I’m a big fan of brinner: breakfast for dinner. When I found out about this addictive website called Jim’s panckes, I lost a good 15 minutes of productivity. Let’s just say pancakes could be categorized under “a few of my favorite things.”

So I was excited to read more about Dan Lacey, “The Painter of Pancakes,” even though I might not display his art in our family room. Lacey is well-known for creating portraits politicians with pancakes, including ones of the Obama naked on a unicorn.

Jon Tevlin of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune profiled Lacey in one of his recent columns, focusing on Lacey’s battle with Orly Taitz, a woman who is attempting to prove that President Obama was not born in the United States.

There’s one section, though, that made me pause because of its lack of clarity.

Before his pancake paintings gave him notoriety, Lacey was a conservative evangelical Christian who drew an online cartoon called “Faithmouse,” which promoted conservative ideas that often angered liberals.

Not anymore. “I quit,” said Lacey of his political leanings. “I sent in my notice and no longer belong to the Christian right.”

I have all sorts of questions about this. Did Lacey leave his faith, and/or did he stop being a conservative? Did his “Faithmouse” cartoon have anything to do with faith?

I looked around Lacey’s website a little bit and found some more details.

Faithmouse is the name of a Christian cartoon I began drawing about a decade ago. A few years ago I had something of a mental and spiritual breakdown, decided to make the cartoon Catholic, and then I decided to paint instead. I still draw the cartoon a little. My paintings sometimes horrify my family.

So is Lacey Catholic now? He links to a quote in about some of his old cartoons.

I like his Faithmouse comics a lot, especially after Dan started to expand beyond his original conservative mission and explored themes like the sexual fantasies of gay Catholic clergy, Faithmouse’s naughty sister, etc. Dan doesn’t do much Faithmouse now; his pop culture paintings (pancakes, naked Obama, etc.) are so popular, I guess he doesn’t have much time for the comic.

So what contributed to his mental and spiritual breakdown; is he religious now? What’s with the (seemingly respectful) portraits of Billy Graham and Mother Theresa? Does his religious affiliations still motivate him at all, even if he’s left the “religious right”? I know this is a column, but I would expect something reported to give a little bit more explanation if Tevlin feels its relevant to the story. Otherwise, it’s more confusing than revealing.

When it comes to issues of sports and faith, your GetReligionistas have one basic rule and here it is. If journalists are going to let a sports figure play the “God card” — especially if this person is in any way controversial (think Michael Vick) — then the publication owes the reader at least one paragraph of information that actually attempts to report some basic facts about this alleged religious influence in his or her life.

I know, I know, that’s very idealistic.

But, you see, we’re sort of crazy around here. We think it is possible to do actual reporting about religion, even in its most rare and intimate forms — like people going to church. So sue us.

Take, for example, that USA Today news feature the other day about a coach who was at the heart of one of the worst, if not THE worst, scandal in the history of college athletics, one involving dirty money, NCAA violations (a ton of them), drugs and, finally, murder. Oh, and all of this took place at Baylor University, in what Baptists often call “Jerusalem on the Brazos” during a hot national debate about the nature of “Christian” higher education.

Anyway, here is the lede:

BRYAN, Texas — Dave Bliss could have chosen to live outside the public eye in the state where he was the public face in one of college athletics’ darkest episodes seven years ago. Instead, the man who resigned in disgrace as men’s basketball coach at Baylor is back in the public spotlight again as he starts his first high school coaching job.

“I love Baylor University, so I didn’t come here to dredge that up,” Bliss, 66, said recently at Allen Academy. He was hired in early May on a one-year contract at the pre-kindergarten-through-12 private school about 100 miles southeast of Baylor’s campus in Waco. He was hired as dean of students, athletics director and boys varsity basketball coach. The school declined to reveal salary details.

“Everybody deserves a second chance; it’s just part of life,” he said. “But the second chance is to do what God plans for your life, to get back to doing what you were created to do. This is what I do.”

When believers read that “second chance” reference, their minds leap to words such as “sin,” “repentance,” “grace” and “forgiveness.” However, this is a sports story, so it would be asking a bit too much to expect a trip into theological territory (although readers do find out that Bliss “confessed” his role in the scandal when investigators, who had evidence on audiotape, confronted him).

But Bliss has clearly played the “God card,” right? It’s controversial that he’s back working with young people in a setting that involves sports and academics. Parents were sure to ask questions and, sure enough, they did.

First, we need to know what Bliss did when his house of cards at Baylor collapsed.

Bliss’ career path has had its stops and starts since his resignation at Baylor.

The father of three, Bliss, wife Claudia and youngest son Jeff moved near in-laws in a Denver suburb in late summer 2003. Bliss coached the then-Continental Basketball Association’s Dakota Wizards for the 2005-06 season before resigning.

Bliss and Claudia returned to Texas in 2008 to be near their middle child — daughter Berkeley Bohner — who had just started a family. About that time, Bliss began a support group for coaches called Game Plan Ministries.

Note the word “ministries.”

That’s an important word, in this kind of story. So, who is on the board of this ministry? Is it linked to any particular church or denomination? As it turns out, the website for Game Plan Ministries offers next to no information either, although the “testimonies” page has a strong Baptist flavor.

I would think that, if a man this controversial played the “God card” and started his comeback by starting a religious ministry, you might want to collect a few facts — maybe a paragraph — on that.

