Hopefully, after more than a year of writing for GetReligion, I have won the respect of you, kind reader.

Surely, by now, you realize that I would never use GR as a personal platform — as an excuse to write about the sport that God probably watched when he rested on the seventh day.

Of course, my fellow GetReligionistas would never let their personal affection for any given athletic endeavor influence their musings in this space, either.

By the way, did I mention that today is a national holiday?

Opening Day, that is.

Speaking of, um, the field of dreams, Yahoo Sports’ major league baseball editor has a truly compelling piece on David Eckstein following a sort of family tradition by donating a kidney:

David Eckstein is up next, and he’s filled with familiar anticipation and butterflies. He’s been on-deck thousands of times as a major league ballplayer, a few steps from home plate, waiting his turn. But this is different. He’s ready to donate a kidney because that’s what people with his last name do.

He’s been preparing most of his life, and, as with an at-bat, he’s watched others experience it first. Only three months ago, David’s brother Rick, the hitting coach for the Washington Nationals, donated a kidney to their oldest brother, Ken. An entire scorecard of Ecksteins, in fact, has either needed or donated kidneys.

Everybody goes under the knife. The current Eckstein box score: Five kidney transplants with six more anticipated. Two family members and a close friend have donated kidneys.

At 2,900-plus words, this is a thorough, well-researched story that goes behind the scenes of a close-knit baseball family. In many ways, it’s a joy to read. But this is GetReligion, so you know what’s coming.

The big ole elephant in the room.

Or shall I say, the ghost.

Readers learn this about David Eckstein:

One of the smallest players in baseball at 5-feet-7, 175 pounds, he is an overachiever known for a tireless work ethic and relentlessly positive attitude.

“Everything my family went through gave me a life lesson at an early age that a game is just a game, it’s not life-or-death,” he says. “But along with that, it taught me to never take a day for granted.”

Something bigger than life or death? Is it me or does that hint at something spiritual? Religious even?

Oh, near the end of the story, there’s even this:

“My wife and I have zero concerns about having kids,” David says. “God isn’t going to give us something we can’t handle. If it’s put upon me that one of my children has this disease, that’s what God wants.”

God, huh? Is it me or is there a possibility that faith plays a role in Eckstein’s life? Except for that one paragraph, you sure wouldn’t know it from reading this story.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the reporter had included some background on Eckstein’s Jewish faith? Oh, wait, Mollie the Cardinals fan is screaming at me. Just a second. Oh, OK, it turns out that Eckstein isn’t Jewish. Even jewornotjew.com knows that:

Of course, if one’s Judaism were determined by a name, then David would be MVP of the Hadassah instead of the World Series. But Judaism isn’t name deep. David’s just a hard-working goy playing on Rosh Hashanah and getting slapped on the tuchas after a clutch hit.

Let’s try again then: Wouldn’t it be nice if the reporter had included some background on Eckstein’s Catholic faith? According to The Tidings, the weekly newspaper of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, he takes it pretty seriously:

St. Louis Cardinals players David Eckstein, John Rodriguez and Jeff Suppan, do not often tout their Catholic in public. But they believe their actions on and off the field define them as Catholics.

All three were born into the faith, attend Mass regularly and make prayer a key part of their daily lives.

Interesting. Too bad an otherwise fine piece struck out when it came to getting religion.

Now, everyone please repeat after me: “Play Ball!”

Via Rocco Palmo’s Twitter feed, I came across this Miami CBS affiliate story about the Roman Catholic archdiocese there launching a television campaign about the sacrament of penance:

The Catholic Church is trying something different to get people’s attention.

The Archdiocese of Miami is launching a television campaign to encourage people to confess their sins.

“Confession is for Catholics the way to have the sins that they have committed after Baptism to be forgiven,” said Archbishop Thomas Wenski to CBS4’s Jorge Estevez at Saint Martha’s Church in Miami.

The idea to shoot the 30 second spot came from Archbishop Thomas Wenski who wanted to remind Catholics of the meaning behind confession.

“The sacrament of penance is more about knowing we are loved, that our god is merciful, and that he forgives us,” said Archbishop Wenski.

The Archdiocese of Miami hopes to remove any anxiety attached to the sacrament of confession.

