As several media outlets consider the move towards nonprofit journalism, Religion News Service recently took the plunge with a $3.5 million three-year grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. RNS, the only nonreligious service covering religion and ethics exclusively, becomes a nonprofit tomorrow under Religion News LLC.*, a new parent company over Religion Newswriters Association.

Kevin Eckstrom says that while most religious subscribers have held on during recent cutbacks, about 25 to 30 percent of daily newspapers unsubscribed to the service in the last five years. The news service also dealt with reduced staff over the past 4-5 years, especially since Newhouse News Service shut down in 2008. Eckstrom says that while content will not change under the move, it will expand from three to four and a half employees and seek funding for multimedia journalism, Jewish beat coverage and theme story coverage of areas like Islam in America and religion and politics.

Eckstrom, who has been at RNS for 11 years and editor for five, will move to an office at the National Press Club while reporters Daniel Burke and Adelle Banks will work from home. I recently spoke with Eckstrom about RNS’ changes, future Patch-like religion hubs and what to expect from mainstream religion coverage during the industry changes.

How do you feel about all the changes?
It’s been a rocky ride. It’s been a good ride on the other hand because we have really good staff and we’ve had really good owners. It’s been frustrating to try to keep up the same quality and quantity with fewer people. By being forced to pick and choose the stories I think they’ve gotten better. Lean times force you to make choices.

Do you think more media outlets will try to move to a nonprofit status?
It doesn’t work for everybody. The scrutiny that the IRS conducts is extremely heavy. It took us much longer than expected to get approval. You will see more of it, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a panacea for the industry.

How do you differentiate your service from the Associated Press or religious publications? Do you see the AP as competition?
Historically we have, but that’s changed last couple of years. The AP has resources and reach that we will never be able to have. If you’re an RNS subscriber, you can count on getting anywhere from 25-35 stories a week and you won’t find that consistent, knowledgeable coverage in other places. We’re trying to reach people on the Huffington Post, in USA Today, Christian Century, Christianity Today, so we have to write for a pretty broad audience.

People seem less interested in their particular region and self-identify more with maybe their hobbies or interests. Are people interested in broad religion stories simply because they are religious?
We never had a public following before, but that changed when we started to put stuff online. We’re on Facebook and Twitter, and we have the religion news round-up and an e-mail subscription. Judging from the subscription lists, readers tend to work in religion, have an interest in it, are religious themselves or they’re part of the new atheist crowd. Judging from the comments, Catholics tend to comment on Catholic stories and evangelicals tend to comment on evangelical and general Christian stories. We get a lot of people interested in ethics.

If newspapers are cutting off your services, what does that mean for religion coverage in the mainstream media?
You’re not seeing it regularly. Sometimes it’s in metro, sometimes it’s on A1, sometimes it’s in living. It tends to revolve around controversy, scandal or celebrities, and it gets superficial. When you’re not doing it all the time, you’re joining the herd on some big sexy story. That being said, there are a lot of people who are writing about religion online. I worry sometimes about the lack of professionalism where it can devolve into people in their pajamas spouting off. Their version of truth is different from everyone else’s but there’s no editor to tell them that. The online universe is a beast that needs to be fed constantly and is never satisfied.

Part of your plan is to create 20 local community-based websites for local/national religion coverage, which sounds like Patch.com.
It’s kind of like if Patch.com and RNS got together and had a baby this is what it would look like. The idea is to create religion coverage where there isn’t anyone already. The entire state of New Jersey and places like Wyoming and New Hampshire do not have full-time religion reporters. Some of the content will filter up to RNS, and some RNS content will filter down.

Who will contribute to the sites or edit them?
Each of the seven or eight sites will be run by a full-time veteran journalist who will rely on freelancers edit the content, post it, do sales and marketing and raise support on the local level. We already have a person to oversee the whole thing. I don’t know if it’s public yet, but it’s someone who is well known to RNA and to the beat in charge of orchestrating the whole thing.

You’re starting these in the coming year?
We’re hoping to have the first test run in Columbia, Missouri in partnership at the folks at University of Missouri as a laboratory, starting it by the fourth quarter of 2011. Ad revenue will be a part of what we do, but you can’t run a business off of ad revenue online.

