Sometimes it’s easy to spot those stories where you think, “Wow, you should not try to tackle that subject in 5,000 words.” Or 500 words. Or three minutes.
A local Houston television station has taken on the bold task of answering the following question: “What does it mean to be a Christian?” Here’s the reporter’s intro:
Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist. Historically, there have been many different divisions in Christianity, all with slightly different beliefs and traditions. But those denominations are losing numbers, with recent research showing the only religious classifications gaining ground in all 50 states is that of the nonbeliever, those who check the none box when it comes to religion. So tonight we take a closer look at what churches are doing to change that, and what it means for the definition of Christianity.
So Lutherans and Baptists simply hold “slightly different beliefs”? Oh man. Also, if you look at the news hook, it doesn’t match the story at all. The reporter cites statistics on the rise of the “nones,” people who don’t identify with any religion at all. But the story is focused on more people are identifying with nondenominational churches, mostly pitting Joel Osteen against everyone else. People who identify as “none” are not the same as those who attend a nondenominational church.
The loss of denominational barriers is something Joel Osteen understands. …Osteen was raised by a Baptist minister. But it was when his church became just Lakewood that legion of worshipers, looking for a less defined path to God, filled the seats of what is now the largest church in America.
Something tells me that it was more than Lakewood dropping the Baptist label that Osteen’s popularity began to skyrocket. The piece sort of acknowledges that some don’t like Osteen’s approach, but the set up is very strange:
While this prosperity theology is popular, not everyone is on board with the more grace and less fire-and-brimstone approach to the book.
So anyone who opposes Osteen must prefer a fire-and-brimstone approach? Overall, the piece portrays Osteen as representative of what Christianity in America looks like.
It may not be traditional church doctrine, but Osteen says it scores big with his followers. In the end, the question may be what do all of these changes mean for the future of religion?
The piece ends quoting a “high-powered attorney” who began Lanier Theological Library.
“Will we have a great awakening again in America like we did 100-plus years ago, or are we at a corner that is a dead-end? I am an optimist. I think we are going to see explosion,” Lanier said.
How is this individual authoritative on where Christianity is headed? And as a reader put it, “In a city with an RCC Cardinal, an Orthodox cathedral and and nation’s largest Episcopal Church, you would think ‘traditional’ Christianity
would get a voice in this story.” The piece is an incredible train wreck, one of those where you think, “Don’t attempt.”
Ashamed image via Shutterstock. Note: the post has been updated to reflect the reporters’ opening line.
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Comments (10) |
January 31, 2012, at 3:35 pm
Sarah, your chosen images reminds me, a lifelong Trekker, of the double face palm classic: http://www.girlgamer.net/image/DoubleFacepalm.jpg
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January 31, 2012, at 4:15 pm
If this was the reporter’s point (I’m not certain it was, but we can go with it for these purposes) then the reporter misses the point non-denominational churches share a common body of doctrine which can effectively be said to make them a de facto denomination. It is not as though these places do not insist on certain Christian truths.
It is also worth noting that the doctrine (if it can be called such) espoused by Osteen’s church is not that espoused by the vast majority of non- (or un-) denominational Christianity. Whether this reporter realizes it or not (and she apparently does not), Osteen is not representative of the brand of Christianity in which she places him.
@Jerry: thank you for the Picard facepalm. It immediately came to my mind as well; if you hadn’t, I’ve have gone there.
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January 31, 2012, at 7:32 pm
That was awful. It would be like if the question was “What is quantum physics?”, spending two-thirds of the answer focusing on quarks, then getting that half-wrong.
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January 31, 2012, at 10:19 pm
So this Christian business is not about what might or might not be true, but about what makes my peeps feel good.
What an in depth observation!
I also noted in the comments, that “religion” seems to be a scorned term these days.
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January 31, 2012, at 11:07 pm
I know it’s a short TV report, but it does make you curious where the “recent research” that produced this article came from.
Also, Sarah, in the reporters list of denominations at the beginning of the article, the first one she said was actually Catholic.
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January 31, 2012, at 11:37 pm
Fr Theordore, good catch. I added it above.
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January 31, 2012, at 11:38 pm
Jerry, I wish I had used that photo, actually.
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February 1, 2012, at 1:09 am
Houston TV stations are fixated on the Osteens. I was in town a year ago trying to shop around a certain story and I as informed by one of the major stations that if I could work Victoria Osteen into my story, they’d air it.
Am planning to use this broadcast with my journalism students on how not to cover religion. Can’t believe this reporter skipped some of the largest Baptist churches in the country that are on the west side of town in reporting this story.
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February 1, 2012, at 4:35 am
Looks like yet one more example of “The Usual Article”, as described by G.K. Chesterton in his book of essays, The Thing:
“But the philosophy expressed in the Usual Article avoids all these disadvantages by never coming into the world of reality at all. Its god is afraid to be born; its scripture is afraid to be written; it only manages to remain as the New Religion by always coming to-morrow and never to-day. It puffs itself out with spiritual pride, because it does not impose what it cannot even invent. It shines with Pharisaical self-satisfaction, because there are no crimes committed for its creed and no creed to be the motive of its crimes. This sort of critic is a surgeon who never performs an unsuccessful operation because he never operates; a soldier who never falls because he never fights. Anybody can talk for ever about a non-existent religion which shall be free from all the evils of existence. Anybody can dream of that entirely humane and harmonious Christianity, whose Christ is never born and never crucified. It is so easy to do, that half a hundred people in the papers and the public discussions have been doing nothing else for the last twenty or thirty years. But it is every bit as futile as applied to a spiritual ideal as it would be if applied to a scientific theory or a political programme; and I only mention it because I have just heard it for the hundredth time; and feel a faint hope that I may be mentioning it for the last time.”
No such luck as “mentioning it for the last time”, it would appear!
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February 1, 2012, at 10:30 pm
Wait, you guys are now criticizing local TV “news” “stories”? Did you run out of fish in your barrel or something?
-John
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