Frank Lockwood — the Bible Belt Blogger — caught something interesting in an Associated Press story by political reporter Bob Lewis:

Democrat Jim Webb and Republican George Allen both pocketed developments Wednesday important in motivating their core voters in Virginia’s close U.S. Senate race.

… Allen, however, may have found in a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex unions the bogeyman he needed to energize social and religious conservatives dispirited by recent Republican scandals to vote in the Nov. 7 election.

Lockwood, who is the faith and values reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader, said the word “bogeyman” caught his eye. The word means “a frightening imaginary being, one often used as a threat in disciplining children.”

The use of the word strikes me as fairly loaded — even in a “news analysis” piece. The word “bogeyman” suggests that gay marriage is an “imaginary” problem — not a real one. I’ll leave it to Bible Belt Blogger readers to debate whether gay marriage is good or bad. My point is simply that Americans are divided on the topic and the word “bogeyman” belongs on the editorial page — not in the news section.

Furthermore, the word “bogeyman” insults people who care about this issue, suggesting they are gullible or childlike if this issue motivates them to vote. Again, this isn’t news — it’s opinion.

Lockwood looks into the tendency of reporters to label Christian conservatives as gullible. He wonders whether the term might be better applied, at times, to mainstream reporters themselves.

Thank you, thank you, to all the readers who made sure that I knew about the Los Angeles Times news feature by William Lobdell and Stuart Pfeifer about Matthew Crouch and his Gener8Xion Entertainment, which is one of the most controversial players in the emerging Contemporary Christian Cinema industry.

I saw the piece when it came out earlier this week, but it has taken me a few days to put into words what was nagging me about this story, which had one of those killer headline packages: “Deep pockets fuel his Hollywood crusade — Tax-free donations from his parents’ Trinity Broadcasting Network fund Matthew Crouch’s religion-themed movies.”

Here is a sample of the story, which uses the new film One Night With the King as its news hook:

Matthew Crouch, 44, could use a box-office hit. Of his first three movies, none has turned a profit, although his 1999 movie, an apocalyptic thriller called “The Omega Code,” is credited by some for showing Hollywood the potential of Christian-themed films, leading to such hits as “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and “The Passion of the Christ.” Crouch’s small, publicly traded company is struggling, having lost nearly $3.7 million last year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Even so, Crouch’s ties to his parents’ cash-rich ministry — which operates the world’s largest religious broadcasting company — may help explain why he never had to take a vow of poverty. He owns a Hollywood Hills mansion. He and his wife, Laurie, have eight vehicles, including a $240,000 Bentley Arnage.

… In many ways, Crouch and his company, Gener8Xion Entertainment, are Hollywood anomalies. He hasn’t had to look further than his parents — with their tax-free donor base and worldwide television reach — to bankroll and market his movies. In other ways, the stereotype of a Hollywood producer fits snugly. Friends and foes describe him, by turns, as charismatic, arrogant, charming, ruthless, visionary and greedy.

The bottom line here is that some people in Hollywood are trying to take the Christian movie market seriously and Crouch is the kind of guy who, for many Hollywood players on the cultural left, symbolizes that market and its customers. The Times piece is very, very negative and makes it perfectly clear that Crouch — who did that Christian press-relations thing and refused to do an interview — has made all kinds of enemies, including some people who used to be his friends and employees.

It’s a damning picture, and the facts appear solid. There are many colorful details, including an evangelistic-movie screenwriter who was arrested not far from Hollywood “on suspicion of soliciting a child for sex over the Internet and attempted child molestation.”

Then there was Gener8Xion’s vice president of marketing, Sean Abbananto:

His prior industry experience was as an actor in several adult films, including “Erotic Fantasies III.” Abbananto, who had no marketing experience, said he was upfront about his past.

“The thing I enjoyed about Matt and Gener8Xion is that stuff didn’t bother them,” said Abbananto, who now runs a Christian ministry. “They were more interested in what you’re doing now, as opposed to what you did then.”

In a statement, TBN said that Crouch was unaware of Abbananto’s previous work.

But like I said, something about this story bothered me. Something was missing.

First of all, everything boils down to one question: Is Crouch a good choice to symbolize the traditional Christian presence in the Hollywood marketplace? Is his the right face to pin on that valid story?

I would say he is not typical, in lots of ways. We can see this by paying attention to who is not quoted in this Times story.