Now, what about his new job?

Allen Academy is the state’s oldest private school, with roots to 1886 and an annual tuition for high school students of nearly $10,000. Its enrollment is about 330. The Rams compete in the second-smallest classification of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools.

As it turns out, Allen Academy is a secular, college-prep school with a military heritage. So, no religious content there — which is interesting. The leaders use some vaguely religious language linked to hiring Bliss (more forgiveness and “second chance” references), but that’s about it.

In the end, the reader knows almost nothing about the role that faith plays or has played in the life of this coach, even though he has held himself out as a minister to other coaches. We do not hear from his pastor. We do not hear from another coach touched by Bliss and his counseling work with other troubled coaches.

Come to think of it, we don’t even know where he goes to church (if he goes to church). Is he walking his talk? Does he give 10 percent of his income to a congregation and other religious causes? Who is in his entourage, so to speak?

What we need is some information. To tweak some questions I used to use when working on this kind of story, it might be good to ask: How does Bliss spend his time? How does he spend his money? How does he make his decisions?

Questions are good. Facts are good. It is possible, I think, to ask questions and gather facts, even when covering a famous (or infamous) person who has played the “God card.”

Just do it.

IMAGES: Photo from the homepage of Game Plan Ministries. Pat Neff Hall at Baylor University.

The Supreme Court handed down a decision on Monday that dealt with the gay rights and religious freedom by looking at how non-discrimination clauses can come into conflict with the freedom of association. We’ve looked at Christian Legal Society v. Martinez before here, here, here and here.

Hastings College of Law in California recognizes a wide variety of student groups — things like La Raza and College Republicans and the like. But there’s one group that they won’t recognize. They refused to sanction a chapter of the Christian Legal Society because it requires its members to uphold traditional Christian doctrine about sex (i.e. only in marriage, no homosexuality, etc.). At the time they denied the group registration, the school said it was because the chapter discriminated against people on the basis of religion and sexual orientation, both mentioned in the non-discrimination policy.

CLS said that this violated their freedom of religion — while the school said that they couldn’t select officers who were dedicated to a particular set of religious beliefs, the policy allowed other groups to select based on political, social or cultural beliefs. (The court proceedings show numerous examples of student groups being registered even though they required support of particular beliefs.) Indeed, back when the case began, Hastings admitted that its nondiscrimination policy “permits political, social, and cultural student organizations to select officers and members who are dedicated to a particular set of ideals or beliefs.”

But at some point after that admission, administrators put a new spin on it. They said that their anti-discrimination policy means that groups must accept everyone who wants to join. They called this their “all comers” policy. When they announced this interpretation in 2005 or so, they asked student groups who had already been cleared but were in violation of this policy to revise their policies to come in line with the requirement. The revision in how they enforced the policy is also worth mentioning because of another reason. While the non-discrimination policy’s wording says that it applies to everything at the school, the “all comers” interpretation is used only for student groups. The school doesn’t discriminate in its hiring but neither does it hire everyone who applies. The school doesn’t accept all students who apply, etc., etc.

All that to say that the decision deals with the “all comers” interpretation rather than the anti-discrimination policy in general. Whether such anti-discrimination policies violate religious freedom wasn’t really discussed.

And yet many media reports obscured this important — if difficult to convey — distinction. Here’s how Southern California Public Radio put it:

The court also was split between liberals and conservatives in its 5-4 ruling against a Christian student group that sought official recognition from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law.

The Christian Legal Society requires that voting members sign a statement of faith and regards “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle” as being inconsistent with that faith.

But Hastings said no recognized campus groups may exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation.

Again, that was what Hastings said back when this case started but their argument changed over time. And regardless, the court didn’t rule on the constitutionality of anti-discrimination policies based on specified grounds, such as race, religion, gender and sexual orientation.

In his dissent, Justice Alito explains it this way:

Only religious groups were required to admit students who did not share their views. An environmentalist group was not required to admit students who rejected global warming. An animal rights group was not obligated to accept students who supported the use of animals to test cosmetics. But CLS was required to admit avowed atheists. This was patent viewpoint discrimination. … It is no wonder that the Court makes no attempt to defend the constitutionality of the Nondiscrimination Policy.

I know it’s a tricky distinction, but it’s an important one. A quick hat tip to Washington Post staff writer Robert Barnes for getting this crucial distinction right in his lede.

Most media coverage was totally fine, actually. Reporters had to respond to a huge number of cases, some of them involving Or what about this tidbit from the San Francisco Chronicle:

The school was backed by educational and civil rights groups, while religious and conservative organizations filed arguments in support of the Christian Legal Society.

Except that this isn’t how the groups broke down. It is true that conservative organizations generally sided with the Christian Legal Society. But there were religious groups who sided with the school and civil rights groups that sided with the organization. It would be better to use modifiers to describe what type of educational, religious and civil rights groups were on one side or the other. The American Jewish Committee sided with the school, while a coalition of Muslim, Jewish, and Sikh groups sided with the law group.

And civil libertarians were not all on one side either. In fact, most of what I read today came from civil libertarians who were worried about the decision. Even groups that generally don’t support public funding of groups said that if it exists, the government shouldn’t be in the business of decided which groups have appropriate speech and which groups don’t. Richard Epstein summarizes some of the main civil libertarian concerns in his Forbes essay “So Much For Religious Liberty.”