As part of your online strategy, do you worry about competing for traffic with your subscribers when you post stories?
That’s a good question. We want to build an audience. When people are reading our story on Huffington Post, we’re happy they’re reading our story period. We wish people are reading it on our site. We know not everyone knows to find us and we’re not able to put everything on our site. We’re trying to build the brand, the audience and the visibility.

You’ve mentioned a push towards multimedia. Will you hire someone to do that or will you hope your current reporters do that?
The plan is to have a semi-full time multimedia editor to figure out how to tell stories in a visually and audio. The model would be NPR, the gold standard in how to tell stories in various formats. We’re not going to give our reporters a Flipcam and tell them to do video and give us an 800-word story because it’s not realistic.

What kinds of religion stories do you think people want to see through multimedia?
The way we’re thinking about it initially is not that there is print content, video content and audio content. There’s content and it comes in different forms as companion pieces. Maybe you pull together the best 2-3 minutes for audio excerpts from an interview. Instead of producing a fancy eight-minute piece, throw up a couple YouTube clips from previous speeches.

You seem to be producing more 2-300-word briefs instead of a few longer pieces.
Before, we had at least three pieces and it had to be at least 350 words long. We felt like it was a straightjacket. We’re able to cover more things and give it the length it deserves. I noticed that when I read the paper, the briefs were three paragraphs when our briefs were seven or eight. Shorter is probably what people are going to read anyway.

With your D.C. presence, are you concerned with a potential political filter?
D.C. makes a lot of sense because there are so many institutions here and so many stories that traditional media might not cover. For example, we were writing about the chaplains in “don’t ask don’t tell” six months before other outlets. Obviously CT did that, too. There are other stories here related to religion and international affairs, the Supreme Court and the budget. We’ll probably always have a Washington presence, but we’re so virtual that we’ll be in New York and we’re looking at possibly being in the Chicago area. It would be hard to write a lot about religion and moral values and national priorities from somewhere other than here.

*Updated per Ann Rodgers’ comment below.

Hey Ryan, we feel your pain.

That’s my first response to the reader who contacted GetReligion concerning a CBS News report on the Joplin, Mo., tornado relief effort:

This story was just beyond weird and frustrating as you can’t help but want to yell, “Who are these strangers showing up to help?”

Check out the headline and subhead on the piece:

Strangers flocking to help Joplin residents

84-year-old Joplin widow benefits from the kindness of total strangers as she rebuilds after the disaster

Not only are the mysterious helpers strangers; they are total strangers.

Ryan said his favorite paragraph from the report was this one:

About 30 volunteers suddenly appeared one day, and they lifted Mary’s furniture and her spirits for a while. But when there is so much need, help has to keep moving.

Ryan’s commentary on that graf:

This makes it sound as if people are like clouds and just appear out of nowhere. What brought these people? This might even be worse than a religion ghost behind it all, as I am left wondering in general what the motives are of these people just suddenly showing up to help strangers.

Just the other day, I scratched my (bald) head over tornado coverage by CNN that nailed the religion angle in the written version of a story but totally ignored God and faith in the video report.

In this case, I clicked the embedded CBS video to see if it matched the story Ryan called to our attention. In fact, the video itself helped answer some of the perplexing questions — as much as CBS tried to ignore them.

A soundbite from one of the volunteers says:

We prayed that morning that if there was a need that we would know it, and God works these things out.

Hmmmmm, does it sound like — just possibly — there’s a faith angle here? The woman quoted has a son who’s wearing a green T-shirt that appears to display a Scripture on the back. Again, hmmmm …

In the same video, many of the “strangers” who show up to volunteer are wearing orange T-shirts. The writing on the front of the T-shirts says, “Samaritan’s Purse.” I do believe that Samaritan’s Purse is an evangelical Christian ministry with disaster relief experts and volunteer teams on the ground in Joplin. Even the video fails to mention Samaritan’s Purse, but you can’t miss the T-shirts … or the volunteers giving the older woman a Bible and asking to pray with her.

My, my, my.

