It’s the Holy Grail. It’s the holy writ. It’s as if the words “had appeared from somewhere on high.”

“The Book That Started It All” will be released to the public on Friday, and there’s a media storm a-brewin’.

If you’d like a copy, go outside first thing in the morning and wait for the heavens to open up and deliver it to you. Or if you’d prefer, try Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The big deal is the release of the original working manuscript of the Big Book, the Bible of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, this news is probably not quite the level of knowing which commandments were rejected before God settled on The Top 10 Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots, but it’s big nonetheless. And yes, there’s a highly significant religion angle.

The top of the story from ABC News:

For decades, addicts have adhered to Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12 steps and the book that lays them out, informally known as the Big Book, as if the words in it had appeared from somewhere on high.

But it turns out that the original manuscript, written in 1939 by AA co-founder Bill Wilson, was heavily edited to make it less religious and more welcoming to people who did not consider themselves Christians. The original is being published next week as “The Book That Started it All.”

Sid Farrar, the editorial director of Hazelden Publishing, which is publishing the manuscript, called it “one of the more important documents in the movement.”

“This shows the book didn’t come down from heaven,” he said. “It wasn’t written by one person, but it was this remarkable group process.”

After being hidden for 70 years, the edits of the Big Book show there was debate, largely unknown until now, about how overtly to reference God and Christianity in the group’s tenets.

Michelle Boorstein of The Washington Post explains:

The group’s decision to use “higher power” and “God of your understanding” instead of “God” or “Jesus Christ” and to adopt a more inclusive tone was enormously important in making the deeply spiritual text accessible to the non-religious and non-Christian, AA historians and treatment experts say.

The editors softened Step 7 of AA’s renowned 12 Steps for example, by deleting a phrase that evoked church worship. “Humbly, on our knees, asked Him to remove our shortcomings - holding nothing back,” became “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”

In the first chapter, a sentence that read “God has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish,” was edited to replace “God” with “faith,” and a question was added: “Who are we to say what God has to do?”

The Associated Press and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune offer other insightful coverage.

The basic tenor of the coverage: AA made a brilliant decision not to focus its 12-step program on a single faith (Christianity) and Higher Power (Jesus).

From ABC News:

Because it’s not exclusive, the text has since been adopted by many diverse faiths and also by those who struggle with addictions other than alcoholism, from drugs to gambling to sex.

The ABC report does include an alternative voice — from left of center, that is:

An alternative to AA called Smart Recovery, which was founded in 1994 and has about 600 meetings across the country, doesn’t use spirituality or religion in its program. AA is the biggest treatment program by far, with more than 2 million members.

“We have no objection to a higher power, but what we teach is not connected to that,” said Tom Horvath, Smart Recovery’s president. “That would be like if you’re going to medical school to learn how to treat cancer. I don’t care if you pray about it, but that’s not what I’m going to teach. It’s an entirely secular approach.”

ABC’s right-of-center voice? Sorry, but I caught no reference to Celebrate Recovery, which rejects AA’s concept of addicts choosing their own concept of a Higher Power and teaches that Jesus is the only sufficient Higher Power. Celebrate Recovery, associated with Rick Warren and Saddleback Church, has been implemented in more than 3,500 churches, according to a recent news story.

To her credit, Boorstein’s piece notes that AA’s 12-step program “has been retooled by groups ranging from Chabad (for Jews) to Rick Warren’s Celebrate Recovery (for evangelical Christians).”

She tacks on a dissenting voice at the end of her story:

Jack Cowley, a former prison warden who worked with AA for decades and now helps run faith-based prison programs, said the manuscript reflects “a cop-out” on Wilson’s part, to make an inherently religious process “the least confrontational.”

“The power is in the understanding of how Christ can apply these [steps],” Cowley said. “It’s the scripture where the power is, it’s not AA… . This is the same thing we’re doing today. We’re downplaying the faith issue to get more people.”

It’s interesting that much of the coverage focuses on AA’s role as a “spiritual but not religious” organization. AA, of course, is not a church. Then again, maybe it is.

A Time magazine writer explains:

While many AA members sincerely believe that the program is “spiritual, not religious,” and people from many faiths — even atheists — have found it helpful, as I wrote earlier, federal courts have unanimously ruled that coercing people to attend AA violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

By all means, click the links and read the stories. Is the coverage fair and the religion angle handled adequately? Do you see any ghosts?

Everyone claims that they don’t like negative ads but the truth is that they’re an effective way for someone to gain ground against a political opponent. So usually it’s the political challenger who goes negative against the incumbent. But this being the crazy year it is, more incumbents are vulnerable and going negative. One of those is Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla.

