Here we go again.

I have heard from some readers who want to know what GetReligion thinks of the coverage — specifically the A1 news feature in the Washington Post — about the efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union and a several other groups to take down a simple cross erected in honor of World War I veterans on an outcropping of rock on federal land in the Mojave National Preserve in California.

Right now, the cross is covered in a rather ugly plywood box to hide it from desert wanderers who might be offended.

Conservative are outraged, of course, and this latest excursion into the shifting sands of church-state law is about to hit the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is about more than this one cross, of course. It’s about the role of religious symbolism in veterans memorials all over the place.

So am I supposed to share what I think about the case or am I supposed to focus on what I think of the Post report? Once again, readers need to remember the mantra that is so beloved by your GetReligionistas: This is not a blog about religion news. It’s a blog about how the mainstream press struggles to cover religion news.

So let me say this about the A1 Post story: It looks fine to me, both as a reporter and as a guy with a graduate degree in church-state studies. It contains, for example, insightful and informed quotes on both sides of the debate. This passage is especially nice:

It seems an improbable importance for this piece of desert land, where temperatures regularly hit three digits, an hour can go by without a passing car and somewhere nearby is likely to be a Mojave Green, the desert’s own highly lethal variety of rattlesnake.

“It’s just a little cross in the middle of nowhere,” said Wanda Sandoz, who with her husband Henry is the cross’s unofficial caretaker. Henry built the cross that currently occupies the spot — there have been three — and the Sandozes say they are fulfilling a WWI veteran’s dying request to look after things.

Hiram Sasser, a lawyer with the Liberty Legal Institute, which represents the Veterans of Foreign Wars and assists the Sandozes, agreed. “I always say you have to risk life and limb to be offended by this cross,” he said.

At the same time, many of the voices on the other side are themselves religious believers, including Jewish and Muslim veterans.

Meanwhile, the other pivotal issue in this case is whether it is possible for a Christian cross (or a Jewish menorah, for example) to be used as a neutral, “secular,” symbol. In this case, we are also talking about a cross that stands alone — not one that is part of a government memorial containing other symbols.

One of the opponents is not so sure that he likes the idea of a non-Christian cross:

Despite what supporters say was its secular birth, the cross for years has been the scene of Easter sunrise services, and the challenges began in 1999, when the U.S. Park Service denied an application from a Buddhist to build a shrine nearby. Frank Buono, an assistant superintendent, informed his boss that the presence of the cross violated the Constitution’s establishment clause.

Buono is Catholic, but he said he was offended by the religious display on federal land. “The cross is important to me because it is the indispensable symbol of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Buono said in an interview. “But it isn’t right that the symbol of my religion, or any religion, be permanently affixed to federal land.”

Well now, you can imagine how much legislators enjoy being asked to vote thumbs up or thumbs down on the fate of a cross that is popular with elderly war veterans.

So it’s a complex story, with strong emotions and arguments on both sides. In this case, I think the Post did a fine job of letting readers hear from interesting, informed voices.

And what do I think of the case itself? Click here and then here for hints.

Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA TODAY caught our attention with this recent story: “People with ‘no religion’ gain on major denominations.”

Americans who don’t identify with any religion are now 15% of the USA, but trends in a new study shows they could one day surpass the nation’s largest denominations—including Catholics, now 24% of the nation….

(Barry) Kosmin and Ariela Keysar of Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., directed three editions of the American Religious Identification Survey over 18 years. The 2008 ARIS, based on a sampling of 54,000 U.S. adults, also burrowed in for a closer look at 1,106 Nones, who answered extra questions about their beliefs and behaviors and views on God.

Articles based on surveys pose unique challenges. The Spring 2009 issue of Trinity’s Religion in the News features “Our Excellent ARIS Adventure,” a fascinating article by Mark Silk about the uses and abuses of the ARIS data, particularly news stories on the “sudden” rise of the nones:

That finding was canonized in “The End of Christian America,” Newsweek’s April 4 cover story by editor John Meacham. Not since Time’s April 8, 1966 “Is God Dead?” cover has so stark a religious message adorned an American newsweekly. It put Trinity ARIS right up there with Time’s notorious Death of God theologians.

