The Daily Mail has brought to its readers’ attention a timely twist to the conflict between faith and science. The article: “Muslim medical students boycotting lectures on evolution… because it ‘clashes with the Koran’,” reports the tensions felt by Muslim medical students who are divided between adherence to their faith and the pursuit of their profession.

However, readers expecting an updated version of “Inherit the Wind”, substituting Islam for Christianity and London for the American South, will be disappointed. There is a great idea for a story here, but no story as far as I can tell.

The article opens with a bang, and telegraphs the Daily Mail’s editorial view (the students are villains, the professor the hero):

Muslim students, including trainee doctors on one of Britain’s leading medical courses, are walking out of lectures on evolution claiming it conflicts with creationist ideas established in the Koran.

Professors at University College London have expressed concern over the increasing number of biology students boycotting lectures on Darwinist theory, which form an important part of the syllabus, citing their religion. 

Similar to the beliefs expressed by fundamentalist Christians, Muslim opponents to Darwinism maintain that Allah created the world, mankind and all known species in a single act.

Steve Jones emeritus professor of human genetics at university college London has questioned why such students would want to study biology at all when it obviously conflicts with their beliefs.

Everything is here for a screenplay. It includes great characters: Muslim medical students, a lefty professor, and a mysterious Muslim scholar Harun Yahya. The photo of Yahya provided by the Daily Mail could have come from central casting. Forget Claude Akins as Rev. Jeremiah Brown (the preacher in the 1960 Stanley Kramer version of the film) Harun Yahya could be played by a mature Jack Nicholson.

We have a clash of ideals — the tenets of Islam versus evolution, and a change of scene to London.  And in the background we have England’s unease in dealing with the demands of its growing population of immigrant Muslims. Throw in a clash of generations with the clash of cultures and an attractive female lead and we have a modern morality play. But that movie is not this story.

The Daily Mail article is unbalanced, un-sourced, and heavy handed. Neither good entertainment nor good journalism. Following its strong opening Prof. Jones speaks.

“I had one or two slightly frisky discussions years ago with kids who belonged to fundamentalist Christian churches, now it is Islamic overwhelmingly.

“They don’t come [to lectures] or they complain about it or they send notes or emails saying they shouldn’t have to learn this stuff.

“What they object to - and I don’t really understand it, I am not religious - they object to the idea that there is a random process out there which is not directed by God.”

So far so good — pithy, hard hitting comments from the professor. I was initially surprised, however, by placement of the professor’s comments first. When a reporter presents two sides to an argument he sometimes gives the less favored side the first chance to speak. That allows the reporter’s favorite the opportunity to speak in rebuttal. (“God tells me the earth ends tomorrow” claims Fred Loonie. “Not so,” replies Prof. John Serious. “The Science is against it,” said the Nobel laureate ….)

But surprise turned to astonishment when I read on and found no student or Muslim voice in rebuttal or explanation. After  the professor’s comments comes a statement that an imam received “death threats for suggesting that Darwinism and Islam might be compatible.” This is followed by:

Sources within the group Muslims4UK partly blame the growing popularity of creationist beliefs within Islam on Turkish author Harun Yahya who, influenced by the success of Christian creationists in America, has written several books denouncing Darwinist theory. Yahya associates Darwinism with Nazism and his books are and videos are available at many Islamic bookshops in the UK and regularly feature on Islamic television channels.

And the article closes with a word from Richard Dawkins.

“I think creationism is … a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories … if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there’s just been a jarring of categories … My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it.”

The shame of it all is that there is a real story in here — but not the one the Daily Mail is reporting. If the premise of the story is true, that Muslim medical students are boycotting classes on human evolution for religious purposes, then it is important to learn why and how such a radicalization took place. What has happened in British higher education that has converted Muslim students to an extremist view of their faith? A view rejected by the scientists from across the Muslim world.

All in all, this is a mess.

Photo of Charles Darwin courtesy of Shutterstock - Jose AS Reyes

Another day, another article about a religious group trying to be hip. It’s the third article in about a month that The New York Times has noted hipster and religion trends. Again, the premise of its latest piece is that religion is not hip so it’s noteworthy when a group finds a way to pull it off.

Heads in the congregation nodded: young men in untucked T-shirts and jeans and insouciant 20-something women, a crowd that otherwise might be seen pedaling fixies in the Mission or sipping brewed-by-the-cup coffee at a trendy cafe.

At Ikon, hipsters — the city’s latest bohemian generation — have found religion.

The piece had potential with the start-up angle, since it’s interesting that other churches around the country would help finance it with no apparent denominational ties.

Ikon has what Mr. Monts called “angel investors” — 22 similar churches from across the nation, including ones in New York and Miami, that have contributed to the church’s initial financing.

Reunion Christian Church in Boston, itself just five years old, gave money to start Ikon, according to its pastor, Hank Wilson. He described the donation as “modest,” and said it was part of his congregation’s mission to help new “church plants,” its term for these start-ups.

Does Reunion Christian Church give to just any church plant? How did the two churches get connected in the first place? Otherwise, it’s not that unusual for people to plant churches, so it’s unclear why this one is so noteworthy with just 120 members.

Ted F. Peters, a professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, said that new churches were rare not just in San Francisco, but in most of the country. “Over the last decade it’s been very difficult,” he said.

Since 2006, Dr. Peters said, there has been an “explosion” of atheism nationwide, perhaps, he added, in reaction to the Roman Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals and extremist right-wing positions taken by some Protestant churches.

Successfully attracting young adults to a church is unusual. “Most mainline denominations have really lost that group,” Dr. Peters said, adding that a church would need to have “liberal social ethics.”

