So what do we really know, at this point, about Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo and his attempted attack on Ft. Hood?

Well we do know this.

Abdo — Muslim: from Arabic abduh “his servant”, i.e. “his (Allah’s) servant.” Abduh is one of the epithets of the Prophet Muhammad.

We know that, in the U.S. military, he self-identified as a Muslim.

We know that, in addition to his weapons and bomb-making materials, investigators said Abdo had an article — from the Summer 2010 issue of “Inspire,” an English-language al-Qaeda publication — entitled, “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom.”

We know that, when applying for conscientious objector status in 2010, he argued that his Islamic faith would prohibit him from fighting in a war while serving in the U.S. Army. In particular, Abdo argued that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan violated his beliefs.

We also know that he was on the verge of being discharged as a conscientious objector, but that this was derailed when he was charged with possession of child pornography.

Then, the other day, the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream media organizations offered reports that went something like this:

The suspect accused of planning an attack on Ft. Hood soldiers had holed up in a motel room in Killeen this week, authorities said, with a 40-caliber handgun, a cache of bomb-making ingredients and a plan to make this military city ache all over again.

Instead, Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo appeared … in U.S. District Court in Waco. There, the army private shouted his inspiration for what authorities say was a plot to set off two bombs at a popular restaurant outside the sprawling Ft. Hood military base.

“Nidal Hasan — Ft. Hood 2009!” he said, a defiant reference to the army major and psychiatrist and fellow Muslim who is charged with killing 13 people at the base nearly two years ago.

So at this point, what do we not know about this man? What do we urgently need to know?

For one thing, we know that he has self-identified as a Muslim. We do not know, however, if he has practiced this faith in any meaningful way. Other than an al-Qaeda magazine, we do not know if he has been reading anything that might link him to any form of Islamic network, congregation or school of thought.

The following paragraph the Los Angeles Times article struck he as especially interesting:

When authorities arrested Abdo … at the motel, court papers said, they found smokeless gunpowder, shotgun shells and pellets, two clocks, two spools of auto wire, an electric drill and two pressure cookers. There was epoxy and glue, tape, gloves, a battery and Christmas lights, with some of the items in his backpack.

What is missing from this list, at least as offered by military authorities or the editors at the Times? Was he, for example, carrying a copy of the Koran? A mat to use during prayers?

In other words, is there any way to know if this man was following his faith in any meaningful way? Was he, in effect, another troubled loner who was living out his own version of Islam? Was he connected to any particular imam or congregation? To any particular approach to the faith, in the mainstream or on the radical fringe?

These fact-based, journalistic questions may sound familiar to GetReligion readers, as of late.

You see, the goal is to dig deeper than mere labels, even if this conflicted and possibly disturbed man pinned that label on himself. Does this kind of journalistic digging matter and, if so, to whom? Back to the Los Angeles Times report:

“Thank God nothing bad happened,” said Suraiya Rabbani, a school counselor who’s lived here for two decades. “Thank God no lives were lost.”

A Muslim on her way to Friday prayers, Rabbani had added reasons for relief. She recalled how the adults at her mosque had to soothe children who were taunted after the 2009 attack. She found herself explaining, repeatedly, that Islam was a religion of peace.

When she learned that Abdo claimed to share her faith, her stomach sank.

“He had to come here to Killeen to do this?” she said.

Note the word “claimed” in that piece of the story. That’s an important word.

So is the word “practiced,” when it is backed with strong, factual reporting. Once again, it is time to keep looking for the facts. Mere labels are not enough.

I’m not a huge fan of news stories about advertisements because it seems a little lazy on the media end for not finding more original stories and it often just fuels the ad even more. Some outlets do a nice job of fact checking the ads to make sure the claims are accurate, but there’s a lot of wasted energy on “X releases ad targeting opponent.”

For the same reason, I’m not a huge fan of this piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Michele Bachmann’s attempts to build a base among “the faithful.” We saw similar coverage after Tim Pawlenty released a video about his faith, but I couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about. Politicians are trying to build their base and many of them target certain niche groups, the end. In this case, we learn only that Bachmann is targeting “the faithful,” which is a pretty broad umbrella term for people who have some sort of faith.

