Ask religion reporters to name the part of the beat that bugs them the most and a high percentage (give me your estimates, Godbeat walkers) will say that they worry about finding new, valid, interesting stories linked to religious holidays.

I mean, dang it, how often does Christmas-High Holy Days-Easter-Ramadan-Etc. roll around? Didn’t I write a story on that last month? The years simply spin past in a blur.

Over at the newspaper that lands in my front yard, Rosh Hashana and the Jewish High Holy Days have to be underlined on the calendar in bright red. The Baltimore area contains a large and extremely active Jewish community, including a large and vital Orthodox community. Anyone who drives around in some of the older neighborhoods in Northwest Baltimore on a Friday evening knows this.

Thus, I was intrigued when I started reading the following Baltimore Sun story that ran under the headline:

Service at Oregon Ridge puts tailgating spin on Rosh Hashana

Popular outdoor event draws thousands

Here’s the top of the report.

For certain religious oenophiles, Wednesday’s dinner presented an interesting question:

“What wine goes with services?” wondered Arnold Weiner.

Judging from the crowd gathered Wednesday night at Oregon Ridge Park for the popular al fresco Rosh Hashana service marking the Jewish New Year, white, red and rose all had their adherents.(For the record, Weiner, the lawyer famous for defending former Mayor Sheila Dixon in her corruption trial, went with a crisp pinot grigio.)

Started five years ago by Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, Rosh Hashana Under the Stars has become a tradition for thousands, who flock to the rolling grounds of the Baltimore County park for an event that has brought a tailgating spin to the ages-old service marking the start of the High Holy Days.

“I love the informality of it,” said Leslie Greenwald, a Baltimorean who arrived when the gates opened at 4:30 p.m. with her husband, son and mother- and father-in-law. “I want to support something like this that encourages all Jews to come out. It’s a great atmosphere.”

I’ll admit that I read right past the name of the congregation that organized the event — Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. The key is that the name did not include the word “temple.” In the cities in which I have lived and reported, most Reform congregations have the word “temple” in the title. Combine that with the reference to “all Jews” coming out and I thought this was a simply amazing story, one that involved all branches of Judaism in its organization and execution.

But the further I read into the story — a good story, in many ways — the more I doubted that. Note the name of the person who has led the rites for five years. That would be Rabbi Elissa Sachs-Kohen. Would the Orthodox and more conservative elements of the community be flocking out for worship led by a female rabbi?

Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not. Almost certainly not? Thus, to what degree was this a ceremony for the whole Jewish community?

The story never openly addresses this issue, at all. I think the assumption is that readers already know that this is a liberal, progressive, Reform congregation.

So this was, readers are told, a “sacred assembly.” That’s a totally appropriate term for it, for many Jews.

Toward the end, the story finally hinted at these issues with this interesting passage:

This year, the prayer book was available for downloading, for $1.99, on smartphones, laptops, tablets and e-readers. It was a way to be more eco-friendly and more practical: As the night grew darker, it was easier to see the prayers on screen than on paper.

“My husband is in love with his iPad,” said Ralene Jacobson, who was on the Baltimore Hebrew committee that worked with the Central Conference of American Rabbis to create a digital version of the prayer book. “Plus, we can share it.”

The event has helped give the congregation something of an unusual brand in the area.

“Our doing this has given us a new face in the Jewish community,” Sachs-Kohen said. “People perceive Baltimore Hebrew differently — they see us as open and cutting-edge. We were more of a standard Reform congregation before.”

Thus, this congregation bills itself as being on the cutting, progressive edge of the liberal, Reform branch of Judaism. That’s fascinating.

This makes me wonder what other members of Baltimore’s diverse, outspoken and highly articulate Jewish community actually think of this service that is open to all Jews.

It might have even made an interesting theme to introduce into the story, just for the sake of balance and accuracy. If the Orthodox held services and declared them open to all Jews, would the Sun have taken them at their word?

Just asking.

You might consider Associated Press reporter Tom Breen to be the anti-William Lobdell. Breen recently told me he eventually became a weekly Mass attendee after educating himself on the Catholic abuse scandals for his journalism job. His story is quite the opposite from Lobdell, whose work on the religion beat at the Los Angeles Times caused him to drop his faith and write Losing My Religion.

Instead of re-writing Breen’s story into an intro, I’ll let him tell you about it before he answers some questions about the religion beat:

I was baptized a Catholic, but never really in any tradition other than a vague understanding of Christianity coupled with a sort of tribal pull toward the Catholic Church. My mother died when I was very young, and my father had enough bad experiences with church growing up in an Irish neighborhood in Chicago that he wasn’t particularly driven to make sure my brother and I were raised as active members of the faith.

My father is a journalist, though, and it was his influence that steered me toward news. After college, I was working at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass., at the time the most recent sex abuse scandals began to break in Boston. Partly because I had some Catholic bric-a-brac on my desk, my editor assumed I actually knew something about the church, and so I was assigned to cover a few local stories related to the scandal.

I quickly realized that I didn’t know anything about Catholicism, and so to avoid embarrassing myself and the paper I resolved to learn what I could. In addition to reading everything I could get my hands on, I started pitching stories on religious topics that had nothing to do with the abuse scandal, hoping to bring myself up to speed.