It’s a little strange that he would say churches really need to have “liberal social ethics” to attract young adults, considering the mainline churches probably fit that category and lost the young adults. Why does he think mainline churches losing young adults and having liberal social ethics and correlate? I’m guessing this writer just called up some professor and took his word for it. I asked Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Research about whether church planting has decreased and whether atheism has increased. Here’s what he said:

About 4,000 churches are planted a year in the U.S. (my stat, from Viral Churches book). Most observers would say that there has been an increase (see articles in Christian Century about mainline and Christianity Today about evangelical). So, I see more church planting, not less. Perhaps not in San Francisco, but I can list several there off the top of my head.

The “atheism explosion” is a common idea, but the Baylor study has debunked that—and it has been widely reported. Atheism remains about 4%—not much change. Atheists may be more aggressive, but they are not more prevalent.

So did the reporter ask: what data is Ted Peters using to demonstrate that there has been decrease in church planting and/or an explosion of atheism? Back to the original article, it seems like reporter is fascinated by all the tech. You can read the Bible from iPhone? Who knew?

But little of it seems traditional: Sunday readings were from an iPhone, contemporary songs replaced hymns, a video screen showed a popular YouTube clip during the sermon and techno music thumped for the recessional. Ikon uses Twitter, Facebook, sleek Web sites and advertising campaigns in transit stations to promote its message.

Has this reporter ever been to a megachurch? Because gosh, these “hip” elements seems pretty traditional for any booming church, eager to adapt to any new media.

The church’s tenets include a devotion to the arts, openness (gay men and lesbians are welcome), environmental causes, and addressing tough social issues, like outreach to the city’s sex workers.

I’m not seeing anything about what this church believes, mostly about what it emphasizes. For instance, what does it believe about the Bible, Jesus, heaven and hell, etc.?

Another member, Mabi Knittle, 34, put Ikon’s message more succinctly. “Love saves people,” he said. “Love rescues people.”

The above summary is perhaps too succinct that it tells us nothing. Love, generally speaking, saves people? Perhaps he could have asked her to go into more detail? If the church members love each other, they will be saved from what? Otherwise, what sets this apart from any other hipster Christian church? As we noted before, they’re kind of all over the country.

Hipster photo via Shutterstock.

This is the headline on a Washington Post story published today:

GOP hopeful Rick Santorum campaigns with a seriously ill daughter at home

My first thought: You’re kidding — Santorum’s still in the race!?

My second thought: What a jerk!

Then I decided to read past the editorialized title and see what the story had to say. The Lifestyle piece opens this way:

SIOUX CITY, IOWA — At the lectern in a packed convention center last month, Rick Santorum spoke haltingly, not for the first or the last time, about his seriously ill youngest daughter, Isabella , who has the genetic disorder Trisomy 18. Half of all children with the chromosomal anomaly, more common in girls, are stillborn. And of those who do survive, only one in 10 makes it to her first birthday.

“I have a little girl who’s 3¹/₂  years old,” the Republican presidential hopeful said in his dinner speech at the annual “Defenders of Freedom” event, hosted by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). “I don’t know whether her life is going to be measured — it’s always been measured — in days and weeks. Yet here I am” — on the road so often, he was the first of the current GOP contenders to visit all 99 Iowa counties. Why? “Because I feel like I wouldn’t be a good dad if I wasn’t out here fighting for a country that would see the dignity in her and every other child.”

His is easily the most searing personal narrative offered by any candidate this season. And when he speaks of Bella publicly, it is almost always in conjunction with his top policy goal of dismantling the health-care reform legislation, which he sees as a threat to those like her, “on the margins of life.”

Amazingly enough, the 1,400-word profile attempts to tackle Santorum’s personal and political motivations without a single mention of faith or abortion.

In the online version, the Post even links in the opening paragraph to the YouTube video embedded with this post. In that video, Santorum prefaces his remarks about his daughter by citing his authorship of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

The story makes vague reference to Santorum’s “life” platform:

The point of his run, and indeed his whole political career, he said, is “to open people’s eyes to things they maybe ­haven’t thought through. I don’t think most Americans think through life.”

But nowhere does the story explore the role of religion as it relates to Santorum’s daughter and his presidential run — or question whether his decision to campaign bolsters or undermines his reputation as a candidate of faith. (For those new to the GetReligion party, we refer to this gap in coverage as a religion ghost.)

A quick Google search turned up a recent McClatchy story on Santorum. That headline (with a slightly different slant than the Post):

Santorum keeps faith at forefront in his GOP presidential nomination campaign

From that story:

But it was his narrative about 3-year-old daughter Bella that brought him and his audience near tears.

Born premature and profoundly disabled, she almost died twice.

“I look at Bella … and just love her unconditionally,” Santorum said, then added, “That’s how the Father looks at me.”

“That’s right,” a woman responded to his allusion to God.

When he meets with pastors, Santorum points to Time magazine’s decision to list him, in 2005, as one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America for leading fights on Capitol Hill against abortion and same-sex marriage.

“And I’m not an evangelical,” said Santorum, who’s Catholic. Evangelicals are Protestants who emphasize a personal “born-again” experience, evangelism and a literal reading of the Bible.

Yet the only hint from the Post story that faith might play a role in Santorum’s life and campaign comes in a passing reference at the very end:

It was late by then, and the candidate hoped, he said, to check in with his family before grabbing a few hours’ sleep, then heading off to an early morning Mass and another full day of campaign events.

Ghosts, anyone?

Not too long ago, when the New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a supportive profile of a sex-positive sex-ed teacher, Rod Dreher wrote about the magazine’s obsession “with sex and sexuality, and of course always, always, always from a progressive point of view.” He listed some of the “sexual-liberationist” stories they’d done this year.