One of the most electrifying moments in Michele Bachmann’s quest for the White House came last Sunday when she took to the pulpit of an evangelical mega-church in this city’s suburban edge.

There were no campaign banners, no attacks on President Obama, not even any mention of next month’s all-important Republican straw poll in Ames.

It’s odd that the reporter would assume that there would be campaign banners. Someone help me: couldn’t the church risk losing their nonprofit status if campaigning took place at a church? Maybe not, but I wouldn’t expect campaign banners or opponent attacks for a church visit from someone running for president.

In an early-voting state where the majority of Republican caucusgoers are religious conservatives, Bachmann has shot to the top of the polls.

As much as anywhere else, her faith message has resonated deeply here, giving traction to a presidential campaign that has taken a skeptical party establishment by surprise.

The underlying assumption here is that if Iowans are polling heavily for Bachmann, her message must do well among people who are religious. In a recent poll, we saw that the number of evangelicals is slightly higher than the national average, so it’s unclear where the reporter is basing his assumption.

In the following paragraphs, check out the description of the church between the quotes and then the description of the biblical story of Nehemiah.

“Her focus here was strictly to share her faith story,” said Brittney Roorda of Des Moines’ First Assembly of God church, a conservative church that teaches that those who reject Christ are damned to a lake of fire. “She did not go into any political leanings, or ask for a vote or any sort of endorsement.”

According to Roorda, the church’s lead pastor invited Bachmann to speak because “he realized her faith story fit with the Nehemiah series that we’re in right now.”
The Old Testament Book of Nehemiah focuses on the importance of leadership.

Where did the reporter find the description that the church “teaches that those who reject Christ are damned to a lake of fire”? Is that the highlight of the bulletin? Also, that is one vague description for the book of Nehemiah, where if you do a quick wiki search, you could be more specific about the man who worked on purifying the Jewish community and rebuilding Israel. Perhaps the reporter could have asked Roorda what she meant when she saw parallels between Bachmann and Nehemiah.

Generally, the article does nothing to help us understand Bachmann’s faith. If you read this piece with no background, you would have no context of her background, formerly attending a church belonging to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Even a one-sentence recap would give readers a little context.

The reporter finds a few anecdotes of people saying how they feel about Bachmann and portrayal of the media, but none of the examples are backed up by anything more substantial.

Born-again Christians like Rabe feel their beliefs are under attack as well. “We have a right to our opinions,” she said. “We think it’s radical on the other side.”

For the faithful, Bachmann doesn’t always have to be right on the issues. “People are looking for convictions, not positions,” said Deace, explaining Bachmann’s popularity despite the barrage of withering political attacks that would flatten most candidates.

The article does little to tell us whether “the faithful” are interested in her, like whether they are polling in stronger numbers for her than other Republican candidates. Otherwise, after you strip some of the “moral crusade” language, the Star-Tribune might as well be doing an advertising piece with nothing but fluff.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

I live in flyover country, so maybe this won’t surprise you, but I haven’t wasted a lot of time or energy worrying about the budget debt crisis.

If history — er, “West Wing” — teaches us anything, it’s that some kind of deal will be worked out at the midnight hour before Armageddon actually occurs. Yawn. Please spare me the partisan drama leading up to the 72-point headlines.

Speaking of the aforementioned budget debate, I stumbled upon an ABC News item that sent my “Lame-O-Meter” skyrocketing. My first thought was that the item was so lame as not to merit any mention at all, negative or otherwise. But then I came across it again in two places that I regularly scan for religion news: on the Religion News Service blog’s daily news roundup and on Christianity Today’s latest news feed.

It’s just a little item on ABC’s website (and that’s a big part of the problem).

The headline:

Faith Leaders Arrested in US Capitol During Protest

The entire item is just four paragraphs, so I’m going to avoid violating any copyright laws and just copy and paste the first paragraph. But please read the whole thing so the rest of this post makes sense:

Eleven faith leaders from a range of denominations were arrested in the Capitol Rotunda Thursday as they staged a protest urging Congress to pass a budget agreement.

OK, you read the full report, right?