But in fact, the increase in no-religion Americans—the “Nones”—was not really news. It was the 2001 ARIS, the second of the surveys, that registered the big bump (to 14.1 percent). Since 2001, the proportion of Nones has grown by less than one point—and Christian self-identification has declined by less than one (with the actual number of self-identified American Christians increasing by over 450 thousand).

Grossman’s USA TODAY story quotes Kosmin as saying the spiritual profile of the nones resembles that of America’s founders:

“They’re a stew of agnostics, deists and rationalists. They sound more like Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine. Their very interesting enlightenment approach is like the Founding Fathers’ kind: Skeptical about organized religion and clerics while still holding to an idea of God.”

Grossman also included this intriguing observation:

One quirky fact: 33% of Nones claim Irish ancestry, although the U.S. Census says only 10% of the USA does.

If you want to understand the Irish nones, listen to Flogging Molly (as I did last Saturday at their stellar Red Rocks Ampitheatre appearance), particularly their rocking anthem for Irish-Catholic nones, “Rebels Of The Sacred Heart.”

Let’s return to one of my favorite hot-button topics, the role of religion in the public schools. Whether it sets a precedent or not, the question of how to teach religion in the Texas schools is roiling the State Board of Education, schools, and activists concerned either that religion isn’t getting a fair shake or that a certain viewpoint (read: Christian) is being promoted.

So, under the circumstances, it seems that reporters could give readers clear explanations of the issues and opinions. After all, many readers pay taxes for these schools and send their children to them.

Or maybe not. Maybe we could just have another spitting contest with the eeeevil conservatives on one side and the rabid secularists on the other.

Cynicism aside, as I’ve said, every time you push the church-state button, from local boards of education to the United States Supreme Court, you are getting into the realm of opinion, in which there isn’t a clear consensus. So it’s not easy for a reporter to mark out the landscape of battle. But adding to the confusion isn’t a great idea, either, as did this recent, uneven piece from the Houston Chronicle.

Texas schoolchildren should know how God and religion greatly influenced the country’s Founding Fathers more than 230 years ago, say some of the experts reviewing the state’s social studies curriculum.

It is a viewpoint that troubles others who worry that a controlling majority of conservatives on the State Board of Education may go too far in pushing Christianity in public schools.

To characterize the origins of this country as a Christian nation would be wrong, said Steven Schafersman, who routinely attends SBOE meetings as president of Texans Citizens For Science.

“It is absolutely false,” Schafersman said. “That kind of belief is dangerous.”

He is among several who argue that many of the Founding Fathers actually were deists — they believed in God as creator, who permits the universe to operate according to natural laws rather than continued intervention. As such, they did not believe the Bible or Jesus were divine.

Eh, this really isn’t about “God and religion.” To date, it’s apparently been focused on whether there is or can be a Judeo-Christian perspective (emphasis on the Christian) in teaching materials. Look at the Peter Marshall quote later in the article, and you’ll see that seems to be his perspective.

“Controlling majority” — is that another way of saying that this is a group of conservatives who have the votes? Who are they? Are they all in agreement or do they represent diverse points of view?

And Schafersman isn’t one of “several” who believe that many of the Founding Fathers were deists. Many of them were deists. Or is Gary Scharrer saying that Schafersman only one of several in the state of Texas who believe that? Some Christians believe that the Bible is without error, but they don’t believe it is divine.

And then we have Marshall, head of Marshall Ministries. I’d have a lot of questions as to how a clergyman and the head of a ministry organization got appointed to review curricula for a school board.

That’s not addressed here.

For some reasons there are scare quotes around “expert reviewers when Marshall is being quoted, but the lede mentions experts without the quotes. It’s possible that the reviewers all reflect Marshall’s point-of-view (I can’t believe that anyone is still teaching that Columbus “discovered” America), but it’s also possible that some of them could have added light to the controversy as well as heat. The Schafersman quote right after Marshall’s doesn’t explain what he means by “live and let live.” Or is he just spitting back?

And, by the way, is this Founding Father story only about the guys who signed the Declaration of Independence and crafted the Constitution, or does it include influential men like the Puritan Cotton Matther (see picture above)? It is certainly possible to argue that American exceptionalism is as strong a strain in public life as is the predominant deism of our founding documents.