The thing about these stories, though, is that they’re frequently pretty good in what they do share. They just lack any skepticism at all. As I like to say, if you can’t find contrary opinions on sexual-liberationist stories, you’re just doing it wrong. To wit, about the supposedly devout Catholic who teaches kids sex positive stuff, I read someone saying “A grown man who is talking to kids about sex this way is usually called a pedophile. He’s giving them an induction ceremony, not an education.”

I mean, it’s not hard to get people talking about sex and saying really interesting and controversial things. Calling beloved teachers who are just trying to get kids to touch themselves and talk about their naughty bits mean names. You know how it goes. That’s part of what makes it so fun to write about (says this former sex columnist).

In any case, here’s another story in the mold, this time from the New York Times’ regional section. It so closely approximates a parody of what critics of the Times say would make a perfect Times story, that I actually had to make sure the group profiled was real before I wrote about them. They are real! The piece is headlined “Schmekel, a Band Born as a Laugh.”

THE basement auditorium of the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side is a sincere space. Big, brown and bare, it suggests a school gym, a place for officially sanctioned fun — which made a recent concert by Schmekel, a raucous klezmer-core punk band made up of “100% trans Jews,” all the more surprising.

“Schmekel” means little penis in Yiddish, and is a play on the fact that all four members were born female but now identify themselves on the masculine side of the gender spectrum. It’s an appropriate name for a band that started as a laugh.

Now, most bands with this level of popularity (when I checked their YouTube page tonight, their most watched video had only 1200 views — and this after being featured in the New York Times) don’t get much media coverage, much less in the Grey Lady. But how many trans Jew bands are there? I’d have profiled them, too. Still, I do wonder what the Times is missing in that genre of bands at this level of popularity.

Anyway, the article is an enjoyable read. We meet members Lucian Kahn, Ricky Riot, Simcha Halpert-Hanson and Nogga Schwartz. Religion is fully included in the story and their sound is described this way:

If the musical satirist Tom Lehrer were to write a hard-core anthem about sex reassignment surgery, with a driving guitar lick, a “Hava Nagila” breakdown and a keyboard line lifted from Super Mario Brothers, it might approximate the Schmekel sound.

When we meet Schmekel, they’re playing at a JCC on Halloween night. The article includes some fun commentary on the meaning of it all. The senior director of institutional programs at the center says that the band members are emblematic of a sea change in mainstream Judaism:

“What has become so particularly amazing now is all of the places you get to layer your identity,” she said. To her mind, people used to have to choose a single broad-stroke identifier, as though they were characters from an ’80s movie: nerd, jock, Jew or trans. Now, Ms. Lacks said, more and more young people are unwilling to leave any of their identities behind to fit into regular Jewish space.

“The Venn diagram on musical, Yiddish and queer leads to a very small shaded area, but they live in it,” Ms. Lacks said. “This is à la carte Judaism. Or you could do a different frame, and it’s à la carte queerdom.”

The rest of the piece reads like promotional material for the band or what you might expect in a progressive Jewish publication. But with that high level of religious discussion. One of the members, who says he was raised “conservadox,” says that there are six recognized genders in the Talmud:

These include the standard two with which we’re all familiar, and four more for others including eunuchs and people who are raised as girls but develop male characteristics at puberty.

When Mr. Schwartz started to prepare for his bat mitzvah, he began questioning everything from his religion to his gender, and he sought support from his temple. “My rabbi sat down with me and we had many conversations,” Mr. Schwartz said.

The rabbi told him that his soul was “probably a more masculine one,” and that he had to “live in the female experience to learn both sides of the coin.”

That, in Mr. Schwartz’s view, is what Judaism is all about. “We’re supposed to better ourselves as human beings, not as male or female,” he said. “That’s the ultimate goal.”

Great anecdote to include. But it made me realize that while we hear from a rabbi second-hand and are presented this information as if there is uniform agreement that gender is unimportant in Judaism that there is precisely nothing in this story that indicates these views of Judaism might not be universal. Well, that’s not true. Check out these paragraphs:

Indeed, for all the band’s irreverence, the foursome is serious about Judaism. Mr. Riot wears a skullcap, was born in Israel and grew up in Fair Lawn, N.J., in a modern Orthodox community. Mr. Kahn identifies as an atheist but holds a master’s degree in religious history from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. And Simcha Halpert-Hanson (who prefers not to be identified with gendered honorifics or pronouns) grew up in the Reform movement but has always been drawn to a stricter interpretation of Judaism.

In the end, it may be their respect for and knowledge of their history that makes the band groundbreaking. They are not fractious rebels storming the castle of traditional faith, though they are fierce critics of homophobia, transphobia and misogyny in organized Jewish life. They see themselves as grounded in a strong Judaic tradition, even if the rest of the world doesn’t — yet. But they are reaching out, and the mainstream is reaching back.

Note the care with which Simcha Halpert-Hanson’s preferences on “gendered honorifics or pronouns” are handled. I would have loved to see a similar level of care when it came to some other details. In order for the reader to assess these claims about the existence of irrational fear and misogyny in organized Jewish life, we need details. Who fears irrationally? How is that irrational fear manifested? In order to assess whether Schmekel is grounded in a strong Judaic tradition and that they are reaching out to the mainstream and the mainstream is reaching back to them, we need details.

Yes, it’s a lovely story about an all-transmasculine Jewish band. If it’s just about a fun band having fun, such a puffy approach is more than appropriate. But if we’re going to make it about something much bigger than a handful of YouTube views and a college tour, the story needs to go ahead and embrace the challenge more fully.

What do you need to do to get featured in the New York Times? Just get a Facebook group of about 800 people, apparently. The website Stuff Journalists Like noted a trend of journalists who love the social network.

There are two types of journalists – those who use Facebook and those who don’t get Facebook. Those of the latter often dismiss cell phones and power car windows.