Does it tell the reader absolutely anything of value? What kind of budget agreement do the faith leaders want passed? Are they upset with just the Republicans or both parties?

Who are the 11 faith leaders, besides the rabbi in a wheelchair? Speaking of faith, what in the world does this protest have to do with the clergy present and the religious groups they represent? Why is this news? As a speaker on the YouTube video notes, the group went to the Capitol to engage in civil obedience and get arrested. Again, why is this news?

The Huffington Post provides more details and answers many of my questions. That news site also indicated that the rabbi that ABC reported was arrested was, in fact, not taken into custody. Not sure which news organization got it right, but I’d tend to go with the one that did some actual reporting. Here’s what The Huffington Post said:

One protester who was not arrested, police said, was Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.

Police gave Waskow, 77, a wheelchair while he waited with his colleagues for them to be cuffed with plastic bindings. They took the chair back after the last protester was arrested. It appeared as if the elderly leader hoped to keep it to leave, but police said he did not complain.

We live in interesting journalistic times where lots of news media are putting alleged “news” content in a blog format. It’s quick and easy. And, sometimes, it’s maddening.

End of rant. Now back to the debt ceiling weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Sorry about the headline, I just couldn’t stop myself.

Actually, I don’t think that’s a good label for this loner and his unorthodox church-of-one approach to religion.

But stop and think about it for a minute. One of the only things we know about him, religion-wise, is that he chose to be baptized into the Church of Norway, which is a mainline form of Lutheranism and a state church that, for the most part, leans to the left in unity with its government. We also know that Anders Behring Breivik, by his own admission, is not a “personal Christian” (to use the Norwegian phrase) and that he is not a very religious person, implying that the basics of the faith are not essential to his life.

So he is a Lutheran who doesn’t claim a relationship with Jesus, nor does he believe the core tenets of orthodox Christianity. That would make him, uh, a Lutheran agnostic? A doctrinal liberal?

Actually, this just shows us that (a) his church identity is national and ethnic and (b) his church identity is not based in belief, practice and experience (unless facts emerge that say otherwise). It would be wrong to call him a liberal Lutheran. It would be wrong to call him a conservative Lutheran. The f-word? Forget it.

GetReligion podcast listeners will not be surprised that the “let’s label Breivik” discussion was still on my mind when we recorded the “Crossroads” episode for this week (click here to head straight to it or head on over to iTunes).

While we were recording this, it suddenly hit me that I had better warn listeners to brace themselves, to sit down and to prepare the be shocked. Why? I needed to praise the New York Times, more than once.

Now I need to do that again. The Times is still wrestling with coming up with a fair, fact-based ID for this terrorist. Here is the top of another story that offers another take on this:

OSLO — The prime minister of Norway acknowledged … that his country had fundamentally changed as a result of the attacks on a youth camp and government complex last week, but he vowed to protect the culture of openness that is a source of Norwegian pride.

The attacks have prompted officials to start reassessing Norway’s policy on public security, which seemed defined by a belief that bad things happen elsewhere. Anders Behring Breivik, a self-described Christian crusader who has admitted to the attacks, appeared to face few obstacles when he detonated a car bomb on a busy government plaza last Friday, killing 8 people, then traveled 19 miles and took a ferry to the youth camp on the island of Utoya, where he slaughtered at least 68 people.

You can see the editors distancing themselves from the label, right?

So Breivik is a “self-described” (yes, that’s one of the only facts we have) “Christian” (Church of Norway, on the books) “crusader.” Now that last word calls up all kinds of language in his manifesto and it also points toward the nature of his violence — what he views as a necessary war with Islam.

Frankly, this is one of the better labels that I have seen in the mainstream.

Meanwhile, we have to keep waiting for some hard facts, as journalists try to see what role religion played — if any — in his man’s political war on the political doctrine called multiculturalism.

Enjoy the podcast.

I had this completely unrealistic thought last week about how nice it would be to have a nice long delay before the next terrorist-related news item. But just yesterday news broke about a plot to attack Ft. Hood, the same site where Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people two years ago.

It was only a week ago that news reports erroneously advanced the claim that Muslim terrorists had bombed Oslo. It turned out to be a right-wing terrorist who not only isn’t Muslim but left behind a 1,500-page manifesto detailing his hatred for Muslims and multiculturalists and his desire to launch a holy war to save his version of Christendom and the West.

