I’m sure all of you have your countdown clocks going for the first major event in 2008 — the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses! So much drama, so many television commercials, so many cliches and platitudes. The Los Angeles Times published a story about former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and his roving army of homeschooled children/precinct captains.

I’m still waiting for a story to explain how someone can be endorsed both by teachers unions and homeschoolers. The New Hampshire arm of the National Education Association endorsement of Huckabee gave Huckabee its first ever endorsement of any Republican. And teachers unions are notorious for opposing homeschooling. Politics creates strange bedfellows but usually those bedfellows have noncompeting motivations. The Times story doesn’t mention Huckabee’s endorsement from the New Hampshire NEA but it does delve deeply into the support he receives from certain homeschoolers in Iowa and other early primary states:

As other candidates have found over the years, home-schoolers’ flexible schedules make them invaluable volunteers. High school-age students can call a halt to calculus to set up chairs for a town hall meeting, or put off biology for a day to stick mailing labels on the latest campaign flier.

In the evenings, families pile into minivans to canvas door-to-door. Parents often send their children to make the pitch, so the whole experience becomes part of their education, like a civics class come to life.

“You get a family where there’s eight or nine children … you have a team right there. Put several of those out helping, and doing it for free, and that does a lot,” said Justin LaVan, 35, a Des Moines lawyer and father of five who serves on the board of the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators.

The story does a good job of talking to actual homeschoolers and explaining how it is that a relatively small percentage of the population can be so helpful to candidates. But as GetReligion reader and homeschooler Sharon D. pointed out, the story has some basic reporting problems. Take this, for example:

About 9,000 of Iowa’s students are home-educated. Nationwide, the number is 2 million and rising steadily, according to Michael P. Ferris, who runs the national home-schooling association. Home-schoolers are distributed fairly evenly among the states. Though an increasing number are ethnic or racial minorities, the majority of families are evangelical Christians.

The national homeschooling association? The? How about “a” national association. The group Ferris founded, the National Homeschool Legal Defense Association, is but one group that represents the interests of homeschoolers. There is also, for instance, the National Home Education Network.

The last line of the excerpted paragraph is also troubling.

It is written to appear that being an evangelical Christian is at odds with being a member of an ethnic or racial minority. I don’t think the data would support the notion that these groups are mutually exclusive. There’s also the problem that a figure is dropped in the story without a source — that a majority of families who homeschool are evangelical Christians. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that unspecified religious or unspecified moral reasons are the primary motivation of a sizable 30 percent of parents who homeschool, but any contention that a majority of homeschool families are specifically evangelical Christians should be sourced.

Decades ago in my home state of Colorado, Christians of various stripes as well as other religious adherents, secularists and parents of children with special needs comprised local homeschool associations. Many had religious or moral motivations for homeschooling but not all were evangelical. It may be true that a majority of families who homeschool are evangelical Christian but I would like to know more about the proof for that figure. Sharon has one final comment to add:

Finally, if most trivially, can everybody please update their stylebooks? I haven’t seen a homeschooler hyphenate the word in many years. Why are newspapers determined that they must?

The Los Angeles Times story is a good one and helpful to understanding a key factor in Huckabee’s standing in Iowa. But reporters need to be careful when writing about homeschoolers and see them as the incredibly diverse group they are.

Here is one more brief look back into the wave of Christmas and pre-Christmas stories, even as we move into the heart of the actual season of Christmas.

Every few years, there is some fresh wave of speculation about the cause of the mysterious star that, according to tradition and scripture, guided the Magi to Bethlehem. There will be a new book or a television special or something that sets off the coverage and scribes, eager for news hooks during an annual season of writing, grab on.

This is fine with me, because this is an interesting topic, with lots of possibilities to discuss.

For a quick guide to what is going on, check out the report by the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly program on PBS. It ends with a summary statement by essayist Frederica Mathewes-Green, who I must confess is both my good friend and the wife of the priest in our parish south of Baltimore. Frederica’s point is simple — this is a mysterious act of God. That’s the heart of the whole matter and points to the heart of the Incarnation:

I would really hate for the focus on uncovering what this was historically or scientifically or astronomically to eclipse the fact that this is a star of wonder. The star that’s at the center of that part of the story is such an object of wonder because we don’t understand what it is. …

I think that’s one of the things that the star speaks to us, that in its brilliance, its luminosity, its elevated qualities, but yet participating in this very same universe that we’re in, that it shows us the depths of the story and, just as it led the Wise Men, it leads us as well deeper and deeper into the mystery.