This continued after I moved to the Journal Inquirer, the paper in my hometown of Manchester, Conn. By now I had discovered that I was interested not just in Catholic stories, but in religion generally. It was not only a fascinating topic, but it was one that not many other reporters were interested in covering, so I could pursue stories without stepping on any toes. I also had tremendously knowledgeable editors who were hungry for religion news. One of them put it to me in a way I’ve always remembered: compare the amount of resources the press spends on covering primary elections, he told me, with the number of people who vote in primary elections. Now compare the resources spent on covering religion with the number of people who attend a weekly worship service.

So that’s how I became hooked on religion coverage. On kind of a parallel track, I eventually became a devout Catholic, going through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and becoming a weekly churchgoer. Ironically, it was my work covering elements of the sex abuse scandal that led me to become an “official” Catholic; I learned all I could about the faith to make sure my stories were accurate, and my learning convinced me this was the truth.

I realize personal belief is a touchy subject for journalists, but in the religion beat it’s been a tremendous asset to my reporting. It’s an imperfect comparison, but if you grew up rooting for the Chicago Cubs you’re going to be a better baseball reporter than someone who’s never been to a game. That’s not to say I think active membership in a religious group is a prerequisite for the beat, but an ex-Cubs fan still knows the game even if she doesn’t follow the team anymore.

That’s probably far more than was necessary, and I apologize. On to the questions!

In your role at the AP, how do you boil down everything into a brief story and still maintain nuance, balance, complexities, etc.?

The AP’s very talented religion editor once described the faith beat as “intimidating,” and I think that’s absolutely right, for precisely this reason. There is no government, economic philosophy or baseball team on the planet with a back story as rich, detailed and complex as, say, Judaism. Or Christianity. Or Islam. Or Hinduism. You get the idea. What we strive to do is work in our “pre-reporting” to identify the telling details, wise sources and most salient facts to make sure that even an 800-word story has enough nuance and balance to meet our standards. When writing about Rob Bell’s book Love Wins and the wide-ranging debate it prompted, for example, I knew in the earliest stage of the story that I wanted to talk about the Christian theologian Origen in the context of universalism. I hit the books, talked to some sources, and spent maybe half an hour boiling down what I learned into two paragraphs that I could then bounce off editors who are religion pros (to make sure it was accurate) and editors who don’t know Methodism from method acting (to make sure it was right for a general audience). Knowing what’s going to be important in terms of background and detail to augment the main news in the story is a huge help when it comes to “front-loading” our reporting.

Where do you get your news about religion? Have blogs, social media, etc. changed how you read and then cover religion news?

My news about religion comes from a lot of sources: newspapers and broadcasters, the denominational press, tips from sources, friends and acquaintances, press releases, etc. But the most important day-to-day aspect of covering the beat is social media and blogs, something that’s a huge change from when I started in daily journalism 10 years ago. Twitter in particular is a chance to monitor international conversations about faith as they happen, with everyone from Rick Warren to the person in the next pew pitching in. And for reporters looking to go beyond the usual pundits, officials, experts, talking heads, etc. and get deeper on a story, there’s nothing like social networking. On a story about American Catholics’ reaction to the beatification of John Paul II this year, I was able to write a story out of Raleigh with voices from all over the country thanks to finding folks on Facebook and Twitter and contacting them for interviews. Blogs have also changed the way the beat works, moving from commenting on stories or developments to breaking news; the questions about Ergun Caner’s resume being a good example of a story that was broken first by bloggers. I honestly don’t think it’s possible to do a good job covering religion today without daily use of those resources.

What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media is having a hard time grasping?

Some of the tectonic shifts in American religion are being only dimly appreciated so far, I think. The U.S. has in all likelihood become a country without a Protestant majority for the first time in its history, a change with lots of implications, both in the short and long terms. The major inroads that Evangelical churches are making among first and second-generation Latinos in the U.S. is also a big story with major implications that I think too often gets lost in coverage of how Latino immigrants are providing the bulk of the Catholic Church’s new members. And the fact that growing numbers of Americans say they have no religious preference is interesting in ways that I don’t think are being fully explored – too often, that’s taken as a decline in religious belief, when I think a big part of the story is a change in how people are defining religion.

What’s the story you will be watching carefully in the next year or two?

I’ll be very interested to see how American Catholics receive the new translation of the Roman Missal, which has been getting a roll-out in some places for months, but which is going to “go live” on the first Sunday of Advent. It’s not on the same level with the changes to the liturgy that came at the end of the 1960s, but it’s altering parts of the Mass most American Catholics have known for their whole lives. People are going to have add the word “consubstantial” to their vocabularies! There’s been some pushback in Anglophone Europe from priests and laypeople, but so far we haven’t seen much of that in the U.S. I don’t know if that will change on November 27. I think it’s going to be an opportunity for some great stories about what people believe and why.

What is the funniest, most ironic twist that you have seen in a religion news story lately?