Interesting that the end of the article is so much clearer and more compelling than the beginning. Readers might not agree with Cynthia Dunbar or Richard Hughes, but at least they might gain some greater understanding of the profound questions here. From what I can tell, the religion wars in the Texas schools are being fought on many fronts, and reporters are trying to keep up with changing battlegrounds. This week it’s the Founding Fathers — next week, it might be the faith of Abraham Lincoln.

Another, less concrete idea — I have the sense that the entire framework in which these stories are reported (secularists versus religious, right versus left, conservative Christians versus liberal Christians) really needs to be evaluated, and possibly tossed out — in the interest of truly educating readers, rather than titillating them. I’m not sure what would replace it, but I do think that as the American religious culture changes, journalists need to find ways to keep up with how to write about it.

Picture of Cotton Mather from Wikimedia Commons

Get out your party hats and reading lights. If it’s the last week of September, it’s Banned Books Week. This is the annual awareness campaign that draws attention to censorship. From the American Library Association:

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

I mean, this could not be less controversial. Or at least I hope it couldn’t be. But there are a few things that are interesting about the coverage of the event, which is cosponsored by the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Let’s look at Time’s coverage. The headline, which I would like you to keep in mind, is:

Censorship in Modern Times

How modern? Well, the first book on the list is Candide, published in 1759. Others include, well, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s 1984. You get the idea. (Isn’t it interesting that these lists of banned books are always sugar-sweet like this? It’s not like you ever see someone wearing one of those “I Read Banned Books” t-shirts illustrated with the book jackets of the Turner Diaries or Mein Kampf or whatever).

Anyway, when I think of pressing issues of censorship, I think of Mark Twain. Don’t you? When I think of the plight of authors who express unpopular ideas, I think of J.K. Rowling and her undervalued Harry Potter series (also on the list because a small group of parents in Maine once publicly attacked their copies of the book with scissors). I mean, I’m sure we all know how difficult it is to get one’s hands on Harry Potter books. They’re practically impossible to find.

But I should give Time a break. It’s not like there’s anything more newsworthy or current for Time to report than U.S. Customs seizing Harvard-bound copies of Candide in … 1930.

Unless you think censorship happening this year is more timely.

Call me crazy, but maybe during Banned Books Week we should be looking at the story of how Yale University censored Jytte Klausen’s book “The Cartoons That Shook the World”:

Yale University has removed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad from an upcoming book about how they caused outrage across the Muslim world, drawing criticism from prominent alumni and a national group of university professors.

Yale cited fears of violence.

Seriously, what is more threatening — a handful of Maine yahoos and their scissors? Or a major university self-censoring an academic book over fears of widespread violence? What’s more troublesome for Time — the fact that some people tried to keep coarse language away from juveniles (that’s what most of these “censorship” claims are about — people attempting to limit juvenile exposure to bomb-making cookbooks, etc.) or that publishing houses are getting firebombed when they issue books that some Muslims don’t like?

That’s what happened at the home of Martin Rynja, owner of Gibson Square publishing house. That outfit dared release The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones’ historical novel about the Prophet Muhammad and his child bride Aisha. And what about Random House? That American publisher had inked a two-book, $100,000 deal with Jones. But, fearing “acts of violence by a small, radical segment,” abandoned its publishing plans.

But for Time magazine, the latest target of Muslim violence that it noticed was, I kid you not, The Satanic Verses. That was published during the Reagan Administration.

And for good measure, let’s just note the way Time began it’s special package on banned books:

The tradition began as a nod to how far society has come since 1557, when Pope Paul IV first established The Index of Prohibited Books to protect Catholics from controversial ideas. Pope Paul VI would abolish it 409 years later, although attempts at censorship still remain.

Yes, because when I think of religiously motivated suppression of “controversial” ideas, I think of Pope Paul IV before I think of, say, the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy that led to riots resulting in more than 100 deaths and the attacks on Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Don’t you?

Jim Lindgren over at the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy has excerpted a fascinating George Orwell essay from 1944 about what a morally depraved yet talented artist Salvador Dali is. It discusses how the fans of his art claim “a kind of benefit of clergy” where they exempt him from the moral laws that constrain ordinary people. Here’s the line that got me:

If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear.