However, there are people — I confess that I am one — who still like to read reports about the speculation. Thus, let me point you toward the recent “Myth or Miracle?” story by Frank D. Roylance in the Baltimore Sun.

The bottom line: This is an ancient subject, with new hooks due to technology:

Modern technology and scholarship have opened many new windows on the event — and a bibliography on the topic runs into the hundreds of titles. … Was it a comet? A supernova? A spectacular convergence of bright planets? Can we run our celestial computers backward and rediscover it? Or was it a myth or a miracle, inaccessible to science?

This report runs you through most of the options mentioned in that paragraph, including the “pure myth” option. I won’t repeat all of the details.

However, I will note that one option is missing in this list of theories and interpretations.

On one level, the key point of doctrine is that the star carries a message from God. There are people who read the text and, when asked to explain the star’s strange behavior, they offer a simple explanation. This is not a strange star, but a normal — if one can use that word in this context — messenger from God. The star is, in other words, an angel.

A star that is more than a star? This image shows up from time to time in Christian literature. For one example, look up the story of Coriakin in the Narnia tale “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” by C.S. Lewis. I hesitate to mention, in the age of Potter warfare, that Coriakin is, in this story, called a “wizard” as well as a “star at rest.”

Did anyone else see any interesting mainstream news reports on the “Bethlehem star” beat this year?

The winter issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review features an essay by blogger RJ Eskow (a regular at The Huffington Post) about the challenge of balancing blog-inspired activism with Buddhist disciplines. Both the promise and the limits of Eskow’s vision appear in his lede:

There is no way out of a spiritual battle
There is no way you can avoid taking sides

In the years since Diane di Prima wrote those words in a poem called “Rant,” the United States has become a rantocracy of screaming politicians, pundits, and talk radio hosts. They shout, even when they whisper. Some of us try to make ourselves heard above the shouting, and that raises Buddhist questions: Can a person maintain equanimity and stay in the political debate? And what about the precept of right speech? It forbids lying, of course. But it also means no harsh words, rumor-mongering, or frivolous talk.

In today’s political dialogue, what’s left?

Eskow acknowledges his pugnacious style — such as referring to “Cheney’s Chappaquiddick” or threatening to “respond physically” to a Joe Klein column (“I was joking, but the feeling was real”) — but suggests that pundits Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are worse ranters still.

Eskow achieves two breakthroughs: he refrains from responding when one of his readers criticizes him for writing about JonBenet Ramsey rather than Darfur, and he chooses not to exploit aggressive email from a New York Times reporter that would have diminished the reporter’s image. These feel like rather small steps in the rantocracy that Eskow sees in American politics, but it’s something. Eskow has a clear grasp of the long-term goal:

“First, do no harm.” The physician’s precept should also be mine. In an ideal world, everything I write would come with a disclaimer that says: “No animals or humans were harmed in the production of these words.” No one. Not Tucker Carlson, or Sean Hannity, or Joe Klein. Not even Dick Cheney. I’m not there yet, but I’m trying.

I mention Eskow’s essay by way of confession. Blogging is not my default setting as a writer, and I’m not sure I’ve ever found a relaxed, unguarded voice in this medium. Blogging has sometimes made it too easy to lapse from noting irony to indulging unkind sarcasm.

Eskow makes his peace with sarcasm by consulting Dharmavidya David Brazier:

I was certainly finding it difficult to maintain an aggressive, ironic tone, so I asked Dharmavidya about irony and satire. “The Buddha was attracted to irony,” he said. “He was a prophet with a sense of humor. Once when he was debating the idea that bathing in the holy river is purifying, he said, ‘There must be a lot of holy fish.’ And when he talked about Jain asceticism, he pointed out that it was designed to end suffering by inflicting even more suffering — on its followers.”

So irony, or even its evil twin, sarcasm, isn’t necessarily un-Buddhist? “Not necessarily,” said Dharmavidya. “The Buddha judged these things based on the likely outcome and how wholesome the speaker’s intent is.”

I’m more inclined to agree with my friend Frederica Mathewes-Green, who has long argued that sarcasm is of the spirit of murder.

As Eskow confronts the Buddhist notion of right speech, I struggle with Scripture’s teachings that an abundance words can lead to foolishness (Ecclesiastes 5:3), or that the tongue is a most destructive force (James 3).