Not since the phone book has there been a tool journalists used more than Facebook.

Facebook is a favorite tool for journalists to find stories, and it just takes is a page to attract some attention. Last week, Bobby noted what looks like an increased number of puff pieces on atheists. His post nicely prepared us for the Times profile of black atheists, a group the paper just discovered and found it best to fit in front of Sunday’s style section.

Ronnelle Adams came out to his mother twice, first about his homosexuality, then about his atheism.

“My mother is very devout,” said Mr. Adams, 30, a Washington resident who has published an atheist children’s book, “Aching and Praying,” but who in high school considered becoming a Baptist preacher. “She started telling me her issues with homosexuality, which were, of course, Biblical,” he said. “ ‘I just don’t care what the Bible says about that,’ I told her, and she asked why. ‘I don’t believe that stuff anymore.’ It got silent. She was distraught. She told me she was more bothered by that than the revelation I was gay.”

This is a fairly dramatic lead to the story that only serves as a mini anecdote with no further explanation. What was the path he took from considering being a Baptist preacher to becoming an atheist? From the opening, you might guess it has something to do with his sexuality, but the piece doesn’t flesh that out, making the lead anecdote a lazy way to get into a flat story.

In the two years since, Black Atheists has grown to 879 members from that initial 100, YouTube confessionals have attracted thousands, blogs like “Godless and Black” have gained followings, and hundreds more have joined Facebook groups like Black Atheist Alliance (524 members) to share their struggles with “coming out” about their atheism.

Listen, a Facebook group of 879 members for something is basically nothing. I understand this is in the style section and may not need a hook, but framing the story with these numbers makes it seem like it’s some sort of trend, when 800 really isn’t that many for a place like Facebook.

While some black clergy members lament the loss of parishioners to mega-churches like Rick Warren’s and prosperity-gospel purveyors like Joel Osteen, it is often taken for granted that African-Americans go to religious services. Islam and other religions are represented in the black community, but with the assumption that African-Americans are religious comes the expectation that they are Christian.

This is stated with authority but with little to back it up. Why not attribute this to anyone?

Given the cultural pull toward religion, less than one-half of a percent of African-Americans identify themselves as atheists, compared with 1.6 percent of the total population, according to Pew. Black atheists, then, find they are a minority within a minority.

I don’t doubt that this story is true. It would probably be difficult to be nonreligious—especially atheist—in a black community. It just annoys me that the Times would print something so obvious. If there were a mass trend towards atheism in the black community, I might find it more interesting. But nothing in the piece taught me anything new about faith, race or culture, and breaking new ground is where I would hope the paper would devote its resources.

Simple photo via Shutterstock.

Anyone who has followed religion coverage in the mainstream press in recent decades should be familiar with the byline of Don Lattin.

While he is best known for his years of work at the San Francisco Chronicle, he has also done consulting work with the news pros at CNN, ABC, NBC and elsewhere. GetReligion readers may also be familiar with some of his books, such as “Following Our Bliss: How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today” and “The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America.”

In other words, the guy has been around. He’s a God-beat veteran, any way you want to look at it.

Just the other day, Lattin dropped in on the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature, which was meeting in, as he puts it, “Baghdad on the Bay.” This leads to the following weblog commentary on one of the sessions that certainly would have been of interest to GetReligion readers.

… I made the mistake of stumbling into a panel of (except for KQED’s Michael Krasny) East Coast media elite telling the assembled professors how to get their bright ideas picked up by what we used to call “the popular press.” That was back in the day when people still got their news in the form of something called a “newspaper.” …

I was somewhere between bemused and enraged when Sally Quinn of the Washington Post, the ultimate inside-the-Beltway celebrity journalist, explained how she looked across the vast media landscape five years ago and discovered that no one in the news business had figured out that Americans really care about religion and that there are a bunch of great stories out there just waiting to be told.

As someone who covered the religion beat for 25 years, I thought I’d gotten used to the fact that leading newspaper publishers, managing editors, network television producers and others who claim to speak for the “news media” rediscover the religion beat about every five years.

I almost raised my hand to remind the assembly that there has been something called the Religion Newswriters Association. It’s been in business since the 1940s and has over the last few generations given awards to hundreds of fine journalists who have produced lively, informative, heart-felt stories about religion in America and elsewhere on the planet. And, no, they were not all hacks writing the Sermon of the Week for the Saturday church page. And — unlike myself — many of them are still plying their trade at big, medium and small newspapers across the country, even more overworked and underpayed and underappreciated than ever.

But I kept my mouth shut.

I would assume that, as a matter of timing, Quinn’s remarks that day were similar to those she offered to “On Faith” readers in an online meditation about what she has learned in the five years since the launching of this Washington Post commentary and (increasingly) news content site. Her commentary begins like this:

It was five years ago this month that we launched On Faith. The idea was to inform and educate about all faiths (and no faith) and to initiate an on-going discussion about the role of religion, values and ethics in our daily lives. I hoped that after learning more, people would become more accepting of those who held different beliefs. Pluralism was the goal.

I have never been so enthralled, learned so much or been so fulfilled by any subject so much as this. It has totally changed my perspective on life. It was clearly what I was meant to do. …

What follows are her thoughts on five subjects related to the commentary side of this sprawling website. The bullet points will surprise few readers who are familiar with her work.

1. Nobody knows.

2. All religions are the same — and not.

3. Everything is about religion.

4. We are all looking for meaning.

5. Why there is suffering.

Lattin may have been able to keep his mouth shut, but I cannot.

First, please read her commentary because I think, on one level, that it speaks for itself. It also helps to know that Quinn used to refer to herself as an atheist but, after face-to-face evangelism by Jon Meacham (the original co-founder of “On Faith”), she has decided to simply call herself a “learner.”