Hey Ryan, did I mention that we feel your pain?

Last time I checked, there are about 1.3 billion Roman Catholics in this world.

That’s an important statistic, but I am not sure that it tells us much about the financial health of Christendom’s largest flock.

Financial health? Say what?

There are plenty of cynical people who believe that when religious leaders look at their flocks, all they see is dollar signs. Thus, 1.3 billion Catholics equals a lot of money in offering plates. You get the picture.

However, I have never seen this concept advocated in such a naked fashion as in the transcript of this recent PBS report that ran under the headline “Catholic Church Looks to Lead Conversation on Combating HIV/AIDS.”

Scan this quickly and see if you see what I saw (after, yes, a tip from a reader):

JUDY WOODRUFF: Ray, since we know that the pope is neither a physician, nor someone who holds a government position connected to health, why is what he is saying in this area of HIV transmission getting so much attention?

RAY SUAREZ: Judy, there’s a massive audience for whatever the Catholic Church teaches in this regard, because you have to remember that, with over $1 billion members around the world, one out of every six people on planet Earth is a Catholic.

And the Catholic Church has been very hard at work in the hardest-hit countries in the world when it’s come to the scourge of HIV and AIDS. There are, in fact, 117,000 Catholic medical facilities, from clinics in the deepest jungle to large urban hospitals in the developing world, that are involved in treating both people that are already infected with AIDS and trying to prevent the transmission to at-risk populations.

OK, OK, it’s a typo. I know that.

Somewhere in the next day or two or three, there is almost certainly going to be a PBS news intern who says “oops,” once someone in the public broadcasting matrix sees that wayward dollar sign.

This is proof, I guess, that — when sitting in an office inside the DC Beltway — it’s hard to type the word “billion” without, by reflex, hitting the key that says “$.”

Correction please!

I’m not much for displays of civil religion but there’s one recent governmental intervention that really chaps my hide. That’s where the government requires citizens to submit prayers for governmental approval before they’re uttered.

I rarely hear a prayer I agree with and I’ve yet to be too bothered by it. I expect that individuals praying publicly are praying according to their own conscience, not mine, and I respond accordingly. If I’m able to pray along, great. If I’m not, no sweat off my brow. Fact is, the prayers that absolutely horrify me the most are the ones that attempt to be “inclusive” by bringing in not just a single religion I don’t adhere to but as many of them as possible.

But this governmental trend received pushback last week and the Houston Chronicle was there to report on it. I thought the story was pretty good and since it relates to Memorial Day, today is a fitting day to look at it. Headlined, “VA agrees not to interfere with holiday prayers: Agency backs down after losing court fight over pastor’s mention of Jesus in Memorial Day invocation at Houston cemetery,” reporter Terri Langford writes:

The nation’s agency for military veterans has agreed to stay out of religious refereeing for now, backing down from its attempt to tell a minister how to craft a prayer for a Memorial Day invocation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Hindrichs told federal District Judge Lynn Hughes that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will not demand that Memorial Day prayers at Houston National Cemetery Monday be as non-denominational as possible.

I was going to criticize the use of the term “non-denominational” but I think it’s actually correct. We so often see it used by evangelical Christians as a marketing term for a particular type of Christian but it really does probably mean “not tied any religion.” I always think it’s funny, though, that these government approved prayers would be perfectly at home in some churches — so is it really accurate to call them nondenominational? I’m not sure.

The change of heart came one day after the judge granted the Rev. Scott Rainey a temporary restraining order against the agency after officials told the pastor to edit his prayer to make it as general and non-denominational as possible. Rainey’s prayer, submitted for review at the agency’s request included the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and thanked Jesus Christ, the Christian savior, in closing.

No, that’s not right. Here’s how it ended: “While respecting people of every faith today, it is in the name of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, that I pray. Amen.” That’s not “thanking” Jesus but praying in his name. Still, the story got good quotes, such as this one:

“I’ve never said a prayer in my life that didn’t end with Jesus Christ,” Rainey said after Friday’s hearing. “It was unrealistic expectation for me not to include the name of Jesus Christ.”