GetReligion has welcomed me during two tenures, and I’m grateful for that, but it is now time to devote myself to other callings. One year from now, I owe an editor friend a book about tithing. That book will be the primary focus of my writing in 2008.

I will continue writing a column for Episcopal Life and contributing to a blog called Covenant, which strives for irenic reflection on the Anglican Communion’s conflicts.

I think Eskow asks, in so many words: How do I blog without losing something important in my soul? For now, this is my answer: I must blog less, and do more long-view writing that generates joy — both in my life and, I hope, in the lives of my readers.

I love finding religion stories in the sports pages and business pages of the newspaper. New York Times’ reporter Douglas Quenqua had a great one this week about religious values and internet dating.

Not too long ago I began seeing television commercials by Chemistry.com attacking the internet dating site eHarmony. The advertisements complain that eHarmony screens out people who aren’t happy enough or whose morals are considered suspect. I would love to know how well that campaign is working because it seemed to me that in the murky world of internet dating, a bit of a litmus test might not turn customers away. Quenqua’s story looks at the ad campaign’s results as well as the transition of the ad campaign to print venues.

The online dating service Chemistry.com plans to unleash a new campaign that seeks to depict its older and larger competitor, eHarmony.com, as out of touch with mainstream American values. The ads, which will appear in weekly newspapers and magazines starting Monday, attack eHarmony for refusing to match people of the same gender and for the evangelical Christian beliefs of its founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren.

It is not the first time that Chemistry.com has hit on this theme. In April, the service ran a set of ads called “Rejected by eHarmony” featuring people who were turned away from eHarmony for being gay, not happy enough or simply unmatchable by its system. Chemistry.com spent $20 million on that campaign, and the company plans to increase the budget for this new effort.

Although Chemistry.com has 3.7 million registered users, in contrast to eHarmony’s 17 million, the “Rejected by eHarmony” campaign may be working. Since it was introduced, Chemistry.com has experienced an 80 percent growth rate, said Mandy Ginsburg, general manager of Chemistry.com. She said that enrollments by gays and lesbians have risen 200 percent since the “Rejected” campaign started, and that 10 percent of Chemistry.com’s members are seeking a same-sex match.

I have two friends who married after meeting on Match.com, which is Chemistry.com’s parent company. At least one of them chose Match over eHarmony precisely because they didn’t want to use a service which wouldn’t cater to homosexuals. I thought Quenqua looked at this story with a nice objective stance, letting facts and figures speak for themselves while also letting company spokesmen explain their philosophy.

Jody Petrie, an eHarmony spokeswoman, said the companies are fundamentally different. EHarmony markets itself as helping people find successful long-term relationships rather than people to date:

EHarmony, which is based in Pasadena, Calif., and was founded in 2000 by Dr. Warren, a clinical psychologist, has long been criticized for its practice of turning away applicants who are gay or lesbian, married or serially divorced. Dr. Warren, a former seminary student who has had several books published by Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian group, has publicly voiced his belief that premarital sex can increase the likelihood of one’s marrying the wrong person.

Ms. Petrie said that eHarmony took no position on premarital sex and had no affiliation with any religion. As for its reason for not offering services to gays or lesbians, she said: “EHarmony’s matching system is based on psychological data collected from heterosexual married couples, and we have not offered a service for those seeking same-sex matches. Nothing precludes us from offering a same-sex service in the future, but it’s not a service we offer now.”

Quinqua explains that Chemistry.com is betting that enough consumers will prefer a company that reflects their values. Their campaign features, among other vignettes, a motel sign declaring “No premarital sex.” The copy then explains that the company does not judge any moral code for its members. The reporter explains the company’s approach of attacking eHarmony in great detail as well as eHarmony’s contention that the advertising is inaccurate and negative and that Chemistry.com would be better served by improving its own product.

All in all, a nice straightforward business story.

In a few hours, the fate of the Washington Redskins’ emotionally and spiritually harrowing season will be decided as they take on the Dallas Cowboys at FedEx Field. There are many reasons to look at the Redskins’ season and wonder why they are in contention for a playoff spot — especially the shocking and tragic murder of safety Sean Taylor.

On Friday, Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon reflected on the challenging season the Redskins club has endured and shared a few thoughts on how head coach Joe Gibbs has managed to bring his club within reach of the postseason:

Both Walker and Bostic can recall, word-for-word, some of what Gibbs would say at the beginning of every training camp. They both talk of his legendary calm. Bostic says he remembers Gibbs losing his temper twice in 12 seasons. And they, among others, cite Gibbs’s spiritual faith as being instrumental in getting his teams to believe.

