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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Everyone knows that few Christians in Britain worship regularly. But The London Times revealed the severity of this trend. As Ruth Gledhill reported,

Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests. The fall — from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. . . .

In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims will have increased from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.

It’s true that Gledhill’s story is based on projections; as such, the state of Christianity in Britain might well change. Even so, I think that Gledhill deserves little but praise.

She did a good job of getting the story, which is based on statistical analysis of worship in Britain. She did a good job of putting the story in context, drawing out the implications of church membership decline and comparing it to those of non-Christian faiths. She did a good job of parsing out the statistics for individual denominations. (Presbyterians and Methodists are predicted to have fewer than 10,000 adherents combined.)

That said, I have a few quibbles with the story.

Gledhill points to a few exceptions to the Christian trends:

Only in the large, evangelical churches of the Baptist and independent denominations is there resistance to the trend, but many of these churches also show some decline. One small area of growth is in Northern Ireland, where the enthusiasm of Pentecostals and other independents has led to a slight increase in numbers of churches - a trend expected to continue to 2050. The three growing denominations are the Orthodox, Pentecostals and smaller denominations, all dependent to a degree on immigration.

I think that Gledhill should have unpacked this paragraph a bit. Why do scholars think that evangelicals are bucking the trend? Is it because their churches demand more of their adherents and/or because their services are more low church than high church?

Similarly, Gledhill quoted a Church of England official about her story:

The Church of England disputed the forecasts last night. Lynda Barley, its head of research, said: “These statistics represent a partial picture of religious trends today. In recent years church life has significantly diversified so these traditional statistics are less and less meaningful in isolation.”

It’s unclear what Barley means by diversified. Is she referring to Christians who go to fellow Christians’ homes to worship? If so, does this mean that Christianity can survive without churches?

In a story of this magnitude, fleshing out answers to the questions would have made it even better. Once again, the goal is to link facts and statistics with realities on the ground, in terms of faith ann practice.

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In the days preceding and following Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States, we discussed some of the media coverage of whether politicians who publicly advocate for abortion rights would/should/could receive Communion at the papal masses in Washington and New York.

After former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, a Republican, received communion at one papal mass, New York Cardinal Edward Egan announced “that he was not to receive the Eucharist because of his well-known support of abortion.” He said he would meed personally with the former mayor to discuss the matter. Now another politician has been singled out for receiving the sacrament while supporting legalized abortion.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann, of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, published a column in the archdiocesan newspaper that said Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius should refrain from taking Communion until she publicly repudiates her support for abortion rights. Naumann also criticized Sebelius for her recent veto of a bill regulating abortion clinics that was passed by significant majorities in the Kansas legislature. John Hanna of the Associated Press has the goods:

Naumann said he wrote to Sebelius, who is Catholic, in August, asking her to refrain from Communion but learned recently that she had participated in the sacrament. He said it prompted him to write to her again, asking her to respect his request and “not require from me any additional pastoral actions.”

He said he had earlier called upon the governor to make “a worthy sacramental confession” and take “the necessary steps for amendment of her life which would include a public repudiation of her previous efforts and actions in support of laws and policies sanctioning abortion.”

In a column published Friday in The Leaven, the archdiocese’s newspaper, Naumann wrote: “The spiritually lethal message, communicated by our governor, as well as many other high-profile Catholics in public life, has been in effect: ‘The church’s teaching on abortion is optional!’ ” . . .

Naumann wrote, “I hope that my request of the governor, not to present herself for Holy Communion, will provoke her to reconsider the serious spiritual and moral consequences of her past and present actions.”

Sebelius spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran said the governor hasn’t seen the archbishop’s column. However, Corcoran said, “receiving Communion has not been a problem in the past for her.”

One of the readers who sent this story in wondered whether it belonged on page A1 of a newspaper. It’s a great question. Last week I wrote about media coverage of a new book by Honor Moore about her Episcopal Bishop father’s adultery and bisexuality. Even thought the book was very supportive of her deceased father’s behavior, one of the GetReligion readers who commented wondered why there was any coverage of such a topic at all. It is worth asking whether the media should permit such discussion of public figures who can’t defend themselves.

The Sebelius situation is different and it’s important to discuss why. In order to understand the journalistic question, a quick clarification of the Catholic church’s treatment of sin is in order. While Catholic clergy promise to keep secret the sins that are confessed to them, the church considers public support of abortion to be scandalous. The Catholic definition of “scandal” is conduct that incites others to act immorally or do evil. So this brouhaha is not about the private views of Sebelius. This is about church figures speaking publicly about public figures’ public support of abortion. In other words, I think it’s definitely worth prominent media coverage. And since Sebelius has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Barack Obama, her profile is rising.

