Trust me, I have the greatest of sympathies for general-assignment reporters who find themselves forced to wade into the complex details of doctrine, rite and history that are frequently served up by day-to-day events that transpire on the religion beat.

This is true in religious movements ancient and new.

How is anyone supposed to make sense out of the whirling world of emerging, post-evangelical, neo-charismatic, nondenominational, free-church Protestantism, where there is often no legal or doctrinal authority higher than the pastor (ordained by who knows who) and the board of deacons-elders-presbyters-directors who hires him?

And in the ancient world, there are various forms of Orthodoxy to consider that overlap in the same regions with the competing claims of Rome. Which patriarch is on first? Who’s on second? Is the man in robes on third old calendar or new, is he oriental Orthodox or canonical? Really, says who?

So pity the copy editor who drafted the following photo caption for Reuters:

Palestinian Roman Orthodox Christian girl

A Palestinian Roman Orthodox Christian girl looks at candles as they are lit inside an old cave which residents say is used as a church, in the West Bank village of Aboud near Ramallah, ahead of Christmas December, 16, 2010.

A veteran GetReligion reader was both confused and amused by this unique reference, writing: “The picture shows Palestinians lighting candles in a cave in Ramalla, but IDs them as ‘Roman Orthodox’? What is Roman Orthodoxy?”

Good question.

It is possible, of course, that these Palestinian Christians were simply Eastern Orthodox, most likely linked to the ancient — to say the least — Church of Jerusalem. Then again, they may have been Eastern Rite Catholics, part of a flock that is loyal to the pope of Rome, yet one uses rites that are almost identical to those used by the Eastern Orthodox.

Then again, the photographer or reporter at the scene may have heard a spokesperson for the church use a very ancient name that sometimes appears in Eastern Orthodox rites. Consider these few lines from the Chrismation rite used when converts enter the church:

Bishop: Hast thou renounced all ancient and modern heresies and false doctrines which are contrary to the teachings of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Eastern Church?

Answer: I have.

Bishop: Dost thou desire to be united unto the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Eastern Church?

Answer: I desire it with all my heart.

Like I said, this is complex territory. It’s easy to make mistakes, even when doing one’s best not to.

Then again, there is always a chance that we are dealing with journalists who, when they see candles and people making the sign of the cross, immediately think of Rome — no matter what.

Be careful out there, folks.

NPR’s Morning Edition had a story this week about how Israel responds to African migrants. “In Israel, No Welcome Mat For African Migrants” was interesting, but I thought it had some flaws. You could begin with the headline, which in addition to stating that Israel is not friendly to African migrants, also seems to suggest that a welcome mat is the standard by which Israel’s immigration policy should be judged.

The substance for the claim includes the erection of a fence to help combat the illegal immigration into the country:

The $270 million fence will cover 87 miles of Israel’s southern border with Egypt. African refugees are smuggled through this area almost daily. They travel thousands of miles and often spend their life savings to try to reach Israel, a country they see as their doorstep to the West.

Israel, however, is far from laying down the welcome mat.

Sigal Rosen is an organizer at the Hotline for Migrant Workers, an advocacy group for refugees, in Tel Aviv. She says that though Israel signed the Geneva Convention relating to refugees, it regularly violates it.

“During the last years, Israel is sending a very clear message to all asylum seekers: Beware. We are not interested in your presence here. We will do whatever is in our power to prevent you from being here, even if the price is violating our legal commitments,” Rosen says.

The other ways the country is trying to deal with its immigration issues is by building an “open facility” detention camp to house refugees, punishing any employer who hires African migrants or supports their employment, and repatriating refugees. Last week it paid 150 southern Sudanese with pocket money and a flight home to vote in an upcoming referendum.

It’s unclear, from the story, which of these violates the Geneva Convention. I don’t even know what an “open facility” detention camp is. Heck, it’s unclear in this story why these people are “refugees” and not just people who have come into the country illegally. The story quotes precisely one of the people in the “African migrant” category and it’s unclear if or why he’s a refugee. It seems he’s there illegally.

As the number of Africans seeking refuge in Israel has risen, so has the number of people who walk through the door of Rosen’s office, trying to figure out their rights in Israel.

Oscar Olivier is one of those people. Originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Olivier has lived in Israel for 16 years with no official status.

“I don’t even have a residency, and today after 16 years, I don’t have a work permit,” he says.

Olivier lives in a small apartment outside Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station. The area has been nicknamed “Little Africa” because of the thousands of refugees who have settled there. Olivier’s spartan room is undecorated except for photos of his 8-year-old daughter.

It’s for her that he has toughed out all these years, working as a janitor and house cleaner in what he calls an unfriendly environment.