That terrorist, Anders Breivik, is sufficiently idiosyncratic to cause problems for journalists. Contrary to early reports, he’s not a Christian fundamentalist and his mish-mash of views make him difficult to characterize concisely in any case. Just what type of Christian terrorist is he? We’re still working on that answer.

I was thinking about the next terrorist attack or plot because I wondered how we’d see the media handle it. Would they be more responsible? Would they jump to conclusions? What if there were religious motivations with the attack? How would those be explained?

Yesterday gave us some answers to those questions. The first thing I noticed was the difference between the way the Associated Press and Reuters handled the news. Here was the early report from the AP:

KILLEEN, Texas (AP) — An AWOL Muslim soldier who had weapons stashed in a motel room near Fort Hood admitted planning an attack on the Texas post, where 13 people died in 2009 in the worst mass shooting ever on a U.S. military installation, the Army said in an alert issued Thursday.

Reuters, on the other hand, didn’t mention the soldier’s religious views until the very last paragraph:

Abdo applied for conscientious objector status in 2010 because he said Islamic standards prohibited his service in the U.S. Army in any war, military officials said.

As the story was updated throughout the day, the AP story naturally changed. So did the location of the story where the soldier’s religious views were first mentioned. I actually think the change is for the better and I’ll go ahead and quote the first few paragraphs as they appeared later in the day:

An AWOL infantry soldier caught with weapons and a bomb inside a backpack admitted planning what would have been Fort Hood’s second terrorist attack in less than two years, the Army said Thursday. He might have succeeded at carrying it out, police said, if a gun-store clerk hadn’t alerted them to the man’s suspicious activity.

“We would probably be here today, giving you a different briefing, had he not been stopped,” Killeen Police Chief Dennis Baldwin said, calling the plan a “terror plot.”

The 21-year-old suspect, Pfc. Naser Abdo, was arrested Wednesday at a motel about three miles from Fort Hood’s main gate. He had spoken out against the 2009 Fort Hood shootings last year as he made a public plea to be granted conscientious objector status to avoid serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Like the soldier charged with killing 13 people in the shootings, Abdo is Muslim, but he said in an essay obtained by The Associated Press the attacks ran against his beliefs and were “an act of aggression by a man and not by Islam.”

Abdo was approved as a conscientious objector this year, but that status was put on hold after he was charged with possessing child pornography. He went absent without leave from Fort Campbell, Ky., during the July 4 weekend.

It’s a sad story, for many reasons, but I think all the information is handled well.

The extremely odd issue with this story is that Abdo has been in frequent contact with many media outlets. When he sought conscientious objector status last year, he discussed it with a wide variety of media outlets. So as soon as his name was released yesterday, these media outlets had video, audio and print stories about the man. That’s why the Reuters report that buries the religion angle until literally the last paragraph is so laughable. We know a little bit — not everything, by any means — about how this man’s practice of Islam shaped his views and action.

Anyway, including everything from the conscientious objector information to the magnitude of the plot to the child pornography charges is difficult, but the AP story handled it well with the updated information. In fact, the rest of the story includes interesting detail after interesting detail.

The CNN interview I posted above was not exactly hard-hitting. Better follow-up questions probably could have been asked by someone with more knowledge of Islam and how it’s practiced.

Every now and then, someone in our comments pages accuses your GetReligionistas of arguing that the way to improve religion-news coverage in the mainstream press is to have more religious believers invade America’s newsrooms. After all, “get religion” is a Bible Belt phrase for someone having a conversion experience of some kind.

Sure, the pun is there. So sue me.

But let me say once again that, in my career, I have known some excellent reporters — on and off the Godbeat — who were stunningly effective at covering religion stories, yet were not personally religious. (I have also known some religious folks who just didn’t get journalism. Period.)

The key is whether a reporter is curious about the views of others, to the point of empathy, and committed to accuracy (and even balance).