I don’t know about funny or ironic, but a story that really provided me with a “Wow!” moment this week was the AP’s coverage out of Jerusalem on a small group of Muslim missionaries who spend their days trying to win Jewish converts to Islam, apparently a first in the history of Israel. Given the social, political, cultural and religious contexts, this is bound to be an interesting story, but what I especially liked was that it explored questions that can resonate with missionaries in any tradition: how seriously do you take your faith, and what are you willing to do for it?

BONUS: Do you have anything else you want to tell us about religion coverage in the mainstream news media?

I’ve had plenty of experiences where I’ve called a member of the clergy or a layperson for a story on a religious topic and as soon as I identify myself as a member of the press, they react like a babysitter in a 1980s horror movie hearing the words, “The calls are coming from inside the house!” One of my fondest wishes is that I will one day be able to make people understand that the vast majority of reporters want just two things: to tell a good story and to get it right. And the only way reporters can tell good, true stories about religion is by developing relationships with people who know faith and aren’t afraid to trust their story to someone.

No matter how high a reporter’s aspirations, there’s something about filing stories for the local police blotter that’s always enchanting. A few days ago, a local reporter for the Beaver County Times found himself a pretty big public interest story.

Preparing for a weekend wedding, an Eastvale couple cut copper wire valued at $7,146 from 18 utility poles, according to a North Sewickley Township police report.

April C. Cater, 24, and Joseph Russell, 23, both of 700 2nd Ave., were charged with theft, criminal conspiracy and criminal mischief after the incidents on Aug. 9, according to police.

Russell told police they planned to be married on Aug. 13 and he had lost his job at an auto parts store, according to the report.

And the story was picked up far and wide. No one did any additional reporting, it was just a story that obviously carried meaning to a wide audience. We’re preparing to go to a wedding in New York next weekend for a dear friend and I’ve had to relive the horrors of wedding planning through that and it just reminds me how very, very thankful I am to have avoided most of the wedding-industrial complex, which I have written about here, but also just to have that behind me.

But I came across another story that involved additional reporting and it was fantastic. A reporter went ahead and called the church where the wedding took place and followed-up. Imagine that! The article begins by noting that the template for the story was “out-of-control wedding madness” but that the Rev. Jim Farnan, the pastor of St. Philomena Catholic Church who celebrated the marriage, said they were a young couple who panicked when faced with financial problems.

We learn more details about the couple and how stupid their crime was — they stole more than $7,000 from utility poles and only netted $30. They have taken responsibility, claiming they were desperate.

Here’s a sample from the story:

“It surprised me that they did this. But I’m not surprised that they did it together,” Father Farnan said. “They support one another. They were sincere, they had a real closeness. They are good for one another. I’m sure that’s why they’re so remorseful. You can see it in their interviews.”

According to Father Farnan, Ms. Russell was an adult convert to Catholicism and her husband isn’t Catholic. During pre-marital counseling they never brought up his job loss, although the priest had heard about it from others.

“They tried to handle this by themselves. They thought that the burden fell all on them, but I think they will learn that there is a whole community of people supporting them,” he said.

Their wedding, he said, wasn’t extravagant. “I think they stole to pay for very basic things, like her dress,” he said.

We learn that fellow parishioners are disappointed but will likely help the couple with wedding bills and restitution — and some words of wisdom.

The moral of the story isn’t a warning about bridezillas, he said. The lessons that people should draw are about what it means to be married in a community of Christian believers.

“The most important people at the wedding are God and the couple,” he said. “There is so much pressure to show your love materially, and you have to avoid that. It’s important to remember that your marriage is a communal experience, it’s a parish experience. You don’t have to go through this on your own. There are a lot of people out there who understand and appreciate what you are going through. Don’t underestimate the generosity of people who want couples to experience the most beautiful side of their wedding.”

Now, I’ve always been a member of a Christian congregation. Which means that there are people throughout the United States who are aware of stupid things I’ve done over the years (you just try being a pastor’s kid in a small town, OK?). And this story rang so true to me. It sounded exactly like what I might expect to happen if something similar occurred with a member of my congregation. And that includes the pastoral lesson about caring less about wedding materialism.

It’s surprising to me how rarely I see a religion story I can relate to. So as soon as I finished this, I went back to see who had written it. It will surprise no one. The reporter is Ann Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

We have had some fascinating comments about my recent posts (here and here) noting the lack of mainstream media coverage of the Iranian proceedings against Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani — who was accused of apostasy for converting to Christianity, even though he had never practiced Islam after coming of age.

Some readers seemed to think that I was seeking special coverage for evangelical Christians, when anyone who has read this weblog very long knows that we have urged improved coverage of a wide array of religious minorities.

This would include, for example, minority groups within Islam and progressive Muslims in nations — think Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — in which their rights are at risk. One of the major themes of this weblog is that there is no one Islam, that it is a faith containing many different niches and approaches. Tragically, to defend many Muslims the press must often investigate the blasphemy laws and bloody teachings of other Muslims who want to kill them.

My posts on Nadarkhani have noted that, for months, his case has received little or no news coverage other than in “conservative” or religious media. I am sure there are exceptions to that, but I have not been able to find them.