Her personal remarks are interesting. Nevertheless, it’s impossible for me not to read her commentary in a journalism context. All along, my questions about the “On Faith” project have been journalistic questions, questions rooted in my conviction that all kinds of journalists — believers and unbelievers — have done exceptionally good work on the religion beat. However, their goal was journalism. It has always seemed that Quinn’s goals are not essentially journalistic — they are educational and therapeutic.

Meanwhile, it’s important to remember that the Post employs several professionals who, as a rule, do an good job of writing about religion as journalism. This was true before “On Faith” was born and that continues to be the case today. The fact that their journalism appears in “On Faith” in various forms is a journalistic plus. Readers can only hope that trend continues and expands.

Meanwhile, “On Faith” has tweaked its commentary-driven approach to include other hard-news content, including extensive space for the work of the professionals at the Religion News Service. I think that’s a big plus, as well, since GetReligion is pro journalism.

The key question, once again, is why Quinn is convinced that religion — as opposed to dozens of other complex and mysterious subjects covered by journalists — must exclusively be viewed through a lens of feelings, emotions, opinions and, thus, commentary. Is religion, in effect, too dangerous to cover as news? Trust me, I know that religious doctrines, traditions, beliefs and emotions, when combined, can be volatile and hard for journalists to handle in an accurate, balanced and professional manner. However, this is not a valid reason to flip a switch and assume that this journalistic task is impossible. Quite the opposite.

What does Quinn mean when she says that the first lesson she has learned through “On Faith” is that, “Nobody knows”? On one level, this is a simple truth about a wide variety of topics — politics, fine arts, economics and sports leap to mind — in which it is impossible to nail down many crucial variables in a laboratory.

As I have stated many times, it’s hard to write a simple declarative sentence stating that “prayers can heal.” There is fascinating evidence on both sides of that debate, some of which has been produced in settings such as the Harvard Medical School.

Journalists who want to cover that story must strive to accurately quote authorities and believers on both sides. No one knows, after all, that prayers have no impact. We do, however, know that millions of people believe in the power of prayer and that these beliefs help shape their lives and actions. That’s a fact. We know that. We also know that different religious traditions have very specific doctrines, traditions and beliefs about prayer and that it would be bad journalism to confuse them or to mangle the factual details of those teachings. That’s a fact. We know that.

If “no one knows” is the guiding principle, then right-wing blowhards are telling the truth when they say that they think that President Barack Obama is actually a Muslim. It is a fact, of course, that he walked down an aisle in a liberal Christian congregation and made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. It is a fact that he has shared his Christian testimony in a wide variety of settings. But, hey, no one knows. Right?

Think this through. The first thing we know is that no one knows. The one fact we know is that facts do not matter. Thus, religion is a subject that is best addressed through opinion and commentary, not journalism.

This scares me, quite frankly. This belief about beliefs could lead major journalists to conclude that there is no need to attempt balanced, fair, accurate journalism on topics linked to religion. Is that right, Bill Keller?

After an earlier “on Faith” mini-storm, I summed up my journalistic convictions this way:

There are facts that matter here. Facts about history, doctrine and courtesy. Facts matter when you are covering religion news and trends. Facts matter when you are interviewing religious people — left and right, members of major world religions and members of lesser known bodies that some would be tempted to call “fringe.” Facts and doctrine matter to religious people, even to people who are very specific and highly creedal about the doctrines that they reject. I have interviewed many an atheist who had more doctrines in his anti-creed than I recite in the Nicene Creed.

This isn’t about emotions and feelings. It’s about getting the facts right and showing respect for the people for whom those facts, doctrines and rituals are a matter of eternal life and death. Facts matter in journalism, religion and journalism about religion.

I still believe that. I know many other mainstream journalists who still believe that, too. And that’s a fact.

A few days ago, voters went to the polls in Morocco to elect a parliament. In Egypt, voters are going into their second day of high-turnout elections. The Moroccan election is part of a governmental reform process initiated by the king. It includes greater power for elected officials and a decentralization of authority.

Now, I know that many U.S. readers aren’t as interested as they should be in foreign elections. But I wonder if stories such as this one in the New York Times aren’t part of the problem. The headline is “Moderate Islamist Party to Lead Coalition Government in Morocco.”

So of course what I’m hoping for is an understanding both of what makes this party Islamist but also what makes it a “moderate” Islamist party. Here’s the lede in the story by Souad Mekhennet and Maia de la Baume:

A moderate Islamist party achieved major gains in Morocco’s parliamentary election, according to final returns announced by the government on Sunday, giving it the right to lead a coalition government. King Mohammed VI is now expected to choose a prime minister from the party, Justice and Development. ….

The Constitution reserves important powers for the king, including in military and religious matters, and does not establish the kind of constitutional monarchy demanded by the protesters. But the government will be Morocco’s first popularly elected one, with the power to appoint ministers and dissolve Parliament.

In Tunisia last month, voters also elected a moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, in that country’s first free election.

OK, that is wonderful to learn that the Constitution “reserves important powers for the king” and that these include “religious matters.” But what is up with the lack of specifics? What religious matters? What does that even mean? Does the average New York Times reader just know much, much more about Moroccan government and society than I do? Am I the only one wondering what these religious matters are?

Also, that’s great that Tunisians also elected a “moderate Islamist” party, but I still don’t really have any idea what that means.

We learn that the Moroccan party in question got 107 of 395 seats, a monarchist party got 60 and a “center-right” party got 52. We learn that the majority party isn’t expected to make any radical changes and that it’s loyal to the king. I don’t know what that means. I wish I did. So what will the party care about? Here it gets a smidge better:

Its leader, Abdelilah Benkirane, claimed victory, saying the party would focus on democracy and governing. “Today what I can promise Moroccans is that I am going to try, I and the team which will work with me, to be more serious and more rational,” he told the French television station France 24 on Saturday.