You may have already heard of the ad where he claimed that his opponent — Daniel Webster — was a draft dodger who “doesn’t love his country.” In fact, Webster received college deferments but was ROTC during school and reported for his military medical exam promptly after college. People were outraged at that ad so it was perhaps a bit surprising that he came out with an even less truthful one more recently.

Here’s the Christian Science Monitor describing it:

Florida Rep. Alan Grayson (D) - the man who once said the Republicans’ health-care plan was for ill Americans to “die quickly” - calls Republican challenger Daniel Webster “Taliban Dan” and compares him to “religious fanatics” in Afghanistan and Iran.

On Monday, the website factcheck.org, a nonpartisan site sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, took the ad to task for being blatantly misleading.

It repeatedly runs clips of Webster saying wives should submit to their husbands. But the clips, asserts the website, are taken out of context. “In fact,” says the website, “Webster was cautioning husbands to avoid taking that passage as their own. The unedited quote is: ‘Don’t pick the ones [Bible verses] that say, “She should submit to me.”’”

Kudos, first of all, to reporter Amanda Paulson for noting that Grayson has a history of immoderate language. He’s clearly dealing with some major issues and the voters seem prepared to find a new person to represent them. And I think it’s good to appeal to an independent analysis of the ad. But I really have problems with FactCheck.org. The actual story about what Grayson said is more complicated than they let on, even if he did get the Shirley Sherrod treatment. Here’s how they put it:

The full context of the remarks make clear that Webster is not telling wives to submit to their husbands. Just the opposite.

Webster: So, write a journal. Second, find a verse. I have a verse for my wife, I have verses for my wife. Don’t pick the ones that say, ‘She should submit to me.’ That’s in the Bible, but pick the ones that you’re supposed to do. So instead, ‘love your wife, even as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it’ as opposed to ‘wives submit to your own husbands.’ She can pray that, if she wants to, but don’t you pray it.

Grayson campaign spokesman Sam Drzymala told us that the campaign interpreted Webster’s remarks to mean that he believes wives should submit to their husbands. As evidence of this interpretation, Drzymala pointed to Webster’s comment to husbands, “She can pray that, if she wants to.”

The phrase “if she wants to,” though, shows that Webster was not imposing his “radical fundamentalism” even on the people at the religious training conference. Also, the Grayson campaign’s interpretation is aided only by selectively editing the video to concoct a phrase that doesn’t even exist in the video: “She should submit to me. That’s in the Bible.” That’s a mash-up of two sentences that read: “Don’t pick the ones that say, ‘She should submit to me.’ That’s in the Bible, but pick the ones that you’re supposed to do.”

My problem is with the first lines I excerpted here. While it’s true that Webster is not telling wives to submit to their husbands, he’s not saying “the opposite” so much as “something altogether different.”

My husband and I agree with the description of marriage given in Scriptural passages such as Ephesians 5. This means that I am to follow the “submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” part while my husband is to adhere to the “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” part. (Full passage here.) I understand that many people freak out about this passage but the weird thing is that they never freak out about the husband’s requirement, which is much more difficult.

Anyway, what Webster was saying was that if you’re reflecting on a verse about your relationship with your wife, don’t pick a verse about her role. Pick a verse about how you are to treat her. So it’s not that he was telling wives not to submit — but, rather, that he was telling men to love their wives as Christ loved the church. You can imagine, in the same way, Christian women being encouraged to reflect on how they can be more loving, forbearing or respectful of their husbands — rather than meditating on how their husband isn’t living up to the role given to him.

Now, what this understanding of Christian marriage has to do with a Congressional race is beyond me, but it is odd to see FactCheck.org attempt to claim that Webster opposes part of it. The progressive Religion Dispatches also criticizes FactCheck.org for inaccurately describing the Institute in Basic Life Principles (“a non-denominational Christian organization that runs programs and training sessions.”). It was at their training session where Webster gave his speech. I’m not sure they needed to get into that too much but if other reporters are looking into that group, they should know that it’s pretty significant group in evangelical Christianity and not without controversy.

While I will fully admit I’m not well-versed on this group myself, some of its critics argue that there is too much emphasis on the submitting aspect of the marital relationship and too little on the husband’s sacrifice, part of a larger authoritarian streak, they claim. Of course, the particular Webster quote in question would indicate the opposite — and it doesn’t change the fact that Grayson might win an award for most deceitful ad of the year.