Well, apparently Orwell didn’t consider Woody Allen, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese, three of the latest film luminaries, according to the Guardian, that have signed a petition calling for the release of talented director — and child rapist — Roman Polanski.

When I first learned of the arrest of Polanski — he’d been sought since 1978 after skipping town prior to sentencing for the rape of a 13-year-old girl — it didn’t occur to me that people would defend him. I mean, heck, we all like Chinatown but that doesn’t mean you get a Get Out of Jail Free card, does it?

Apparently it is. There’s this odd clip from The View where Whoopi Goldberg tries to explain that Polanski merely raped the girl, not “raped-raped” her. Because apparently giving a 13-year-old alcohol and Quaaludes and repeatedly refusing to comply with her demands that you stop orally, vaginally and anally raping her isn’t “rape-rape.”

Although most of the sympathy for Polanski is coming from Hollywood and the more liberal media elite, some of it is creeping into the mainstream media coverage. I don’t think everyone who rapes 13-year-old girls gets the “it’s such a complex situation” treatment that we’ve been seeing on, for instance, Good Morning America coverage. Or note this headline from the New York Times:

Question in Polanski Arrest: Why Now?

At the Washington Post, media critic Howard Kurtz says the headling “shows how Polanski advocates have gotten their spin into the mainstream news coverage.” Here’s a Washington Post Style piece explaining how Polanski is in a fighting mood, full of quotes from his high-profile defenders. And here’s the Los Angeles Times version that advances the view of some that the arrest reveals “America’s dark side.”

If you’re curious in what the opinion media is saying about Polanski’s arrest, here’s an absolutely devastating take in Salon, by Kate Harding. Anne Applebaum, a columnist for The Washington Post, takes the view that Polanski has suffered enough, losing his mother to a concentration camp and his wife to the Manson murderers. She neglected, however, to reveal that her husband is the Polish foreign minister pushing for his release.

Anyway, all this to say that there is an interesting religion angle here. Turns out that some people have noticed the discrepancy between how different sexual abusers are treated. In other words, if only Roman Catholic pedophiles could have been Roman Polanski pedophiles! Here’s Father Thomas Reese writing in the Washington Post’s On Faith section:

Imagine if the Knight of Columbus decided to give an award to a pedophile priest who had fled the country to avoid prison. The outcry would be universal. Victim groups would demand the award be withdrawn and that the organization apologize. Religion reporters would be on the case with the encouragement of their editors. Editorial writers and columnist would denounce the knights as another example of the insensitivity of the Catholic Church to sexual abuse.

And they would all be correct. And I would join them.

But why is there not similar outrage directed at the film industry for giving an award to Roman Polanski, who not only confessed to statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl but fled the country prior to sentencing? Why have film critics and the rest of the media ignored this case for 31 years? He even received an Academy award in 2003. Are the high priests of the entertainment industry immune to criticism?

The statute of limitations is apparently shorter for Polanski than it was for Elia Kazan, I guess. Some religion reporters are paying attention to the double standard. Here’s USA Today’s Cathy Lynn Grossman. U.S. News & World Report’s Dan Gilgoff cites Reese and others before writing:

But what is noteworthy about the Catholics speaking out against Polanski’s generally liberal apologists is that they are overwhelmingly liberal themselves… .

More conservative Catholic blogs have been relatively quiet about the Polanski arrest, at least so far. For the moment, the debate over how to treat Polanski is mostly a family feud among political allies: the left’s serious Catholics and its Tinseltown honchos.

I’m not sure it’s true that conservative Catholic blogs have been quiet about the arrest but will have to pay attention as I complete my tour of the Catholic blogosphere today.

The story had to be written, so the New York Times turned to a veteran who has excelled as the newsroom’s designated expert on doing serious, fair and accurate coverage of cultural and religious conservatives. Yes, the Times has such a person. I have heard media critics on the right praise David D. Kirkpatrick far more often than I have heard them attack him.

Thus, this was the man who needed to write the story that ran under this headline: “Abortion Fight Complicates Debate on Health Care.” Here’s the top of the story:

WASHINGTON — As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion.

Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions.