The party has appealed to Morocco’s poor by focusing on economic and social issues, modeling itself on Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party, which has fused religion and modern politics.

But what does that mean? A fusion of religion and modern politics? I just want a practical example of this. Here’s a quote from someone:

“We have a progressive approach to Islam,” Mustapha Ramid, a party leader, said in an interview. “The Islamicization of Morocco will be achieved only by re-establishing justice, and religious freedom.”

OK. Good to know. Any more platitudes we can get people on record in support of?

I thought the Associated Press story that ran in the Washington Post was much better. Here’s the lede:

The victory of an Islamist Party in Morocco’s parliamentary elections appears to be one more sign that religious-based parties are benefiting the most from the new freedoms brought by the Arab Spring.

Across the Middle East, parties referencing Islam have made great strides, offering an alternative to corrupt, long serving dictators, who have often ruled with close Western support.

Later we hear from political analyst Maati Monjib:

In Tunisia, Morocco, and on Monday most likely also Egypt, newly enfranchised populations are choosing religious parties as a rebuke to the old systems, which often espoused liberal or left-wing ideologies.

“The people link Islam and political dignity,” said Monjib, who describes himself as coming from the left end of the political spectrum. “There is a big problem of dignity in the Arab world and the people see the Islamists as a way of getting out of the sense of subjugation and inferiority towards the West.”

Like the Ennahda Party in Tunisia, the PJD is also from the more moderate end of the Islamist spectrum. The party’s leader, Abdelilah Benkirane, supports a strong role for the monarchy and the movement has always been careful to play the political game.

The party doesn’t describe itself as “Islamist” but rather as having an Islamic “reference,” meaning that its policies follow the moral dictates of the religion.

The PJD has also avoided focusing on issues like the sale of alcohol or women’s headscarves that have obsessed Islamist parties elsewhere in the region, and instead has talked about the need to revamp Morocco’s abysmal education system, root out rampant corruption and find jobs for the millions of unemployed.

And the explanations continue. We hear from a politics professor who says that the winning party was able to broaden its appeal by giving assurances to the business and middle class “that they weren’t totally Islamist.” And we learn that many are looking to Turkey for how modernity and Islam can be allied effectively.

It’s just a much different, much more engaging story that actually shows what a “moderate Islamist” party might look look.

Moroccan tile image via Shutterstock.

One of the overarching story lines in the mainstream coverage of the new English translation of the Mass is that the critics of the new translation (who, thus, are the defenders of the old, more casual “dynamic equivalence” translation that it has replaced) are the true defenders of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Of course, this would mean that Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican powers that be and other defenders of the new English translation are actually working to overturn the spirit (more than the actual actions) of Vatican II.

With that tension in mind, pay special attention to the lede of The New York Times daily story about the Advent I changeover.

Roman Catholics throughout the English-speaking world on Sunday left behind words they have prayed for nearly four decades, flipping through unfamiliar pew cards and pronouncing new phrases as the church urged tens of millions of worshipers to embrace a new translation of the Mass that more faithfully tracks the original Latin.

It’s interesting, of course, that the story concedes that the new translation “more faithfully tracks” the “original Latin.” Then again, “tracks” is a strange word. It is not quite the same thing as “translates.” It sounds rather mechanical and clunky.

What caught my eye was the term “original Latin.”

What percentage of Times readers do you think read that reference and thought, “Oh, the old Latin Mass,” as in the Tridentine Mass that was updated by the Second Vatican Council?

How many, instead, do you think read those two words and thought — accurately — that this was a reference to the modern Mass, the Novus Ordo? The source, reference text for this rite is maintained in Latin, but this modern liturgy is then translated into the various languages of Catholics around the world.

In other words, the new translation is a more literal, grammatically strict, translation of the Mass approved by the Second Vatican Council.

If readers do not know that one piece of information, the background for the entire story changes. The Times team never explains this basic fact.

If you know that one fact, then this story is no longer about defenders of Vatican II and opponents of Vatican II — reformers vs. anti-reformers. Instead, it’s a debate between leaders in two schools of thought about how best to translate and practice the reforms of Vatican II.

If you know that one fact, then it appears that the Vatican wanted a new English translation that includes all of the words and images of the Novus Ordo, a translation that more closely parallels post-Vatican II translations into other languages used by Catholics around the world. Yes, this does mean that English-speaking worshipers will need to learn some new phrases that are, in fact, included in the Vatican II rite. Many of the missing phrases and images that are being restored are references drawn from scripture or allusions to scripture.

The summary paragraph offered by the Times team sums up the debates this way:

… (B)ehind the scenes, the debate over the new translation has been angry and bitter, exposing rifts between a Vatican-led church hierarchy that has promoted the new translation as more reverential and accurate, and critics, among them hundreds of priests, who fear it is a retreat from the commitment of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s to allowing people to pray in a simple, clear vernacular as they participate in the church’s sacred rites.

Note that this debate is between Vatican leaders and a vague camp of critics, including ordinary priests. In reality, this is a debate INSIDE the American Catholic hierarchy and, especially, among conservative and progressive Catholic liturgists and academics. The essential question? Is a translation “simple” and “clear” if it omits many words, phrases and images that are found in the source document?

That’s the debate journalists need to cover. Thus, one would expect that this Times story must accurately and fairly cover this debate, with articulate leaders — local and national — being heard on both sides. That’s the journalistic challenge. Correct?