The story features secular players who distrust or detest Crouch. So be it. It also quotes a few positive people who clearly work for Crouch or are still working with him. So be it.

But there are many different Christian organizations active in Hollywood these days. There are believers who are, in fact, quite well known, and they often speak openly about film and faith. Where are the folks from Act One? Where are people from Fuller Seminary, City of the Angels Film Festival and Reel Spirituality? Where are the faculty members from Biola University, Azusa Pacific University or the Los Angeles Film Studies Center (a program linked to the Washington Journalism Center, where I teach)?

Where, for X-ample, is Ralph Winter? Where is Randall “Braveheart” Wallace? How about Scott “Exorcism of Emily Rose” Derrickson (pictured here)?

Either one of two things happened.

It could be the reporters at the Times did not know about these people and organizations, which means they accepted Crouch as a typical Christian in Hollywood without even doing a simple Google search, which would say something very bad about the newspaper’s editors. Or it could be that Times people tried to talk to folks in the Christian mainstream and these artists and scholars simply refused to be quoted in a story about Crouch. That would say a lot about Crouch.

I would love to know what happened. I’ll ask around, next time I’m on the left coast.

How does a reporter write a balanced profile of a guy who thinks that anyone who believes in God is an idiot and “that religion is the root of all evil”?

The ever-edgy Washington Post’s Style section took on “Atheist Evangelist” Sam Harris in a lengthy profile Thursday that reads like a ping-pong match where one player refuses to do anything but swing as hard as he can at the ball without regard for his accuracy. The other player, who really doesn’t want to play in the first place, does his best to engage himself in the match, but his opponent continuously slams the ping-pong ball back, preventing a real match from taking place.

To say the least, I am guessing that Harris would not like the mission of GetReligion.

In reading the piece over a couple of times, I am left wondering whether Harris, the author of Letter to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, can fashion a decent argument against religion. Which is, I guess, the point:

There are really just two possibilities for Sam Harris. Either he is right and millions of Christians, Muslims and Jews are wrong. Or Sam Harris is wrong and he is so going to hell.

This seems obvious whenever Harris opens what he calls “my big mouth,” and it is glaringly clear one recent evening at the New York Public Library, where he is debating a former priest before a packed auditorium. In less than an hour, Harris condemns the God of the Old Testament for a host of sins, including support for slavery. He drop-kicks the New Testament, likening the story of Jesus to a fairy tale. He savages the Koran, calling it “a manifesto for religious divisiveness.”

Nobody has ever accused the man of being subtle. Harris is straight out of the stun grenade school of public rhetoric, and his arguments are far more likely to offend the faithful than they are to coax them out of their faith. And he doesn’t target just the devout. Religious moderates, Harris says in his patient and imperturbable style, have immunized religion from rational discussion by nurturing the idea that faith is so personal and private that it is beyond criticism, even when horrific crimes are committed in its name.

“There is this multicultural, apologetic machinery that keeps telling us that we can’t attack people’s religious sensibility,” Harris says in an interview. “That is so wrong and so suicidal.”

There are few serious arguments to work with here. Part of me wonders why the Post decided to pursue this story, but there is interesting material here and Harris has an interesting life story. Then again, if Harris weren’t taking on religion, would anyone care for his shallow arguments about a subject that is rich and substantial?

One part of the piece that I felt was appropriately highlighted is Harris’ attack on religious moderates. The idea that religious moderation provides cover for extremists is in a way honest and refreshingly clear. The only thing missing was a response from another genuine atheist. (The article quotes a retired religious studies professor saying that the “country needs a sophisticated attack on religion,” and that “pushing moderates into the same camp as fanatics … seems like a very crude mistake”).

“I could have told you what is wrong with religious dogmatism on September 10th,” [Harris] says. “But after 9/11, I realized the role that religious moderation played in providing cover for fundamentalism.”

Reporter David Segal quotes various religion and theology professors on Harris’ belief system (can you call it a set of beliefs?), but near the end of the piece Segal gives us a hint of his own conclusion:

Of course, if religion were merely failed science, it would have been supplanted by real science centuries ago. But it has survived and thrived through a revolution in our understanding of the solar system as well as our bodies and our minds, which suggests that it offers something that deduction, data points and reason do not.

All in all, Segal does a solid job poking and prodding a thinker who offers little substance but plenty of style. There are obviously more significant and thoughtful atheists out there, but few can be compared to Evel Knievel.