My only negative comment about the opening of the story is that it makes it sound like this is something new. I reality, of course, this battle inside the Democratic tent has been going on for weeks or months. Click here and then here to catch up on that, a bit.

The story, you may note, also hints at the line that pro-life Democrats have been trying to draw in the sand, by calling for a simple, public up-or-down vote on the Hyde Amendment.

What will really raise eyebrows, however, is Kirkpatrick’s summary paragraph:

The question looms as a test of President Obama’s campaign pledge to support abortion rights but seek middle ground with those who do not. Mr. Obama has promised for months that the health care overhaul would not provide federal money to pay for elective abortions, but White House officials have declined to spell out what he means.

There you have the key to the whole thing. The president is insisting that he will keep the promise, but there is no singular statement of what the compromise bill will look like. And don’t think that his pro-life critics — left, middle and right — haven’t noticed that. This is also, I would assume, why journalists have hesitated to write about this issue. How do you nail down facts, or even opinions, when you don’t really know what is at stake?

The strength of this story comes near the end, with it’s focus on debates inside the Democratic Party and, finally, a clear statement in the Times about the importance of the U.S. Catholic bishops on this issue. Again, why do they matter so much? Duh. The bishops have a proven record of actually wanting health-care reform to pass.

As always in Beltway battles, people on the inside are already trying to do the math.

Lawmakers pushing the abortion restrictions say they feel the momentum is on their side, especially because the restlessness of other Democratic moderates is making every vote count. At least 31 House Democrats have signed various recent letters to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, urging her to allow a vote on a measure to restrict use of the subsidies to pay for abortion, including 25 who joined more than 100 Republicans on a letter delivered Monday.

Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan, a leading Democratic abortion opponent, said he had commitments from 40 Democrats to block the health care bill unless they have a chance to include the restrictions.

After months of pushing the issue, Mr. Stupak said in an interview, Mr. Obama finally called him 10 days ago. “He said: ‘Look, try to get this thing worked out among the Democrats. We want you to work it out within the party,’ ” Mr. Stupak said, adding that Mr. Obama did not say whether he supported the segregated-money provision or a more sweeping restriction. “We got his attention, which we never had before.”

The story meticulously quotes calm voices on both sides, as it should, and ends with the bishops. Once again, the key debates are taking place among people who WANT health-care reform, but have questions about issues — abortion, rationing, etc. — that historically have been debated in terms that are both political and religious.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has lobbied for decades to persuade the government to provide universal health insurance, says it opposes the bill unless it bans the use of subsidies for plans that cover abortion.

“We have said to the White House and various Senate offices that we could be the best friends to this bill if our concerns are met,” Richard M. Doerflinger, a spokesman for the bishops on abortion issues, said in an interview. “But the concerns are kind of intractable.”

Why? Because many of the concerns are ancient and doctrinal. In other words, this battle is pulling everyone — both opponents of abortion and defenders of abortion rights — into church-state territory.

Stay tuned. Obviously.

As a religion reporter, I always hated the holidays. Christmas, Ramadan, Yom Kippur — they all meant coming up with new stories for centuries-old traditions.

In five years, I think I only managed to write one holiday story that I was proud enough share, that of a Muslim teen balancing the discipline of fasting for Ramadan with the physical demands of varsity football practice, and another that was interesting but not among my faves.

Hytham’s story was an inspired one. But, in general, holiday stories came about at the request of an editor and were usually discovered by one of two means: dumb luck or calling local religious leaders and asking, for example, why is this Passover different from all other Passovers?

I wasn’t unique. Survey the coverage this past weekend of Yom Kippur. It was generally bland and unremarkable, offering really only something of value to those who aren’t familiar with the Jewish Day of Atonement. And that’s what made two stories from the Los Angeles Times and New York Times so fascinating.

The latter was from the Times’ sports columnist George Vecsey. His position, in and of itself, should indicate that you’re in for a treat. The impetus? Yom Kippur began this year at sundown on Sunday, which meant all kinds of schedule maneuverings for the Yankes, Jets and Giants. Vecsey loved it:

Baseball cannot avoid conflicts. Games are played on Good Friday, the most solemn day on the Christian calendar. On Oct. 2, 1978, they played on Rosh Hashana, and Bucky Dent hit one into the screen at Fenway Park. Supply your own moral.