The AP report seemed very straightforward and fair. Finn Bullers of the Kansas City Star also wrote a helpful story by putting Naumann’s action in context:

Four years ago, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said leaders who support abortion rights were “cooperating in evil” and their bishop should decide whether to deny them Communion.

But not all Catholic leaders have agreed that it’s proper to deny the sacrament.

Speaking about the debate in 2004, Bishop Raymond J. Boland of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph told a Star columnist, “I don’t think I have any right to invade another person’s conscience when they come to me.”

Naumann said he wrote to Sebelius in August and asked her to refrain from Communion but learned recently that she’d participated in the sacrament at a church in Topeka. He said he again wrote and asked her to respect his request and “not require from me any additional pastoral actions.”

Forcing priests to refrain from giving the governor Communion would be one option, but one not being considered by the archbishop. Instead, he said he puts the burden on Sebelius to do the “right thing” and heal the fracture her actions have caused the church.

For Catholics, he said, the Eucharist is the literal nourishment of the body of Jesus Christ and not a symbolic gesture. So to support abortion and take Communion creates a theologic contradiction that is unacceptable, Naumann said. . . .

Bishop Robert Finn, Boland’s successor in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, said in a statement Friday that Sebelius’ Catholicism made her “consistent support of abortion especially troubling.”

Naumann’s request that Sebelius refrain from communion “is clearly a pastoral responsibility of the local bishop entirely consistent with guidance from the Vatican and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops,” Finn said. “Archbishop Naumann has my admiration and prayerful support.”

I’m glad that Bullers showed that not every bishop handles public support of abortion in the same way. That was one of the obvious and most interesting subplots to the papal mass stories. Why did Cardinal Egan crack down on Guiliani while pro-choice politician Sen. Edward Kennedy received no such admonition for receiving the sacrament?

Washington Times religion reporter Julia Duin actually did some investigative journalism to answer that question. She quoted eyewitnesses who said that Kennedy didn’t just receive the sacrament but had it hand delivered to him in the stands — a move they said would have had to have been pre-arranged. After inquiring about how decisions about who to commune are made, the Washington archdiocese told her such decisions are best handled by local bishops. So Duin contacted the home dioceses of pro-choice politicians such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Chris Dodd. None of the bishops there responded.

We’re still pretty early in the cycle for much of this coverage but there are a few things that I hope to see in subsequent coverage. Most importantly, we need a theological — or even just practical — defense for receiving communion when the local bishop has said it’s wrong to do so. With so much of the opinion media failing to get the underlying theological issues, it’s important to clearly and repeatedly explain the Catholic concept of scandal as well as the politicians’ understanding that they can choose which Catholic doctrines to follow. The Kansas City Star, for instance, wrote an editorial claiming that Naumann is forcing Sebelius to choose between his will and her oath of office. Religion reporters need to explain to the uninformed how the church sees the conflict. A good religion reporter will also explain the theological positions — as opposed to the political — of Sebelius and her pro-choice colleagues.

It is also important for religion reporters to explain the church’s pastoral actions versus political advocacy. Sometimes these two issues sit closely together but they are distinct. Telling a parishioner she is not to receive communion while in a state of unrepentant sin is, in the eyes of the church, a way to care for the very soul of the parishioner. It is important that this aspect is not neglected in the story. Some churches believe it’s loving to accept and embrace people without judgment as to their actions. Others believe that it’s loving to show people their errors. Though they frequently do, the media should not take sides on which method is correct.

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The Canton Repository, a Canton, Ohio, daily newspaper, has a story on Mother’s Day consisting of a series of quotes from a broad spectrum of individuals representing different religious faiths stating the obvious: mothers play an important part in religious upbringing.

For the obligatory newspaper story on the sacred Sunday that is Mother’s Day, the article has a unique perspective, but the information coming out of the story is anything but novel. Stringing together a bunch of quotes from individuals of different faiths is rarely the best approach in terms of informing readers:

For most people, their first introduction to God, spirituality and other matters of faith, starts with their mother.

Often, those lessons come by example.

“I learned more about faith and God from my mother’s actions than from her instructions,” said Ruwaida Salem of North Canton. “My mother taught me the values of faith and created an environment of God-consciousness in our home. In turn, this foundation has been the foundation of my spirituality ever since. From her, I learned techniques for how to apply that God-consciousness environment with my own children . . . She also taught me how to pray to God.”