“Not only to feel that you are not welcome, but to know that [you] are not welcome. So it ends up not a place for people who are different. It’s a place where people should be, look, all the same,” he says.

The story suggests that all Israelis are, look the same. Do Ethiopian immigrants look the same as Russian immigrants? Do black-hat Orthodox look the same as secular supermodel Israelis? And using the term “African migrant” to distinguish between people in the country legally and people in the country illegally makes it seem like immigrants — or even African immigrants — aren’t part of the legal Israeli population.

The opposition to such migration isn’t explored well. We’re told that the Interior Minister calls the “refugees” an “existential threat” that could challenge the Jewish majority in the country. But that’s it. It seems that this issue needs much more explanation for people like me who aren’t up-to-speed on every aspect of Jewish law or culture. And without that explanation, this just reads like a hit piece.

And on that note, even if we accept this piece stating that Israel has committed horrendous crimes against humanity, some context about how African migrants are treated by countries that neighbor Israel would be seriously helpful. Here’s a Foreign Policy post from Dec. 15 about Egypt permitting African immigrants to be raped, beaten, burned and then extorted by Bedouin human traffickers. Earlier this year, BBC reported on the 16th sub-Saharan immigrant to be shot by Egyptian authorities. Other comparisons might also be helpful. How large is Israel compared to its neighbors? How many people are attempting to gain residency there as opposed to other countries? How capable are all these countries to deal with mass immigration? Why? Most countries struggling with assimilation, integration or immigration flow report other social issues such as management of crime. Is that an issue here?

Blaming Israel and accusing it of human rights crimes is certainly one option for how to respond to the story of African migration. But for a news outlet with the ability to report a tragic and complex story, NPR could do better. With better information, the global community can come up with better solutions to the plight of these migrant communities.

For better or worse, I’m as Jewish as any of your GetReligionistas. (In a Jewish sense I fall well short of my predecessor here, Ari L. Goldman; I also fall short as a journalist.) Thus, I’m often the guy who gets called upon when there is a bit of Jew news that needs some scrutiny.

For example, yesterday one of my colleagues sent me a story by Isabel Kershner of The New York Times. It was titled “Some Israelis Question Benefits for Ultra-Religious,” and, in light of past discussions here, the question was one of lingo.

As I also discussed last summer, there has long been a perception in Israel that the Haredim — what those outside the group consider Ultra Orthodox Jews — freeload off the Jewish state, primarily by escaping compulsory national or military service and by studying Talmud instead of earning a living.

But this New York Times piece was not just revisiting trodden ground. (I mean, it was, but the soil was still pretty fresh.) Kershner opened with:

Chaim Amsellem was certainly not the first Parliament member to suggest that most ultra-Orthodox men should work rather than receive welfare subsidies for full-time Torah study. But when he did so last month, the nation took notice: He is a rabbi, ultra-Orthodox himself, whose outspokenness ignited a fresh, and fierce, debate about the rapid growth of the ultra-religious in Israel.

“Torah is the most important thing in the world,” Rabbi Amsellem said in an interview. But now more than 60 percent of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel do not work, compared with 15 percent in the general population, and he argued that full-time, state-financed study should be reserved for great scholars destined to become rabbis or religious judges.

“Those who are not that way inclined,” he said, “should go out and earn a living.”

Kershner is right. It was pretty surprising to hear Amsellem say that. But was it appropriate for Kershner to refer to Amsellem and the men he spoke for and about as ultra-Orthodox?

That depends. See Brad A. Greenberg, Hollywood doesn’t get Jews, GetReligion.org, June 7, 2010; specifically, look at comment four:

I debated whether to use the term “ultra Orthodox” because, as BC noted, it’s not commonly used. However, in this case, I wanted to give a little attention because the NYT used it in an otherwise well-done story last month and one of our readers found the expression a bit odd. While it can have a pejorative connotation, it doesn’t implicitly and it is a descriptor broadly used in the Jewish community.

Far as I can tell, “ultra-Orthodox” is New York Times style. I know my old stomping grounds, The Jewish Journal, uses it as well. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, however, does not.

JTA, which has an audience more highly knowledgeable of the contours of the Jewish community, once preferred “fervently Orthodox,” but has moved away from that moniker. It now uses Haredi Orthodox on first reference. Why does JTA avoid “ultra-Orthodox?” Because members of that community object to the term and using it doesn’t help readers understand the group being identified than the term Haredim, which is what the Haredi call themselves.

For JTA, it’s a matter of respecting the wishes of the Haredi, but I think it’s based on the faulty premise that “ultra” implies extremism.

