynes Charter School and it is now in Benjamin Banneker Elementary. The first two schools have seen a decrease in violence and an increase in communication. "There's a difference between the schools that have art therapy. In the two schools where we have completed the program the principals report less aggressive behavior in general. They wrote letters to help keep the program, but unfortunately I'm the only art therapist working with public schools in New Orleans," Wherry said.
The completion of the program in these two schools gave way for an art exhibition that was put on display in NOMA. Children who participated were asked for permission to display their art and write a caption that explained what they drew.

An eight-year-old who drew a picture of a red swirl with angry eyes as Katrina and a house and animals on fire after being struck by lightning said, "I hate Katrina so bad, I just wanted to draw this picture, so I could get my anger out on her." She also drew herself fighting Katrina with water guns.

   Another participate drew a face split in half. One side had tears and a frown and the other a smile. The 6th grader wrote, "this is how I feel sometimes: I feel mixed."

   One of the priorities of the program is also to help kids remember what they love about New Orleans. When most of them returned they hated their situation. Wherry recalls them complaining about their messy homes and dangerous neighborhoods. In art therapy, "We incorporate art materials that remind them of their city, like Mardi Grass beads and balloons and we read books about New Orleans to remind them of these things that they do love about this city," she said.

   The exhibition at NOMA brought many families and communities together. Most importantly, it allowed parents to see what their children had been feeling all along. It opened an opportunity for communication because many are still hesitant to talk about Katrina and the ramifications that came along. James Mulvihill, director of communications and marketing said the "exhibitions offered some visions of hope and progress," he said. "Many of the Katrina-themed art exhibitions out there have focused on devastation, and while these certainly offer raw looks at the physical and mental toll wrought by the flood, they also reveal a deep love for the city and an attempt to move on and grow."

   The Hyogo-NOMA initiative is helping the children in New Orleans heal properly and allowing them to move on. The art exhibitions are to show the rest of the country that this has not happened yet and New Orleans still needs help.