There’s not much to say about the story — it’s fairly brief and only offers one perspective. But it did get me thinking (again) about how much of what passes for religion news fails to accurately convey the life of the church. I’m Lutheran and my pastor has been gently encouraging us during Lent to avail ourselves of the opportunity for private confession and absolution. And truth be told, private confession is a pretty interesting story.

But it’s also, like, 2,000 years old. So how do you cover something that’s ancient when the church down the street is running a Whoopee Cushion series for Lent? Which one are you going to cover? And what are the consequences of giving coverage to one Lenten practice over another?

But there are ways to cover confession, reconciliation, etc., even if it is an ancient practice. Picking up on a new television campaign is one. Archdiocese of New York and Diocese of Rockville Center have a campaign called “i-Confess” that uses social and digital media to generate interest in the practice, culminating with an all-day confession event in mid-April.

The Miami television ad is embedded above. I do think the choice of having my favorite Lutheran composer accompany the ad is worth noting!

Time for a quick dip into my GetReligion guilt file to look at a Religion New Service story that intrigued several readers who felt slapped by the headline it inspired at USA Today, which was, “Parents discourage daughters who would be nuns.”

What struck me about this story was a rare mainstream press reference to what I am convinced is one of the most powerful realities in Catholic life today. More on that in a second. Here’s the top of the report:

If she had listened to her parents, Sister Jenn Graus might never have professed vows last month to join the Congregation of St. Joseph.

Though lifelong Catholics, Graus’ parents had met few nuns or sisters near their home in Sterling Heights, Mich., and assumed most were cloistered in remote convents. They were uneasy when Graus, 27, told them about her religious calling. Would they ever see her again? Would the college education they scrimped and saved for go to waste?

“They had to overcome a lot of apprehension,” Graus said. Gradually, her parents warmed to her vocational aspirations after Graus told them that, yes, she would be allowed to visit home, and no, she would not have to give up her teaching career.

Now, there are several stories that loom over this one. First and foremost, the story seeks to address what it calls a “season of demographic decline” among Catholic female religious orders. That’s putting it mildly.

And another issue must be mentioned, which is that many Catholic orders are in decline, while a few others are booming (see this interesting NPR report). To state the obvious, there seems to be a theological component to this part of the story and, yes, the Vatican seems to think that too. The RNS report briefly mentions this angle.

But the heart of this story is found, literally, much closer to home:

More than half of the women who professed final vows to join a religious order in 2010 said a parent or family member had discouraged their religious calling, according to a survey conducted by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

Only 26% of the surveyed sisters said their mother encouraged them to consider religious life, and just 16% said their father cheered their choice, according to the report, which was released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. … A more extensive survey conducted by the Chicago-based National Religious Vocation Conference in 2009 produced similar results.

Here is the specific reference that caught my attention.

Sometimes parents object because they want grandchildren, or fear losing a daughter.

They want grandchildren? That would be a factor only if the parents themselves have no other children or have, let’s say, only one other child. This implies a major change in the past half century or so in the very shape and size of the Catholic family here in American and in the Western world.

Sure enough, near the end of the story the reader is told:

At one time, having a nun or priest in the family was a source of pride for Catholics. Folklore even held that it would help parents and siblings gain a spot in heaven.

But smaller families, changing cultural norms, a lack of knowledge about religious life and the clergy sex abuse crisis all contributed to a general decline in the desirability and prestige of Catholic vocations. …

As the old saying goes, demographics are destiny.

So what we have here is a solid story on an important topic. It is also rather obvious that it contains evidence that a sequel is needed. How does one find sisters, nuns, brothers and priests in a Catholic culture that is nervous about large families? And is there a doctrinal component to that question, as well?

It’s encouraging to see news outlets continuing to cover the death of a 14-year-old girl who was accused of adultery and sentenced to 101 lashes.

One of the earlier stories on the death came from The Guardian, which covered the death with mostly generic words, like “religious justice,” “religious edicts,” and “religious clerics.” The story glossed over the significance of the case and why it might matter in a country like Bangladesh.

Thankfully, CNN has followed up on the story with more specific details. Here’s part of the intro from CNN’s Farid Ahmed and Moni Basu:

Hena Akhter’s last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

Hena dropped after 70.

Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.
Amazingly, an initial autopsy report cited no injuries and deemed her death a suicide.

The most recent news is that the doctors who carried out the autopsy are being prosecuted. The sister told CNN that the girl was harassed by her cousin, who beat and raped her. His wife dragged the girl back to their hut and beat her.