That’s why Rainey, who has prayed at this ceremony before, filed suit. The judge said officials at the agency were going too far and telling citizens precisely how to honor veterans:

“The government cannot gag citizens when it says it is in the interest of national security, and it cannot do it in some bureaucrat’s notion of cultural homogeneity,” Hughes wrote.

See, stories about lawsuits can be interesting. Anyway, nicely done for an update on a story that will probably include many more updates. I hope everyone is having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. Do let us know if you saw any particularly good or bad coverage of the day’s events.

We are going to be done with Oprah Winfrey finale stuff sooner or later. I promise.

However, you will not be surprised — if you read some of the amazing first-person sermons that appeared in major media after her last rite — that I was still thinking about America’s favorite guru when it came time for this week’s Crossroads taping. That’s the GetReligion podcast, of course. Click here to listen to it (or head on over to iTunes and get it automatically every week).

I don’t want to add a whole lot here to what gets said in the podcast, but I do want to connect a few of the dots about why this subject fascinates me so much.

Let’s start here. If you had been reading GetReligion from the get go, you know that we have always argued that the shape and content of the Religious Left has been one of the most under-covered subjects in the mainstream press. The Religious Right has generated oceans of ink, while many corresponding subjects, debates and trends on the left have received little attention.

I mean, right now in Google News, a search for “Religious Left” gets you 19 references. A few minutes later, a search for “Religious Right” gets you 330. Actually, that’s a down day for the right. It’s time for a Sarah Palin bus tour!

I bring this up because, in my opinion, the decline of the Protestant mainline left — a basic fall of about 40 percent in membership in the last third of the 20th century — was one of the most under-covered subjects in that era. But while the moral, cultural and religious left declined in pews, pulpits and at altars, it’s clout evolved and grew elsewhere.

Like on television, at the mall and at the multiplex. And in Oprah’s Book Club.

One could also make the case that, without the decline of the mainline left, there never would have been a growing hole in the public square to be filled, for better and for worse, by the Religious Right.

So the Religious Right became the huge news story. The opening that allowed its rise? That received less analog and digital ink.

This leads us to that amazing Sally Quinn quote the other day in the Washington Post “On Faith” cyber-section, the one about the Rt. Rev. Oprah Winfrey and her impact on American civil religion (I think that is what she was saying changed):

In recent years, religious behaviors have changed dramatically. More people have left traditional religions to join congregations which are self validating. Gone were the fire and brimstone, you’re-all-going-to-hell-unless-you-accept-Jesus-Christ-as-your-personal-savior, the judgment, the fear, the punishment. Many religious and spiritual leaders have taken the lead on this, realizing people don’t want to be lectured to and made to feel guilty for common human failings. People want to feel hopeful, as though they matter. They want to feel empowered.

Oprah led the way.

So Oprah led the way to a faith without fear, judgment or punishments — eternal or temporal. A faith without a Savior who would ever dare to say, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

As a reporter, Quinn’s summery of the Oprah gospel sounds like the message that has grown to become the heart of the mainline liberal Protestant faith, especially at the level of seminaries and ecclesiastical bureaucracies.

So here is my question: Was Oprah the most successful mainline Protestant evangelist of her era? If so, why does her theology work so well at the mall and not in the sanctuaries of many or most mainline churches? I don’t know how one would investigate that story — but there is a story there.

Enjoy the podcast.

In Christianity Today, LaTonya Taylor offered the definitive look at “The Church of O” 10 years ago. There are many reasons why I’m not the type of woman to get into Oprah Winfrey, but her religious views always intrigued me.

Earlier this week, Tmatt looked at some of the coverage of Oprah’s goodbye show. He wrote “She led the way in creating what I have long called ‘OprahAmerica,’ it’s a culture defined by emotion, feelings and stories, not by acts of creeds, doctrines and sacraments that have eternal consequences.” But how many articles got at that issue?