“We all know about Joe’s great belief in God,” Bostic said. “And I think he has a way of imposing his belief. Whether you’re a believer or not, or you think you are or not, he has you believing in something larger than yourself.”

It’s not that Gibbs converts everyone to believe in what he believes in spiritually, just that, regardless of whether the team is in contention or struggling, the people on hand are not going to indulge in selfish behavior.

Bostic’s quote — that Gibbs has a way of imposing his belief on others — deserves some additional scrutiny. One perspective would take this perceived imposition of faith as an affront to his players who are essentially employees under his direction. Wilbon could easily have perceived the quote that way, but he knows that Gibbs’ faith is subtler, as the subsequent paragraph explains.

Gibbs’ faith informs his actions and attitude as a coach, and that flows into the behavior and attitude of his players. How often do you see that kind of analysis about a professional football coach?

Gibbs is of course one of the most outspoken Christians in professional football, but unfortunately you won’t likely see much discussion about it during this afternoon’s game. That’s too bad, since it clearly has played a significant role in the Redskins’ struggle to get to where they are today.

The best way to put a buzzkill on the typical Christmas War story is to focus on who benefits the most from the battles. If every story on Nativity scenes on public land mentioned the amount of money the lawyers were taking in, people might view the whole debate differently.

Along these lines, one of my favorite Christmas war stories this year came buried in The Washington Post about a week ago by Michelle Boorstein. Here is the gist of the story, centered in Exmore, Va.:

Attorneys who specialize in religious expression say they get a spike in calls in November and December, with people calling about everything from public school choirs singing religious songs to Nativity scenes on government property. Some are for, some are against, and some are public officials trying to find out how to avoid being sued.

While the Supreme Court has handed down multiple rulings about religious expression, including several about holiday displays, each case turns on the details, which means fertile ground for competing legal opinions and disagreement.

Exactly how prominent was the Nativity scene on the town green? Was it the only holiday display there? Were the students handing out Christmas cards at school standing where other students couldn’t avoid passing?

The questions are endless, and so are the tensions.

The story goes on to summarize what seems to be a typical small-town legal debate over how public Christmas holiday expressions are allowed to be. This is all due to vague legal language that governs this issue. Lawyers have plenty of wiggle room, but this is hardly unique in the law.

By focusing the story on the lawyers rather than conflicting sides of the debate, Boorstein is able to deal with the legal aspect of the issue rather than the never-ending back and forth that seems to always happen with these stories. This perspective also allows the story to end as no doubt so many of these Christmas-related legal battles end:

But the disputes remain, and remain bitter. In Exmore, [town manager Herbert Gilsdorf] noted that the town is predominantly Southern Baptist and Methodist and said the only people who complained about the Nativity scene were from Richmond, Norfolk and Washington — “particularly in Washington,” he said.

[Ayesha Khan, legal director at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State], whose group requested the town change or take down its display, said the person who brought the issue to Americans United is from Exmore but wants to remain anonymous. “This whole area of law, people are very frightened to come forward,” Khan said.

All sides agree the issue will vanish — literally, if nothing else — in a matter of days.

“We’re stalling until Christmas,” Gilsdorf said. “You think we’re stupid?”

Reporters who find themselves on the Christmas wars beat should check to see what the lawyers involved in the case are getting paid or what their typical hourly rate is. I am not quite sure what that will do to the Christmas spirit of the readers, but it is certainly a part of the story worth telling.

The Washington Post’s Jacqueline Salmon and Hamil Harris wrote up their Christmas story about the pressure pastors are under to hit a home run with their Christmas Eve sermons. I love the angle, particularly because I’m the daughter of a pastor and remember how difficult the Advent and Christmas seasons are for clergy.

In the Lutheran Church we have increased services during the penitential season of Advent and the festive Christmas days. My pastor’s wife loves it when people ask if she and her husband are going anywhere for Christmas. People don’t seem to understand that pastors’ families don’t get to go anywhere for Christmas or Easter. They can barely keep up with all the services and events.

Pastors strive to make their Christmas sermons unique and relevant, Salmon and Harris argue:

Hundreds of ministers in the Washington region will face packed churches tonight when they preach one of their most important, and challenging, sermons of the year as Christians gather to celebrate Christmas.