The next day, the village elders met to discuss the case at Mahbub Khan’s house, Alya said. The imam pronounced his fatwa. Khan and Hena were found guilty of an illicit relationship. Her punishment under sharia or Islamic law was 101 lashes; his 201.
Mahbub Khan managed to escape after the first few lashes.

Darbesh Khan and Aklima Begum had no choice but to mind the imam’s order. They watched as the whip broke the skin of their youngest child and she fell unconscious to the ground.

The girl’s body was exhumed and after doctors confirmed she died of internal bleeding, authorities arrested several people, including her cousin. The CNN story carefully explains the role of religion in the particular case and how it isn’t consistent with the country’s laws. Bangladesh has outlawed punishments handed down by fatwas.

Bangladesh is considered a democratic and moderate Muslim country, and national law forbids the practice of sharia. But activist and journalist Shoaib Choudhury, who documents such cases, said sharia is still very much in use in villages and towns aided by the lack of education and strong judicial systems.

The Supreme Court also outlawed fatwas a decade ago, but human rights monitors have documented more than 500 cases of women in those 10 years who were punished through a religious ruling. And few who have issued such rulings have been charged.

Last month, the court asked the government to explain what it had done to stop extrajudicial penalty based on fatwa. It ordered the dissemination of information to all mosques and madrassas, or religious schools, that sharia is illegal in Bangladesh.

It’s impossible to report on this case without discussing the role of religion—both in why she died and why it doesn’t fit with the country’s laws.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Yesterday I had a mini-meltdown when the BBC site was offline for an hour or so. I must be more reliant on them than I had realized! One of the stories I was trying to read was written by BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott, headlined “Jordan battles to regain ‘priceless’ Christian relics”:

They could be the earliest Christian writing in existence, surviving almost 2,000 years in a Jordanian cave. They could, just possibly, change our understanding of how Jesus was crucified and resurrected, and how Christianity was born.

A group of 70 or so “books”, each with between five and 15 lead leaves bound by lead rings, was apparently discovered in a remote arid valley in northern Jordan somewhere between 2005 and 2007.

The story provides all sorts of fascinating details — how the niches inside the cave were exposed, how they were marked, how a Bedouin opened the plugs and what he found. We learn that the Jordanian government believes the goods were illegally smuggled into Israel by another Bedouin. For that Bedouin’s part, he says he didn’t and that they’ve been in his family for 100 years.

We don’t get a lot of information about the various Bedouin tribes involved. I saw my first Bedouin as I traveled in Jerusalem to and from the Dead Sea. It was really interesting to see that some Bedouin are completely nomadic while others have partially or fully settled into communities. (The picture above I took from the car on the way to Arad.) The camel is of part of a herd being run by a group of young Bedouin. It might have been nice to know a bit more about what tribes the men were from or even whether they were both Sunni.

Here’s a quote explaining the significance of the find:

The director of the Jordan’s Department of Antiquities, Ziad al-Saad, says the books might have been made by followers of Jesus in the few decades immediately following his crucifixion.

“They will really match, and perhaps be more significant than, the Dead Sea Scrolls,” says Mr Saad.

And there are many other promising quotes and claims about the evidence that these are that important. By the time I was done, I was so excited I could hardly stand it.

Then I read a blog post from Larry Hurtado’s blog that gave me pause:

The reported symbols inscribed in the items seem as/more readily to point to a Jewish origin. E.g., contra Mr. Elkington, the menorah is a frequently found item in ancient Jewish art (often in grave art). Philip Davies claims to have seen what he takes to be a representation of Jerusalem and a reference to crucifixion. That might mean a Christian-produced item, but by no means necessarily.

The writing is reported as some kind of Hebrew but coded. Until the items are competently read, we don’t even know what their contents are. The items are miniature codices, of a size that suggests private usage, and, so far as I know, suggests a date much later than the first century (there seems to have been an upswing in the production of miniature codices from ca. 3rd century CE onward).

Finally, the incidence of the forgery of artefacts is so great that any responsible scholar must express profound hesitation about making any judgement on such items until they have been properly analysed. Especially in light of the “Jesus bone-box” drama, we might all take a few deep breaths and simply call for the items to be put into the public domain for competent study before more rash and pointless claims are proffered.