I’m not sure what a “God-conscious environment” is, but I’m sure with a few follow-up questions, the reporter would have been able to inform readers. But it’s the next paragraph that jumped out at me:

Salem said her mother also made an extra effort to ensure she could read the Koran in Arabic by tutoring her at home, and both parents embraced the Islamic principal of gender equality.

I am not an expert in Islam, but I do not think it is journalistically appropriate for an objective news/feature story to state as a matter of fact that gender equality is an Islamic principle. First of all, what does gender equality mean? Equality can mean many things.

Secondly, how can gender equality be an Islamic principle if a large powerful Muslim nation forbids women from driving? Reasonable people can disagree of course. A slight re-phrase of that sentence — such as stating that the “parents embraced the principle of gender equality that they believe is embraced by Islam” — would fix the problem.

The rest of the story is slightly less bland. A bit of history would have helped provide some context to the story because mothers imparting faith into their children is an old story that certainly should not be forgotten.

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No question about it, this is the picture of the day. Here’s the lede from the New York Times, taking the details right down to the one that will have tongues wagging a bit inside the Beltway:

President Bush’s daughter Jenna Welch Bush on Saturday married Henry Chase Hager, a graduate student and son of a former Virginia lieutenant governor, before 200 relatives and close family friends here, the White House confirmed. . . .

Although the Bush family kept up a strict zone of privacy around the events, the tiny town of Crawford made merry on its own. Souvenir shops hung banners wishing Ms. Bush, 26, and Mr. Hager, 30, well. Jenna-and-Henry coffee mugs, mouse pads and coasters flew off the shelves. One shop served wedding cake.

On Saturday afternoon, the Hager family hosted wedding guests at a barbecue in Salado. The wedding, which began at 7:30 p.m., took place on the Bush ranch, before a white limestone altar erected next to a man-made lake. The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston officiated at the ceremony. Mr. Caldwell, a longtime religious adviser to Mr. Bush, has endorsed Senator Barack Obama.

As you would expect, every major news story mentions this final detail — so much so that it is almost impossible to find a Google search combination that actually gets you any meaningful details about Caldwell’s involvement. You just get that one political note.

However, over at Beliefnet.com there is an interview with Caldwell — a rather traditionalist United Methodist of evangelical leanings, in the doctrinal sense of that word — in which he talks about his decision to back Obama:

One, I think he’s just a solid man. He’s a solid, spiritual man, and I have a great deal of respect for him as an individual.

Number two, when he initially announced, they said, “Well, he will be a symbolic candidate. He has no chance of winning.” And then he began to attract, you know, crowds of 20, 30, 40,000. Then they’d say, “Well, he may attract twenty, thirty thousand folk at a time, but he won’t be able to raise any money.” And then he started raising a ton of money. . . . Then, they said, “Well, he’s not black enough.” Well, clearly he is. Then they said, “He’s too black.” Well, that’s ridiculous. Then they said, “Well, you know, he doesn’t like white folk because his pastor says whatever.” And I think folks forget his mother was white, for goodness sake. The grandmother of his children are white. I mean it just — that’s just a ridiculous argument.

Then, they said, “Well, he’s Muslim.” And he’s confessed his faith — I would say that he’s more of a Christian than some folk who claim to be Christian, because he didn’t grow up in a Christian house. . . . He had to declare his faith separate and distinct from his — from the house that he grew up in.

Now what you will not find, in this interview, is how Caldwell squares his endorsement with any of the moral and cultural issues involved. In other words, with the actual religious content of Obama’s faith and that of the United Church of Christ. Again, the basic, foundational questions are missing as the interview rushes on to the strictly political.

I would have been interested in hearing what Caldwell has to say, since one of the crucial questions facing Obama is — here we go again — how to relate to the African-American churches that oppose his views on a wide range of religious issues that link to politics. Yes, that would include abortion and the meaning of words like “family” and “marriage.”

Meanwhile, down in the Texas media there is a bit more content floating around. You can, for example learn:

As for the president, Caldwell said, on Saturday he was just the father of the bride. “He was compassionate and emotional. He cried a couple of times,” Caldwell said.

There you go. There’s the lede.

PHOTO: White House press office.