In the New York Times this weekend, Mark Oppenheimer looked at “The Church of Oprah Winfrey and a Theology of Suffering.” And as you might expect of a religion column, it’s all about the unique religion advanced by Oprah, “at once Christian and pantheistic.” The first part of the article talks about some of the Christian strains in her theology, with interesting quotes from Eva Illouz, a sociologist:

While respecting Ms. Winfrey’s use of her Christian heritage, Dr. Illouz ultimately concluded that the talk-show host might be something of a false prophet. That is because, she said, Ms. Winfrey and her cadre of self-help experts treated suffering as something beneficial. Ms. Winfrey turned the black church’s ethos of self-reliance in the face of suffering into an exaltation of suffering itself.

“By making all experiences of suffering into occasions to improve oneself,” Dr. Illouz wrote, “Oprah ends up — absurdly — making suffering into a desirable experience.”

And if, as Ms. Winfrey’s teachings suggest, strong women “can always transcend failure by the alchemy of their own will and of therapy, then people have only themselves to blame for their misery,” Dr. Illouz said.

Very interesting. We then get an intriguing discussion of Charles Grandison Finney and the “anxious bench.”

But I also enjoyed the part of the article that looked at the non-Christian aspects of Oprah’s theology:

Yet the Church of Winfrey is at most partly Christian. Her show featured a wide, if drearily similar, cast of New Age gurus. As Karlyn Crowley writes in her contribution to “Stories of Oprah: The Oprahfication of American Culture,” an essay collection published last year, Ms. Winfrey excelled at offering “spiritual alternatives to the mainstream religions” in which many of her followers grew up. Ms. Winfrey presided over something like a “New Age feminist congregation,” Dr. Crowley writes. …

In her earnest spiritual seeking, Ms. Winfrey gave platforms to some rather questionable types. She hosted the self-help author Louise Hay, who once said Holocaust victims may have been paying for sins in a previous life. She championed the “medical intuitive” Caroline Myss, who claims emotional distress causes cancer. She helped launch Rhonda Byrne, creator of the DVD and book “The Secret,” who teaches that just thinking about wealth can make you rich. She invited the “psychic medium” John Edward to help mourners in her audience talk to their dead relatives.

Oppenheimer’s reported column ends with this type of criticism of Winfrey’s religious exuberance and failure to ask tough questions of “psychics and healers and intuitives.” Whether you agree or disagree with Oppenheimer, this is a thoughtful and well argued analysis of Oprah’s theology and its limitations. It’s nice to read something of this nature in the weekend paper.

The Los Angeles Times doesn’t much do stories like this one anymore. A shade under 2,000 words, with a good hook and decent depth, this weekend feature about an Okie convert to Islam.

The lede gets the reader off to a good start:

At the pulpit of an inner-city Chicago mosque, the tall blond imam begins preaching in his customary fashion, touching on the Los Angeles Lakers victory the night before, his own gang involvement as a teenager, a TV soap opera and then the Day of Judgment.

“Yesterday we watched the best of seven…. Unfortunately we forget the big final; it’s like that show ‘One Life to Live,’ ” Imam Suhaib Webb says as sleepy boys and young men come to attention in the back rows. “There’s no overtime, bro.”

The sermon is typical of Webb, a charismatic Oklahoma-born convert to Islam with a growing following among American Muslims, especially the young. He sprinkles his public addresses with as many pop culture references as Koranic verses and sayings from the prophet. He says it helps him connect with his mainly U.S.-born flock.

Since reporter Raja Abdulrahim references a Lakers win, we know that the was working on this story for at least a few weeks. And the quote he chose is, well, a bit bizarre; bizarre because it perfectly captures what the reporter is going for. She catches his subject making a pop culture reference and using a bit of slang, even if it does seem a little dated.

The story continues in fairly good fashion.

Though I had to wonder if some of the statements were too general. We learn that Webb gives sermons at his “virtual mosque,” via his “popular” website — Define: popular — and that Webb is a resident scholar with the Muslim American Society, which is vaguely described as “a national religious and education group.” But of greatest significance was this:

Webb is at the forefront of a movement to create an American-style Islam, one that is true to the Koran and Islamic law but that reflects this country’s customs and culture. Known for his laid-back style, he has helped promote the idea that Islam is open to a modern American interpretation. At times, his approach seems almost sacrilegious.