In this case, defense of the old liberalism — a key element of which is freedom of religion and conscience — is often considered “conservative.” We live in an age in which one is much more likely to find coverage of Iran’s persecution of Baha’is in Christianity Today or, yes, Baptist Press than in most mainstream newspapers.

I’ll continue to stress that terms such as “liberal” and “conservative” are increasingly irrelevant in discussions of global human rights issues, especially those involving religion.

And then there was this comment:

Michael says:
September 29, 2011, at 8:55 am

I don’t recall Fox News reporting on the execution of three young men for homosexuality a couple of weeks ago. Or anyone at GetReligion thinking that that omission was poor journalism.

Well, my posts said nothing about Fox News — other than the fact that Fox, at first, ran a mere editorial about the Nadarkhani case, instead of a hard news report. In other words, Fox was mentioned as part of the whole this-is-not-hard-news syndrome, not an example cited for praise.

In the end, Fox produced a news story at pretty much the same time as other mainstream outlets, which was when it became real — in elite zip codes that means POLITICAL — news in crucial newsrooms.

The bottom line: The White House press secretary said something. Oh dear, that means this story must be important (for a few minutes, at least).

Unless I have missed something, the one exception to this rule was CCN.com, which offered a real, live news story that opened like this:

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, the head of a network of Christian house churches in Iran, could be executed as soon as midnight Wednesday in Tehran for refusing to recant his religious beliefs and convert to Islam, said the chair of a commission that monitors religious freedom around the world.

A statement by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent advisory group appointed by the president and Congress, “expressed deep concern” for the man’s fate.

After four days of an appeals trial for apostasy, Nadarkhani refused to recant his beliefs.

Leonard Leo, chair of the commission, said the pastor “is being asked to recant a faith he has always had. Once again, the Iranian regime has demonstrated that it practices hypocritical barbarian practices.” Leo said that while the trial is closed to the press, the commission collects information from sources in Iran and around the world.

That particular commission is, of course, linked to the government. However, most journalists seem to view it with great skepticism, especially in comparison to the key voices at the State Department. In fact, news consumers would need to read the Washington Times (I should mention that editors there assigned one of my students to report that story) to find out that an anonymous U.S. Senator has placed a “hold” on funding for the commission, which means its critics may succeed in getting it shut down.

As for the latest hangings of gay men in Iran, similar actions by that government have received coverage in the past in both mainstream and niche publications. I know that I have written on the issue here at GetReligion (who can forget using one of the photos of these events), but I can’t seem to find that earlier coverage in our blog’s often funky search engine.

Based on my earlier work on that subject, it does seem to me that these latest hangings received less coverage in the mainstream (check this Google News search). However, I know that I read about the latest hangings in a mainstream source. Of course, I have seen little coverage — ever — examines these stories in the context of Iran’s version of Sharia law and theocracy. The religion ghost remains there.

I guess we should say that — tragically — some journalists may consider these hangings an old story. I think that is viewpoint is wrong.

Meanwhile, there has been a report that Pastor Youcef may simply be locked away and not killed, with his death sentence overturned.

This report, of course, came from an alternative, “conservative” media source.

(Cue: audible sigh)

As you might have heard, the national pastime’s regular season ended Wednesday night in a ho-hum sort of way.

Ho-hum, as in the most unbelievable and remarkable few hours imaginable (and I’m not even talking about my beloved Texas Rangers’ dramatic ninth-inning home run to gain home-field advantage in the American League Division Series).

Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci captured the scene:

They will go down as the most thrilling 129 minutes in baseball history. Never before and likely never again — if we even dare to assume anything else can be likely ever again — will baseball captivate and exhilarate on so many fronts in so small a window the way it did September 28, 2011.

Starting at 9:56 PM Eastern, the grand old game, said to suffer by comparison from football’s siren sisters of gambling and violence, and said to suffer from America’s shrinking attention span and capacity to contemplate, rose up and fairly screamed, “Watch this!”

At that minute, the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves clung to twin 3-2 leads and the belief that they would avoid the completion of the greatest September collapses in the history of the sport, even if, in Atlanta’s case — the Braves appeared headed for a tiebreaker game with St. Louis — it meant a 24-hour stay of execution. Boston seemed home free to October, seeing that Tampa Bay, its competitor for the wild card spot, was getting blown out by the Yankees, 7-0.

But what happened at that moment was the beginning of the end: With the Braves two outs from victory, Chase Utley of Philadelphia tied the game in Atlanta with a sacrifice fly against Craig Kimbrel, the baby-faced rookie closer for the Braves who was pitching with the earnestness of youth, but more obviously with the toll of overuse and stress from a grueling stretch run. Red-cheeked and flustered, he invited pity more than scorn.

Nothing would be the same in the next 129 minutes. Fortunes were reversed. Reputations were made and destroyed. Careers were altered.

It was 129 minutes played on the edge of a sharp knife. It wasn’t just win or go home. It was fame or infamy. Anonymity or celebrity. Cursed or blessed. Collapse or comeback. The Last Night of the Year did not bother with the in between. The scale and speed of it was mind-boggling.

Of course, the baseball gods — and even God — figured prominently in the media coverage of baseball’s night of miracles.

Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch focused on the “miracle” of the St. Louis Cardinals (enthusiastically endorsed by megafan M.Z. Hemingway of GetReligion.org fame) overcoming a double-digit deficit to win the National League wildcard over the Atlanta Braves:

So now the miracle continues. On to another city, another series, and perhaps another long and crazy Red October that could outdo the remarkable September magic they’ve already produced.

And at this point, would you dare to think anything else?

“This is a great situation for us,” said Carpenter. “How can you not be excited about what’s going on? This ball club has been unbelievable.”

In Baltimore, perhaps Orioles aficionado Terry Mattingly had something to do with the “Curse of the Andino” inflicted on the Boston Red Sox.

Or maybe the defeat was God’s will, as Red Sox slugger Adrian Gonzalez seemingly suggested after the game? From The Atlantic:

And, speaking of God, the aforementioned Gonzales (sic) said in the locker room after Wednesday’s game that “God has a plan. And it wasn’t God’s plan for us to be in the playoffs.” That happened. He actually said that. I guess it’s better than saying, “God didn’t want me to hit that curve ball.” But it helps explain why so few members of the Red Sox Nation, spread out all over the world, can’t stand this team of underachieving apologists.

Gonzalez’s explanation also caught the attention of Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy:

Adrian Gonzalez chose to take the easy route of predestination.

“God has a plan,’’ he said. “And it wasn’t God’s plan for us to be in the playoffs.’’

Wow. That’ll play well in the Nation. And the owner’s box.

I’d like to look at a fairly recent Washington Post story about drone warfare. But before we look at it, let’s go back to June and look at a New York Times story on the same topic. Headlined “War Evolves With Drones, Some Tiny as Bugs,” the article is about the growth of drones. There were fewer than 50 a decade ago. Now there are 7,000. Some spy as well as strike. Manned aircraft are on the way out while the Air Force is training more remote pilots.

This is a very interesting trend and it immediately raises questions about whether the use of drones is more or less just. In the case of the Times story, they did get a quote from someone addressing the topic:

Large or small, drones raise questions about the growing disconnect between the American public and its wars. Military ethicists concede that drones can turn war into a videogame, inflict civilian casualties and, with no Americans directly at risk, more easily draw the United States into conflicts. …

Within the military, no one disputes that drones save American lives. Many see them as advanced versions of “stand-off weapons systems,” like tanks or bombs dropped from aircraft, that the United States has used for decades. “There’s a kind of nostalgia for the way wars used to be,” said Deane-Peter Baker, an ethics professor at the United States Naval Academy, referring to noble notions of knight-on-knight conflict. Drones are part of a post-heroic age, he said, and in his view it is not a always a problem if they lower the threshold for war. “It is a bad thing if we didn’t have a just cause in the first place,” Mr. Baker said. “But if we did have a just cause, we should celebrate anything that allows us to pursue that just cause.”

Now, a moral theologian will tell you that this quote doesn’t do much other than begin the discussion on whether the use of drones is just. According to them, a just cause is a necessary cause but insufficient cause for making the determination of whether a war is just. Everything about how you conduct war comes into play.

The implications for drone warfare in Just War theory is a topic folks love to study and discuss and write about. Good religion journalists, such as the folks at PBS’ Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, were writing about it a long time ago.

Which brings us back to the Washington Post article that ran over a week ago, headlined “A future for drones: Automated killing.” We’re told of criticism that the technology “makes war too antiseptic” and that they are “a challenge to the current understanding of international humanitarian law.” Sounds like a great time to bring in some Just War scholars or other ethicists. Then we’re given this quote:

“The deployment of such systems would reflect a paradigm shift and a major qualitative change in the conduct of hostilities,” Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said at a conference in Italy this month. “It would also raise a range of fundamental legal, ethical and societal issues, which need to be considered before such systems are developed or deployed.”

Consider those questions raised, Jacob Kellenberger! I’m sure the Post will now quote some people giving their thoughts on those raised questions, right? No. Instead we get this:

“Authorizing a machine to make lethal combat decisions is contingent upon political and military leaders resolving legal and ethical questions,” according to an Air Force treatise called Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047.

We get it! Now let’s talk about those ethical questions. And when we do, let’s make sure we bring in some Just War theorists and others who can help us navigate these very complex and thorny issues.

Instead we get a fairly dry discussion about how robots can be programmed to act “ethically” (whatever that means) and follow rules of engagement.

The reader who submitted this story commented:

The churches are collectively failing to apply the Just War theory to the changing nature of warfare. This is partly because journalists fail to see the ghosts involved. This article is an ideal example. Drone warfare raises questions of legitimate authority. A call to a major religious university - or a military chaplains school would uncover some sources. I’d be happy to come up with a list of suggestions.

Yes. An article about the ethical and humanitarian issues raised by drone warfare simply can’t get by without that discussion. And while I actually think there are quite a few people discussing this and saying interesting things about it. If we as a people are to engage in ethical combat, these voices are most helpful in navigating the thornier questions raised by technological advances. Their voices simply must be included in the debate.

“Can one man build effective bridges between evangelical Christians and Chicago’s gay community?”