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Today is Pentecost, one of the three chief festivals in the Western Christian church year. It would be hard to imagine a complete lack of coverage of Christmas or Easter but Pentecost, the least commercial or secularized of the three days, doesn’t receive much media coverage at all. I don’t have any statistics to back this up but I think that media coverage is particularly sparse during those years, like 2008, that the High Holy Day of Mothers coincides with Pentecost.

Perhaps because Pentecost isn’t celebrated in the home as much as Christmas and Easter, reporters have trouble writing about the day which marks the birthday of the Christian Church. Of the media outlets that even mentioned Pentecost, also called Whitsunday, most simply published personal essays from religious adherents. The Times (U.K.) ran an interesting and thorough essay from the Right Rev. Dr Geoffrey Rowell, Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe. It’s probably one of the few times a piece was headlined, “The celestial fire that brings us new life and inspiration.”

The Columbia Missourian actually had a detailed explanation of the origins of Pentecost:

Although Pentecost is largely regarded as a Christian holiday, it has Jewish roots.

It was during the Jewish festival of Shavuot, which is associated with the spring harvest and marks the day Moses received the Torah from God on Mount Sinai — that the Holy Spirit came down to spread the good news about Jesus Christ.

According the second chapter of Acts in the Bible, as Jesus’ apostles celebrated Shavuot, the Holy Spirit appeared, marking the beginning of the Christian church’s mission.

The piece even mentioned the symbols, traditions and celebrations of Pentecost. The hymns it says are most popular are not ones I’m familiar with:

“Breathe on me breath of God,” “There’s a spirit in the air,” “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me” and “O Breath of Life, come sweeping through us” are among the most popular.

I love Pentecost hymns but don’t recognize those, even after a YouTube perusal. (Today we sang one of my favorites, which we also sang at my wedding: “To God the Holy Spirit, Let Us Pray.”) I would quibble about what makes the cited hymns so popular but I won’t. I’m too excited that a reporter would think to include hymns in a story about popular liturgical celebrations.

Hank Arends, a retired religion reporter, writes a weekly column for Oregon’s Statesman-Journal. For this week, he wrote about the lack of attention paid to Pentecost:

The Rev. Don Shaw of John Knox Presbyterian Church in Keizer once did an informal survey among those who were not active church attendees.

His request: “Identify the three major Christian holidays.” Most easily named Christmas and Easter, with blank looks and answers like Thanksgiving and Lent for the third.

“Not one of those I questioned came up with Pentecost,” Shaw said. He pointed out that the church holy day falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter and “marks the birth of the church.

“So why is Pentecost unknown in our culture, while Christmas and Easter are widely acknowledged? I believe the answer lies in the very nature of Pentecost.”

The pastor said while Christmas and Easter remember the one time events of a birth and resurrection, Pentecost recalls the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon the early church and is “ongoing and continuous.”

Holly Andres, a staff writer for the LA Daily News, used Pentecost as a hook to talk about a local congregation with an interesting approach:

Furious winds and flames overhead are not what the parishioners at St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Rite Catholic Church would ever want to experience at their Chatsworth building near the brush-fire prone Santa Susana Mountains.

Except for this Sunday, when it might be thrilling for them to personally experience what Jesus’ Apostles did on Pentecost, which the parish will celebrate Sunday.

Pentecost, which comes 50 days after Easter, is the day Christians believe the Holy Spirit descended and brought spiritual gifts to the Apostles and then, ever since, to anyone who affirms to be a Christian.

“There was a sound like a rushing, mighty wind. There were tongues of flames over their heads. Then the Apostles were speaking in tongues,” said the Very Rev. Anthony F. Rasch from St. Mary. “Our Lord said he would send the Spirit to remind them (of his teachings) and lead them to all truth.”

The small congregation worships God in an historic cemetery chapel and uses the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. I love the way the reporter used the hook of a major church festival to discuss this liturgical congregation.

The three pieces I highlighted here were fine and good. Pentecost is difficult to cover since it has no secular or commercial angle. It is also not celebrated by Christians themselves as much as Christmas or Easter. But perhaps reporters — other than those in the Catholic press — can do a bit better on this in the future.

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Long-time GetReligion readers may remember that I have been, and remain, very confused about the meaning of the term “emerging church” and how it relates to that other confusing term “evangelical.” There was even a time, two years ago or thereabouts, when GetReligion.org was named one of the top weblogs linked to the “emerging church” movement. That struck me as most strange. It still does.

Whatever the term means, it is supposed to be linked to a kind of post-evangelical embrace of the nuances of postmodern reality, in an attempt to fuse ancient mysteries with contemporary questions without the certainties of orthodoxy or something like that.