What we have here is a highly partisan op-ed page piece — it’s written by Jim Towey, a George W. Bush staffer — on an openly conservative editorial page that bluntly protests a situation in the mainstream press that certainly looks painfully partisan.

Thus, this is precisely the kind of thing that your GetReligionistas try to avoid, because it’s a partisan, partisan, partisan thing. Ick.

But there’s a problem.

At the heart of this partisan op-ed is a valid faith-based news story that isn’t getting any mainstream ink.

Now, sadly, this is one of those Wall Street Journal pieces where you need a digital subscription in order to read the whole thing. However, in this case the first few paragraphs will do just fine:

I was George W. Bush’s director of faith-based initiatives. Imagine what would have happened had I proposed that he use that office to urge thousands of religious leaders to become “validators” of the Iraq War?

I can tell you two things that would have happened immediately. First, President Bush would have fired me — and rightly so — for trying to politicize his faith-based office. Second, the American media would have chased me into the foxhole Saddam Hussein had vacated.

Yet … President Obama and his director of faith-based initiatives convened exactly such a meeting to try to control political damage from the unpopular health-care law. “Get out there and spread the word,” Politico.com reported the president as saying on a conference call with leaders of faith-based and community groups. “I think all of you can be really important validators and trusted resources for friends and neighbors, to help explain what’s now available to them.”

Since then, there’s been nary a peep from the press.

That certainly seems to be true, looking at this Google News search built on a few logical terms.

There was this completely one-sided press release at CNN.com, but I hesitate to point readers toward it because it does not contain a single voice expressing concern about this use of the faith-based project. It’s so PR pitch-perfect that it could be a satire of some kind. Ick.

All of this is rather sad, since it provides more fuel for the people who — with good cause, from time to Time — see the mainstream press as a nakedly partisan force on the side of moral and cultural progressives and in opposition to traditional forms of faith.

Regular GetReligion readers know that I think that complaint is simplistic, most of the time. Unfortunately, it’s easier to make that case on moral and cultural issues than on basic political issues, as candid mainstream journalists have admitted from time (click here) to time (then click here).

Now, I know that some of you are thinking: What does this have to do with the health-care debate? Wasn’t that a high-stakes battle over politics, pure and simple? What’s so controversial about religious leaders getting involved in lobbying for or against health-care reform? I don’t know. Let’s ask Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) about that question.

Anyway, all of this is helping to fuel a high tide of anti-MSM acid out there in Middle America, according to some new data from the folks at Gallup. Here’s the top of the organization’s announcement:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% now saying this is a record high by one percentage point. … The 43% of Americans who, in Gallup’s annual Governance poll, conducted Sept. 13-16, 2010, express a great deal or fair amount of trust ties the record low, and is far worse than three prior Gallup readings on this measure from the 1970s.

Trust in the media is now slightly higher than the record-low trust in the legislative branch but lower than trust in the executive and judicial branches of government, even though trust in all three branches is down sharply this year. These findings also further confirm a separate Gallup poll that found little confidence in newspapers and television specifically.

Nearly half of Americans (48%) say the media are too liberal, tying the high end of the narrow 44% to 48% range recorded over the past decade. One-third say the media are just about right while 15% say they are too conservative. Overall, perceptions of bias have remained quite steady over this tumultuous period of change for the media, marked by the growth of cable and Internet news sources.

So, that 48 percent number is pretty high — but it’s not a majority. Then the people who think the press is doing fine, plus the folks who think that the MSM lean to the right? That adds up to about 48 percent or a tick higher.

Sounds like a pretty divided, partisan situation to me. Sad. Sad. Sad.

What to do? Well, for starters, if anyone sees a fine, balanced mainstream news report focusing on that tax-payer-funded, faith-based campaign to back Obamacare, a news report that takes both sides of the debate seriously, please let me know. I am always looking for solid, non-partisan news reporting on tough issues that are rooted in religion. We need more of that, as I am sure the Gallup pollsters would agree.

Insanity.

That’s all I could think of when I read this line in a Fortune magazine article about why we’ve seen no lawsuits from Facebook or its founder Mark Zuckerberg despite all the likelihood that “The Social Network,” compelling as I expect it to be, is based more on fiction than fact:

An obvious part of the answer lies in the creative license that American law gives to writers. A novelist can pen a roman a clef, journalists can play with quotes, Oliver Stone can do a wicked screed like W. — all are protected under the First Amendment as long as the material isn’t outright libelous. The fact the works play with the truth is legally beside the point unless the fiction is so over the line that it harms somebody and does so recklessly.