Here’s how prominent civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer at The Atlantic begins her essay against the ruling:

“The era of loyalty oaths is behind us,” Justice Kennedy perversely declares, concurring in a 5 - 4 decision allowing a public university to deny official recognition to a religious group that excludes from membership students who will not disavow homosexuality or pre-marital sex. What’s perverse about Kennedy’s statement? The Court’s ruling in Christian Legal Society v Hastings is more like an endorsement than a rejection of official loyalty oaths. It upholds state power to condition the benefits extended to private associations on their willingness to conform to an official ideology - in this case a particular view of sexual morality.

Via the award-winning Godblog, I found this link to a Huffington Post piece by Student Press Law Center attorney Adam Goldstein. While he said the case was a difficult one to decide, the rationale the majority found for the school “could end up doing more violence to student expression rights than any decision in the last 22 years.”

There are so many interesting media angles that I hope we’ll see explored. Since the “all comers” interpretation found favor with the court, will we see a rush of policy changes to ensure that traditional Christian groups will be shunned?

There was also a lot of discussion about how this ruling could lead to chaos. For instance, will you see a bunch of traditional Christians join the campus gay rights groups, take it over and wreak havoc? It could, but in all likelihood a group under siege would be able to reach out to the larger campus community. Unless, that is, they are a disenfranchised minority with unpopular or politically incorrect views.

The smartest piece I’ve read so far about the Twilight phenomenon, was Caitlin Flanagan’s essay for The Atlantic. To date, I haven’t read the books or seen the movies, but my Mormon upbringing has made me somewhat attuned to a subject that otherwise is primarily of interest to adolescent females. Anyway, here’s Flanagan’s take on the books’ religion and morals:

That the author is a practicing Mormon is a fact every reviewer has mentioned, although none knows what to do with it, and certainly none can relate it to the novel; even the supercreepy “compound” where the boring half of Big Love takes place doesn’t have any vampires. But the attitude toward female sexuality — and toward the role of marriage and childbearing — expressed in these novels is entirely consistent with the teachings of that church. In the course of the four books, Bella will be repeatedly tempted — to have sex outside of marriage, to have an abortion as a young married woman, to abandon the responsibilities of a good and faithful mother — and each time, she makes the “right” decision. The series does not deploy these themes didactically or even moralistically.

I think the reason why most reviewers don’t know what to do with the books and films’ supposed Mormonism is because the moral examples put forth, while certainly more conservative than much of what we see in secular culture, are broad and shared by a good many other religions. Mormons aren’t exactly alone in their desire to see young women value marriage and children, abstain from premarital sex, and to see abortion as immoral.

In that context, this Religion News Service piece “Mormon imagery runs deep in ‘Twilight’” had me scratching my head a lot. The set-up of the piece is basically a strawman:

“People make up all these Mormon references just so they can publish ‘Twilight’ articles in respectable publications like The New York Times,” actor Robert Pattinson (Edward, the film’s central vampire character), told Entertainment Weekly. “Even Stephenie said it doesn’t mean any of that.”

It’s possible that Meyer never set out to weave LDS imagery into the ‘Twilight’ background. Yet intentional or otherwise, it’s hard to ignore:

What follows are six bullet points discussing the alleged religious themes in Twilight. Some of the things do sound like they might in fact reflect a Mormon worldview:

—The story’s teenage heroine, Bella, avoids coffee, tea, alcohol and tobacco — not unlike the Mormons’ “Word of Wisdom” health code. Bella also advises her father to “cut back on steak, much like the LDS teaching to eat meat and poultry “sparingly.”

Again, I haven’t read the books — but if that’s the case it could well be the author’s Mormonism that influenced the characterization. However, many of the things highlighted are mighty thin gruel:

—Mormons believe angels are resurrected beings of flesh and bone. The most familiar is Moroni, who stands high atop LDS temples, trumpet in hand. The Book of Mormon, the faith’s trademark Scripture, says Moroni was a fifth-century prophet who visited church founder Joseph Smith. Smith described Moroni as radiating light and “glorious beyond description.”

Bella describes her vampire boyfriend, Edward, as an angel whom she cannot imagine “any more glorious.” Edward’s skin sparkles in the sunlight, and he visits Bella’s bedroom at night. But Mormon angels don’t have wings; in the “Twilight”  film, Edward sits in the science lab, the outstretched wings of a stuffed white owl just over his shoulders.

Huh? That’s an awful lot of import to project on use of the word “glorious.” And there’s this:

—A unique LDS teaching is that marriages are “sealed” for eternity; spouses are referred to as eternal companions. Bella describes her relationship with Edward as “forever.”

If proclaiming that love is “forever” is somehow indicative of LDS teaching, then every song lyricist and hack poet alive must be Mormon.

There was one thing in the piece I did find kind of fascinating, and contra some of the previous points, evinces a sophisticated understanding of Mormon theology:

—Bella and Edward’s marriage, and her quick pregnancy, underscore the Mormon emphasis on the family. But Bella’s half human/vampire fetus nearly destroys her, so her distraught husband suggests an abortion and artificial insemination. Mormons permit abortions if the mother’s life is in danger, and artificial insemination is an option for married couples.