With that in mind, I went through the story with a highlighter pen and marked the voices on both sides, then I counted the words. I did everything I could to leave many words as neutral, including the following quote that allowed one Catholic to cover both bases at the same time:

Rebecca Brown, a parishioner at St. James Cathedral in Seattle, said she felt well prepared for the new translation. “I’m not fond of the linguistic choices, how it rolls off the tongue,” Ms. Brown said. “But on the other hand, the Catholic Church is always about renewal and reforming itself. This is just one of those changes.”

I am sure that others attempting this task and end up with numbers that are slightly different than mine. I erred on the side of neutrality, as I mentioned.

Nevertheless, I ended up with 128 words of positive commentary about the new translation and 403 words of negative commentary. The story includes one scholar on the left, but none on the right. When it comes to direct quotes, all of the strong voices are among those who oppose the new translation.

It’s not a fair fight. Then again, that does not appear to have been the journalistic goal — simply looking at the raw materials of the report. This is a story about good guys and bad guys, defenders of Vatican II and opponents of Vatican II.

In terms of balance and tone, here is a typical exchange:

“It was interesting,” said Danielle McGinley, 31, a parishioner at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. “It feels more like a Spanish Mass to me. The Spanish Mass is a more literal translation. I like it.”

But George Lind, 73, in New York, had a more visceral reaction. He tried to say the new language at the Church of the Holy Cross in Times Square during the Saturday night Mass, he said, but he became so angry that he had to stop speaking.

“I am so tired of being told exactly what I have to say, exactly what I have to pray,” he said. “I believe in God, and to me that is the important thing. This is some attempt on the part of the church hierarchy to look important.”

Yes, yes, there are conservative Catholics who would respond that they have, for four decades, been told exactly what they have to say, exactly what they have to pray. That’s the other side of the story, the other side of this emotional debate.

Do the journalistic math.

At first glance, I had high hopes for a CNN story out today with the headline “Pastor fights HIV stigma in Southern town.”

I printed out a hard copy, ready to enjoy the kind of precise details and behind-the-scenes insight that make for compelling, praiseworthy journalism.

Instead, I settled for an avalanche of stereotypes and vague references to backwoods religion.

According to an editor’s note, CNN’s Health team is taking a close look at the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Southeastern United States with a series leading up to World AIDS Day on Wednesday. Perhaps the Health team should have enlisted the help of CNN’s Godbeat pros on this particular story. The top of the piece:

Dorchester, South Carolina (CNN) — The fan by the window pushed humid air uselessly against the church pews.

Diana Martinez made small talk as Tommy Terry shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The man sitting next to Martinez cracked a joke. Nobody laughed.

A clock on the back wall ticked minutes away in a mocking cliché.

Only three people had shown up for this month’s HIV/AIDS awareness meeting. Usually, there are 10 to 12 — a surprisingly good turnout for a congregation of 25, which just goes to show how many people the disease affects in this small Southern town.

It’s a problem all across the Bible Belt. In 2007 — the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the rate of diagnosed AIDS cases in the Southeastern United States was much higher than in other regions of the country: 9.2 per 100,000 people, versus 2.5 in the Midwest, 3.9 in the West and 5.6 in the Northeast.

Now, the numerical references immediately confused me: Are the 10 to 12 who usually show up part of the church’s 25 members? That’s unclear to me. (Not religion-related per se, but I also did not find the lede all that compelling: What is “small talk?” Why not be more specific about what the woman actually said? The same with the joke … why not tell what he’s joking about? But I digress …)

As the story moves on, readers learn that the Bible Belt’s high prevalence of AIDS cases can be attributed to “stigma, poor education and a lack of funding.” By stigma, the connotation is obvious: These Bible Belt folks have a problem with homosexuality. But the story takes a long, weaving path to get there, and even then only vaguely. For example, there’s this reference to a man who died of AIDS:

Instead, his death was simply another symbol of the fear surrounding HIV/AIDS in rural South Carolina.

Fear? I’m supposing that has something to do with the vague religious stigma. Eventually, there’s this note:

Many socially conservative residents of the Deep South have a hard time talking about sex with their children, never mind discussions about condoms with complete strangers.

And this note as that vague religion pops into the conversation:

The second barrier is religion. Some in the South believe they could go to hell because of their actions, he says, be they drug use, premarital sex or homosexuality.

Later, there’s an anecdote indicting all the pastors in town except for the one featured in the story:

Tommy Terry has a love/hate relationship with religion and the pastors who preach it in Dorchester County. A faithful man, he attends Byrth’s HIV/AIDS meetings as a tribute to his partner, Michael, who died in 2005.

The couple spent 10 years together. Terry could do nothing as he watched Michael fade away, losing weight and friends at an equal rate.

Sitting on the concrete porch outside the Bibleway Holiness Church, Terry struggles to keep tears from falling as he talks about the last few months of Michael’s life. Terry called pastors from around the county to come pray at Michael’s side in the hospital. They all refused.

What does the writer mean by “a faithful man” as it relates to Terry? No idea. The story does not provide any more detail or insight.

What do the pastors all over the county who refused to come pray at Michael’s side say about their alleged unwillingness to minister to someone in his time of crisis? No idea. The story doesn’t bother to quote any pastors, or anyone else in town, for that matter, who might shed light on what this community thinks about the AIDS epidemic.

This piece had such potential to be relevant and important. It’s an excellent angle, but unfortunately, CNN failed to develop it fully. Ghosts, anyone?

Image via Shutterstock

I know we’ve seen a lot of bad media coverage of the changes to the wording of the Roman Catholic liturgy in recent weeks. But could we pause for a moment to just note how awesome it is that we’re seeing coverage of this in the first place?

I know, I know, one shouldn’t be excited when reporters are simply doing their jobs. But for my house, the Lutheran liturgy is a topic of daily conversation. My children’s favorite book right now is “My First Hymnal,” which features psalms, portions of the liturgy, selected hymns and pictures that apparently provoke a thousand questions.