All of that is to say that one of the most talented writers at the Washington Post — television-beat veteran Hank Stuever — has once again served up a feature story that gracefully glides into religious territory. GetReligion readers may recall my previous post on Stuever’s remarkable book “Tinsel,” about the commercialization of Christmas in postmodern, suburban America.

Stuever is a liberal’s liberal and a skeptic’s skeptic and, as required in the Style section, has been known to have a major-league snarky streak. Yet his work is fueled by a powerful humanism that even allows the convictions and actions of religious believers to shine, from time to time. In other words, he’s a reporter and he has the ability to care about the better angels of a wide variety of people.

This time around he is writing about a new television documentary called “Serving Life” that takes viewers inside the hospice program inside the gates of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

There is very little overt religion in this piece, yet it seems that themes of repentance, love, faith and redemption have soaked in really deep. The bottom line: It is a profoundly spiritual act to help care for the dying, especially when the people on both sides of that exchange have both caused and experienced plenty of pain and suffering during their lives.

What happens when convicted murderers, with tears in their eyes, help their prison brothers die with dignity? We read:

The hospice volunteers and patients in “Serving Life” have committed crimes that include murder, armed robbery, rape and selling drugs. Should they rot in prison for the rest of their days? It happens — one bedsore at a time.

The longtime warden, Burl Cain, says he has been moved by observing the kind of care his inmates are capable of giving one another. Hospice, Cain says, “is a way to die with your family. This [prison] is your family. … Hospice is the chance to prove — have you changed or have you not?”

Angola, infamous for its brutal history, has seen violent incidents drop 73 percent in the past decade, we are told. This dovetails with the advent of hospice and improved health care in the prison, but also other communal upgrades. The Angola seen here often appears as a tranquil, intentional farm cooperative — growing the food it consumes, paving its roads; its denizens attend Bible college and work to gain enough trust that they are allowed to wear jeans and hoodies instead of uniforms.

Cohen’s camera follows four volunteers in the prison’s hospice unit as they receive training and care for their first patients. The rookies include a murderer, an accomplice to murder, a bank robber and a drug thug.

Even in an alternate world such as Angola, death becomes universal.

I know that it is strange to praise a newspaper story that is, in effect, journalism that is about another work of journalism, a documentary. But this is much more than a TV review.

Read it all. This is not a religion story. It’s a redemption story.

As I read The New York Times’ somewhat celebratory coverage about the first legal same-sex marriages in the Empire State, I sensed that everyone was happy, save those predictable few cranks from the Westboro church.

Among the happy were judges and clerks who came in on their day off to officiate at these history-making unions, which led me to imagine that had I been the editor in charge, I would have asked the scribes in the trenches: Were there any clerks who weren’t happy about their broader duties?

A few taps of the keys took me to a July 13 story by the Times’ Thomas Kaplan, who answered the question.

Laura L. Fotusky, the town clerk in Barker, N.Y., a small community north of Binghamton, looked at the calendar, looked at her Bible and knew what she had to do.

She drafted a letter to the Town Board and said she would resign on July 21, three days before same-sex marriage becomes legal, because she could not in good conscience issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

“I believe that there is a higher law than the law of the land,” she wrote. “It is the law of God in the Bible.”

Ms. Fotusky’s resignation is the starkest illustration yet that the same-sex marriage debate, although settled in Albany, is continuing to roil New York.

In his well-reported piece, Kaplan included a discussion about the potential effect of the law on people like businessman “Clifton S. McLaughlin, 45, the president of Christian DJ Enterprises in the Bronx, who said in an interview that while no same-sex couples had inquired yet about his services, he would decline their business if any did.”

“I would just let them know that I love them as God’s creation,” Mr. McLaughlin said, “but based on my Christian faith and my belief in God and what the Bible teaches, I cannot and I don’t support gay lifestyles.”

At least two other clerks found the new law at odds with their faith-based conscience. In the July 19 edition of the Post Standard in Syracuse, Paul Riede wrote about one of them:

Ruth Sheldon was knee deep in work Monday. As town clerk in Granby, she was busy with the census of the town’s dogs.

… “I’m getting so many distractions from these reporters and so forth that are calling, and I have an enormous amount of work to do,” she said.