Whoa. I feel like the author has stumbled on to something, with her discussion of the Mormon doctrine of “free agency.” (For more on this doctrine, see this article from a former member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the archives of the church’s Ensign magazine here.) And interestingly enough, the Mormon take on sin and the exercise of free will is anchored in the church’s belief in the “premortal existence,” i.e. the church’s belief we all inhabit the same spirit world before we are born, and this belief in turn profoundly shapes the church’s position on abortion. But that’s a lot to unpack, and it gets such short shrift and it is ultimately so vague I’m not sure what to even say about it.

In any event, while I applaud the author of the piece for trying to cover a lot of ground, she teaches film at UCLA and religion is not necessarily her bailiwick. This is really more of a religion story than a film piece. There’s not a single quote from anyone in the piece who is an expert in Mormon doctrine. Three phone calls to the right people could have resulted in a more interesting piece. Finally, here’s how the piece ends:

Bram Stoker probably never imagined that vampires would represent a religious doctrine. But more than a century later, Twilight shows that these nocturnal creatures can accommodate just about anything.

Are you kidding me? There’s no creature in popular culture more freighted with religion than the vampire — they drink blood, recoil from crucifixes, and are a walking commentary on resurrection and redemption. If you went back and time asked Bram Stoker about Vampires representing religious doctrine, I’m pretty confident he would have seen this one coming.

My views are simple. Political: Sober. Religious: Well … actually that’s not so simple. My Facebook profile suggests as much. There I say that I’m a “God-fearing Christian with devilishly good Jewish looks.”

Unique as that exact wording may seem, use of such an unorthodox description to categorize religious beliefs is really not that uncommon on Facebook.

That isn’t really news.

Two years ago, The Jewish Journal’s summer intern wrote about a gal who defined herself as an “impassioned Jew” and the paper itself listed it’s views as “pretty Jewish.” (That’s pictured, and if you don’t know why iti s funny, click here.) GetReligion’s very own Sarah Pulliam Bailey gave this “religious self-profiling” some more depth during her day job at Christianity Today.

Now I guess it was The New York Times’ turn with “Facebook Bios: Truth or Fiction?”

Arguably the most tantalizing bits of self-description are the spaces provided for political and religious views. Plain vanilla Democrats and Republicans defer to the irreverent (pinko liberal commie bastard) or proselytizing (environmental jingoist) or in-your-face (left of you). …

Religion is widely interpreted as a blank canvas of self-expression: Some are poetic (yoga, oceans, cathedrals), some cryptic (overhead, wide), some creative (Nikki’s yoga class is a religious experience), some guilty (have turned into a C & E Catholic; shame on me), some prosaic (private), some sweet (atheist except for kittens), some trying hard to delineate or differentiate themselves (atheist but O.K. with religious holidays).

Every mainstream religion seems to have offshoots and subsidiaries unrecognized by any priest, pastor, rabbi or imam: Judaism is represented by Amish Jew, Jewish pagan, pantheistic with a Jewish twist on the rocks, and Jew-ish (which must be different from Jewish, perhaps more along the lines of Jew-esque).

I not only know “Jew-ish” — I thought I had coined the term. Oh well.

The stories here are spot on. I have Jewish friends who list their views as Conservadox — that’s a blending of Orthodox and Conservative Judaism. Other friends “heart jesus!” or feel that “it’s all good.” Then there are the traditionalists: “Christian — Protestant,” “Muslim,” “agnostic.” And few who decline to state anything.

The NYT story quickly moves on to what motivates this culture of self-description, as well it should. But a subject I’d like to see explored is whether such introspective profiling is giving rise or merely reflecting a changing panoply of religious beliefs.

On Facebook, most everyone seems to be a pick-your-preference religious person. But I wonder if such unique characterizations really represent any sort of a change in religious beliefs or social circles, or whether outfits like Facebook have really just provided folks with a much-needed outlet to demonstrate what makes them a different, even if in name only, than their co-religionists.

Obviously, if this post is a shameless plug for The God Blog, that means that it is a shameless plug for young master Brad A. Greenberg.

You may recall that Brad vanished from GetReligion for quite some time at the end of the spring academic semester as he was crushed under an avalanche of law text books (again), during that whole dreaded First Year of Law School thing. However, while he was missing from this blog, he kept up his work with the award-winning weblog that he founded over at The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles — that would be The God Blog.

Well, Greenberg went and did it again — with The God Blog once again winning the best weblog by an individual writer award from the Los Angeles Press Club. Saith the judges comments blurb:

Calling The God Blog a “thoughtful look at religion and its pervasiveness …” is only part of the story. Words like funny, insightful and unafraid should also be used to describe this effort that, through its humor, allows us to appreciate our differences while getting a good chuckle. Well done.

Greenberg (who was too shy to write this shameless plug, but contributed background info) was recognized for two days of blogging — click here for that span — that focused on some of his usual subjects, as in evangelical atheists, anti-Shylock laws, Carrie Prejean, academic comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and, of course, Jews in professional basketball.

Concerning that last item, click herefor a quick sample:

Every time I come home from playing basketball, I lament my physical stature. Short, skinny shooters — that’s what we consider ourselves: shooters — can only get so far; even J.J. Redick is 6’4.”

“This is ridiculous. Jews can’t play basketball.” Oh, the wisdom of Eric Cartman. And that look on Kyle’s face? I know it. But what if there was an era when Jews dominated basketball, when the chosen game strategy was known as Jewball, when a guy who was only 5’4,” barely taller than Mugsy Bogues … and half a foot shorter than me, could be such an overwhelming force that he would be considered one of the greatest players in the game?