When Lutherans got our new hymnal about five years ago, it was a huge deal! While it involved relatively little debate, it was an adjustment for folks. In many ways, though, it brought us closer to the hymnal we used from the 1940s to the early 1980s. Bring up these three hymnals in Lutheran company and you might settle in for a healthy discussion. But near as I can tell, it received no media coverage.

You seek, liturgy is one of the things that most affects the day-to-day worship life of traditional Christian and yet this topic receives almost no coverage. I wonder how much many reporters even know about the liturgy.

For instance, in a weekend comment thread, reader Hector wrote:

Significantly, the traditional-language liturgies done by Anglicans (which were what most Anglicans were using before the 1970s) are a lot similar to the language of the ‘new’ translation. This isn’t really ‘new’ at all, it’s faithful to the tradition of English liturgy.

And reader Jon in the Nati responded:

Yeah. Across town, the Episco-Anglo-Caths are wondering what the big deal is with the new translation.

Of course, as someone part of a tradition that moved to English fairly recently, there are good theological reasons why a group might not adopt another’s translation wholesale. But one gets the feeling that this entire world of liturgy and translation is not well understood by many reporters.

In any case, a reader submitted this article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer with the note “I get the feeling the reporter is slightly disappointed there were no riots with the parishioners burning the new missal.” But the last time I analyzed a piece by Michael O’Malley and the Catholic Church, I began by writing “I don’t know what the Roman Catholic Church did to anger Michael O’Malley and the editors of Cleveland’s Plain Dealer but I am curious.” So by those standards, this piece is downright friendly. Of course, by those standards, the editors shouldn’t let O’Malley write about religion. (And just for example, I didn’t even bother analyzing a by-the-cliche-book womenpriests piece. It was just that bad. But not even in an original way.)

If you go to the front page of Cleveland.org, the top story after the Browns’ loss to the Bengals is the wording change:

Cleveland Catholics struggle with new, more formal words at Mass
New words for various liturgical services include “consubstantial,” “ineffable,” “incarnate” and “ignominy.” Archaic words like “shall,” wrought” and “thwart” are also employed in the new translation.

No! Oh the humanity! Oh the humanity! I can’t be the only one that gets a kick out of the idea that no one understands the words “shall,” “wrought” and “thwart.” I mean, I was going to make a joke about how maybe the words are too difficult for newspapers to use but a quick Google search shows that even that’s not true within the last day or so! See: shall, wrought, thwart. Even the sports pages use these! (Hey, how about my Broncos? Sorry, tmatt.)

Anyway, the breathless reportage continues.

The new English translation of the Roman missal — closer to the original Latin version written centuries ago — went into effect this past weekend, the beginning of Advent.

It is the first major change in Mass prayers since the 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council ordered a loose translation of the Latin into common tongues.

So after nearly a half-century of sacred praise in the vernacular, Catholics are now trying to adjust to a loftier lexicon that’s meant to inspire a greater reverence for the Mass.

I assume the reporter is trying to articulate that the changes are “more faithful” or something like that rather than “closer” to the original Latin. But there’s just a general lack of precision in these lines. The mass is still in the vernacular, even if it uses words that fancy newspapers such as the Palm Beach Post use, you know?

Side note, I was wondering if anyone had seen a report that explained why the changes were happening on the first Sunday of the church year. I have been a bit behind in my reading so perhaps we’ve even covered that here, but it seems interesting that these stories don’t mention that the beginning of Advent is also the beginning of the church year.

Here’s a sample of the Cleveland take on the reaction:

“My brain was going back to the old words,” said John Sheridan, 61, of Cleveland Heights, following Mass on Sunday at Communion of Saints. “It’s habit.”

Sheridan said he liked the new changes because he studied Latin in high school. He remembers “Et cum spiritu tuo,” which, in English, is “And with your spirit.”

Sandy Pierre, 65, of Cleveland, was one of those at St. Ignatius on Saturday who uttered the old, “And also with you.” But, she said after Mass, she did it intentionally because she doesn’t like the word “spirit,” believing it conjures a dead person. The old response, “also with you,” she said, speaks to the living.

“I’m not going to say, ‘And with your spirit,’ ” she said. “I’m a stubborn Hungarian, and I refuse to say ‘spirit.’ “

Pierre’s husband, Fred, 67, said he was not pleased with the missal changes because the words are too formal. “When Jesus walked the Earth, he talked in simple language,” he said. “You don’t need $3 words to pray.”

New words for various liturgical services include “consubstantial,” “ineffable,” “incarnate” and “ignominy.”

Archaic words like “shall,” wrought” (sic) and “thwart” are also employed in the new translation.

Isn’t it kind of comforting to know that there are stubborn Hungarians in every congregation? In any case, I still just get such a kick out of the attempt to make “shall,” “wrought” and “thwart” into a controversy.

Having said this, and I noted this in a comment thread to a previous wording change story, but my 4-year-old knows — along with everyone else in her class — hymns with words like the ones mentioned above as well as a Kyrie hymn with words such as “mediator” and “supplication.” My 2-year-old already knows a good portion of the prayers and liturgy we use regularly in our Divine Services.

This whole media narrative of “Catholics can’t figure out these tough words” is part of a larger media template, one that paints many Christians as yokels and idiots. I wonder if this particular approach to the wording changes doesn’t just perfectly showcase how silly that template is. Or maybe it shows how stupid journalists think all of their readers and viewers are. I don’t know, but I do find the whole thing fascinating.

I will say that I came across a couple of very well done articles that managed to avoid this overdone template. I’ll highlight them later if another GetReligionista doesn’t get to them first.