One year, baseball did get a message from on high. In 1986, the geniuses scheduled two Mets-Astros postseason games, for the night and next afternoon of Yom Kippur. Yours truly predicted a downpour of Biblical proportions, which in fact occurred, postponing the afternoon game. They got what they deserved.

Last year, the Tampa Bay Rays made it into the postseason for the first time, but a potential fifth and deciding game was scheduled for Yom Kippur.

“The way I run my life, there was no decision to be made,” the team owner, Stuart Sternberg, said the other day. He was prepared to attend services, but the Rays won in four games, on their sweet run to the World Series.

The Rays — that’s the seem team that went from being the worst in Major League Baseball when “Devil” was part of the club’s name to the best in the American League after they dropped the unholy association.

Vecsey’s piece meanders a bit, but the tone is beautiful and, though he makes sure to quote ESPN and club executives talking about the financial implications of the schedule changes — because that’s really what this is about — he is clearly applauding professional sports for realizing that, though they are religion, they aren’t God. “When religion is at play,” the headline warned, “a game is just that.”

Not much religious exploration here, but the column doesn’t need it. There was, however, some great religious insights in this short LA Times piece on how Persian Jews celebrate the High Holidays. Or, more aptly, the additional burden some young Persian Jews carry to synagogue:

Facing enormous pressure from their families to marry within the community, many of these young people — and their matchmaking relatives — say they use the day to scope out potential romantic interests and tap into vast social networks to get the scoop on prospective candidates.

The irritability and less-than-fresh breath that can accompany the 25-hour fast don’t seem to stop many of them from dressing up and synagogue-hopping from the San Fernando Valley to the Westside in search of a soul mate.

“If you go to the mall a few days before, everyone’s looking for an outfit for Yom Kippur,” said Dalia Azizi, 25, of Beverly Hills. “Every year the skirts are getting shorter. They’re going to temple and they look like they’re going to a club.”

Talk about a money quote. Bulletin board that one ‘cause it’s worth looking back upon. Not often religion stories gets comments that illustrative. (Reminds me of how I’ve often felt looking around at what people wear at my own church.) And not bad for an LA Times newcomer at the who’s pretty fresh out of school.

In fact, this was only Robert Faturechi’s second byline in the LA Times. Nonetheless, Faturechi, who, shameless college newspaper plug, succeeded me at the UCLA Daily Bruin, was clearly working within very limited space. But he still managed to not only quote the individuals who proved his story, but he gave, in short order, the essential info about why Persian Jews prefer other Persian Jews; this seems like a bit of context that would be missing in many of the religion stories I read these days.

The community’s religious leaders generally seem to approve. A skirt slightly shorter than might be deemed modest or some overt flirting, the reasoning goes, are small prices to pay to encourage marrying within the group.

“If young people start to connect and later on try to meet, it’s very positive,” said Rabbi David Shofet, a prominent spiritual leader of the local community and son of the former chief rabbi of Tehran. …

For many Jews of other ethnic groups, marrying within the religion might be sufficient. But for those whose background is Iranian, maintaining the culture can be just as important. Many of the customs can seem curious to outsiders, to the extent that convergence through marriage with families that don’t share the background can be fraught with cultural land mines.

And why on Yom Kippur? Faturechi explains that, much like Christmas for Christians, the High Holidays are the one time a year when most Jews, even me, come around.

Here’s hoping that Faturechi will appear a lot more frequently.

PHOTO: A bit of photoshop trickeration from the Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog.

It was a strange story from the start. The Washington Post dedicated a lot of newsprint the other day to a story about an ex-hoops star, an urban basketball legend who, strangely enough, lacked strong ties to the D.C. area.

As you would imagine, the heart of this feature wasn’t really about basketball.

No, story of the rise and fall of ex-NBA superstar (or almost superstar, which is crucial) Kenny Anderson focused on another issue altogether — fatherhood. Reporter Dave Sheinin wrapped this drama in the language of moral choices right from the start.

PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. — He ran the production like a former point guard, which Kenny Anderson is, and as if his life depended on it, which, in a way, it did. He lined up the consents of five women — the mothers of his seven kids, some of them more amenable to the idea than others — and coordinated the kids’ flights, same days, same arrival times, so as to minimize the waiting-around time at the airport. There was no time to waste. He was finally getting his kids together. …

From the comfort of his home, Anderson, who didn’t know his own father until his early 30s, contemplated the blessings of fatherhood and beamed. In the faces of his kids, he could see the evidence of his own past mistakes — the womanizing, the failed marriages, the hollow attempts at fatherhood he made during a 14-year NBA career that ended in 2005.

But over the course of those few amazing, late-summer weeks, he could also see the seeds of his new beginning, a new chapter for Kenny Anderson — now a 38-year-old, full-time, stay-at-home father to Kenny Jr. and Tiana, and an aspiring college basketball coach who wants nothing more than to distance himself from those past failures as a father, as a husband, as a man.

It’s a long story, full of poignant details, fast cars (lots of them) and millions of dollars that seemed to vanish into thin air.

However, as you might expect, there is a woman standing behind this fancy player who is now trying to mature into something else. That woman is his third wife, a clinical social worker named Natasha. And that’s where the story uses interesting language that points to where it is going.

Thank God for Tasha, say those who are closest to Kenny Anderson. … Natasha, to be sure, was unlike any other woman Anderson had had in his life. She was salt-of-the-earth. She was strong. She “held Kenny accountable for Kenny,” as she puts it.

Just to make sure you get the point, the “thank God for Tasha” language shows up again.

That’s when I started to worry that this was going to be another one of those stories with a sprinkling of vague Godtalk and no actual reporting. It’s one thing to pull God into the picture. It’s another thing to try to figure out — with on-the-record details — the role that faith may actually play in a human life.

You see, playing the “Jesus card” is easy and reporters often let athletes get away with that. In this case, Sheinin didn’t settle for vague labels. He showed that Anderson is trying to build faith and faithfulness into the ordinary details of life. It’s called journalism and here’s a small sample:

It’s a beautiful life Kenny Anderson leads these days, beautiful in its simplicity and its structure. He gets a call every morning, between 6 and 7 a.m., from Al Taylor, his pastor back home, whom Anderson has known since junior high, and who married him and Natasha back in July 2007.

“Sometimes we talk about Scripture, but sometimes there’s something else in his heart, and I just wind up listening to Kenny,” Taylor says. “Sometimes, Kenny is going deep.”

Next, Anderson drives Kenny Jr. and Tiana — Natasha’s daughter — to their public elementary school and finds something to do until it’s time to pick them up again at 2:15. He’s a prolific Twitterer, particularly between, say, 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.

It seems easy to do this kind of reporting, but it isn’t.

I was afraid that this story would be haunted by a religion ghost, but that isn’t the case at all. It’s a story about a man learning to be a father and, as often happens, faith is playing a role in helping him keep his vows.

It’s a nice story. Read it all. And if you happen to be a conservative reader who loves to take shots at the Post, please drop the editors a line to compliment this story. Shock them.

Not that I want to encourage more coverage of Westboro Baptist Church, but this was worth bringing up.

Westboro — you probably know them as the proprietor of godhatesfags.com — got a lot of attention this weekend on two separate though related fronts (and on a third one tmatt discussed yesterday). What’s surprising is which of the main two stories got more play.

The big news was that Westboro’s angry band of picketers traveled from Kansas to New York to protest outside a Brooklyn high school and then a Long Island synagogue. “Hate-mongering Kansans begin their assault on NY Jews” was the headline from the New York Post. Newsday offered a little more about the Great Neck protest:

The Westboro demonstrators carried signs declaring “God Hates Jews,” “America is Doomed,” “God is Your Enemy,” and others using a derogatory term for homosexuals. They also sang songs and shouted at protesters and passing motorists.

What I couldn’t figure out was why Westboro was picketing Jews. (Rabbi Bradley Hirschfield takes a stab.) Seems like an unusual combination of democratic tools for social change and medieval attempts at religious coercion. But the articles didn’t really address that. It’s not important. This wasn’t the important news concerning Westboro.