That’s interesting. By now, I would have expected to have heard Webb’s name if he truly is a leading figure in this movement. When I Googled his name, I found a Wikipedia page, his personal website and some YouTube videos, but only one other mention in the mainstream press.

And sacrilegious? That’s a pretty big claim. But the story backs that up with some fascinating anecdotes — like Webb suggesting at a Muslim conference that mosques adopt a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy in regards to gays.

It turns out that Webb grew up in the Church of Christ — something Bobby and I know a little about — and I can’t dispute his account of the birthday gift that CoCers get: “a Bible with your name on it.” Although his teenage years weren’t like those of anyone I knew at a Church of Christ:

His teenage time in the gang and as a DJ at house parties figure prominently in his speeches and public persona, as a way to gain traction with young Muslims. That appears to work, at least with some. After his sermon in Chicago, a boy of about 12 turned to his mother, asking, “Did you hear his speech? He said he’s from the ‘hood.”

Webb was introduced to Islam at 19. He was selling music tapes at a swap meet when he met a Muslim man selling incense and handing out Korans. Webb took one home and read it in secret for several months.

He converted during his freshman year at the University of Central Oklahoma and broke the news to his parents at Thanksgiving dinner that year — when his mother had cooked a turkey and a ham, the latter forbidden by Islam.

The story goes on to discuss the work Webb is now doing and to show ways he is fusing American culture with Islam. But oddly the story doesn’t explain why Webb converted, other than that he had already been doubting the Trinity.

Indeed, despite it’s length this story leaves some questions unanswered. However, I still found it a welcome piece for a weekend edition of the Los Angeles Times. That may be based more on general frustration with the lack of quality religion reporting in the LAT than a reflection of the quality of this feature. But it still made for a good read.

It’s so easy to make mistakes on the religion beat, especially when covering someone as complicated as President Barack Obama.

The following Haaretz newspaper story is rather old, but it has just come to our attention (care of that lurker named Douglas LeBlanc). The fact that it is several months old, for me, only makes it more interesting — because the editors of this influential Israeli publication have not run a correction. The error in it is rather jarring, almost spit out one’s morning coffee level.

However, before you read the top of the report you need to look at the video with this post and realize the number of times videos and photos such as this have appeared in news reports of various kinds around the globe.

Now, here we go.

The Anglican bishop in Israel, Suheil Dawani, petitioned the Jerusalem District Court … demanding that Interior Minister Eli Yishai return his visa, which was confiscated after it was discovered that he sold land to Palestinians.

Six months ago, Dawani, who has served as the top Anglican official in Israel since 2007, was informed that the Interior Ministry had canceled his visa and that he would be deported from the country. In the lawsuit, Dawani’s attorneys note that the Anglican Church has 90 million followers, among them U.S. President Barack Obama, former president George H.W. Bush, and former vice president Dick Cheney.

Dawani is also an official emissary of the queen of England, who holds the official title of head of the Anglican Church. By dint of his position, Dawani is a frequent guest at official state ceremonies, according to the lawsuit.

Spot the error? Yes, I know that former Vice President Dick Cheney is a United Methodist, not an Episcopalian (in the context of the United States). I mean the other error — the reference stating that President Obama is an Episcopalian. According to the story, this error was included in documents filed at the Jerusalem District Court. That makes it official?

As I hinted earlier, I assume that many journalists around the world have simply seen too many pictures of Obama and his family visiting St. John’s Episcopal Church, which is across the street from the White House. Thus, it is often called the “church of the presidents.”

However, this error does raise an interesting journalistic question, one that I was discussing with a Washington Post reporter just the other day.

The question is rather simple: Is it still accurate to say that Obama is a member of the freewheeling, at times iconoclastic denomination called the United Church of Christ? After all, it has been a long time since Obama broke his ties with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and resigned his membership at the Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago.

Here inside the Beltway, Obama has visited St. John’s, as well as a few major African-American congregations. However, his family has never joined a church — citing security concerns. They are reported to attend frequent services at the Camp David chapel.