I’m not sure about that last line. I’ve yet to take the upper division Law of Based on a True Story. So I’ll leave that one to the media law experts. And, would you believe it, that’s exactly what the author of this Fortune piece is.

David A. Kaplan, a former Wall Street lawyer, is a media law professor at New York University Law School. AKA NYU. AKA the sixth-highest-ranked law school in the nation.

I would imagine Kaplan knows his media law. But he might want to bone up on basic journalism ethics.

Playing with quotes is not — as in NEVER — an acceptable practice. Legally, it might be permissible, but practically and professionally it is not. Not if you want to have a future as a journalist. Call the subject back or settle for a softer quote or just paraphrase. But don’t ever play with their quote.

Sure, its standard for reporters to clean up “ums” and “ya knows” and add identifiers within brackets where it’s unclear whom is being referred to. That’s fine, and that’s basically it.

Quotes are just that: Quotes.

The verbatim recitation of someone’s perspective. They may be condensed, edited or bifurcated, but the exact words that appear on page need to be as true to what the subject said as the integrity of what’s left of it.

It’s a short leap from playing with someone’s words so that they sound the way a reporter wants and just straight making the quotes up. Paging Mr. Glass and Mr. Blair. And what in the world ever happened to Janet Cooke?

I imagine Kaplan feels like I am either being insincerely hyperbolic or that I misunderstood what he meant by “journalists can play with quotes.” I doubt the former and I hope for the latter.

To boot, it’s not as if hard-working reporters need to transform quotes into something they want to use. (Here’s an example of what happens when lazy reporters make up quotes.) Devious as it may seem, a good reporter is always able to find the right voice for a money quote that poignantly conveys the exact message the reporter is trying to get across.

On a different note — and this from someone who likely will see “The Social Network” on opening night — I find equally troubling the whole underlying story for the film. It’s based on a book by Ben Mezrich, whose “Bringing Down the House” I devoured in one sitting. I admired his style, until I learned it was prone to composite characters and fictionalizations. He’s sort of like the Bizarro Dan Brown. Makes me feel like James Frey got a raw deal.

I think that I’ll step down from my soapbox now.

Here inside the only Beltway that matters, the insiders, experts and politicos are going through one of their favorite rituals — a season of fevered discussions about the latest Bob Woodward book offering inside gossip about all the president’s people. As always, these holy days begin with a series of A1 excerpts from said volume in the Washington Post.

These rites require journalistic sermons on several topics:

(1) Who does this latest volume hurt more, the Republicans or the Democrats?

(2) Is this volume more embarrassing to the current regime than the volumes published during the previous regime (with optional discussions of whether Woodward is right, center-right, center or center-left in his political orientation)?

(3) Who looks worse in this volume, the president or the president’s top aides? What does this tell us about who leaked the most information to Woodward and his research team?

(4) And that old favorite: What kind of spell does Woodward cast over people to get them to talk to him when they know that it is almost impossible to keep sourcing secrets hidden for long here in the world’s most powerful high school?

What role does religion play in this new book? Well, that depends on whether one considers politics to be a form of organized religion.

However, part three of the “Obama’s Wars” series does include a very interesting ghost, one that even makes it into the headline: “Obama: ‘We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan.’ ”

The story opens last May, when President Barack Obama sends retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, his national security adviser, and CIA Director Leon Panetta to Pakistan on a secret mission — to discuss with President Asif Ali Zardari the connections between the Times Square bomber and terrorist groups that operate inside Pakistan.

Saith Woodward’s omnipresent narrator voice:

Jones thought that Pakistan — a U.S. ally with an a la carte approach of going after some terrorist groups and supporting others — was playing Russian roulette. The chamber had turned out to be empty the past several times, but Jones thought it was only a matter of time before there was a round in it.

Fears about Pakistan had been driving President Obama’s national security team for more than a year. Obama had said toward the start of his fall 2009 Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review that the more pressing U.S. interests were really in Pakistan, a nuclear power with a fragile civilian government, a dominant military and an intelligence service that sponsored terrorist groups.

Not only did al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban operate from safe havens within Pakistan, but — as U.S. intelligence officials had repeatedly warned Obama — terrorist groups were recruiting Westerners whose passports would allow them to move freely in Europe and North America.

Safe havens would no longer be tolerated, Obama had decided. “We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan,” he declared during an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009, near the end of the strategy review. The reason to create a secure, self-governing Afghanistan, he said, was “so the cancer doesn’t spread there.”