There is, however, another twist when using ultra-Orthodox: It’s a bit of a linguistic fallacy. Anyone who believes they are orthodox does not accept that someone else is living in a more orthodox manner.

Haredi is not, as Kershner notes, Hebrew for ultra-Orthodox. It means “fearing God” or “in awe of God.” Ultra-Orthodox is merely the term most members of the Jewish community use to distinguish the Haredim from Modern Orthodox Jews without having to use Hebrew.

This, then, seems to be one of those circumstances on the Godbeat where, like with the pastor of a Messianic church who considers himself a rabbi, reporters refer to members of a group as others perceive them, not as they see themselves.

Whether it is appropriate is a separate issue. If “ultra-Orthodox” is being used pejoratively, then it’s not. But in the vast majority of cases, that term is being used with no more or less derisiveness than “Haredim.”

VIDEO: Regardless of identification, Haredim don’t look good in the above clip from “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?”

It’s been a while since we discussed anything related to Wikileaks. A few weeks ago we looked at a story that discussed the morality of the Wikileaks model. When this got going, I wondered if any of the documents that would come to light would include religion news.

A couple of days ago, I saw on Mike Riggs’ Twitter that leaked cables gave some information on Syrian involvement in Danish cartoon riots in Damascus. You can read the two cables here and here. They basically report on suspicions and confirmations that the Syrian Arab Republic Government fueled the embassy protests.

I figured this would be worth at least a few stories but, as we noted just yesterday, many Americans are a bit internally focused with their news. At least Reuters filed a report:

Syria actively encouraged violent protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad four years ago in which European embassies in Damascus were attacked, a senior U.S. diplomat said in leaked cables.

Charge d’affaires Stephen Seche said Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otari gave instructions for mosque preachers to deliver hard-hitting sermons at weekly prayers on the eve of the protests, according to cables released by the WikiLeaks website.

The article gives a good summary of what happened with the 2006 protests and what cartoons they were in response to. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Damascus of inciting violence at the time, which Syria disputed.

But the most important part of the story might be the part that gets at “why” SARG might have helped fuel these protests:

But it said the violence also helped the secular government of President Bashar al-Assad, a member of Syria’s minority Alawite sect, by showing that Syria could “defend Islamic dignity,” by distracting Syrians from recent price rises, and allowing Damascus to tell the West “we are the only thing standing between you and the Islamist hordes.”

“…Despite any miscalculation, loss of control, or embarrassment, the minority Alawite regime seems to have benefited from the rioting, enhancing its legitimacy in several ways,” it said.

The other details are helpful but understanding why a government may have provoked this violence is key. I was surprised to learn only recently that the protests were not spontaneous reactions to the cartoons. The violence that broke out had a complex story behind it. What hasn’t been explained well is that two imams living in Denmark created a 43-page dossier claiming to show images that had been published in Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper there. They did — they included the 12 cartoons such as Kurt Westergaard’s depiction of Mohammed’s turban as a bomb. But they also included pictures from another Danish newspaper (which had actually been satirizing Jyllands-Posten’s cartoons). And then they included some very offensive cartoons that never appeared in any newspaper. Here’s how Reason magazine put it:

The images include an amateurish doodle identifying Mohammed as a pedophile, a dog humping a prostrate praying Muslim (with the caption, “This is why Muslim pray five times a day”), and a photocopy of a French comedian in a pig-squealing contest (with the phony caption, “Here is the real image of Mohammed”)… . It is as if the pope created “Piss Christ” and then passed it off as the work of critics of Catholicism.

That dossier went on tour and populist protests broke out. The Wikileaked cables indicate that there may have been even more shenanigans at play in getting people to riot.

The complex story about how these riots happened (and remember that in addition to the building damage and economic boycotts, well over 100 people died in these protests, including a nun and a priest) has not been well covered, particularly in U.S. papers. I’m certainly not defending the riots, but knowing how much manipulation and political calculation went into them paints a very different picture than the one we had in the early days after the violence.

And with the news from yesterday that Danish police arrested five people (with a “militant Islamic background”) accused of planning to attack the newspaper that published the cartoons, this story needs context as much as ever.

“If it means me getting naked, I’ll get naked and get right on that plane.”

Obviously, as evidenced by that remark by one airline passenger interviewed by The Associated Press, Americans express varying levels of discomfort — or not — with security measures taken by the Transportation Security Administration.

Mollie has written at least a couple of GetReligion posts (here and here) related to the TSA and religious modesty. She even shared a bit about her personal experience at a security checkpoint:

I joked that in some cultures I would be married to my screener by now. But it wasn’t funny. It was incredibly intimate and it actually made me uncomfortable. I felt intimidated by the fact that the screeners have so much authority over your freedom to move about the country. I even thought about how I should respond as a Christian.