The key figure — in part since his church is so close to the D.C. Beltway — is the Rev. Brian McLaren, an author who has a stunning ability to write thousands and thousands of words without betraying anything specific about where he stands on centuries of Christian faith and doctrine and how they apply to modern issues. That’s where — for a premodern, Orthodox Christian guy like me — the frustrations begin. The last thing journalists need to be doing right now is tossing around another loaded, yet almost totally undefined, term. I mean, imagine trying to write an “emerging church” entry for the Associated Press Stylebook.

Truth be told, the “emerging” people and more than a few other Protestants are trying to run away from that “evangelical” buzz word. That’s part of what is going on with the “Evangelical Manifesto” story right now. Click here for one report on that scene.

Anyway, Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press recently sat down with McLaren for a Q&A that captures some of my frustration with all of this.

It’s common to ask if the “emerging church” represents a move to the theological left and the assumption is that it does.

But that’s an old question. I want to know if the leaders of this movement believe that they are making a move toward ancient faith traditions or simply another attempt by modern people, or postmodern people, to create their own version of the faith that tries to get back to what they believe the early church was all about. This is a recurring theme in American religion for 200 years or so.

Thus, Zoll writes:

Author Brian McLaren is among the most influential American religious thinkers of the last decade. His break with rigid orthodoxy and embrace of new worship styles is at the center of what is called the emerging church — a movement that has gone viral. The emerging church reclaims ancient practices and prayers and creates new ones, while re-examining Scripture to learn how modern-day Christians should live. . . .

Emerging thinkers contend that evangelicals and others have been too influenced by the broader culture in their reading of Scripture. The emerging church says this has marginalized important Bible teachings and hurt the faith.

See what I mean? This is modern worship that breaks with rigid orthodoxy of the past while reclaiming ancient practices to create a fusion for modernists. To me, that sounds like three parts modern with one part ancient and the postmodernists get to create all the equations that matter, when it comes to authority.

Later, in the interview, there is this exchange:

Q: On the theology behind the emerging church, you reject the idea that there’s an absolute truth. So what boundaries are there on theology that churches are teaching? Can any church just call itself an emerging church?

A: Obviously that’s a challenge. The flip side of that question is look at the Catholic Church: For all of its orthodoxy, it could have bishops covering up for molesting priests. And evangelicals, for all their claims of orthodoxy, can be barbaric to gay people and can blindly support a rush to war in Iraq and can be, as we speak, fomenting for war with Iran. . . . Obviously, I have a lot of critics and they often say, ‘You’re wanting to water down the Gospel to accommodate to post-modernity.’ I say, ‘No, I really don’t want to do that. But what I do want to do is acknowledge first the ways we’ve already watered down the Gospel to accommodate modernity.’ . . . I think the naivete of some of those critics is that they’re starting with a pure pristine understanding of the Gospel. It seems to me we’re all in danger of screwing up.

So, no absolute truths? I don’t see a clear answer there, especially not for a minister who is so concerned about social justice. Also, if you are seeking ancient roots, does that include the Nicene Creed? Are creedal absolutes tossed out, too?

You know where I am going with this, right? I think someone — a journalist perhaps — needs to ask this man three specific questions. Cue up the “tmatt trio,” again:

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

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

(3) Is sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage a sin?

So read the Zoll interview, you journalists out there. What questions would you have wanted to ask?

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It’s no secret that Barack Obama fared poorly among white-working class voters in the Indiana primary. Why did he not win them over? Thomas M. DeFrank of The New York Daily News knows — Joe Six-Pack is a religious bigot:

While the case for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race is shakier than ever, one ugly reason for staying in could be found Tuesday amid the ruddy, sun-kissed Hoosiers who cheered her on to victory at the Indianapolis Speedway.

With Clinton posing alongside pioneering Indy speedster Sarah Fisher, there were almost no African-Americans to be seen. Many in the white, working-class crowd were simply not ready to back Barack Obama - for reasons that are disturbing.

“I’m kind of still up in the air between McCain and Hillary,” said Jason Jenkins, 32, who cited information from a hoax e-mail as a reason to spurn Obama.

“I’ll be honest with you. Barack scares the hell out of me,”he said. “He swore on the Koran.”

Obama did manage to pull in many white voters, but still encountered similar sentiments from a man who refused to shake his hand at a diner in Greenwood, Ind.

“I can’t stand him,” the man said. “He’s a Muslim. He’s not even pro-American as far as I’m concerned.”