The story rolls on. If the bomb had exploded, we are told, the United States would have been forced to act — using a secret plan that involved bombing 150 different terrorist camps inside Pakistan. By the way, that’s a lot of terrorist camps.

This threat confuses Pakistani officials, since bombs go off in their streets all the time. Why would Americans be so upset about one bombing? Etc., etc., etc. Finally, the Pakistani leaders receive this ultimatum:

“You can do something that costs you no money,” Jones said. “It may be politically difficult, but it’s the right thing to do if you really have the future of your country in mind. And that is to reject all forms of terrorism as a viable instrument of national policy inside your borders.”

“We rejected it,” Zardari responded.

Jones and Panetta had heard such declarations before.

So what is the religion ghost in this story?

To find it, try to answer this simple question: What is “the cancer” that is “in Pakistan”?

It appears that American leaders believe all terrorists are evil. It appears that on the ground, Pakistani leaders believe that some of the terrorists are evil and that some are not quite as evil and some, in fact, may not be evil at all, but worthy of support from elements of the national establishment.

Meanwhile, the Americans believe that the deadly problem in the region is a “cancer” that lives in Pakistan.

So, from the point of view of the Americans, what is this “cancer”? And from the point of view of the Pakistani officials, what is the difference between a good terrorist and a bad terrorist? At this point, I think that it’s appropriate to ask if these disagreements have anything to do with two terms that do not appear anywhere in this Washington Post story — “sharia” and “Islam.”

Now, are there Muslims who reject all acts of terrorism? Yes there are, millions of them, in fact. Are there Muslims who believe that terrorism is justified in conflicts with infidels and other enemies of Islam? Yes, there are. Are there other Muslims who believe that acts of terrorism can even be justified in conflicts with other Muslims? Yes, there are.

What does this have to do with the story that Woodward is telling? Beats me.

Boo.

Apparently Archbishop Charles Chaput struck a nerve with Mark Silk, professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America.

We’ve discussed Chaput’s address to religion news writers a few times already. If you haven’t read it, we’ll give you a minute to do so now.

I thought that Chaput offered constructive criticism of the media and really elevated the discussion. Silk says it’s tired, old culture war silliness. He says the problem with the media isn’t that it’s composed of elites who make secularist assumptions that are out of touch with reality or that coverage of Christianity in particular is negative. He says the real problem is that “the media tend to view religion not through secularist glasses but in categories derived from Western religion.” Fine.

But check out this part of his criticism:

But be this as it may, what really caught my eye in Chaput’s address was this:

One of the worst habits many Catholics had at the start of the clergy sex abuse crisis, including many bishops, was to minimize a very grave problem. But news media show many of the same patterns of denial, vanity, obstinacy, and institutional defensiveness in dealing with criticism of their own failures.

Now, it’s pretty white of Chaput to include “many bishops” on his side of the comparison …

What? What was that last line? Now, on a good day, in an intimate setting, that type of line is risky. But yikes — what was Silk thinking? The usually sarcastic saying — an unsubtle reference to white people engaging in atrocities against or oppression of non-whites, while claiming to do so in their benefit — is a biting insult with the power to offend all races.

For what it’s worth, Chaput is a registered member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Tribe, very active in Native American affairs and the first Native American archbishop.

I can’t even imagine what the media response would be if Chaput made such a scathing remark with racial connotations. I assume that Silk, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard and has spent his life in journalism and the academy, either didn’t think about what he was saying or didn’t realize how the remark is taken by others. Maybe he thought Chaput’s family heritage is what makes the insult work. I don’t know. But it’s really an odd way to disagree with someone who’s calling for civility and decency in media coverage. And it probably couldn’t better prove Chaput’s point that the media has trouble with self-criticism and respect of others.

Here’s how Chaput’s address ended:

Religion journalism deals with the most fundamental things about human meaning, things intimate, defining, and sacred to many millions of people. So master and respect your material. Know yourself and your prejudices. Acknowledge mistakes, and don’t make them a habit. Be as honest with yourself as you want your sources to be. Understand believers and their institutions as they understand themselves. And if you do that — and do it with integrity, fairness, and humility — then you’ll have the gratitude of the people you cover, and you’ll embody the best ideals of your profession.

We can all disagree and fight things out, but it seems to me this is solid advice. We should check our prejudices and aim for integrity and fairness and humility.

Once again, our friends at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life have unleashed another survey that is causing waves of ink to crash into the mainstream press. This time around, the numbers are rather predictable — revealing that Americans, as a rule, have lots of feelings about religion in their hearts, but not that much information in their heads.

By all means, check out the actual survey materials — right here.