With high-flown rhetoric or plain-spoken bluntness, brevity or long-winded oratory, ministers will try to make the centuries-old story of the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ relevant to today’s worshipers.

It’s not easy, ministers say. Most houses of worship draw double or triple the usual number of worshipers during the Christmas season. Churches are packed with restless children, stressed-out parents and unfamiliar faces making their annual appearance. Parking lots and nurseries are overflowing, and the proximity of holiday scarves and Christmas candles makes some folks nervous.

I have never attended a church that didn’t see a noticeable contingent of visitors — as well as a maximum of regular congregants — on Christmas and Easter, but I would love to see a source for the claim that “most” draw twice or three times the usual number of worshipers during Christmas. I raise the point if only because I’m confident my pastor would preach more or less the exact same sermon if a few of us were there as if hundreds of visitors arrived.

There is a huge difference in American churches between those who use worship as a way to draw in seekers and those who don’t. Those who don’t see other avenues as more helpful for people interested in the church while worship is for believers and members of the church.

It would have been nice to see more mention of those in the latter category but if you accept the seeker-friendly bias, the article is fantastic. They quote one monsignor who says he aims his Christmas sermon at those who come to church only at Christmastime. And Episcopal Bishop John Bryson Chane says Christmas Eve services are some of the hardest to preach. I wish the reporters would have asked him about his 2003 Christmas sermon when he asked:

And what was God thinking … when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the sacred Quran to the prophet Muhammad?

Four years after the fact, I still wonder how that sermon went over. The reporters do give some of the content of other sermons preached this year, which provides a nice view across the Christian spectrum.

What a year it has been for religion-in-sports stories. The year started off with Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy leading his team to a Super Bowl victory proclaiming the power of God at every opportunity, followed by a series of religion and baseball-related stories.

Then there was the Michael Vick saga and another series of God in football stories, with special attention to the death of the Washington Redskins’ Sean Taylor. Even the NBA got some religion with the Orlando Magic’s Dwight Howard.

The Los Angeles Times writes about the faith of the Fighting Illini’s middle linebacker J Leman as a preview of the Rose Bowl, which features the surprisingly talented Fighting Illini versus the USC on the first day of 2008:

God promised he would go to Illinois and that’s what happened, the Illini offering a scholarship a few games before his high school career ended. When he suffered back pain heading into his freshman year, the result of one leg being slightly shorter than the other, he asked others to pray for him.

“I got prayed for 30 times and nothing happened,” he said. “Then a guy said ‘Let me try one more time.’ I checked my leg length, and it was the same length. It took a couple of months, but, since then, I’ve been fine.”

These stories roll out of him excitedly but not the least bit heavy-handed. There is no ulterior motive because Leman does not demand that you believe; the young man is merely telling you what he believes.

Last winter, he underwent ankle surgery and could not seem to heal, the pain causing him to sit out spring practice. Finally, Leman says, God told him to ignore the injury. Just run.

It would have been difficult for the reporter to ignore Leman’s story of faith, but it wouldn’t be the first time the obvious significance of God in an athlete’s life was causally dismissed. Now that Leman’s faith has been featured in one of America’s most-read newspapers, it will be interesting to watch the broadcast of the game Tuesday and whether the commentators and sideline reporters mention his faith and its impact on his career.

As a wrap-up request, feel free to comment on what you think was the most significant religion-in-sports story of 2007. Also, if you have any 2008 predictions or brilliant story ideas, feel free to leave those as well.

It’s not often that you read a newspaper story and think of the afterlife. But The New York Times’ story on the popularity of decorating gravesites put readers in that unusual, and welcome, frame of mind.

Reporter Patricia Leigh Brown did a fine job of showing that Americans in this life continue to love those in the next. As Brown wrote at the end of her fine story about the American way of death:

Bernadette Filosa, a 56-year-old retired court administrator, hauled a Christmas tree out of her Prius to her parents’ graves, though it appeared to exceed the regulation height of four feet. Her mother, Bernadetta, who lived to 91, never lost sight of own parents’ Italian traditions — they ran an Italian restaurant across from Desilu Studios.

Ms. Filosa said she had been baking her mother’s favorite chocolate cookie recipe, with raisins, jimmies, cloves and chocolate icing. They were cooling back home.

“I’m making your cookies, Ma,” she said out loud as she wrapped garlands around the tree from the Home Depot. “We’re still celebrating.”