Give DeFrank some credit. He talked to ordinary voters, and he got revealing quotes from them about religion. Neither is an easy task.

Yet it is outrageous for DeFrank to assert that the two men represent the sentiments of all white-working class voters. It’s nothing more than a smear. (DeFrank’s alternative explanations — that Joe Six Pack was mortified by the Rev. Wright or is a racist — are no less assuring).

DeFrank gives his readers no evidence that the two voters’ views are widespread. He offers no statistical or survey data. He did not talk to a representative sample of white-working class voters or even a small sample. He simply implies that the part stands for the whole.

This journalism is beneath a man of DeFrank’s prestige.

His story also inspires speculation about whether national-class reporters give, as one Hoosier Democrat sang, a damn about the Jackie Browns of this world.

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Hey, there you go. It has taken almost the whole primary season, but it now appears that the national press — or, at least, the Washington Post, which is a big deal in my zip code — has accepted that there are religious believers in the Democratic Party. Hurrah.

Long-time GetReligion readers will remember that we’ve been harping on this story for several years now. What’s next? Discovering that there are different kinds of religious believers in the party and that this has something to do with regional, racial and cultural tensions in the White House race and other contests as well?

But first things first. It appears that, for better and for worst, it was the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., who pulled the lever to yank this story into normality. Personally, I thought that the various “Catholic vote” factors would have done the trick.

So click here to get to the Post story with the headline “Wright Controversy Deepens Voter Divide — Religious, Racial Split in N.C., Indiana.” There is really nothing unusual in this story, other than the fact that reporters are getting to interpret some of the same kinds of exit-poll questions about Democrats that they have been seeing asked about people in God’s On Party for years. Here is a sample:

In network exit polling, about the same number of voters in each state said they considered the situation with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. “very important” to their vote as those who said it was “not at all important.” And most who gave the issue a heavy weight voted for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), while those who said it was not a factor went for Obama, the Illinois senator, by wide margins.

In both states, frequent churchgoers were more apt to say they were influenced by Wright than were less actively religious voters. In North Carolina, among those who said they attend religious services weekly, nearly six in 10 called Wright important to their vote, almost double the figure among those who never attend services. Even among Obama’s own supporters in the Tarheel state, 45 percent who attend services weekly called the controversy important to their vote; among those, a third who rated it “very important.”

In Indiana, the issue also split voters: About half of those who attend services weekly or occasionally rated the Wright issue important, while only a third of those who never attend services said the same.

What the story is lacking is any connection between religion and other issues — such as the Iraq war, health care, abortion, the environment, gay marriage, etc. In other words, we are used to seeing — in GOP coverage — how religious factors (think “pew gap”) affect voter’s views on other subjects.

At this point, the coverage of the Democrats seems to be focused only on race and, to a lesser extent, the mere fact that people are “Catholics” (as if there there was one Catholic vote).

Still, it is good to get even the most basic, blunt data. This is progress, even if everything is coming through the Wright Stuff lens at the moment.

Beyond Wright, Democratic voters again divided along religious lines in Tuesday’s primaries. Clinton carried white Catholics in both states, but by a smaller margin than she did in Pennsylvania two weeks ago. She won about two-thirds of white Protestants in Indiana and North Carolina.The two split weekly churchgoers in Indiana, and Obama held a 12-point edge among these voters in North Carolina. And active religious voters again divided along racial lines: Clinton won white weekly churchgoers in Indiana and North Carolina by 30-point margins, while Obama outpaced Clinton by better than 9 to 1 among blacks who attend church weekly.

Here’s the main point, again. There is content to all of this, facts linked to what groups of people believe, how often they worship and other questions.

It would be good to see the same depth of coverage devoted to religious people on the left side of the political aisle — heck, even people in the middle — as on the right.

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Sometimes when I’m watching Jeopardy, which I do every night, I like to guess what religion or denomination contestants belong to based on clues — the college they attended, the mission trip they went on, their hometown — from their brief introductions. So Newsweek’s Sally Atkinson is a reporter after my own heart.