It’s a good reminder for reporters, too. Sometimes people will have an interest in hyping a particular claim. Make sure you balance out their perspective with a few other voices who can offer caution. It doesn’t take away from the story — simply improves it.

As always, the goal here in GetReligion land is to dig into the nuts and bolts of religion-news coverage in the mainstream press. Truth is, this is easier to do when the coverage is bad than when it is good. Besides, when we praise coverage almost no one writes comments and these good-coverage posts do not affect the trolls who say that we hate the mainstream press.

However, some stories deserve to be praised — such as the following msnbc.com investigative piece about a Wiccan believer who may or may not have lost her Transportation Security Administration job because of prejudice against her faith. As is often the case in workplace controversies, it is hard to describe the precise point where personality conflicts turn into discrimination that can end up in court.

But there are three things I can say about this story.

(1) Reporter Bill Dedman literally buries the reader in often riveting information about the conflict between witch Carole A. Smith and Mary Bagnoli, her former mentor and the woman whose complaints about Smith and her work drove this case to its still messy conclusion. No, we do not know anything about Bagnoli’s religious beliefs, in case that would be relevant.

(2) It’s clear that religion played some role in this case and that the Religion in the Workplace rules created in the era of the Clinton White House — the product of a stunningly broad coalition of religious groups — remain as relevant as ever. This story could have used a small sidebar detailing the key details of these rules.

(3) Wiccans face a tough decision in the complex marketplace that is American religion. Do they openly tell co-workers about their faith, placing the religion card on the table in case they later need to prove discrimination, or do they try to keep their faith hidden out of fear of intolerance? How would we answer that question if we were talking about Jews, Muslims, Sikhs or, oh, Pentecostal Christians?

Here is a key chunk of the story, offering a summary of the initial accusations:

The assistant director told her he was investigating a threat of workplace violence. He said that her former mentor in on-the-job training, officer Mary Bagnoli, reported that she was afraid of Smith because she was a witch who practiced witchcraft. She accused Smith of following her on the highway one snowy evening after work and casting a spell on the heater of her car, causing it not to work. Well, actually, Bagnoli said she hadn’t seen Smith’s car, but she had seen Smith. “I thought to myself,” Smith recalls, “what, did she see me flying on my broom?”

Carole Smith proudly acknowledges being a witch, a practitioner of Wicca, the pagan religion. She does have a broom, too, but just for show. Not all Wiccans use the word witch, but Smith and some others are reclaiming it as a term of respect, sometimes said to mean “wise woman.” She says she had told at least one person at work about her beliefs. But as for hexes, no, Smith said Wiccans don’t go in for that sort of foolishness.

“I was dumbfounded,” Smith said. “I told him, that’s not what Wicca is. We don’t cast spells. That’s not witchcraft. That’s black magic or voodoo or something else. To put a spell on a heater of a car, if I had that kind of power, I wouldn’t be working for TSA. I would go buy lottery tickets and put a spell on the balls.”

The assistant director, Matthew W. Lloyd, testified later that he realized immediately there was no genuine threat of workplace violence. Smith hadn’t followed anyone home — that’s the only highway going toward her home from the airport. It was just a personality conflict made worse by fear of an unfamiliar religion.

In addition to the Wiccan element of the story, Smith also turned into a whistle blower about security issues in the Albany airport security zones, even if she did this, in part, as a reprisals about the complaints about her work that were stacking up in her own personnel file.

As a reader, the most striking passages in this piece come near the end when Dedman draws on court transcripts that cut right to the chase. This is long, but it gives you a good idea about the style of this news feature.

Though she lost her case, the transcript of the hearing is revealing. The judge who ruled against her kept pointing out that the TSA officials were changing their stories.

“You expect me to believe that?” Judge William Macauley of the EEOC asked one supervisor. “You’re hedging,” he told another.

The judge was most withering in dealing with Matthew Lloyd, the assistant director who handled the workplace violence complaint. Lloyd couldn’t explain why he had not noted in his report his conclusion that there was no actual potential for workplace violence. He couldn’t explain why he had told other managers that Smith was uncooperative when she left his meeting in tears, when, as he testified, he had concluded that she was merely emotional.

And Lloyd kept changing his story about why he thought mediation “would be a good venue for Ms. Smith to alleviate any misconceptions” about her religion.