So popular has the custom of decorating gravesites become that cemetery officials are regulating the practice:

At the three cemeteries run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, Christmas decorating is now officially limited to flowers placed in a maximum of two urns and potted evergreens no more than 12 inches high, with weekly sweeps on offending Santa Claus blankets, Styrofoam candy canes and the like.

This news hit close to home. My maternal grandparents — the late, great Michael and Sally Naughton — are both buried at Holy Cross cemetery in Colma. The next time I visit them, I will watch what I bring.

Brown’s actual thesis, however, left several questions unanswered. What is driving the apparent trend toward decorating gravestones? Are there any statistics about its popularity? To what extent are these gravesite decorators influenced by their religion’s view of heaven and hell? Is this a Catholic thing? A sacramental thing? Jewish? Evangelical? This whole subject raises a lot of questions.

Thinking critically about death and gravesites is difficult. But Brown did manage to convey that for an unspecified number of Americans, death is not the end.

Every religious season has its standard stories, its old familiar new ideas. I have one or two others to share during the 12 days of Christmas.

Here comes one of those Christmas classics from earlier this week, care of the Baltimore Sun.

Now, I am pretty hard on the Sun, since, as I have stated before, it’s the newspaper that gets tossed into my yard every morning. When it comes to religion, Baltimore is a progressive Catholic and fading mainline Protestant town, so it’s not much of a surprise that the Sun is well to the left of that, 90 percent of the time. I think I know of only one other Sun subscriber, out of all of my friends in the Baltimore area. Everyone else gave up years ago (and my friends tend to be news junkies who read, read, read).

Believe it or not, the story I am here to praise is even a kind of progressive salute to diversity and, gasp, multiculturalism. So what? It’s a story that delivers some real facts about the changing nature of life in Baltimore, from the old Jewish neighborhoods to the arrival of other faiths and nationalities.

This is, of course, the “what the non-Christians did on Christmas” story, with a strong business theme. So here’s a piece or two of reporter Michael Dresser’s “Yule be served on Christmas — It’s business as usual for many in diverse Baltimore.”

From Pikesville to 33rd Street to Corned Beef Row, Baltimore residents and visitors were providing proof yesterday that you don’t have to be Christian to have a blast on Christmas.

While most mall parking lots were vacant, many of the businesses that remained open bubbled with a celebratory mood, even among those who don’t celebrate the holiday in the religious sense.

In Pikesville, Jewish couples whose children were in school spent their day off from work having a mini-honeymoon at Goldberg’s New York Bagels. On 33rd Street, Hindus were preparing for Christmas parties, and Muslims were laying in extra stores of lamb and goat to share with friends.

People of all faiths or none at all found their way to East Baltimore for the near-religious experience of a corned beef sandwich and cream soda at Attman’s deli.

Wait! There’s one more classic archetype!

The Hankin children were down from New York along with their parents, Richard Hankin and Dawn Hershman, to visit grandparents Murray and Joyce Hankin of Pikesville. Richard Hankin said it was nice to have a family activity to attend when “absolutely everything else is closed.”

“We did participate in the Jewish tradition of having Chinese food last night, and the kids already saw a movie, so we feel we’ve exhausted all the traditional activities,” he said.

Tradition, tradition! Tradition!

Tradition, tradition! Tradition!

Get ready for a thumbsucker.

What do we reporters mean when we apply the word “diverse” to religious congregations? Do we mean diversity in the pews at a service or diversity at a house of faith? Also, don’t Catholics operate by a different type of diversity: one that’s diverse but not integrated?

I ask these questions because of an interesting Christmas story in The New York Times. Reporter Jennifer 8. Lee wrote about an old Roman Catholic church in Manhattan whose parishioners have been made up of differing and succeeding ethnic groups:

The preparations to celebrate Christmas at the two-century-old Church of the Transfiguration in Chinatown, like the history of the church itself, were multilayered, reflecting the nimble adaptation of a church once dominated by Irish and Italian immigrants that now claims the largest Chinese Roman Catholic congregation in the United States.

The English-language Mass, scheduled in part for the Italian-Americans, was said early, at 6 p.m., because those parishioners are now old enough that their children have long since grown up and moved away to Long Island or Staten Island. They do not like to stay out too late.

Lee’s implied thesis was that the Cantonese and Fujianese revived the urban parish. A fair point, but it’s not exactly news. Reporters write often about the changing ethnic character of Catholic parishes. Witness the rash of stories about Hispanic churches.