In “America’s Next Top Mormon,” she wrote about a Mormon American Idol finalist and other Mormons who have been contestants on reality television:

When brothers Ryan and Craig Simmons auditioned for the CBS reality show “The Amazing Race” in 2003, they hoped the novelty of their religion would give them an edge. Their audition tape showed them outside the Mormon temple in Provo, Utah, while the narration played off those classic Mormon ads (“Family: Isn’t it about time?”) with a question for the casting directors: “Mormons: Isn’t it about time?” It certainly is now. Since then Mormons have colonized reality TV as if they’d been assigned there by Brigham Young himself. They’ve won “The Biggest Loser,” “The Rebel Billionaire” and “Survivor” (along with two second-place finishes on “Survivor”). These days you can’t turn on “So You Think You Can Dance” or “Dancing With the Stars” without seeing at least one, and often several, members of the church. And they’re closing in on the biggest reality TV prize of all: cherub-faced Mormon David Archuleta is one of four finalists left on “American Idol,” and his chances just soared following the elimination last week of Brooke White. White is Mormon too, and now that she’s off the show, the two of them won’t have to split the faithful’s vote anymore.

Wholesome, likable Mormon competitors are now so plentiful that some viewers have taken to playing Spot the Mormon. Former “Idol” contestant Carmen Rasmusen, herself a Mormon, says one of this season’s early episodes set off her Mormon radar when she heard White tell the judges she’d never seen an R-rated movie. “My husband and I just looked at each other and said, ‘She’s totally Mormon.’ I mean, who else would say something like that?”

Atkinson covers the story from different angles. She noted the cultural disconnect between Mormon virtues and reality television’s conniving, back-stabbing and sexuality. She looked into the motivation of Mormon contestants themselves. She noted that LDS families form a great voting and viewing block for their fellow churchmen. She notes that Mormon contestants do well on shows without voting, too, quoting people who cited mission trips and navigating relationships in large families as contributing factors. She even got some Mormon criticism in the story:

Lauren Faber, an eighth-grader in Provo, votes for Archuleta as many times as she can each week for at least 20 minutes, “no matter what—even when he messed up that once.” That will undoubtedly be music to Archuleta’s ears, although last week Osmond spoke out in the church-owned Deseret News, saying that White and Archuleta should be judged based on their talent, not their religion. “I mean, you don’t hear other people saying, ‘One of the finalists is a Catholic’ or ‘One of them is a Presbyterian’ or ‘One of them is Jewish’.”

Actually, denominational press frequently note when finalists for reality television are one of their own. Just today my church body notified us that we’ve got a finalist for America’s Favorite Mom. Go Nora!

Atkinson even included how reality television success can come at a price for some Mormons. Julie Stoffer, a Brigham Young University student in 1999’s “Real World” was suspended by the university for living with housemates of the opposite sex on the show, a violation of the school’s honor code. Another Mormon contestant won “Survivor” last year although his homosexuality caused ripples in the Mormon community. Here’s how she ends:

Some tension may still exist between the Mormon community and mainstream America. But considering that not too long ago Mormons were a small, persecuted band, it’s remarkable that America may be poised to crown a Mormon as its new Idol.

The reader who sent the piece in praised it for not being snarky even though it would have been easy to make it so. I agree. Atkinson wrote a thoughtful and thorough article about popular culture.

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The economy is big news these days. The rising gas prices and increasing number of foreclosures are important stories throughout the Midwest. When Indiana became a key state in the Democratic primary a few weeks ago, religion and the culture war issues took a back seat to economic plans, job growth issues and ideas about how to lower gas prices. Even Barack Obama’s Rev. Wright issues seemed to drop off the radar in the days before Tuesday’s election.

But religious issues should never be so far removed from the public discussion that a 1,600-word article on the state of Middle America not mention religious issues at least once.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post’s style section had a remarkably straightforward article on Muncie, Ind. Unless I’m missing something, there is no snark, but neither is there any mention of religion. Coming away from this article one would think that Muncie, Ind., doesn’t have any churches or people who believe in God:

On the eve of the Indiana primary, does Muncie have anything to tell America? (And is it sick of being asked?)

“I don’t know what to tell you about Muncie, but it’s a dying town,” says Ron Cantrell, working the cash register of a dusty liquor store on the south side of town, where things are bleakest. “It’s almost dead. It’s like a cockroach lying there with its legs in the air.”

Muncie looks okay from certain angles, kind of like America. North of the White River, which bisects Muncie, things are pretty good. There’s Ball State University and Ball Memorial Hospital, both large employers. There’s Muncie Mall and the big-box stores, and — why would anyone shop in Muncie’s historic downtown anymore? How could those little shops possibly compare with Wal-Mart?

By leaving out religion, the article gives the impression that Muncie doesn’t have anything to tell America about God or their churches.

In a slideshow attached to the on-line version of the article, there is a photograph of a church, so we know the reporters were aware of at least one house of worship. I have limited personal experience in Muncie, Ind., but friends of mine who grew up there would say that there are churches in Muncie that are apart of the community.