The key is that, when he is out on his own, young master Brad gets to just fire at will — which is lots of fun. Meanwhile, it is great that he can also screw his thinking cap down tight and focus on the mechanics of journalism and the Godbeat, which is what we do here at GetReligion. I, for one, am glad that he gets to do both, in large part because he gets to keep both sides of his journalism brain going at the same time. Let’s hope there continues to be enough room in that skull for all of that digital ink as well as (yawn) the fine details of law school.

After all, as actress Wendie Malick said when presenting the award (Brad says this quote is close to accurate):

Nothing has a bigger impact on our lives, but covering religion often doesn’t get a lot of respect. Well, tonight it is getting some much-deserved respect.

Amen. Carry on.

At first glance, it sure seems like The New York Times’ make-fun-of-prayer squad is at it again.

Earlier this month, GetReligion went behind the scenes of a Times story on unidentified faith groups seeking “divine wisdom” (scare quotes courtesy of the “Old Gray Lady”) to close a California state budget gap of biblical proportions.

Now comes a Times story from the Gulf Coast that opens like this:

BON SECOUR, Ala. — In a small white building along the baptizing Bon Secour River, a building that once housed a shrimp-net business, the congregation of the Fishermen Baptist Church gathered for another Sunday service, with the preacher presiding from a pulpit designed to look like a ship captain’s wheel.

After the singing of the opening hymn, “Ring the Bells of Heaven,” and the announcement that an engaged couple was now registered at Wal-Mart, the preacher read aloud a proclamation from Gov. Bob Riley that declared this to be a “day of prayer” — a day of entreaties to address the ominous threat to the way of life just outside the church’s white doors.

Whereas, and whereas, and whereas, the proclamation read. People of Alabama, please pray for your fellow citizens, for other states hurt by this disaster, for all those who are responding. And pray “that a solution that stops the oil leak is completed soon.”

In other words, dear God, thank you for your blessings and guidance. And one other thing, dear God:

Help.

That snarky enough for you?

You’ve got the baptizing river (seriously, what does that mean?). You’ve got the obligatory Wal-Mart reference (I’m guessing there’s not a Macy’s or even a Target in that small town). You’ve got the scare quotes around the “day of prayer.” The only thing missing is Forrest Gump’s mama saying, “You have to do the best with what God gave you.”

Get past the condescending approach, though, and this story actually is a hundred times better than the California piece.

Yes, it manages to include the word “mortals,” just like the story from the West Coast. Yawn. But this time, when the Times refers to divine intervention, there are no scare quotes. Let’s chalk that up as progress.

Even better, there’s some actual religion meat in here — specific details on the wording used by each of five states’ governors who declared days of prayer Sunday:

In the two months since the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion began a ceaseless leak of oil into the gulf, damaging the ecosystem and disrupting the economy, the efforts by mortals to stem the flow have failed. Robots and golf balls and even the massive capping dome all seem small in retrospect.

So, then, a supplementary method was attempted: coordinated prayer.

In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry encouraged Texans to ask God “for his merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis.” In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour declared that prayer “allows us an opportunity to reflect and to seek guidance, strength, comfort and inspiration from Almighty God.” In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal invoked the word “whereas” a dozen times — as well as the state bird, the brown pelican — but made no direct mention of God. In Florida, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp asked people to pray that God “would guide and direct our civil leaders and provide them with wisdom and divinely inspired solutions.”

I could get all nitpicky and complain that the story never tells me whether the Fishermen Baptist Church has any ties to the Southern Baptist Convention or another denomination. I could complain that the piece uses the term “Bible Baptist” and doesn’t explain what that means. But I won’t. Unless, of course, I just did.

The story ends this way:

A missionary about to leave for Brazil was waiting to make a multimedia presentation, but first these kneeling men, led by Brother Harry — Harry Mund, a relative of the pastor’s — needed to finish their prayer.

Please God, help us with “this awful oil spill,” he said. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The men rose from their knees and returned to their pews, a couple of them rubbing the salty wet from their eyes.

So there you go. A prayer story from the Times that’s not half bad. I think I’ll rub the salty wet from my eyes, too.

There was a fine story in the New York Times the other day about Brooklyn, the Catholic Church and sainthood. Here’s the opening:

Brooklyn, the borough of churches and trees, Walt Whitman and Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand and Mike Tyson, has never lacked for people of distinction — except perhaps in one category.

Nobody from Brooklyn has ever been made a saint.

But at a special church service … Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn opened what is known as a “canonical inquiry” into the cause of sainthood for a Brooklyn priest, Msgr. Bernard J. Quinn.

Monsignor Quinn, who died in 1940 at age 52, championed racial equality at a time when discrimination against blacks was ubiquitous in America, even inside the Catholic Church. In the Depression-era heyday of the anti-Semitic, pro-Fascist radio broadcasts of the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, Monsignor Quinn encountered sharp resistance from some fellow priests when he proposed ministering to Brooklyn’s growing population of blacks, many of them fleeing the Jim Crow South or migrating from the poor Caribbean countries.

It’s quite a story. A few GetReligion readers, including one who said it felt strange to praise the Times, sent me the URL and asked for a positive post about this feature.

Glad to do so. However, I must first mention one very basic problem, one linked to that sentence that states the news hook: “Nobody from Brooklyn has ever been made a saint.”