I must acknowledge that I probably lean more in the direction of the AP interviewee. I am a nervous flier anyway, and since 9/11, I have taken a small measure of comfort in heightened scrutiny at the airport. I want the TSA screener to shine a light on my driver’s license (or passport if I’m traveling internationally) and look me up and down a few times. I don’t want just a quick glance and a nod to move ahead from a sleepy-eyed agent.

When I flew earlier this month, I breezed right through the line and to my gate with no patdown whatsoever. I voiced my disappointment on Facebook. I was joking, of course.

Yet I realize that for many Americans, this is no laughing matter, and that was reflected in a holiday travel story by The Washington Post:

As Erum Ikramullah prepared to head to Reagan National Airport on Thursday for a flight, she mulled over two distasteful choices: the body scanner or the pat-down?

Ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a trip to the airport has been fraught for Muslims, who sometimes feel they are being profiled as potential terrorists because of their religion. The addition of full-body scanners, which many say violate Islam’s requirements of modesty, has increased the discomfort.

Muslims aren’t alone in their antipathy toward the new security measures. Followers of other religions, including Sikhs and some Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians, also say the scanners and pat-downs make them uncomfortable or breach the tenets of their faiths.

I thought the Post did a nice job up high of explaining — from the perspective of an actual person of faith — why the measures concern some Americans:

But Muslim women have been particularly reluctant to subject themselves to the scanners, which reveal the contours of the human body in glaring detail.

In Islam, “a woman’s body and a man’s body are both pretty much private,” said Ikramullah, 29, who wears a head scarf. “I choose to cover myself and dress in loose-fitting clothing so the shape of my body is not revealed to everyone in the street.”

The other choice, an “enhanced” pat-down in which security agents touch intimate body parts, was hardly more appealing, said the College Park resident. In recent years, Ikramullah said, she has been pulled aside for a milder version of the pat-downs almost every time she flies. The reason, she believes, is her head scarf.

“It can be humiliating when you’re standing there and people are walking by, seeing you get the pat-down,” she said. “You just feel like you have a target on your head.”

Keep reading, and the piece highlights perspectives of Sikhs, Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians. Sources from each group give specific reasons for objections and concerns. (In a separate item by Christianity Today, observers discuss whether Christians should resist airport body scans and patdowns.)

I liked the Post report and the way that it allowed individual believers and faith leaders to explain their beliefs in their own words. I do wonder how the newspaper came up with the list of faith groups to include. Were any left out?

I’m flying again next week. Depending on that experience, I reserve the right to change my opinion on this topic.

Once upon a time, Ted Olsen at Christianity Today gave me the GetReligion treatment. Fortunately for me, the story that caught Ted’s web-crawling eyes was one of the finest from my days as a cub reporter at The Sun in San Bernardino.

The story focused on Bruce Nelson and the struggles of faith that followed his being crippled while serving on a mission in India. I’m not entirely sure why I mentioned that, but Bruce’s test of faith was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this beautiful obituary from The New York Times Magazine.

One of 22 included in the magazine’s “The Lives They Lived” year-end feature, chronicles the life, and passing, of Allan Tibbels, who had broken his neck as a young man, “but never doubted that Jesus loved him” and that his paralysis was part of God’s plan. Tibbels put his body where his heart was by insisting to his wife Susan that the family move to one of Baltimore’s ghettos:

Along with his friend Mark Gornik, he had been reading John M. Perkins, an evangelist and civil rights worker in Mississippi who urged the privileged to live with the poor. Christ came down from heaven; Jesus was no commuter! Susan was once the Ivory soap girl of the Christian youth set, destined for suburban contentment. She understood the theory — God dwells among the poor — but she had two young daughters, a disabled husband and a terror of rats. She followed under howling protest, to a neighborhood called Sandtown. Baltimore’s crack-addled streets in the mid-1980s were as mean as any, and there was hardly another white person for miles. Those who did not assume Tibbels was a cop thought he was buying drugs. When a robber held a knife to his throat, he invited him to church.

“Love thy neighbor,” the Bible says, in what may be its toughest command. Other than trying to obey, Tibbels arrived with no plans. Gornik, a young pastor, moved nearby. They volunteered at a recreation center and organized a living-room prayer group. Two neighborhood boys soon moved in with the Tibbelses — Sandtown fathers were rare — and the family drew confused looks for decades when introducing two blue-eyed daughters and two dark-skinned “sons.”