This question kicks off a fascinating article written by Christopher Landau for the BBC World Service’s Heart and Soul Programme entitled “Why conservative Christians flock to a Chicago gay bar”. I honor the BBC for tackling this difficult story; one with landmines for the unwary journalist.

But I ask, who would criticize a story about Andrew Marin: a man who “believes that polite, honest conversation between people of all perspectives is essential if Christians are to address questions about sexuality more effectively”? Who would be so heartless as to be against peace, love and happiness? It would be like drowning kittens.

I answer, me. This profile misses the mark. In its attempt to allow Andrew Marin to tell his story, it neglects to put that story into context. It makes assumptions and value judgments about the Evangelical Christianity and the GLBT movement that Marin seeks to reconcile without allowing the protagonists to define their terms or explain their cause.

This BBC story is quite similar to an Aug 2010 CBN broadcast entitled “Christian’s Outreach to Gays: I’m Sorry”.  It too tees one up for Marin, not pressing him to define or defend his views, nor presenting opposing or critical comments.  Marin even offers the same “Bible-banging homophobic” ‘money’ quote in each piece. He has his patter down pat.

Am I saying Marin’s work is misguided? No.

I am not offering opinions about his ministry or Christian moral teaching or the gay critique of institutional Christianity. It is the way the story has been crafted that I find unsatisfactory. No dead cats here.

Follow me then inside and see if you come out where I do.

The article begins by stating Marin is a “straight” evangelical Christian who:

.. works to try to bring Christians and gay people together in open conversation about sexuality and spirituality - and that includes running a large-scale meeting four times a year at Roscoe’s, one of America’s most famous gay bars.

That is no small achievement in a culture where openly gay people and evangelical Christians have long viewed each other with suspicion.

The scene has now been set and the BBC’s editorial voice speaks, saying “[Marin] believes that too many Christians don’t understand the complexity of the small number of Bible verses that mention homosexuality - he also thinks that gay people are often too quick to dismiss Christianity.”

On the heals of these strong sentiments, the story moves to a chronicle of Marin’s evolving beliefs and how he came to this work.

He had grown up in a conservative Christian household, and says he was “the biggest Bible-banging homophobic kid you ever met”. .. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought there was no way my theological belief system could ever line up with my [gay] friends’ way of life, so I ended up cutting ties with them.”

But Andrew Marin says that over the following months, he believed God was asking him to get back in touch with his friends and apologise to them.

A few weeks later, along with two of the three friends, he moved into Boystown [a gay neighborhood in Chicago].

The article then offers a colorful anecdote from his ministry and an explanation of his worldview.

One of the most unusual aspects of the Foundation’s work are its Living in the Tension gatherings, where people from all perspectives gather together to explore questions about Christian faith and sexuality. .. Most intriguing were two gay Christian men who had reached dramatically different conclusions about faith and sexuality.

Will is an openly gay man, and a pastor in the United Methodist Church.

He says he has resolved a “creative tension” he initially felt between his calling to ministry and his sexuality.

Sitting opposite him was Brian, who also says he’s always known he was gay - but whose traditional theology meant he chose to marry a woman and has since fathered a child.

He says that falling in love with his wife was “an experience that I can only say was through God himself bringing my wife and me together”.

A gay clergyman and an ex-gay: a nice counterpoint. This leads to the story’s cri de coeur:

But the Marin Foundation believes that polite, honest conversation between people of all perspectives is essential if Christians are to address questions about sexuality more effectively.

Not everyone is convinced that Christians are ready - or able - to have many such discussions. .. He says that the Marin Foundation simply wants to get gay people thinking about Christian spirituality in its broadest sense, without a disproportionate emphasis on sexual morality.

“What we try and do is help the person live the most faithful, God-honouring life that they can through their understanding of where God is leading them.”

This open-ended approach will frustrate both traditionalist and progressive Christians.

But few can argue with the fact that Andrew Marin’s foundation has enabled many conservative churches to begin open discussions about sexuality for the first time.

Now what is wrong with that? Well there is the small matter of hyperbole: Marin’s work has led “many” conservative churches to discuss human sexuality “for the first time”. Which churches? Or does he mean congregations? It seems conservative churches have been talking about sex for quite some time. Controversies over contraception, divorce and remarriage, the swinging 60’s, and now gay rights have been topics of seemingly unending discussion for the past seventy-five years, while the Bible seems to have had a bit to say about this (c.f. the Apostle Paul).

An expert’s voice is heard towards the close, a Harvard professor who says “my hope is that I would be willing to kneel at a communion table with my bitterest enemy in these debates.” Yet this quote shows the Harvard man holds a particular theological view of the Eucharist as a sacrament of unity that would not be shared by conservative evangelicals. For conservative evangelicals, one must have a shared doctrine to share communion, while for Roman Catholics, the Orthodox and like groups Eucharistic discipline forbids allowing those outside the fold from receiving the sacraments.

But more than this, the voices of evangelical Christians and the gay non-Christian community are missing from this article and last year’s CBN story. Robert Gagnon, the leading scholar on the traditional side of the debate, has sharply critiqued Marin’s work finding it to lack theological and Scriptural vigor. The blogosphere is also replete with critics of Marin from the opposite corner. Where are they?