That sentence should have read: “Nobody from Brooklyn has ever been proclaimed a saint by the Catholic Church.”

You see, because of its sheer size and importance in American and the West, in general, many journalists have a tendency to see religion news through the lens of Rome (and to a lesser extent, Canterbury). When people in newsrooms think about saints, to the degree that they ever do so, they tend to think about Catholic saints.

The problem is that this does not take into account the second-largest body of Christian believers on the global scene — the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy. Thus, the Times team has overlooked the existence of St. Raphael of Brooklyn, who is a very important figure for the Orthodox here in North America, especially for those who are yearn for the creation of one, unified, pan-Orthodox expression of the faith in this land.

Back in 2000, at the time that this missionary bishop was proclaimed a saint, I wrote the following in a column for Scripps Howard:

Raphael Hawaweeny was born in 1840, while Christians were being slaughtered in the streets of Damascus. His family briefly fled to Lebanon after the martyrdom of their parish priest, St. Joseph of Damascus. … The young Raphael became a monk, but had to leave home to receive an education equal to his abilities. First, he studied with the Greeks at the School of Theology in Halki and he later did graduate studies in Kiev, Russia. Raphael spent nearly a decade in Russia, leading the Arab parish in Moscow. But it was his fierce advocacy of the rights of Arab Christians back home in the ancient church of Antioch that led to clashes with some bishops and, at one point, to his suspension from ministry as a priest.

Then he received an 1895 invitation to lead an Arab mission in yet another strange land — Brooklyn. By this point, Raphael knew Latin, classical Greek and Old Church Slavonic, while speaking Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Russian, French and English.

The missionary traveled from Montreal to Mexico City and founded 30 parishes. As his fame grew, Raphael had numerous opportunities to return home. The Antiochian synod offered him positions as a bishop in Beirut, Tripoli, Tyre, Sidon and elsewhere. But he remained with his flock, becoming a bishop in a 1904 rite in Brooklyn that made him the first Orthodox bishop consecrated in North America. He died in 1915.

So, it is simply inaccurate to say that Brooklyn doesn’t have a saint to call its own. It is accurate to say that, in the future, it may have its first saint that has received that honor from the Catholic Church.

This error would be easy to correct. I must also stress that, by raising this point, I honestly don’t want to diminish the importance of this story by the Times or the cause of those seeking canonization for Monsignor Quinn. In particular, the story does a fine job of noting the rich heritage of Catholicism in New York City. Thus, we read:

The process of canonization can take a long time. The inquiry on behalf of another New Yorker, Cardinal Terence J. Cooke, has been going on since 1984. Pierre Toussaint, the 19th-century Haitian abolitionist, former slave and devout Catholic — who, like Cooke, has been championed by the Archdiocese of New York — has been in line since 1943.

The archdiocese, which includes the Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and several upstate counties, can lay claim to a few saints: Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, Elizabeth Ann Seton, the Rev. Isaac Jogues and several of his fellow martyred missionaries. It has taken up the causes of another dozen potential saints, including Dorothy Day and Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

Brooklyn has some connection to at least two other candidates: Bishop Francis X. Ford, a Maryknoll missionary who was born in Brooklyn and died in Chinese custody in 1952; and the Rev. Felix Varela, an early-19th-century human rights advocate born in Cuba who worked in Brooklyn when it was still part of the New York Archdiocese.

But the inquiry on behalf of Monsignor Quinn is the first the Brooklyn diocese, which encompasses that borough and Queens, has started since its creation in 1853, according to the diocese’s spokesman, Msgr. Kieran E. Harrington.

By all means, read it all. This was, indeed, a man whose ministry of justice and equality was — well — quite miraculous.

Still, a small correction would be helpful, as a nod to St. Raphael of, yes, Brooklyn.

On Friday, Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel — who covered conservative groups — resigned his position after incendiary partisan emails he had sent were published by the Daily Caller. The day before, some of his intemperate emails were published by Fishbowl DC. He had apologized already for those and chalked them up to a bad day.

All of the emails were sent to a closed professional list-serv that required privacy as a condition of membership. So all hell broke loose when these emails were published and there is a lot of commentary you can read about the situation. Almost all of the inside-the-beltway folks rushed to his defense. Media critics did likewise. Ross Douthat of the New York Times says the shame is that the list had a rat and that someone published the leaked material. Beliefnet’s Rod Dreher also laments the violation of privacy. At the end of Dreher’s post on the matter, he brings the discussion around to religion coverage. And I think he draws some interesting comparisons.

Weigel’s emails were sent to a list-serv for liberal journalists. It was called JournoList and was started by his friend Ezra Klein. (You may be interested in TMatt’s prescient take last year on potential problems with the list-serv, as well as some reader comments at the time.) Their publication made his continued reporting about conservatives difficult because on the list he’d strategized about how to help the Democratic Party. He’d also called a Democrat with pro-life concerns about health care reform a “monster” and generally mocked those he covered as racist and stupid.

Those emails were sent before he became a Washington Post reporter but just a few weeks ago he publicly tweeted:

I can empathize with everyone I cover except for the anti-gay marriage bigots. In 20 years no one will admit they were part of that.