Even so, Lee’s story raises questions about what constitutes diversity in American religion, especially Catholicism.

Certainly, the nature of diversity in American Catholicism has changed. Before Vatican II, when all Masses were said in Latin, each urban ethnic group had its own parish. A German Catholic parish would be around the block from an Italian Catholic one. Wasn’t the local diocese diverse but its parishes not so?

After Vatican II, when the Mass was generally said in the vernacular, each ethnic group attends a service at which its native language is said. At the church in Lee’s story, the Catonese Chinese attend the service in Cantonese, while the Fujianese attend the service in Fujianese or Mandarin. Isn’t the local parish diverse but its services not so?

We at GetReligion have written some intriguing stories (examples here) about how conservative churches tend to be more diverse than progressive or liberal ones. But Catholics seem to have their own type of diversity.

Is it too late to vote, yet again, in the poll to name the most important religion-news stories of 2007?

The events keep unfolding all around us, one shock after another.

The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated near the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday. Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto, who was appearing at a political rally, was fired upon by a gunman at close range, quickly followed by a blast that the government said was caused by a suicide attacker. …

A close aide to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf blamed Islamic militants for the assassination, and said it was carried out by a suicide bomber. Ms. Bhutto’s death is the latest blow to Pakistan’s treacherous political situation, and leaves her party leaderless in the short term and unable to effectively compete in hotly contested parliamentary elections that are two weeks away, according to Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani political and military analyst.

The assassination also adds to the enormous pressure on the Bush administration over Pakistan, which has sunk billions in aid into the country without accomplishing its main goals of finding Osama bin Laden or ending the activities of Islamic militants and Taliban in border areas with Afghanistan.

No ghosts in that story at all. Right? The phrase “Islamic militants” covers it all, right now, and if that does not work then we have “extremist Islamic groups” mentioned later in the same story. All of this is, of course, linked to that great goal of the ages — a form of government in a Muslim culture that is neither an Islamist state nor a military/royal machine. Is anything else possible?

Near the end, we read another quote from inside the current regime:

The [Musharraf] aide dismissed complaints from members of Ms. Bhutto’s party that the government failed to provide adequate security for Ms. Bhutto. Ms. Bhutto herself had complained that the government’s security measures for her Karachi parade were inadequate. The government maintained that she ignored their warnings against such public gatherings and that holding them placed herself and her followers in unnecessary danger.

Asked of the bombing was planned in the country’s lawless tribal areas — where Mr. bin Laden and other Qaeda members are thought to be hiding — the aide said “must be, must be.” Militants based in the country’s tribal areas have carried out a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistani this year.

Here is my question, yet again. Is the word “lawless” accurate in that paragraph? There is no law at all, or is the form of the law the whole point?

Meanwhile, let’s also flash back to that Newsweek cover story: “Where the Jihad Lives now.” That’s the package that proclaimed Pakistan the most dangerous nation in the world.

Of the many routine Christmas-themed stories that local reporters could take on, The Detroit News picked a difficult story Monday that is not quite so predictable. Reporter Catherine Jun looked at what is perceived to be an increasing trend of Muslims in southeastern Michigan celebrating Christmas.

The headline of the story is vague: “Muslims warm to Christmas spirit.” Exactly what “spirit” is being warmed to is fleshed out in the article, but the reader gets the sense that it has less to do with anything spiritual and more to do with cultural aspects of the holiday. But that doesn’t make it a bad story. In fact, it delves into a few of the religious issues that come up when one discusses Christmas, Jesus Christ and Muslims:

Some Muslim leaders with more purist views see celebrating Christmas as straying from Islamic practice that can result in losing Muslim identity, said Imam Aly Lela of the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit in Rochester Hills.

But Lela himself sees it differently. To him, decorated evergreens and a jolly Santa are all harmless fun, since neither is viewed as integral to the Christian faith.

“For American Muslims, if they take it as an American cultural thing, it’s not contradictory to the teachings of Islam,” he said. “Of course, we don’t participate in the religious part of it, just like we don’t expect non-Muslims to celebrate our festivals, like the Jewish community don’t expect others to celebrate Hanukkah.”

[Fatma Muge Gocek, a sociologist at the University of Michigan] agrees. Christmas has taken on nonreligious significance for many, as holidays and traditions do take on new meanings over time and in different households, she said.

“(Christmas) becomes a civic thing and not a religious thing,” she said.