So, what is Obama, in terms of denominational affiliation? The UCC is — by heritage and history — a very congregational flock, even though it has a highly outspoken leadership squad at the national level. Obama is no longer a member of a UCC congregation. He has not joined another. Thus, for reporters, is it accurate to say that he remains a member of that trailblazing denomination on the left wing of mainline Protestantism?

One more question, asked with tongue in cheek: Has Obama ever met with Bishop Dawani? I mean, face to face? Just asking. Maybe the president confided his inner Anglicanism, which led to the inaccurate reference in the court document?

Stranger things have happened on the religion beat.

As a journalism professor, one of the toughest challenges that I face is helping students learn how to avoid what I call “buried pronoun disease.”

We all use pronouns all the time and, when journalists interviewing people, they must be careful to make sure to keep the pronouns straight. When a bishop says, “If our church keeps doing that, we are going to slide right into a fiery abyss,” it’s pretty important to know precisely what the word “that” meant, to know to which earlier noun it was linked in the bishop’s previous remarks.

I have reasons to bring this up and, in this case, I want to make it clear that I do not think that the reporter is to blame for any of this confusion. I know that the reporter — veteran Cathy Grossman of USA Today — had the information down straight because she was interviewing me and I know what we discussed and in what order we discussed it.

So what is the subject? The Rev. Harold Camping and his apocalyptic May 21 line in the dirt, of course. The headline atop the resulting news story: “Doomsday predictions no laughing matter for some.”

Here is how I would word the key question in Grossman’s interview with me: “Some Christians are upset that comedians and others are making fun of Camping and his attempt at predicting the precise timing of the Second Coming of Jesus. Why are they so upset?”

We talked about several issues, but the key is that I stressed that many traditional Christians were upset because some journalists could not seem to separate Camping’s beliefs — rooted in a very specific camp within the much larger world of conservative evangelical Protestantism — from ancient Christian beliefs about the mystery of when Christ would return. The Second Coming, as I mentioned the other day in a GetReligion post, is in the Nicene Creed. That’s not a fringe belief, in terms of basic Christian doctrines.

Camping’s views are linked to whole “Left Behind” world of Premillennial Dispensationalism, a relatively modern — as opposed to ancient — method of biblical interpretation that flourished in the 20th century. This is the whole world of “the Book of Revelations tells us how many Israeli jets can land on the head of a pin when Iran gets the bomb” exegesis and so forth and so on.

When you look at the Christian world, belief in the Second Coming is normal. Belief that someone can pin a time and a date on this mystery is not normal. It may be common in a minority slice of believers, but not in the church as a whole.

So with that thought in mind, here is a piece of the Grossman report in which I am quoted, including a quote that surely made many of my friends at church and in the news biz scratch their heads.

The Center for Inquiry — a voice of atheists and secularists — took note of a Pew Forum survey finding that “41% say Jesus Christ will return within the next 40 years” and called it “both disturbing and unfortunate that so many still cling to what can only be described as a fairy tale.”

Terry Mattingly, founder of the religion media critique site GetReligion.org, tracked public reaction post-May 21 with dismay.

“When you laugh at this, you’re laughing at Mainline Protestants and creedal Christians — Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans and more. You’re laughing at everyone from Billy Graham to the pope, laughing at historic Christianity,” Mattingly says.

Mattingly suggests people go with the old bumper sticker advice: “‘Jesus is coming. Get busy.’ It means, ‘Do the work you are supposed to do and just don’t sweat it.’ “

First of all, note that the Pew Forum survey introduced yet another twist on Second Coming beliefs — citing the number of believers who say they believe that “Jesus Christ will return within the next 40 years.” Note that this answer did not require anyone to say that they knew when this event happen or whether they thought it was possible to predict its timing. People who said “yes” to question could be Premillennial Dispensationalists — or not. There’s no way to know.

Enter moi — with a pronoun.

So what does the word “this” mean, in the quote that beings “When you laugh at this”?

It appears that “this” refers to the May 21 event in general. It could refer, somehow, to the “40 years then boom” crowd. But in terms of strict grammar, “this” would refer to “public reaction post-May 21” or something like that — which makes no sense. I suspect some cutting took place in that part of this USA Today article.