This is one of those stories that I am more than eager to share with GetReligion readers. Maybe my law-school-semester’s-end sabbaticals make me soft. Maybe it’s the yin of not reading the Los Angeles Times’ yang. (That is a misapplication of Taoist philosophy, yet you get my point.) But when I read a story like this it reminds me of two things: why I became a religion reporter and what great religion reporting can do and be.

This obituary of Tibbels, who died in June and was a bit of a Baltimore and Habitat for Humanity legend, is one that sensitively and precisely conveys the how one man’s religious beliefs permeated his life. It does not trivialize these convictions, nor mock the decisions they influenced. Instead, it does what any good reporter does: it aims to paint a picture of its subject that would be recognizable to the subject.

And in the process it shows how the remarkable strength of a crippled man could remake an inner-city neighborhood.

Granted, there is very little theology in this obituary. Not even an explanation of what kind of Christian Tibbels was. (Aside from one that followed Christ, I’d guess evangelical based on the name of the church he co-founded.) But obit writer Jason DeParle sprinkles just the right religion references to keep Tibbels’ remembrance grounded on God.

Someone once described Tibbels as “saving Sandtown,” which made him wince. God saves; neighbors share. A condolence letter that Susan prizes came from the 8-year-old girl next door. “We’re a family,” she wrote. “We’re like stars all connected in a special way.”

Amen.

Were you enjoying the fact that the media had more or less dropped any coverage of the proposed Islamic Center near ground zero? Well, it’s back in the news with a couple of updates. There’s the rumor that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia might want to buy shuttered St. Vincent’s Medical Center and move the Park 51 mosque to a new Islamic cultural center he would build on the site (story in the New York Post).

And then there’s the revelation that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration helped the mosque organizers more than was publicly known. I believe the New York Daily News broke the story but it’s since appeared in a variety of other New York media outlets have reported on the latest. Here’s the Wall Street Journal:

The chairman of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission allegedly wanted “political cover” before denying landmark status to a building situated on the site of the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero, giving critics ammunition in their legal quest to stop the project, records released Thursday showed.

The records—sought by the project’s opponents and released by City Hall—show members of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration working very closely with the organizers of the project, known as Park51, to combat public opposition and navigate various governmental hurdles. One city official ghost-wrote a letter for the project’s organizers.

Aides to Mr. Bloomberg, an outspoken champion of the organizers’ right to build the mosque, said the slew of emails reflects the typical back-and-forth between government officials and members of the community. The project’s opponents said the records show the Bloomberg administration was in cahoots with the organizers. The records, they allege, raise serious questions about the legitimacy of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s Aug. 3 vote, which paved the way for the project to rise two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Another story reports that the city’s Community Affairs Commissioner drafted a letter for Daisy Khan, wife of the proposed mosque’s imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, to send to the head of the local community board ahead of its vote on the project. The Commissioner wrote that she hoped that the letter would “get the media attention off of everyone’s backs.”

The story does a fine job of getting the viewpoints from the administration and its critics. But one thing I would have appreciated was some feedback from First Amendment experts. Does the administration cross a line or not? It’s hard to make a judgment without some input from people who study or litigate this for a living and can help us with some perspective.

Another thing that would help is information about whether the administration has helped other groups navigate the New York City bureaucracy. This New York Post follow-up provides Mayor Bloomberg’s defense of his administration’s advocacy on behalf of Park51:

On the radio yesterday, Bloomberg rejected suggestions that the city’s stance on the controversial project — known as both Cordoba House and Park51 — had been “rigged from the start.”

“They asked for help. When the pope came to town, the Catholic New York Archdiocese asked for help. We did the same thing,” the mayor told WOR-AM host John Gambling.

“We wrote letters for them and figured out who they should go to, ‘cause they wanted to tell community boards and other churches … that there might be traffic and whatever.”

Bloomberg also noted that the city assisted a group of Orthodox Jews in erecting a sukkah in Bryant Park and likened the efforts to official support of the business community.

It’s helpful to find out what the mayor’s defense of his actions is. But is anyone wondering the same thing I am? Remember this church? The one that was destroyed on September 11 when Muslim terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers, causing them to come crashing down? The one whose congregation claims they’ve had trouble with government entities reneging on agreements? I think the natural question is to ask Bloomberg what, specifically, he’s done to help that church. The latest on St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox (picture above from its web site), for what it’s worth:

The leaders of St. Nicholas Church, the small whitewashed Greek Orthodox Church destroyed by falling debris on Sept. 11, 2001, have begun legal action against the Port Authority demanding that the church be rebuilt under the terms of a deal worked out several years ago.

A claim filed against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey by church leaders and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America on Monday accused the agency, which is overseeing Ground Zero’s rebuilding, of engaging in “arrogance, bad faith and fraudulent conduct” and “shabby and unlawful treatment.”