If you want to sample the tsunami of mainstream coverage, my advice — picking on several major players — is that you turn to CNN, the New York Times and USA Today and, well, ignore the Los Angeles Times.

Why do I say that? Well, the sexy lede out of this study is that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than, well, religious people. That is just accurate enough to be misleading. It’s also not all that surprising. I know very few people who are as obsessed with the fine details of religion as highly motivated unbelievers. As the old saying goes, the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy.

What the survey reveals is that certain kinds of people know more about world religions, in general, while others may know more about their own religions.

Check out the top of the New York Times story by veteran Laurie Goodstein:

Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.

Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith. Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

What is hard to tell is whether or not the results focusing on “Christians” simply covered too broad a spectrum to compete in that kind of simplistic framework. For example, Mormons and Evangelical Protestants demonstrated high levels of knowledge about the Bible and Christian beliefs, while agnostics, atheists and Jews were more familiar with the details of world religions, period.

You can see a bit more of the complexity of the results in the top of the report by Godbeat veteran Cathy Lynn Grossman at USA Today. This is one case where the use of info bullets at the top of a story, in my opinion, really helped:

The new U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that although 86% of us believe in God or a higher power, we don’t know our own traditions or those of neighbors across the street or across the globe.

Among 3,412 adults surveyed, only 2% correctly answered at least 29 of 32 questions on the Bible, major religious figures, beliefs and practices. The average score was 16 correct (50%).

Key findings:

* Doctrines don’t grab us. Only 55% of Catholic respondents knew the core teaching that the bread and wine in the Mass become the body and blood of Christ, and are not merely symbols. Just 19% of Protestants knew the basic tenet that salvation is through faith alone, not actions as well.

* Basic Bible eludes us. Just 55% of all respondents knew the Golden Rule isn’t one of the Ten Commandments; 45% could name all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).

* World religions are a struggle. Fewer than half (47%) knew that the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist; 27% knew most people in Indonesia are Muslims.

Along the same lines, the New York Times noted that 53 percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation and 43 percent of Jews did not know that the great philosopher Maimonides was Jewish.

According to the researchers, a person’s education was the single best predictor of how she or he would score. I do not doubt that. However, when I have a chance to dig further into this data, I will be looking for evidence of a pew gap in this Pew effort.

In other words, did anyone try to find out if the intensity of a person’s religious practice has anything to do with knowledge. In other words, do daily Mass Catholics know more about Catholicism and other religions than inactive Catholics? Do Jews who regularly attend worship services know more about, well, Maimonides than Jews who are completely secular? Do Evangelicals who take part in foreign missions projects know more about Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., than people who say they are vaguely “Protestant” and that’s that?

And the Los Angeles Times piece? OK, OK, here is the start of that one:

If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist.

Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term “blind faith.”

So there.

Another way to interact with the material is through the CNN Belief weblog, where you can test yourself on sample questions — right here — and read a column by the scholar whose work sank into the DNA of this study. That would be Stephen Prothero of Boston University, author of, among other works, a book entitled, “Religious Literacy — What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn’t.” He trumpets:

Believers and nonbelievers obviously disagree on the virtues and vices of religion. But all careful observers of the world should be able to agree on this: From time immemorial, and for better or for worse, human beings have been motivated to act politically, economically and militarily by their gods, scriptures and priests. Without making sense of those motivations, we cannot make sense of the world.

It is time to address our national epidemic of religious illiteracy.

And all the GetReligion readers said?

“Amen” (I hope).

At my home congregation in Oklahoma, our two Sunday morning assemblies drew 1,256 people on a recent weekend. That same Sunday, just 540 worshipers returned for the evening service. In a fellowship that traditionally has placed a high value on church attendance, that’s a lot of people “forsaking the assembly.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of our church elders made a special announcement on a recent Sunday morning — I can’t recall if it was the same one — encouraging the congregation to return that night.

Of course, my congregation’s Sunday evening attendance trend mirrors what many churches across the nation are experiencing.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a mainstream news story about this trend, however, which is why I was so fascinated by a Religion News Service news feature published this week.

Here’s the top of the RNS story by Grand Rapids Press writer Matt Vande Bunte (it’s a revised version of a piece that first appeared in the Grand Rapids paper):

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) Doug De Vries describes Sunday evening worship as “a lot less formal” than the morning service at Plymouth Heights Christian Reformed Church.

It’s also a lot less crowded.

Plymouth Heights is in step with a larger trend of declining evening attendance in evangelical denominations that long have cherished a heritage of worshiping twice on Sunday. Some evening services are more intimate; others have been cancelled or replaced by an alternative.