So to what noun did “this” refer in the actual interview? What was I talking about? Well, “this” referred to the ancient belief in the Second Coming, as expressed in the Nicene Creed. See how that links to my references to mainliners, Catholics, the Orthodox, Lutherans and others? Note the word “creedal”? Then I mention Billy Graham and the pope, in that context. Graham has always had a strong belief that the Second Coming is near, but has never been interested in predicting a precise time of arrival.

In other words, I was saying that the tsunami of media laughter at the beliefs of Camping & Co. seemed, at times, to be turning into derision of a basic and ancient Christian belief, in part because many journalists and comedians (not necessarily in that order) might not know the difference between, well, “Left Behind” and the Nicene Creed.

That could lead to some horribly inaccurate journalism, as well as some devilish media elitism in which scores of believers are mocked and smeared. That would be bad.

Image: I could not find an image of a more faithful “Get Busy” bumper sticker, cup, t-shirt, etc.

The 9-year story of Elizabeth Smart’s abduction appeared to come to a close this week as her captor was sentenced to life in prison. Smart, now 23, was 14 when she was kidnapped from her bedroom in her family’s home almost a decade ago.

“I also want you to know that I have a wonderful life now, that no matter what you do you will never affect me again,” Smart told Mitchell during the trial. “You took away nine months of my life that can never be replaced. “In this life or the next, you will be held responsible for your actions and I hope you’re ready for that when the time comes.”

Reporters uncovered several religion angles over the years, from her abductor’s self-appointment as prophet, his hymn singing in the trial to Smart’s faith and her recent Mormon mission.

The Associated Press report on the sentence briefly touches on the religion angles but fails to explain them. Sure, this is a basic courts story where reporters don’t need to go in depth into the already uncovered religion angles, but the story uses religion as a hook without giving the reader just a few details to fill them in.

The AP’s headline, for instance, says “Former street preacher gets life in Smart case.” The story never explains Brian David Mitchell’s former street preaching life or how he used religion in the trial. The story does touch on faith briefly, mentioning the hymns he would sing during the trial to disrupt the trial.

On Wednesday, her father spoke to the man who kidnapped his daughter
“Exploitation of religion is not a defense,” Ed Smart said. “You put Elizabeth through nine months of psychological hell.”

The facts of the case have never been in dispute, but defense attorneys have said Mitchell’s actions were tainted by mental illness and long-held delusional beliefs that he had been commanded by God to fulfill important prophecies.

Smart, who described her captor as vulgar and self-serving, testified that she believed Mitchell was driven by his desire for sex, drugs and alcohol, not by any sincere religious beliefs.

“Nine months of living with him and seeing him proclaim that he was God’s servant and called to do God’s work and everything he did to me and my family is something that I know that God would not tell somebody to do,” Smart said during the trial.

After that final quote from Smart in the paragraph above, it’s odd that the story doesn’t mention Smart’s faith or that she just returned from a mission.

Reuters does a slightly better job of connecting the dots between Smart’s father’s comments about exploiting religion and how Mitchell said God delivered Smart to him.

Those remarks were a reference to a contention by defense attorneys during the trial that Mitchell believed he was acting under a commandment from God when he kidnapped Smart from her Salt Lake City home, and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

“Regardless of what your defense has proposed, you put Elizabeth through nine months of psychological hell,” Ed Smart said. “I hope at some time in your life you find what you have done is wrong.”

The embedded video of the press conference demonstrates a somewhat awkward exchanged with the reporters who were trying to get an emotional reaction out of Smart. Smart comes off poised and prepared, not giving tearful or triumphant responses, probably not what reporters wanted.

In the few minutes I watched, I noticed that none of the reporters brought up her faith. Perhaps her emotions would remain the same, but it would be interesting to see if she offered a more spontaneous reaction. Then again, she offers similar seemingly-prepared responses in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune about her mission.

Few stories mentioned Smart’s faith, and although the mention wasn’t necessary, it definitely seems to be a big part of the BYU senior’s life. These stories are the conclusion to a long court case, and court reports don’t often go into every single detail. Still, you would think reporters might include a little more explanation of the religion angles if they mention them in passing.