He apologized for that, too. But Time religion editor Amy Sullivan says she thinks that his clarification of those remarks showed the problem with his reporting:

Weigel’s departure is a good thing for journalism. Not because he was biased against the subjects of his beat but because for someone who often seemed obsessed with conservatives, Weigel was surprisingly incurious about them. To my mind, Weigel’s most damning comment in the past few months was not calling gay marriage opponents “bigots” or suggesting that Matt Drudge set himself on fire, but this response to a Politics Daily reporter as he tried to clarify the “bigots” remark: “I do not understand or respect the motivation of anti-gay marriage campaigners.”

Now, you can’t fault a journalist for not respecting those with whom he personally disagrees (although it’s hard to see how someone can decide to respect or disrespect motivations that he doesn’t understand.) But you could argue that an essential part of Weigel’s job was trying to understand the motivations of conservative activists, including anti-gay marriage campaigners. What good is it to have a reporter on the conservative beat if he’s not digging into what animates different conservative factions and then trying to explain those motivations to readers?

I had some inaccurate assumptions about those who oppose same-sex marriage that were quickly dispelled by interviewing them and reading their arguments. It’s quite easy to understand their arguments and should be a basic requirement for a reporter covering the issue. And I wish reporters would care more about the arguments in favor of same-sex marriage rather than relying solely on emotion to advocate report on that side, too.

When he took the Post position, Weigel tried to present himself as someone who took the right “seriously.” His activism on JournoList has harmed his credibility on that front. However, he has more than enough defenders of his work. They sit all across the political spectrum, too, although it’s worth noting that the left is much more upset about his departure from the Post than the right is. Still, Weigel will be fine, as you will see if you read his explanation of his behavior over at BigGovernment.com. (I should note that the accuracy of part of his account questioned by one of his former editors.)

The Post, however, has some problems on its hands. To start with, the editors there were so clueless that, apparently, they actually believed Weigel was a conservative when they hired him and presented him as such. Even if he downplayed his liberalism, there is just no excuse for believing that. As the Weekly Standard wrote:

Unfortunately for Weigel, the Post believed he was a diversity hire, someone they could point to whenever conservatives complained about ideological imbalance at the paper. His emails undermined their talking-point. They wanted a reporter who would allow them to maintain the fiction that they run a balanced newsroom. He embarrassed them by holding opinions indistinguishable from their own.

The Washington Post ombudsman addressed the situation in a related fashion:

Weigel’s exit, and the events that prompted it, have further damaged The Post among conservatives who believe it is not properly attuned to their ideology or activities. Ironically, Weigel was hired to address precisely those concerns.

The article also quotes an editor saying “I don’t think you need to be a conservative to cover the conservative movement. But you do need to be impartial … in your views.”

Okay, that’s ridiculous. You do not need to be impartial in your views to cover anything well. I have a friend who is one of the best reporters I know. He’s gay and — in his private life — is an activist for gay causes. I would still trust him to write fairly about people who oppose same-sex marriage or other causes he endorses. That’s because he believes his job as a reporter is to … report, not be an activist. I’ve seen him write fairly on issues about which he passionately cares. I think what helps is that he’s very up front about his biases and is curious about the views of those he disagrees with.

To look at the religion beat, what in the heck would “impartiality” mean on that beat? There’s no such thing! No matter what you believe or don’t believe, there’s no escaping partiality. I know next to nothing about the personal religious ties (or lack thereof) of the Godbeat specialists we criticize here. Part of the reason is because it doesn’t matter — we’re just concerned that the topic gets covered fairly and accurately. As far as I know, there’s no creed with that specialty!

Now having said all that, it’s also true that the Post is in desperate need of some different viewpoints in its newsroom. The paper has acknowledged as much previously. That they thought they were getting a diversity hire in Weigel is proof of how dire the situation is.

And Byron York at the Washington Examiner, where my husband works, asks why newspapers are hiring reporters to look at conservatives without also hiring reporters to provide in-depth coverage of liberals. Reflecting on New York Times editor Bill Keller’s explanation, York notes that “just because you’re a liberal, and your fellow reporters and editors are liberals, doesn’t mean you fully understand the liberal world. There might be other ways of seeing it.” Or, as he concludes:

But even if the Post really believed Weigel was a conservative, there is still the question of why they hired a (presumed) conservative to cover the conservative movement. Why not have some of the many liberals already on staff cover that and hire a conservative to cover liberals? Or maybe — gasp — hire two conservatives to cover liberals. After all, there are a lot of liberals in powerful positions these days. If the Post is going to practice opinion journalism, having the perspective of a couple of conservative journalists couldn’t hurt, could it?

That’s certainly a good idea for the opinion journalism emphasis that the Post is trying out. And on that note, the blogging world is making fun of the ideal of journalistic neutrality (which should not be confused with having reporters with no viewpoint), but as much as I like the viewpoint-heavy blogs, I think something is lost when journalists just resort to, for instance, calling opponents bigots instead of trying to report on an issue fairly. It may be less exciting but it certainly seems more civilized.

Up in Wyoming, Casper Star-Tribune subscribers got their money’s worth — and more — Sunday. Kristy Gray’s remarkable story on a priest’s journey from rock bottom to redemption dominated Page 1. The banner-size headline: “RECONCILED.”

I drank in every word of the piece — all 4,400 of them.

To be sure, Gray’s story is not perfect, and I’ll raise a few concerns. But overall, this is the kind of story — the kind of journalism — that struggling newspapers could use a whole lot more of. Even better, from a GetReligion perspective, this story “gets religion” — specifically the doctrine of forgiveness — in a big way.