The reporters weren’t interested in the dog census. They were calling about her decision to resign her post rather than honor the state’s same-sex marriage law. Her last day is Saturday — the day before the law goes into effect.

Every time the phone rang, Sheldon, 65, had to shift gears from counting dogs to discussing matters of law and faith. Like the other 931 town clerks across the state, she is suddenly on the front lines of an issue that is drawing international attention.

So we know some were out there, and we know what they were thinking before July 24. But I couldn’t find either of their names in the Times’ coverage of the day. How about vignettes about how each of the women spent her day?

I referred to the Times’ coverage as celebratory, a conclusion that I’m not alone in drawing. In a 2004 piece, Daniel Okrent, former (and first) Times ombudsman, concluded that the Times reported about the same-sex marriage issue “in a tone that approaches cheerleading.”

A slice from the lives of the civil servants who stood their ground on conscience would not have been rain on the parade and might have blunted the perception that the Times was the head cheerleader for the event. Once again, the goal is more voices, more points of view. In other words, diversity. In other words, journalism.

A few weeks ago there was quite a brouhaha over an atheist challenge to a street sign honoring 9/11 victims. The name of the street is Richards Street but underneath the sign at one intersection is another street sign saying “Seven In Heaven Way” to honor seven local firefighters who were killed on September 11. And so newspapers and media outlets ran with the story. Most news stories seemed fine. One, I recall included quite a few atheists objecting to the complaint on the grounds it was petty or hurtful.

Well yesterday American Atheists filed suit to prevent cross-shaped steel girders from the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers from being included in the September 11 memorial. American Atheists president Dave Silverman was quoted by Courthouse News:

Mincing no words, Silverman, who is not a named plaintiff, added: “It [the cross] has been blessed by so-called holy men and presented as a reminder that their god, who couldn’t be bothered to stop the Muslim terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross. It’s a truly ridiculous assertion.”

ABC wrote up the lawsuit:

Jane Everhart, who is part of the atheist’s suit, derided the cross as nothing more than “ugly piece of wreckage” that “does not represent anything … but horror and death.” …

“The Christian community found a piece of rubble that looked like an icon and they deified it. But really 9/11 had nothing to do with Christianity,” said American Atheists president Dave Silverman. “They want a monopoly and we don’t want that to happen.”

The article talked to the September 11 Memorial folks and they explained that other religious artifacts would also be on display, including a Star of David cut from WTC steel, a Bible fused to a piece of steel that was found during recovery efforts, and a Jewish prayer shawl that was donated by a victim’s family member:

In a statement to ABCNews.com, the memorial foundation identified the cross as a “symbol of spiritual comfort for the thousands of recovery workers who toiled at ground zero,” as well as an “authentic physical reminder” that “tell[s] the story of 9/11 in a way nothing else can.”

The article ends with competing quotes. One is from the rescue worker who found the cross after digging three bodies out from the rubble of the collapsed Twin Towers. He says he was overwhelmed upon its discovery and believes it’s a beautiful symbol of faith and freedom. He argues that it’s a “natural artifact” from Ground Zero. The other quote comes from the communications director for the American Atheists who says she can’t visit the memorial so long as there’s a cross there.

The article is fine but I wonder if it wouldn’t have been improved by including the voices of atheists who are not fans of this lawsuit. Otherwise it gives the impression that all atheists think lawsuits against featuring the remnant beam from the World Trade Center are a good idea.

One other thing. USA Today basically just quoted extensively from the American Atheist press release (which was unwise considering it had some errors of fact). But it mentioned that one of the plaintiffs was a man whose brother had done rescue work at the World Trade Center for two weeks following the attack and died in 2005. We’re told that the man wouldn’t want a cross to honor his brother unless it’s a Lutheran cross.

Now, as you may have picked up from previous blog posts, I am Lutheran. And I have literally no idea what a “Lutheran cross” is. I mean, is it a crucifix? We do like our crucifixes. Is it a plain rustic cross? I guess not, since that’s what the cross in question is. Is it something to do with the Lutheran Rose? What is it? I have no idea.