Judge Macauley: Why? Why? Why? Why should that be a good venue? It should be an irrelevant venue. If Ms. Bagnoli has a problem with her religion, then she needs to be corrected that it’s not relevant on the job and to ignore it. Am I correct?

Lloyd: Yes. You’re absolutely correct.

Judge: Let’s take the witchcraft out of it. If someone complains to you, he’s Jewish, and refers to a stereotype about his Judaism, go to mediation and work it out? Is that management’s response to that?

Lloyd: No. That would not be management’s response to that.

Judge: OK. But witchcraft takes it into a different thing? I guess. I guess witchcraft and Judaism are different in the sense that — what?

Lloyd: To be perfectly honest, sir, at the time, I wasn’t even — I didn’t know anything about witchcraft or Wiccanism. … I wasn’t even aware that Wiccanism was a recognized religion at the time. I had to research it afterwards.

Judge: What’s your impression of witchcraft?

Lloyd: I don’t have an impression of witchcraft.

Judge: You don’t have an impression? You expect me to believe that? You have no impression of witchcraft. … When someone says, “I’m a witch,” you say — you just draw a blank?

Lloyd: Well, it could be claimed they’re a good witch, or it could be, you know, the Wicked Witch of the West. I don’t know enough about it to make a determination.

When asked why the agency’s reaction to the religiously based complaint about hexes was listed on Smith’s termination letter, TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said, “But it also listed a lot of good reasons to fire her.”

This is must reading for anyone who cares about religious liberty and mainstream coverage of religion in the workplace. This, by the way, is not a liberal case or a conservative case. It’s a religious liberty case. Period.

Read it all.

The way this story from the Los Angeles Times opens, it gives the impression that the Shiva Sisters are like the Jewish mourning version of Batman & Robin.

They deal with death — specifically, Jewish mourning — with an only-in-L.A. panache. They arrange catering, equipment rentals and general assistance for after-funeral gatherings, including valet parking, video production, personal shopping and — there is no better way to say it — Jewish mothering.

“They kind of just swoop in and mother you,” said Michael Berman, Lee Weinstein’s partner of 30 years, who hired the Shiva Sisters on the advice of Rabbi Howard. “They’re not just planning a party and an event, but they’re compassionate and understanding at a time when people are grieving.”

It’s an interesting story from religion reporter Mitchell Landsberg, who does a nice job explaining what shiva means in Jewish tradition and in the Hebrew language.

The story also explains how the Shiva Sisters, Danna Black and Allison Moldo, whom I assume are Jewish but the story leaving ambiguous, help with Jewish rituals after the funeral. That is when they take over, primarily in organizing and overseeing a post-funeral catered affair. They don’t plan funerals; they don’t sit shiva. They deal with the “meal of consolation.”

Their name aside, the Shiva Sisters don’t usually have much to do with shiva, at least not in any traditional sense. Their clients tend to be people who are Jewish by birth, maybe by upbringing, but not usually by practice.

In L.A., Landsberg reports, that means Pizzaria Mozza more often than kugel.

The story does a good job generally, but it never really explains why “People who haven’t set foot in a synagogue in years want a Jewish funeral, with a rabbi presiding, and some kind of Jewish gathering afterward” when a loved one dies.

I don’t think there is a lot of mystery there. Being Jewish means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. (Obviously.) But it is an interesting issue, something that could have been further explored or at least explained to the reader in brief sentence or even appositional phrase.

I also was curious about how the gatherings organized by the Shiva Sisters would compare to similar gatherings organized for religious Jews. Landsberg notes that the rabbi touched on Jewish themes but did not say a prayer, not even the Kaddish prayer. That gives some perspective, but I would have liked a little more cross-denominational comparison.

IMAGE: The Shiva Sisters are not a part of Shiva Connect, an online service for mourning and sending condolences

If asked to prepare a list of mainstream foreign correspondents who “get religion,” Pamela Constable of the Washington Post would be in my top handful of names. Simple stated, she does not look at conflicts that are packed with religious language, symbolism and actions and then automatically assume that this is the result of “tribalism” and/or vague “sectarian” forces in the culture. In the past, I have also pointed GetReligion readers toward her evocative memoir — “Fragments of Grace: My Search for Meaning in the Strife of South Asia.”

This is not to say that there are no nits to be picked in her work (or in her copy that ends up being published after her editors have done their thing).