So while the reporting on this story has been fine and good, I think it could be improved by putting the advocacy on behalf of the Park 51 mosque in context of what, if anything, has been done to help the Orthodox Church that has resorted to legal action to get their project moving. And include some knowledgeable First Amendment experts with their takes on what the courts have said about such advocacy by government entities.

As is our practice this time of year — everyone say “Duh” — your GetReligionistas like to roll out some of the “year’s top religion stories” lists and allow readers to join us in making comments.

Yes, I will eventually explain why there is a picture of the Sayidat al-Nejat Catholic Cathedral in Bagdad at the top of this post.

The poll that is seen by the most serious readers is the one that has long been produced by the Religion Newswriters Association, the professional association for mainstream journalists on this beat. Here is the top of the press release on this year’s results.

Public debate and controversy over a planned Islamic community center and mosque to be built near New York’s Ground Zero ignited a national debate about religious freedom that kept the story in the news for months.

The story was voted the No. 1 religion story of 2010 in the annual Top 10 Religion News Stories of the Year poll of Religion Newswriters Association members. The center’s leading proponent, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, was voted the 2010 Religion Newsmaker of the Year.

Public opinion and outcry over the mosque reached a peak when a pastor of a small Florida church threatened to burn a Qu’ran in protest, a bravado that fueled fears of international backlash against the United States until the pastor backed down.

Most of the time I agree with the top few choices in the poll and this year was no exception. However, elected to start my Scripps Howard News Service column on the 2010 results in an odd way, which left me backing into the main subject.

You see, for the past two years the top story has been linked to faith issues related to the rise and triumph of Barack Obama — click here, and here to see that. In an odd sort of way, I thought the story of the (near) Ground Zero mosque actually reflected some of the same strange tensions that were linked to Obama’s public statements about his own liberal Christian faith and his efforts to enthusiastically reach out to the Islamic world, in part because of his own unique spiritual journey.

Thus, here is how I opened my column this year:

President Barack Obama did something on Sept. 19th that caught many in the national press off guard. He went to church.

The First Family walked across Lafayette Square Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, a parish so close to the White House that many call it the “Church of the Presidents.” The Obamas set down front and received Holy Communion.

Was this really an important news story?

Timing was everything. The Obama family had not occupied a public pew — as opposed to attending services at Camp David — since Easter. And this church visit came shortly after a Pew Research Center poll found that 18 percent of Americans insist on believing that Obama is a Muslim, a stunning number that was up from 11 percent in March 2009.

Obama has, in numerous speeches and his two memoirs, offered detailed testimonies about his progressive faith and why he feels at home in the United Church of Christ, a freewheeling flock that has long helped define the left wing of Protestantism. Nevertheless, only 34 percent of Pew poll participants said the president is a Christian and a stunning 43 percent could not identify his current religion. Only 46 percent of Democrats, and 43 percent of African-Americans, said Obama is a Christian. …

It was that kind of year, with many of the most vital news stories and trends rooted in confusing clashes about religious liberty, law, history and tradition.

And that, of course, brings us back to the Ground Zero story and several others.

Now, please read the whole RNA poll list, especially the second half of the poll results. What struck me as interesting — and sad — was item No. 11, which stated:

Faith-based aid workers are slain in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Half of Iraq’s 750,000 Christians have left it since 2003.

Look at the second half of that item.

This, of course, brings us around to the story that I thought should have been near the very top of the RNA poll results — the massacre at the Sayidat al-Nejat Catholic Cathedral, where at least 58 worshipers were slain and more than 100 were taken hostage. That was a rather symbolic story and was the perfect symbol of the forces, led by radical forms of Islam, that are driving Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant believers out of the ancient lands of the biblical world.

The RNA results, I think, are a reflection of a wider problem that should be familiar to GetReligion readers. If the press struggles to “get” religion and the American public is not that interested in global news, then what could be more problematic than trying to draw attention to religion news on the other side of the planet?

Now, there have been more than a few stories about the exodus of Eastern Christians from their ancient homelands. I know that. But it still seems that this story isn’t getting the coverage that it deserves.

Thus, the picture of the Sayidat al-Nejat Catholic Cathedral.

It has been said before: Their blood cries out.

To fully appreciate The Dallas Morning News’ Texas-sized profile of Baylor University President Ken Starr, one must accept its basic premise.

That premise — full of religious imagery — is underscored at the top of the 3,000-word Sunday story:

Meet Ken Starr, fun guy.

No, really.