Image via Wikipedia.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a website for discussion of media treatment of religion news. It is not a place to contribute sub-literate diatribes against Christians, Jews, atheists, etc. Actually, it’s not even a place to contribute literate diatribes against religious folks. I’ve had to delete literally dozens of comments for being so poorly composed and so completely off topic that I am embarrassed for the people who wrote them. If you want to spew, do it elsewhere. Thanks.

You might remember some reports earlier this month that the Crystal Cathedral megachurch in California had ousted the Rev. Robert H. Schuller from its board and before the reports seemed to backtrack. We have a new report today from the Associated Press that the Crystal Cathedral has restored the voting rights of its founder on the church’s governing board. Unfortunately, the early report tells us very little about the decision, offering us about this much:

Spokesman John Charles said Wednesday that the church, which produces the televangelist show the “Hour of Power,” has restored Schuller as a voting member after removing that right earlier this month. The ministry also announced the addition of five members to the board.

The AP is great at breaking news, but hopefully we will see an update. It’s slightly confusing why the initial report did not include why the founder of the church was removed from voting and why he was reinstated. Maybe reporters are still working that out. Was there a misunderstanding? Why were his voting privileges removed and then reinstated?

The LA Times was one of the outlets in early July to write about the “ousting.”

Jim Coleman, president of Crystal Cathedral and the husband of Schuller’s daughter, declined to comment when reached by telephone Sunday night. Coleman’s wife, Sheila Schuller Coleman, took control of the church more than two years ago, marking a family schism that has dogged the ministry, culminating in its bankruptcy.

Several long-time church members and officials said Sunday that they found Robert H. Schuller’s departure from the board startling — and an unsettling reminder that the church’s leadership and finances are in chaos.

Then the same outlet released a follow-up report saying that the church leaders said they did not remove him from the board.

“He [Robert H. Schuller] was not voted off the board,” said John Charles, the Garden Grove church spokesman. “He is still board chairman emeritus.”

The church released its statement a day after Schuller’s son, Robert Anthony Schuller, said his 84-year-old father had been ousted because he had proposed adding new members to the board.

…The Times reported Schuller’s new non-voting position June 19.

In Monday’s statement, Charles said the move will free up Schuller’s time for more speaking engagements and a writing project: “He will also continue to speak in the pulpit of the Crystal Cathedral and on the ‘Hour of Power’ and meet with staff in creative and vision-casting meetings.”

So did the church decide Schuller doesn’t need his time freed up? What’s going on? I don’t see anything from the LA Times yet on this development, but let us know if you see updates.

We have seen a lot of confusing reports about the church in recent years, with the potential sale of its building, its controversial covenant, the schism between father/son, its transition to Schuller’s daughter, its Latino revival, financial challenges, etc.

One of Orange County’s major megachurches seems to continue to struggle under financial challenges and leadership transitions, and this is one piece to the larger puzzle.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

At this point, I think most journalists have reached the point that they know that Anders Behring Breivik (a) has self-identified as a “Christian,” (b) yet he also made it clear that he is not a Christian believer, in terms of beliefs and practice and (c) that it is bizarre to call him a “fundamentalist,” in any historic sense of the word.

The early facts indicate that this was a political radical committing an act of political terrorism for political motives, motives that happen to include some idealized vision of resurrecting some kind of old, glorified, “Christian” European culture.

Yes, I know plenty of activist and advocate journalists are sticking with the “Christianist” template. Also, there are academics who are sharpening their swords and taking the usual swings at orthodox forms of religion (“When Christianity becomes lethal”) Nevertheless, most mainstream journalists seem to be staying in the middle of things and, perhaps, waiting for facts about this terrorist and whatever ties he did or did not have to real people and institutions outside of history books and cyberspace.

At this stage, I would like to point readers toward the following Dan Gilgoff essay at the CNN.com religion blog: “Is ‘Christian fundamentalist’ label correct for Norway terror suspect?” It contains tons of interesting voices and thoughts. I’ll complete this plug for it with the following slice:

“It is true that he sees himself as a crusader and some sort of Templar knight,” said Marcus Buck, a political science professor at Norway’s University of Tromso, referring to an online manifesto that Breivik appears to have authored and which draws inspiration from medieval Christian crusaders.