Why spoil the sweetness and light with clouds of criticism? Because such reporting is unfaithful to the story.

American journalism is founded upon a methodology best articulated by the German historian Leopold von Ranke. It is a scientific objective worldview that sees the task of the journalist (like the historian) to report what actually happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen). In this school of writing, the journalist must set aside his own views and present a story on its own terms, to establish what the facts are and let the facts dictate the story.

Omitting dissent, in this view of reporting, gives a false impression of the past and injects the present into the past.

These high minded words beg the question whether such a project is even possible in this post-modernist age. Is it still possible for a reporter to show what actually happened?

I’m still using Google News to search for mainstream news media reports on the fate of the Iranian pastor who faces the death penalty for being a Muslim apostate, even though he has never practice Islam.

Here’s the latest from this morning — from a conservative news source, of course:

Today, evangelical Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani refused to recant his Christian faith before a court in Iran for the third time. He will be brought to the court again for this purpose tomorrow, for the final time. If he refuses, his death sentence for apostasy can then be carried out. …

Those of us in the free world should press our members of Congress to speak up. Not only were American hikers accused of spying for Israeli recently released, but 13 Iranian Jews convicted in 2000 of spying for Israel and facing the death penalty were all released by 2003 — but only after voices had been raised in Washington and other Western capitals.

This note at National Review Online came from the Catholic activist Nina Shea, who directs the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute. Actually, that ID tag is severely lacking. Here’s a bit more biographical information:

Since 1999, Shea has served as a Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. She has been appointed as a U.S. delegate to the United Nation’s main human rights body by both Republican and Democratic administrations. …

For the ten years prior to joining Hudson, Shea worked at Freedom House, where she directed the Center for Religious Freedom, an entity which she had helped found in 1986 as the Puebla Institute.

Yes, we live in an interesting age when people do human-rights work at Freedom House (founded with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt) and then do the same work at the Hudson Institute. As I keep saying, defending the rights of religious minorities is not a left vs. right issue these days. At least, it shouldn’t be.

I have seen some editorials (Fox News here) on the Yousef Nadarkhani case, but no mainstream news reports in the American media. It is possible that I have missed stories in the global press. Please help me watch.

Over at the Washington Times, an editorial provided some additional background on why this case is so bizarre, even by the standards if Iranian courts:

In the fall of 2010, a Revolutionary Tribunal affirmed the death sentence, and the case was appealed to Iran’s Supreme Court. In June, the high court asked the lower court in Rasht to review whether Mr. Nadarkhani had been a practicing Muslim at the age of maturity, which is 15 in Iran. Prosecutors acknowledged that he had never been a Muslim as an adult but said that the apostasy law still applies because he has “Islamic ancestry.” …

Mr. Nadarkhani may face execution as early as Thursday. The U.S. State Department has registered a protest, but Tehran has shown no response to international pressure. Members of international church groups are fasting and praying for Mr. Nadarkhani, who remains committed to his beliefs even facing the gallows. “I don’t need to write anything further about the basis of faith,” he wrote to his supporters earlier this year. “Let us remember that beyond beautiful or painful feelings, only three things remain: Faith, Hope and Love. It is important for believers to make sure which kind of Faith, Hope and Love will remain.”

Thursday is tomorrow. Maybe there will be coverage by dawn, especially if the pastor is executed.

Let’s pretend for a minute that you get to spend 30 minutes with any presidential candidate. What questions would you ask? How would you shape those questions that makes sense for your readership?

If nothing else, Bill Keller’s stunning column for the New York Times last month raised the issue of what kinds of religion questions we should ask candidates. Many reporters fail to break new ground in their questions or sometimes they try to catch the candidates on some theological disconnect. Rarely do we see how the questions end up relating to policy, which is kind of the point, right?

Robert Crosby poses a new set of questions to candidates in a column for Patheos on On Faith’s website. By all means, read the full column, but let’s check out this list of questions.

1. How does your faith inform your public service?
2. In what ways has your faith experience helped you become a better citizen? A better leader?
3. Can America truly be “great” apart from God and a belief in God?
4. What role might your faith play in the event of a national emergency (i.e., terrorist attack, nuclear war, etc.)?
5. Should Mayor Bloomberg have been allowed prayer at the 9/11 Memorial event this month in NYC? How would you have handled this?
6. Has your faith changed you as a person? In what ways?
7. Does your faith experience cause you to be more accepting of other people’s belief systems or less?
8. After 9/11, the song “God Bless America” was often sung at public events (i.e., sporting events, etc.). In what ways do you believe God has “blessed” America? In what ways do you pray God will continue to “bless” America?
9. Do you view your entrance into public office as a means for advancing your particular faith group or denomination?
10. In what ways do your commitments to faith and family help qualify you for public office?

This seems like a fairly good starting point to me, but what do you think? There is no one-size-fits all for each reporter, but it gives at least a general sense of where to begin thinking about the questions. For instance, I’m guessing The Tennessean might ask different questions than the L.A. Times.

Earlier this month, Amy Sullivan tackled this subject for Time magazine, giving a general list of guidelines. I have pulled out her bolded phrases, but she goes more in depth in her column.