In this case, I want to praise her recent story that ran under the headline, “Pakistani Christian official’s slaying stirs fear, discord.” At the same time, I think it contains either a sin of omission or commission, depending on how one wants to look at it, on a topic of life-and-death importance. Here is the opening of the report:

KHUSHPUR, Pakistan — For generations, this village in Punjab province has been a rare oasis of religious harmony. Muslims and Christians attend each other’s weddings and are buried in the same cemetery. Church bells and Islamic calls to prayer ring out from spires a few muddy streets apart. In recent years, a soccer tournament with mixed-faith teams became a regional attraction.

The man most identified with this achievement was Shabbaz Bhatti, the son of a local Catholic schoolmaster, who grew up to become a passionate advocate for minority rights and, two years ago, the first Christian member of the federal cabinet. When religious conflict flared elsewhere, Khushpur’s 5,000 residents felt shielded by Bhatti’s high-profile stature.

But since March 3, when Bhatti was gunned down by Islamic extremists in the capital, Islamabad, a jittery gloom has permeated his village and the poison of suspicion has begun to creep into people’s thoughts. At the soccer field last week, a sign said, “Play for Peace,” but a rifleman was posted to guard the afternoon match and not one Muslim player showed up.

At the heart of the story, of course, is a deadly political and religious question: Should Christians continue to speak out against Pakistan’s infamous blasphemy laws, or should they be silent and try to remain in hiding, so as not to provoke more killings? This latter strategy would be consistent with the underground railroad that has long existed to help those who convert from Islam to Christianity hide or escape the nation. Christians and other religious minorities in Pakistan are not in agreement on what should happen next.

It is in that context that the Post reports this crucial background material. Note the reference to the recently assassinated Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, a Muslim who spoke out against the blasphemy laws.

Christian legislators and activists close to Bhatti are eager to take to the streets and demand rights for Pakistan’s estimated 20 million Christians. Unless new leaders quickly take his place, they warn that religious minorities — including Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmadis — will retreat into fearful shells as Islamist groups grow stronger.

Christians in Pakistan have not always faced persecution. For decades, foreign missionaries ran Pakistan’s best schools and colleges. Discrimination grew in the 1980s under the “Islamization” campaign of the dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq, but religious minorities found a patron in Benazir Bhutto, the liberal leader who became prime minister twice in the 1990s.

Bhutto was assassinated in 2007 and her widower, now President Asif Ali Zardari, named Bhatti minister of religious minority affairs. He has spoken repeatedly of the need to curb religious intolerance, but after Taseer’s slaying met with unexpected public approval, his government backed off from proposals to reform blasphemy laws, which are often used to persecute non-Muslims.

Now, read the last part of that final sentence again. The blasphemy laws, we are told, are “often” used to persecute non-Muslims, as in the previously mentioned Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmadis, a sect of Islam that is considered heretical by mainstream Muslims.

The problem, I fear, is that most readers will assume that these laws are only used to persecute minorities. Truth is, it is more common for them to be used against Muslims who clash with the often-radicalized mainstream religious authorities. In other words, what we have here is a battle INSIDE the complex world of Islam, as well as a fight over the basic human rights of religious minorities, including converts from Islam to other religions.

Consider the following passage in a Guardian commentary by Shehrbano Taseer, the daughter of the late Salmaan Taseer:

The blasphemy laws were foisted on to Pakistan by the draconian General Zia ul-Haq in 1986. Since then, more than 500 Muslims, 340 Ahmadis, 119 Christians, 14 Hindus and 10 others have been charged under the laws.

Thirty-two of those accused — and two Muslim judges — have been mowed down by Islamist vigilantes. Since 4 January, the day my father was assassinated, there have been 16 known cases in which 23 people have been affected. Once a law is made in the name of religion, no one can touch it.

Do the math. Yes, this is a story about a Christian martyr and the persecution of minorities. However, it is also a story about essential human rights for Muslims who stand up for their own faith and the rights of others. Always remember that there is no one Islam. There are Muslims being persecuted by other Muslims in a battle for the heart, soul and mind of Islam, itself.

PHOTO: From the All About Pakistan website

One of my favorite teachers in high school — all the kids loved him — was Mr. Richard Bonacquista. He was our Colorado History teacher — no one could make Colorado history more entertaining — and our baseball coach. In any case, one of the things he showed us from early first teaching days — over in mining country in the southwest part of the state — was a wooden paddle.