“But he doesn’t seem to have any insight into Christian theology or any ideas of how the Christian faith should play any role in Norwegian or European society,” Buck wrote in an email message. “His links to Christianity are much more based on being against Islam and what he perceives of as ‘cultural Marxism.’”

From what the 1,500-page manifesto says, Breivik appears to have been motivated more by an extreme loathing of European multiculturalism that has accompanied rapid immigration from the developing world, and of the European Union’s growing powers, than by Christianity.

“My impression is that Christianity is used more as a vehicle to unjustly assign some religious moral weight,” to his political views, said Anders Romarheim, a fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies. “It is a signifier of Western culture and values, which is what they pretend to defend.”

Toward the end, a major American scholar enters the debate:

Experts on religion in Europe said those faith-infused views are likely peculiar to the suspected gunman and do not appear reflect wider religious movements, even as they echoes grievances of Europe’s right-wing political groups.

“He was a flaky extremist who might as well have claimed to be fighting for the honor of Hogwarts as for the cause of Christ,” said Philip Jenkins, a Pennsylvania State University professor who studies global religion and politics, describing the suspected Norway attacker. “He did not represent a religious movement. … People should not follow that Christian fundamentalist red herring.”

By all means, give this one a careful reading.

All of this is good, but I can hear copy-desk pros muttering in the background, saying, “Academics, smackademics! Get real. What are we supposed to CALL this guy in a headline?

Over at the Huffington Post, an evangelical thinker from the Greater European Mission has weighed in with another option on that front.

Frankly, I don’t think his language works for journalists — outside of quoted material in news features, when there is a bit of space in which to breathe. It takes too much interpretation. However, his content is crucial. Here is a slice of what Ben Stevens has to say in his piece, “Is Anders Breivik a European Fundamentalist?”

Let’s start with a quote from page page 1,307 of Breivik’s manifesto, and then the minister’s take:

A majority of so called agnostics and atheists in Europe are cultural conservative Christians without even knowing it. So what is the difference between cultural Christians and religious Christians? If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.

Breivik asserts that a majority of the atheists in Europe are cultural conservative Christians. This comes as a surprise to us all, I suppose. The key to understanding his manifesto, his mania and the confusion currently dominating news headlines lies in the reality that by “Christian” he almost always means “European.” In the massive introduction to his manifesto, for example, there is not a single quotation from Scripture, mention of the creeds, allusion to the Church or reference to Jesus Christ himself. And we learn, through the video he posted, that his heroes are not religious figures like Paul or Martin Luther but political figures like Charles Martel and Nicholas I.

Anders Breivik is a cultural fundamentalist. He is a European fundamentalist. But he disowns orthodox Christianity, and this makes it all the more ironic, and disgusting, that he saw himself as a kind of representative against threats to “Christendom.”

These pieces will, I am sure, continue.

Truth is, I still do not know the language that I would put into a one- or two-column bold headline, in this case. I pity copy editors who have to make that call. I honestly do.

Once again, for those who have forgotten GetReligion’s take on all of this, from the start of this story, we remain very interested in knowing the basic facts about how religion influenced this man’s life, if there are any. Here is how I put that on day one:

In terms of the religion angle of this story, what are journalists looking for? I would say they are seeking the exact kinds of facts and leads that they would be seeking if this person was alleged to be a radical Muslim. We need to know what he has said, what he has read, what sanctuaries he has chosen and the religious leaders who have guided him.

Also, follow the money, since Breivik certainly seems to have some. To what religious causes has he made donations? Is he a contributing member of a specific congregation in a specific denomination? Were the contributions accepted or rejected?

Well, we now know more about what he has said — the manifesto plugged that hole, for journalists. We know a bit about what he may or may not have been reading. We know nothing whatsoever about his own religious life and the practice of his faith, if he ever did so. There are no signs of institutional links or real, live clergy of any kind. Again I urge journalists to look for financial ties.

The ultimate question, in terms of religion: Was this man truly a loner, a man living out a brand of faith that he created on his own and, in the end, one in which he serves as the prophet who produces the private scriptures that guide his life and work? In other words, if he calls himself a “Christian,” where is his church, his pew, his altar and his pastor-priest?

Journalists must keep looking for the facts.