The best narrative stories hook the reader up high and give them reasons to stick around until the end. It’s the journalistic equivalent of a soap opera, where each chapter solves one mystery but leads to another. The Casper Star-Tribune does just that, beginning with the scene around which the rest of the story revolves — then going back and forward to fill in the blanks:

No street lights illuminate this winding, narrow road, but Rob Spaulding can see enough.

The car is facing the wrong direction, folded and bent at ugly angles where it hit the trees. Matty is lying on the side of the road.

Rob can’t see what Mark is doing, but he’s outside of the car, walking around.

Rob doesn’t remember how he got out.

We need an ambulance, Rob says into his cell phone.

One needs life support now.

Jared is still inside, slumped over the back of the driver’s seat. Rob reaches out to him and finds a pulse. He’s breathing, alive.

He kneels beside Matty and begins CPR.

Minutes earlier, Rob had been driving his friends around the lake, windows down, enjoying the midnight air. They had been promising young men, studying to become priests, passionate about their faith and the people they felt called to serve.

One reckless mistake destroyed nearly all of it.

The basic storyline is this: Aspiring priest Rob Spaulding has a bright future ahead of him until he goes out drinking with three seminary friends, gets behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated and has a wreck that kills two of the students. Spaulding pleads guilty to three felonies and faces prison time until the mothers of the victims intervene, offering forgiveness to Spaulding and giving him a chance to rebuild his life — and enter the priesthood after all.

In the background leading up to the crash, we find out about the path that led Spaulding to the seminary:

People expected him to go into business, marry his longtime girlfriend and spend summers camping and fishing with his children in Wyoming’s mountains.

But in Laramie, Rob saw the full power of a faithful community. In 1998, UW student Matthew Shepard was pistol whipped, tied to a fence and left to bleed on the prairie. As a member of the Newman Center’s pastoral staff, Rob felt the church reach out and pull students together, to heal through one another.

In 2002, he enrolled in seminary at St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Ill., near Chicago — 1,000 miles from Wyoming. Instead of cowboy bars, Mundelein has neo-Georgian architecture. Instead of dusty pastures and huge skies, it has lakes and canopies of trees.

Rob decided to try it for one year.

He wasn’t sure if he could commit his life to the priesthood after his first year — or after his second. During his third, in the spring of 2005, he completed a pastoral internship at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Cheyenne, a chance to minister directly to people. In August, he chaperoned 180 Wyoming kids at World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany. The faith, fellowship and community Rob experienced there convinced him.

Later, the reporter provides a firsthand view of the forgiveness that victims’ families bestowed on Spaulding:

People sometimes tell Rob that God must have had a reason. God must have needed Matty and Jared in heaven.

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Rob said. “God did not cause this to happen. I did.

“But God has been part of rebuilding it since the time of the crash.”

In April 2006, Rob and his parents drove to Kansas. He met with Rick Cheek, Jared’s father, Joan and then Pam. I am so, so sorry, he said to each one. (Note: Joan and Pam are the victims’ mothers.)

He didn’t expect forgiveness then, didn’t ask for it.

But they all gave it.

What they did transcends forgiveness, Rob said. It crosses over into redemption and reconciliation — standing eyelash to eyelash with the man who killed their sons and then inviting him to become part of their lives.

I could copy and paste more passages from the piece that I really liked. This story is filled with delectable nuggets that made reading it a pleasure.

But I do have a few criticisms.

At times, I wish the reporter had allowed herself to include a bit more skepticism.

It’s mentioned twice in the piece that the future priest only had two drinks the night of the crash. Yet he and his friends were at the bar about 3 1/2 hours, and his blood-alcohol level content was 0.135 percent, almost twice the legal level, according to the story. I would have loved some confirmation from police or another expert that two drinks could have caused that blood-alcohol level.

Also, the story is told from the perspectives of the priest and the two victims’ mothers. As best I can tell, the other survivor of the four seminarians who went drinking that night is not interviewed or quoted. I would have loved for that survivor’s voice to be included, for him either to confirm Spaulding’s version of events or raise doubts about it. At the least, it would be nice to know what happened to him. That potential source’s omission from the piece seems like a hole, especially in a 4,400-word story.

Finally, I wonder if it is possible to “get religion” too much (did lightning just strike?). Seriously, at points in the story, I felt like readers needed to be Roman Catholics to truly understand what was happening. For example, consider this scene of one of the mothers by her dying son’s bedside:

The hospital waiting room fills with friends, seminarians and Mundelein staff. Then, they crowd into the intensive care unit, breaking the two-at-a-time rule. No one from the hospital objects.

Joan waits late into the night. Her sister asks her archbishop to lead them in the rosary. Simultaneously, all of the people in the room reach into their pockets and pull out their beads.

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son …”

I love that detail. I love that the story included that scene. I just wish that the writer had used a few words to explain “rosary” and the significance of the beads.

But those are minor quibbles.

Overall, this is a terrific piece of journalism — one for which Gray and the Casper Star-Tribune should be extremely proud. By all means, read the story and let me know if you agree. What did I miss — good or bad?

UPDATED: The writer, Kristy Gray, who is features editor of the Casper Star-Tribune, weighs in on a few questions I had about the story. Please see her responses in the comments section.