As newspapers shrink and reporting staffs dwindle, it becomes more important for reporters from every section of the newspaper to be aware of the religious issues in the stories they cover. This article was focused primarily on economic issues in Muncie, but that shouldn’t mean religion should be left out.

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It really is impossible to stress too often that there isn’t one “Catholic vote” in American politics, right now. When people talk about Catholics being the ultimate “swing vote” factor — especially in tight races in the Midwest — they are actually talking about Catholics in the middle of a spectrum of doctrine and practice.

The other day, responding to one of Mark’s posts on Catholics and the Democrats, I mentioned a typology given to me once upon a time by a wise Catholic priest here inside the DC beltway. He said that there are actually four different major groups of Catholic voters, the:

* Ex-Catholic/estranged Catholic vote.

* Cultural Catholic/several Masses a year Catholic vote.

* Sunday only, I’m OK at the American Catholic doctrinal cafeteria vote.

* Catholics who sweat the details and go to confession vote.

Now, the GOP has really been targeting group No. 4 in the era after Roe v. Wade and, in large part, that is where you find the most Reagan Democrats who are in Catholic pews. Meanwhile, the Democrats pretty much own group No. 1, which tends to be left of the secular public. There’s some great data out there from a study a decade or two ago by Father Andrew Greeley & Co. that fleshes that out, but I cannot find it online. (Feel free to help me hunt!)

So the battles are about the semi-active Catholics in the middle, who swing back and forth. The current theory is that the Iraq war ticked them off in the 2006 elections.

So why is that wild man, the Rev. John Hagee, the subject of this post? As long as the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., is hanging around the neck of Sen. Barack Obama, expect to keep hearing about Hagee and Sen. John McCain — even if there really isn’t anything new to report. I mean, check out this latest Newsweek piece and tell me the hot new information. Here’s the key section:

“When someone endorses me, that does not mean that I endorse everything he stands for and believes in,” McCain said last month. “I don’t have to agree with everyone that endorses my campaign.” But that may seem insensitive to those who have been offended by Hagee’s more controversial positions. The pastor has made some outrageous comments. He called the Catholic Church, among other things, “the great whore” and “a false cult system.” Hagee says his comments were taken out of context; he says he was not referring to modern Catholicism, but to what he says were the anti-Semitic views of the Catholic Church in the past. The Catholic League, which published a list of Hagee’s “slurs” against the church, has called on McCain to renounce the endorsement.

Hagee also has strong views about the Middle East. He believes the United States has a biblical obligation to support Israel, and he has advocated a pre-emptive strike on Iran to protect the Jewish state. He opposes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, suggesting that if Washington backs such a plan, God might punish Americans by dispatching terrorists.

Click here if you want to flash back and read more about what Hagee said and when he said it (and why his view of World War II and the pope make him sound like an anti-Catholic liberal).

But it’s important to remember that Hagee is a story because of the “Catholic vote” factor. So reporters need to ask, “Which Catholic vote does Hagee threaten?”

Clearly, the left side of the Catholic spectrum will love to hate Hagee for a whole host of reasons. But they are not listening to the GOP anyway, even on abortion and other life issues that matter so much to the Vatican. So the question is what the conservative Catholics think of Hagee — which is why the Catholic League link is politically (and thus journalistically) crucial.

I mean, you already know what Catholics who read Frank Rich are going to think of all of this. But what about, oh, Deal W. Hudson?

As it turns out, a month ago, Deal Hudson did sit down with Hagee to confront him about his statements and his claim that they were ripped out of context. Click here to see the result, at Inside Catholic. This is really interesting stuff, and here is a crucial passage:

. . . I contacted Hagee. He seemed genuinely hurt that he was being seen by the nation as anti-Catholic. He said, “Deal, how can people think I am anti-Catholic when my wife is an ex-Catholic, and a third of my congregation are former Catholics?” I bit my tongue. We really needed to talk; there were some things about Catholics he truly didn’t understand.

When we met later, I told Hagee about “biting my tongue,” and he looked surprised. I explained that Catholics don’t like being reminded of all those who have left the Church. As he started to nod in agreement, his wife Diana said, “He’s right, John.” She would repeat that sentence several times during our long conversation, and each time her husband would acquiesce in agreement.

For example, she agreed when I told Hagee that his account of anti-Semitism seems aimed entirely at the Catholic Church. He explained that he had written extensively about the anti-Sem