Most of the world knows him as the Whitewater prosecutor, the man whose zealous investigation of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky led to the president’s 1998 impeachment. To his many critics and adversaries, Starr seemed a sort of Old Testament avenger, a grim, puritanical apostle of the Christian right whose office conducted what amounted to a political jihad against a sitting president.

But the reality of Kenneth Winston Starr, who in June became the 14th president of Baylor University, is quite different. To watch him work the crowd at the Baylor-Texas A&M football game, in fact, is nothing short of a revelation.

Here, he seems less a pious righter-of-wrongs than a sort of funny uncle. Resplendent in a white warm-up suit trimmed with green and gold and a yellow Baylor cap, and bearing a cherubic smile that never quite leaves his face, the 64-year-old Starr plunges into groups of startled tailgaters. He talks to everyone. He hugs anyone who will agree to be hugged. He tells jokes. He tosses footballs. He poses for photographs, lots of them.

So there you have it: Starr is not as bad a guy as you thought he was. And, oh yeah, he’s working miracles at Baylor.

The profile itself makes for an entertaining and, in some ways, informative read. I became quite familiar with the stretch of Interstate 35 between Dallas and Waco during my time with The Associated Press, so the subject matter caught my attention.

The talented writer of the Morning News’ piece is a veteran Texas journalist whose work has drawn praise from your friendly neighborhood GetReligionistas. But in this case, the Starr profile brings to mind that old saying about the cowboy who was “all hat and no cattle.” I should stress that I’m referring to the profile itself — and the evidence it uses to back up its assertions — not to Starr.

The story drips with effusive praise for Starr’s tenure at Baylor (all seven months of it). Take this section recounting the former prosecutor’s hiring by Baylor:

And even conservative evangelicals who had no political agenda with Starr wondered: Why, at a school whose civil wars of the early and mid-2000s became front-page news, would it possibly be a good idea to hire a non-Baptist with such partisan baggage? (Starr was raised in the Church of Christ, in which his father was a preacher.)

But the Baylor regents had reasons for their seemingly odd choice, arrived at after an intensive two-year search. And it has resulted in a sort of brilliant honeymoon that many would not have predicted.

Starr’s success in winning the Baylor community over is at least partly due to his upbeat, disarming personality and his deep religious convictions that are in tune with those generally held at Baylor.

But he is also the possessor of a legal resume that few contemporaries can match, as well as a striking record of success as dean of Pepperdine University’s law school.

How long do university presidents’ honeymoons typically last? Is it really all that surprising that seven months into the job, Starr enjoys positive relations with the Baylor community? Speaking of which, where are the quotes from Faculty Senate leaders, from Texas Baptist leaders and from others who have sparred with past Baylor presidents to support the notion that Starr is different than the previous leaders who failed?

No Baptist leaders or editors who questioned hiring a non-Baptist president to lead the world’s largest Baptist university are quoted to say that their position has changed. As for Starr’s “deep religious convictions that are in tune with those generally held at Baylor,” the story does not explore those convictions or explain how they are in tune with what Baylor believes. The story does not even report whether Starr has joined a Baptist church, as he promised to do when hired.

More from the story:

Even more remarkable is what Baylor’s board of regents has hired this cheerful, politically polarizing fifth-generation Texan to do: unite a 15,000-student Christian university that has been riven by internal wars — academic, religious and otherwise — for a decade.

Healing those wounds is just the beginning of Starr’s task: His larger mission is to fulfill one of the most breathtaking visions in American higher education. Baylor wants nothing less than to transform itself from its traditional role as a somewhat sleepy, second-rate, predominantly regional Baptist school to a world-class research university with highly ranked graduate programs.

And it wants to accomplish all that while asserting itself as a fully Christian, evangelical university with avowedly Christian professors. No Protestant university has ever done this before or even tried. Old-line schools founded on Christian principles like Harvard, Princeton and Yale historically bowed before a relentless secularism and are now places where religion is relegated to extracurricular status. Notre Dame is the only remotely comparable model. It is very definitely a world-class research institution, but not absolute in requiring its faculty to be Catholic or Christian.

Again, I’d appreciate some actual sources to back up such statements. Who — besides the reporter — sees Baylor’s traditional role as that of a “sleepy, second-rate, predominantly Baptist school?” What expert(s) — besides the reporter — verified the claim that “no Protestant university has ever done this before or even tried?” Or are readers just supposed to take the newspaper’s word for it?

As for healing Baylor’s wounds, that statement seems somewhat at odds with how Starr himself characterizes the situation he inherited. From the excerpts of Starr’s interview with the Morning News included with the story:

“The Baylor I entered was a Baylor at peace. David Garland, the interim president, brought a great and steady hand to bear for 20 months during the search process. He proved to be a great balm and healer. So I have tried not to in any way disrupt the great state of peace and tranquility that I was very privileged to inherit. There is a lot of energy on the Baylor campus, and we need all that energy poured into a positive, constructive effort. That certainly was the direction Baylor was going in when I arrived, and it has been my job not to foul it up.”