“It’s a business question that has been asked,” said De Vries, the church’s minister of music. “People are spending time with their family (on Sunday nights) or using that time to get together in small groups. We were concerned that we were squandering resources to put the evening service together.”

The story cites statistics backing up the trend and gives church leaders an opportunity to explain why they think it’s happening:

There are different ways to interpret the trend: Some see it as harmless, while others see worrisome deviation away from doctrine. For others, the decline is a natural outcome of the historically Dutch church’s aspirations to evangelize a broader demographic.

“Many churches are substituting evening worship and putting their energies into other things,” said Jeff Meyer, pastor of Crosswinds Community Church, a 4-year-old CRC congregation in Holland, Mich., that, like many new churches, does not conduct evening worship.

“The people who are exploring Christianity are not typically accustomed even to weekly worship a single time. So to put forward some kind of a community-based expectation that you do this twice a Sunday would be extraordinary.”

A later reference is made to the Heidelberg Catechism, but the story fails to explain clearly what it means by the “worrisome deviation from doctrine.” In the context of the story, it’s difficult to determine if tradition and doctrine are the same thing. I understand the tight space constraints of most wire reports (this one is 850 words, with an optional trim to 750 words), but I wish that reference had been developed a bit more.

The story doesn’t specifically mention Sunday Night Football, youth soccer on Sunday or the demise of blue laws, but it does put the trend in the context of secular culture:

Others, including Ron Rienstra, a professor at the Reformed Church in America-affiliated Western Theological Seminary, are concerned that Christians may be chipping away on the one day a week that God commanded to be set aside and kept holy.

“The two services is a way to frame the whole day as belonging to Lord,” Rienstra said. “The decline of Sunday evening worship is a marker alongside many that our culture is becoming more popularly secular. We’ve lost a sense of sacred time that is being offered back to God.”

A fellow GetReligionista also noticed that the piece doesn’t reference the fact that many houses of worship have become “commuter congregations.” Whereas Americans once walked down the street to worship, many now drive 30 to 45 minutes to church. That’s more difficult to do — even with gasoline prices stable for the moment — twice on the same Sunday.

Also, I was surprised the story didn’t at least mention Wednesday night. That’s another traditional Bible study time for many evangelical churches, and I’m curious if it’s faring better or worse than Sunday night.

But overall, RNS deserves kudos for a timely, newsworthy piece of reporting. I’d love to see more Godbeat reporters tackle this trend.

Time has an interesting story. Here’s how it begins:

Alta Jacko is the mother of eight children. She is also a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees. Jacko says that playing baseball is what she was born to do.

Just kidding.

Here’s how it actually begins:

Alta Jacko is the mother of eight children. She is also an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Jacko, 81, who earned her master’s degree in pastoral studies from Loyola University, a Jesuit Catholic school, says that being a priest is what she was called to do.

Really. That’s REALLY how the article “Efforts Rising to Ordain Women as Roman Catholic Priests” by Dawn Reiss begins. I could not make that up.

What to say other than … this is not true. There is no mother of eight children who is an ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church. How do I know this? Because I know that the church doesn’t ordain any female, whether they’ve gotten a degree from a Catholic university or not. Whether or not you are an “ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church” is similar to whether or not you are a starting pitcher for the Yankees. It’s not about what you feel called to do. It’s not about feelings at all. And a journalist can check out this fact just as easily as she can check out the roster for a baseball team.

Even the caption is a joke:

Alta Jacko’s (third from left) ordination to be a deaconate on Nov. 1, 2008. She would later be ordained as a priest in 2009.

Time managed to not just misuse the word diaconate but misspell it, too.

Unfortunately, the story is just a complete train wreck. The reader who submitted the story described it as “the usual thread of ‘These women are priests already, regardless of Vatican policy. Speaking of which, why doesn’t the Vatican change its policy?’” And that’s an understatement.

Last week, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver addressed religion news writers at their conference there. Among other things, he said:

[T]he Christian story now told in mainstream media often seems to be a narrative of decline or fundamentalism, or houses divided against themselves along predictable lines of sex and authority. It’s a narrative of institutions and individuals that — insofar as they stay true to their historic beliefs — act as a backward social force and a menace to the liberty of their fellow citizens.

I imagine that if Chaput attempted to satirize the way the media write up stories about female ordination and Catholicism, he could not have done better than the actual story Time published.