Ask relevant questions.
Keep the focus on policy.
No Margaret Mead questions.
Allow degrees of separation.
Ask about Jeremiah Wrights.
Even so, context always matters.
Learn the language.
Know the difference between a dog-whistle and a turn-of-phrase.
Stop calling candidates “devout.”
Thou shalt not discriminate.

Sullivan just did an interview with NPR’s On the Media about these ideas, which I plan to listen to very soon. A friend wrote a note saying, “Bob Garfield seems awfully distressed that there’s an unofficial ‘religious test’ for political candidates.” I’m usually a big fan of “On the Media,” so I’ll be curious how they handle these questions. If you get a chance to listen, let us know what you think about the segment.

Okay, you get one question to ask a candidate: Go.

Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist who became the first African woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, died from cancer on Sunday. Here’s how the New York Times explained her significance in its obituary:

Dr. Maathai, one of the most widely respected women on the continent, played many roles — environmentalist, feminist, politician, professor, rabble-rouser, human rights advocate and head of the Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977. Its mission was to plant trees across Kenya to fight erosion and to create firewood for fuel and jobs for women.

Dr. Maathai was as comfortable in the gritty streets of Nairobi’s slums or the muddy hillsides of central Kenya as she was hobnobbing with heads of state. She won the Peace Prize in 2004 for what the Nobel committee called “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” It was a moment of immense pride in Kenya and across Africa.

Her Green Belt Movement has planted more than 30 million trees in Africa and has helped nearly 900,000 women, according to the United Nations, while inspiring similar efforts in other African countries.

I remembered reading about Maathai on religion blogs back when she won the Peace Prize. A significant portion of her work was dedicated to the relationship between religion and environmentalism. So I waited for the portion of the obituary that explained the role that her Catholicism played in her work. It never came. The obituary did mention she studied at Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas. That school is run by the Benedictine Sisters and you can read some great articles about their relationship to Maathai here.

I’m pretty sure the article I remember from years ago was this one that ran on Beliefnet. Here’s the set-up to a great interview:

In 2002, Maathai was elected to Kenya’s Parliament. She also currently serves as Assistant Environment Minister in the government of Mwai Kibaki. What is perhaps less well-known is that she was educated at mission schools by Catholic nuns (first Italian and then Irish), and earned a scholarship to study at Mt. St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas (now Benedictine College). There, she picked up a degree in biology and what she calls her “Kansas accent.”

Maathai, 65, remains a practicing Catholic while drawing on the tenets of other faiths and the religious expression of her community, the Kikuyu (one of Kenya’s ethnic groups or “micro-nations,” a term Maathai prefers). The Kikuyus’ spiritual home, Mount Kenya, literally Kenya’s highest mountain, looms large over the valleys of the central highlands. Under its shadow, Maathai planted a celebratory tree last fall when her Nobel Prize was announced. She spoke recently with writer Mia MacDonald for Beliefnet.

Reporter Mia MacDonald elicited great responses with her questions. Here is just a sample:

What are some of the values that you take from Catholic spiritual traditions you were schooled in?
One of the greatest teachings of Jesus, of course, is to love your neighbor as yourself. Christendom has not followed that commandment very well. We all know the history of people who promoted Christianity but have also been agents of some of the evil practices we know have been carried out against people in the world. It is still a big challenge for those of us who say we are disciples of Christ to follow that commandment. Many missionaries were inspired by the desire to do good by taking to others the message of salvation, the message of Christ, which they believed was the right message. Many sacrificed a lot. My own teachers are a good example. That is a heritage I cherish.

Christianity has sometimes been marred by people who proclaimed they were Christians but did not practice justice. Nevertheless, my teachers gave me a deep sense of justice and fairness that influenced me to work for human rights, and to desire human rights not only for myself but also for other people. Eventually, this made me understand why it is very important to expand that concept of justice to other species.

How do you use the Bible in your work?
I read the book of Genesis with people. When God was creating the Earth, every day he would look at what he had done and would say, “And that is good.” So I ask them, “If you look at your land, the way it is decimated, would God look at that and say, ‘It is good?’ If God was to look at your rivers when it is raining and see all the good soil he gave you to plant your seeds in the river disappearing, would he say, ‘This is good?’” I try to make them read the Bible, that book they read every day, with a new understanding and a new vision so they can see the wisdom embedded in the words.

Have you sought to engage religious leaders in environmental activism?
For the last few years, I have been trying to communicate with leaders of various Christian churches to urge them to bring protection and conservation of the environment into the mainstream of their faith and their teachings. I have been suggesting that Easter Monday could be a very good day for the entire Christendom to plant trees. If we could make that Monday a day of regeneration, revival, of being reborn, of finding salvation by restoring the Earth, it would be a great celebration of Christ’s resurrection. After all, Christ was crucified on the cross. In a light touch, I always say, somebody had to go into the forest, cut a tree, and chop it up for Jesus to be crucified. What a great celebration of his conquering [death] it would be if we were to plant trees on Easter Monday in thanksgiving.

Usually New York Times obituaries are quite good at incorporating the role that religion played in someone’s life. Maathai was quite clear about her religious views and it would be nice to have those included in the article about her life.