The profile ends like this:

For all of its efforts, Baylor remains both undercapitalized and unable to improve in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. And there are very real limits on how many outside grants — one of the main measures of a research university — it can expect to get.

Starr, meanwhile, is nothing but optimistic.

“It’s a great ambition,” he says. “One of the great things about the vision of 2012 is it envisions a community where we love one another and forgive one another. We have all fallen short of that as a goal, but that is wonderful to have as a stated ideal. We can just talk in those terms, and that is very liberating.”

Again, some sources — and in this case, some actual details — would be nice concerning “undercapitalized” and the U.S. News rankings. As for Starr’s final statement, the reference to “forgive one another” definitely made me curious. That sure sounds like a potential religion ghost.

Photo: In February 2010, newly named Baylor University President Kenneth Starr, right, receives congratulations from regent Chairman Dary Stone.

Typically we discuss how the mainstream media handles religious news. Occasionally we look at treatment of religion outside of news pages. A former GetReligion contributor alerted us to the New York Times house editorial for Christmas Day. It’s short, but here’s the first paragraph:

What are your Christmases made of? A tree full of ornaments as old as you are? A customary feast, if not of roast beast? Perhaps they’re composed of wassail and yule, nog and Noel, Scrooge, “Scrooged,” Pickwick and Charlie Brown. Or Handel and Berlioz, Garland, Cole, Crosby and Clooney, the Rockettes and the dance of a Sugar Plum Fairy, even Bedford Falls and “The Bishop’s Wife.” To Christians everywhere, Christmas comprises, above all, a decree from Caesar Augustus and in the same country shepherds abiding.

Quite lyrical prose, eh? But did you notice anything missing?

It really is impressive to write a Christmas editorial that steadfastly refuses to mention either the name of Jesus or the fact of his birth. And yet the remaining paragraphs — all beautifully written as well — fail to mention these things. Now, maybe the New York Times editorial page members know so few Christians that they actually believe that Christmas is — above all — mostly about a decree from Caesar Augustus and shepherds abiding. I don’t know. I’m on record pooh-poohing the Christmas wars, but have things really gotten to the point where you can’t mention Jesus’ birth in a Christmas editorial?

Over at Commonweal, longtime religion writer Peter Steinfels comes to the paper’s defense. He says that each department at the Times has its own culture, that it does many things that are egregious, but that it does many awesome things “entailing rare skills, unusual dedication, exhausting work, sacrifice of corporate profits, not infrequently even risk of life.” He mentions the horrific “Vows” column in a recent Sunday Style Section:

But the Christmas editorial discussed below is something else. It is not the editorial I might have written had I ever been invited (or accepted) to join the editorial page. There are many Christmas editorials, including some redolent with explicit celebration of Christ’s birth, that I might not have written. But they don’t stir my ire or sense of victimization either. Here we have four paragraphs of admirable, if somewhat bland, Christmas-related sentiments. It could have been written, for all I know, by an editor who was at Midnight Mass. But he or she consciously wrote it from a religiously neutral standpoint, except perhaps for the final endorsement of “prayer.” And it was written for a readership about whose religious convictions no assumptions could or would be made. This is, it seems to me, not the only possible but nonetheless a very plausible and respectful reflection of our contemporary pluralism. There really are many people who are not out to get us but who sincerely and thoughtfully don’t believe in Christ or Christianity. Are we shocked, shocked, by that? I think we should get used to it.

So what do you think? Is it really offensive to say that to Christians, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus? How is that not “religiously neutral” since it’s just a statement of fact? A brief editorial doesn’t need a dissertation on the birth of Christ, of course. But how about a brief mention?

And isn’t the biggest problem with the editorial the confusion about what — “above all” — Christmas is about for Christians? A decree and shepherds? Is it ignorant, silly or religiously neutral? One commenter wrote:

This is not a question of being “religiously neutral,” but of political correctness carried to absurdity. Do you really think any religious or secular sensibilities would have been offended had the center of the Nativity triptych been mentioned? The image that comes to mind is of a painting with a Roman Emperor on the right and shepherds on the left — and a huge empty spot in the middle of the canvas.

Steinfels says that he thinks that, if anything, the editorial writer assumed too much religious literacy. The editorialist later references the “liturgical calendar” which supports Steinfels’ view.

So what do you think? Was the piece just purposely “oblique and breezy,” overly pluralistic or just fine?