Now, we didn’t have corporal punishment at Douglas County High School. But apparently they had it over in Durango or what not. The paddle looked well worn and had been retired during his time there. Anyway, the way it worked was that adolescent boys who acted up were given an option. They could either take a swat with the paddle or, if they didn’t want that, it was not problem. All they would do is call the employer of the boy’s father and have him brought up out of the mine to take the boy home. The dad would lose his day’s wages. For some reason, not a single boy took that option.

I thought of that when I read this New Orleans Times Picayune. It follows up on a piece Bobby looked at earlier this month. That story was about how Archbishop Gregory Aymond had forbidden the use of corporal punishment at St. Augustine High School. The piece was fascinating, but only told his side of the story, and hinted at larger social issues. Keep that in mind when you read this lede:

More than 500 students, parents and other supporters of St. Augustine High School’s policy of using corporal punishment marched Saturday morning on an Archdiocese of New Orleans office to press their message with Archbishop Gregory Aymond, who has called on school officials to abandon the 60-year practice.

The protesters, who posted three requests on the locked doors of the archdiocese’s Walmsley Avenue offices, called on the archbishop to issue a “public, unequivocal retraction … of all statements linking St. Augustine disciplinary policies with violence, particularly in the New Orleans community.” …

Protesters on Saturday also demanded proof of the archbishop’s claims that parents have complained about the paddling policy, along with evidence for a study that Aymond has cited to bolster his position.

The archbishop has said corporal punishment institutionalizes violence, runs counter to Catholic teaching and good educational practice, and violates local archdiocesan school policy.

Citing similar concerns, the Josephite trustees who founded and own the high school imposed a temporary paddling ban last year, in circumvention of local school board wishes.

The piece does a good job of covering the basics and wrangling the various complaints of people associated with the school. Many of them say the issue isn’t even so much about the paddle as the rights of African-American parents to educate and discipline in the manner they see fit. But the story also has some interesting quotes from students who support corporal punishment. Then others weigh in:

Disciplinarian Sterling Fleury said the paddle is one of many corrective tools at the school. It is not used every day, he said, but it has value as an “immediate consequence.”

Since the paddling policy was suspended, behavior problems among students have risen, said Dr. Michael Hunter, a physician for the football team. “There are more detentions, more suspensions and more dismissals,” he said.

“I would hate to think it has anything to do with race,” Hunter said. “If the paddle is not causing something detrimental, why take it away?”

Hunter, a 1974 alumnus, said he was raised by a single mother who knew that sending him to St. Augustine would “set me straight.” The school is renowned for producing graduates who have gone on to become civic and professional leaders.

“Young black men are dying in the streets, and we are trying to break that cycle of violence by teaching morals, values and excellence,” said Dwight McKenna, a physician and a 1958 alumnus. “Without St. Aug I don’t know what would have happened to me. St. Aug taught me to be a man.”

It’s all very interesting and nicely written. And the religious and racial themes are developed through the piece. However, I’d like to know more about the specific Catholic arguments for and against corporal punishment and related issues (such as obeying the will of the archbishop). For outsiders such as myself, this is information I don’t possess. I have my own biases with regard to corporal punishment, particularly outside the home, but I know the issue isn’t as cut and dry as we sometimes make it out. For instance, I wrote about a study that showed that limited corporal punishment correlated positively with behavioral and academic outcomes. And religion certainly must affect views on the use and misuse of physical discipline. It would be nice to read more about how religion motivates the various sides in this conflict.

(For an explanation of the headline and art, see here.)

In an Associated Press story in 2004, I let my creative juices flow this way:

In the Bible Belt, fried-chicken fellowships and potbellied pastors are as much a part of the culture as NASCAR races and sentences that start with “Y’all.” Churches traditionally have not worried much about waistlines.

I don’t know if that paragraph would win a GetReligion seal of approval, but I enjoyed writing it at the time.

Fast-forward seven years, and the size of religious people’s bellies is again making news. And like yours truly, most media are having some fun with the story.

The headline at MSNBC.com:

Praise the lard? Religion linked to obesity in young adults

Time magazine’s take:

Why Going to Church Can Make You Fat

Over at USA Today, Cathy Lynn Grossman describes it this way:

Uh-oh. All those pizzas luring young adults to church activities may have unintended consequences. The devil may be in the pepperoni: Folks who stick with church for years often wind up fatter than their unchurched peers.