After the horrible lede and problematic caption, we learn that there is “a movement against the no-women rule.” We hear from a variety of people opposed to the rule. We hear from no one who can articulate, much less support the reason for not having female priests. Instead we get a quote from a priest whose previous opposition to female priests was based, apparently, on nothing more than emotion. But now his views are “complicated” and he helps her learn how to say the liturgy. He is presented as a hero facing the loss of his job, his pension and his home. And then we get this, which shows the combined problem of too little understanding of doctrine and a complete mangling of doctrine:

It is a question that more and more members of the flock are asking. Many have begun to publicly challenge the church’s stance, especially after the Vatican decreed in July that ordaining female priests was a “grave” crime, on par with pedophilia. Biblical passages refer to female clergy, including an apostle named Junia in Romans 16:7. On Sunday, Sept. 26, thousands of Catholics around the world plan to protest, either by boycotting Mass or by showing up wearing green armbands that say “Ordain Women.” “Women are tired of being treated as second-class citizens in the church,” says Jennifer Sleeman, an Irish Catholic who turns 81 on Sunday and is helping champion the Sunday Without Women demonstration organized by Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW).

It’s like the reporter was engaged in a contest to see how much she could fill a paragraph with weasel words, unsourced claims and other silliness. For starters, the use of “more and more” and “many” to quantify the movement is a bit much. I know journalists are always trying to suggest a trend — but at least attempt to provide some data. Assuming you’re not writing a press release, that is. And I’ll skip the obligatory reference to the Vatican statement in July. But what’s this about the Bible referring to female clergy including an apostle named Junia?

OK, that is certainly one view, a view espoused by the folks trying to get the Vatican to change traditional Christian teaching. They say that Junia/Junias was a female apostle in the Early Church but that male clergy conspired to cover up her legacy and the legacy of other female ministers. The argument goes that since Junia/Junias was a female apostle, women should be ordained as pastors. The verse, for those who are interested, reads:

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my countrymen and my fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me.

The view espoused by those who support female ordination is not shared by the Catholic Church, the Orthodox or confessional Lutherans, to name a few. To begin with, there is some debate about whether Junia is being called an apostle, and even whether Junia is a male or female name (to be fair, even the early church fathers took opposing sides on just that issue). But keep in mind that this “smoking gun” passage is in Romans. The book written by none other than St. Paul. It’s not like his views against female ordination aren’t known. Normally he’s getting in trouble for the many passages he wrote about the roles for men and women.

Anyway, the issue has adherents on varying sides. Unless reporters are confused about their job or have an inflated view of their understanding of Scriptural controversies, they probably should not come down on one side or another. That’s not good reporting. The Sleeman quote above is followed by another quote from someone identified as “Chicago’s first ordained Catholic female priest.” She says that “many” male priests are all for the movement.

Then we learn of a documentary about women’s ordination called “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican,” followed by dramatic quotes from people who refuse to give their names. But the worst part is that it keeps going — there are many more quotes from people, all from one side, all saying horrible things about the Catholic Church.

Perhaps the story is so laughably bad, so unbelievably silly, because the reporter failed to speak with anyone she disagreed with. That’s bad enough in a story that quotes only one or two people. But in a story of this length, in this high profile of a publication, it’s an embarrassment. It’s as if Time is going after the Newsweek demographic.

Also, these stories are so routinely and increasingly bad that I’m almost beginning to wonder if there’s some kind of Bulwer-Lytton-type contest for who can come up with the worst.

The second GetReligion podcast is up and running and it happened quicker than I expected.

This time around, the voice you’ll here is that of the Divine Mrs. M.Z. Hemingway discussing the media coverage — secular and religious — of the Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman. Once again, the purpose of the podcast is to let her go a big deeper into the discussion of a topic that, when addressed in a recent post, fired up quite a bit of discussion. The conversation then spins off in several interesting directions.

It appears that some of the technical issues we were having are getting worked out, but we are not completely out of the digital woods.

At this stage — until the iTunes page is up and running — the key is to load the whole podcast and then, using the direct download link, right click and save the file to your computer desktop. You can then drag it into your iTunes files, or whatever system you use for storing audio files. It’s tricky, but it works.

Anyway, we are still working out all the details. We thank you for your patience. Please offer feedback on these initial efforts and help us improve them.

Whenever there is a new podcast, we will file one of these short “Pod people” posts. Thus, you’ll be able to glance through them in the new “Podcasts” category in the archives and find them in searches, using that slug line. We are considering other filing options as well.

So, how many of you are podcasts in the car people? Commuter trains? Material for iPod use during boring sermons?

Confess.