What was — and was much harder to find coverage of outside of Kansas and this brief in The New York Times — was an appellate court ruling that Westboro’s practices of offensive picketing is constitutionally protected. The locus quo was a soldier’s funeral, the saga of which Daniel Pulliam discussed last year. Now, the news from the Topeka Capitol-Journal:

A federal appeals court on Thursday favored civil rights over popularity when it reversed a civil lawsuit won by the father of a fallen U.S. Marine against members of Westboro Baptist Church.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., ruled that protest signs carried by church members in March 2006 outside the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster, Md., were protected by the First Amendment.

With that, the $5 million judgment and lien on the church’s building and law firm in Topeka have been dismissed.

Calling from New York City where she was protesting at the United Nations building, church spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper said she was happy Albert Snyder, the Marine’s father, had filed the lawsuit.

“If he hadn’t put us on trial, we wouldn’t have exploded around the world,” she said of the media exposure.

That is, sadly, quite true. This also might earn Westboro the immortality of a lawschool casebook. But why, for what seems like such a significant ruling, was there so little coverage?

RNS filed a shorty, and the Associated Baptist Press covered the boilerplate and Westboro background and picked out this choice quote from the appellate court:

Paraphrasing a ruling in another case invoking the First Amendment, the court said judges defending the Constitution “must sometimes share their foxhole with scoundrels of every sort, but to abandon the post because of the poor company is to sell freedom cheaply.”

The Baltimore Sun, the Snyder’s local paper, played this story surprisingly straight, reporting on the ruling, quoting Westboro, quoting the Snyder’s attorney, who plans to appeal, and then closing with this quote from Margie Jean Phelps, a Westboro attorney and daughter of founder Fred Phelps:

“The amount was set with a goal, and the goal was to silence us,” said Margie Jean Phelps. “In this country, you don’t get to claim damage over words you don’t agree with. … Because we’ve trained a nation of crybabies doesn’t mean we change the law.”

What I don’t understand from the coverage is why this is an appropriate means of religious communication. The court only ruled that it was legal. But is it expedient?

It seems to me that a disservice is being done when journalists write Westboro off as a bunch of wacky fundamentalists without digging through the noise of their offensiveness to identify the elements of their basic approach that also bear scrutiny. So Westboroites believe God is sending home dead soldiers to punish Americans for accepting homosexuality (and Jews) — how in the world do they get from this belief to religious obligation that they share it at funerals?

To me, the issue doesn’t seem to be so much religious as it is free speech shrouded in the double protection of speech and religion. If both are essential, OK. But how about asking why.

The above clip from “Hannity & Colmes” is painful, and the Westboro Baptist comments thanking God for 9/11 and dead soldiers only make it more so.

In an era in which the definition of journalism itself seems to be up for grabs, it’s a pleasure to praise Godbeat journalists recognized for superior writing by their own colleagues in the Religion Newswriters Association. Troll the list of the 2009 RNA awards, and you will see a few names you may know, either because they comment on the blog, or we often praise them for being examples of accurate reporting — Julia Duin (who won in multiple categories!), and Bob Smietana. Another award recipient was Sarah Pulliam, the younger sister of our own Daniel Pulliam.

Here are a few highlights:

Selected as Religion Reporter of the Year, Moni Basu, now with CNN, wrote an ambitious, multi-faceted series about Fort Stewart Chaplain Darren Turner and his work here and in Iraq. Read “Chaplain Turner’s War” for yourself. Basu also won the Suplee Religion Writer of the Year Award.

Jeff Brumley of the Florida Times Union won first place among reporters for mid-sized papers for stories on how faith meets modern life. Melanie Smith of the Decatur Daily was elected Reporter of the Year from publications with workday circulations of 50,000 or below.

The Salt-Lake Tribune ,edited by Lisa Carricaburu, won an award for its religion pages, which we here at GetReligion have often found a good source for reporting on the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly Special Correspondent Kim Lawton won Television Religion Reporter of the Year for a piece she did on the continuing legacy of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And the radio religion Reporter of the Year award went to Stephanie Martin of KQED in Northern California.

I have to admit that I wasn’t familiar with all of these names. Were you? All over the nation, reporters in media both large market and small continue to work to bring us religion news. That gives me hope for the profession! Please let us know what you think of the stories (some of the content is subscription only, however) and which others ones you might have nominated.