The news peg drawing reporters’ interest? A study by Northwestern University medical researchers. A Northwestern news release provides the basic facts and quotes used in most of the news reports:

CHICAGO — Could it be the potato salad? Young adults who frequently attend religious activities are 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age as young adults with no religious involvement, according to new Northwestern Medicine research. This is the first longitudinal study to examine the development of obesity in people with various degrees of religious involvement.

“We don’t know why frequent religious participation is associated with development of obesity, but the upshot is these findings highlight a group that could benefit from targeted efforts at obesity prevention,” said Matthew Feinstein, the study’s lead investigator and a fourth-year student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “It’s possible that getting together once a week and associating good works and happiness with eating unhealthy foods could lead to the development of habits that are associated with greater body weight and obesity.”

Previous Northwestern Medicine research established a correlation between religious involvement and obesity in middle-age and older adults at a single point in time. By tracking participants’ weight gain over time, the new study makes it clear that normal weight younger adults with high religious involvement became obese, rather than obese adults becoming more religious.

Later, the news release notes:

The authors caution that their findings should only be taken to mean people with frequent religious involvement are more likely to become obese, and not that they have worse overall health status than those who are non-religious. In fact, previous studies have shown religious people tend to live longer than those who aren’t religious in part because they tend to smoke less.

Most of the news reports on the study are about as thin as religious people are, presumably, fat. CBS News, Religion News Service and the Los Angeles Times all basically rewrote the news release.

I was pleased, however, to find a few cases where news organizations dug deeper, although obvious questions — the religious breakdown of those studied, the specific religious activities involved, just to name a few — remain mostly unanswered.

One of my first questions was this: Could it be that religious people marry younger and, thus, start putting on more pounds because of that?

The Chicago Tribune addressed this question:

(Purdue University sociologist Ken) Ferraro, who was not involved in the study, called it “intriguing and important.” But he wondered whether the observed effect was only seen in women. And he also questioned the role of marriage, since the study focuses on the time period when many Americans get hitched.

“We know that weight gain is common after marriage and that marriage is highly valued in most religious groups,” he said. “Thus, one wonders if the results could be partially due to religious people being more likely to get married earlier and then gaining weight.”

ABC News provided, by far, the most insightful coverage that I found. Even the lede managed to nail the bigger picture:

Americans who are religious are more likely to be happy, healthy … and hefty?

ABC also delved into the spiritual and theological realms.

On the spiritual side:

“Another possible explanation is that religion encourages a focus on the afterlife and might thus distract a bit from focusing on the health goals in this one,” said Katz.

Concerning theology:

Sociologists Krista Cline and Kenneth Ferraro noted that, in America, religions tend to focus on constraining sins such as smoking, drinking and promiscuity, while gluttony became a more acceptable vice to indulge in.

Dr. Keith Ayoob, director of the Nutrition Clinic at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, added that amid the atmosphere of restriction, food can also become “a legitimate, socially acceptable drug.”

ABC even questioned whether the study’s failure to account for location might be an issue:

The southeastern part of the United States, often referred to as the Bible Belt, has the highest concentration of religious populations and also contains some of the states with the highest prevalence of obesity.

While Feinstein’s study draws on populations from around the country (Alabama, Minnesota, Illinois, and California), researchers did not control for location and, hence, it may have been that the Alabama participants skewed the association by having large populations of overweight and highly religious participants.

Not the best writing in the world, but ABC presents a fuller — fatter, if you will — account than other reports and raises intriguing questions.

MSNBC also showed some initiative in interviewing real religious people. (No, I don’t think the reporter asked their weight.) This was my favorite section of that report:

Jessica Ward, a 30-year-old notary public who regularly attends the Kent Lutheran Church, in Kent, Wash., says potlucks can definitely be filled with delicious temptation.

“You don’t see a lot of fresh stuff at most church potlucks,” she says. “You’ll see spaghetti and Swedish meatballs and three or four varieties of potato casserole or green bean casserole or Jell-O salads. Plus heaps and piles of desserts — lots of pies and cakes and cookies.”

Hmmmmm, that sounds like a lot of church potlucks that I’ve attended. I don’t know why, but suddenly, I’m hungry. Food and fellowship, anyone?