Gocek also noted that Christmas has non-Christian origins dating back two millennia when European civilizations threw grand celebrations around the winter solstice and the end of the harvest season.

The story unpacks a number of issues. Namely: What are Americans actually celebrating on Christmas? While it is appropriate to see Christmas as a “civic thing” as opposed to a “religious thing” in some areas of American society, where do the civic and the religious “things” touch, and how significant is that for a Muslim? Is this story primarily about Muslims or about how Americans celebrate Christmas? Or is it a little bit of both?

The article spends a lot of time explaining the cultural challenges of Muslim families trying to fit in with their Christian neighbors, but at the very end of the story, the reader is rightly told that Muslims and the celebration of Jesus Christ aren’t exactly oil and water. Actually, they could go together historically and theologically for a Muslim:

Though many Muslim scholars are hesitant to place Jesus above the rest of the many prophets revered in Islamic text, given what Christmas means to believers, the story of Jesus’ birth should remain the focus on Dec. 25 rather than Santa or presents, said Eide Alawan, director of interfaith outreach at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn.

“Christ belongs not just to Christians but to all mankind,” he said.

How interesting that it took a Muslim to explain that Christmas is not just about the tree, a “sleigh-riding St. Nick,” presents and other Christmas fanfare.

If a producer wanted to make a movie of a day in the life of the Carmelite nuns, he or she could do worse than reading a recent story about them in The Washington Post. Reporter Michael E. Ruane’s article captured the spirit of the contemplative order’s daily rhythms:

In the dark of the early morning, a Roman Catholic nun in a brown tunic and black veil stepped from her cabin and walked to a nearby bell tower.

She rang two bells, calling her sisters to Christmas Eve prayer. Across the complex, other nuns emerged from their hermitages in the woods and gathered in a small chapel. From there, the 10 women embarked on a procession along pathways lit by the full moon, singing as they walked:

Sisters, Arise! Away with your sadness,

With love your hearts adorn;

All the Earth is full of gladness

Slumber not this happy morn.

Singing, praying, chanting — Ruane’s description will be familiar to anyone who has read a book about, prayed with, or spent time with members of a cloistered Catholic religious order.

It can be an impressive experience. I once spent a month in a Benedictine monastery, and I cannot remember a newspaper reporter better describing what being inside this type of monastery actually feels like.

That said, I think that Ruane’s story was incomplete in the way that movies often are. It lacked sufficient explanation.

The most glaring lack of explanation was about the purpose of the Carmelite order. What is the mission of the Carmelites? What is it about the Carmelites, as opposed to other religious orders, that attracted these women? Were they inspired by Saint Therese of Lisieux or Saint Teresa of Avila, the best-known Carmelite nuns?

From Ruane’s account, readers got the impression that the Carmelite sisters joined to escape the materialism and spiritual congestion of post-industrial America. As one nun remarks:

“I had everything life could offer,” said Sister Marie Bernardina, who grew up in Bowie and worked for the government before she came to the monastery 17 years ago. “I had money. I had friends. … I had a car. I had boyfriends. I just wasn’t happy. I had a good job. I had no debts. I just was searching for more meaning in my life.”

She is 42 now.

A memorable quote, but it fails to explain why Sister Marie joined the Carmelites.

To be sure, Ruane does quote from the monastery’s prioress about the Carmelites’ goal being to pray better to God. Yet he neglects to point out that, to quote Tim Watkins, an old religious studies teacher of mine, monks and cloistered nuns are “spiritual superstars.” Their vocation is to pray unceasingly so that people might go to heaven. As the order’s own website declares:

As the heart is enclosed in the body and hidden from public view, so are contemplatives within the Church. The heart performs a vital function — pumping blood to the other parts, even though it is not seen. The hand or foot are readily seen carrying out their works; but the heart works best when left alone, enclosed and hidden from view to do its work. The life of prayer and sacrifice is indeed the life-blood of the Church.

I don’t mean to be overly critical of Ruane’s story. He clearly spent a lot of time with a cloistered religious community, which is something that more religion reporters should do. But I think that his story would have benefited from using more of the reporter’s bag of tricks and not just those of the screenwriter’s.

There is that old journalism formula: Who, what, when, where, why and how. The “why” matters, too.

In a day and age in which newspapers fail so miserably at answering the question “What does Christmas mean?” (apart from generic platitudes of goodwill and commercialism), I have to commend Tim Townsend and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a story that gives a completely theological response.

I know that this was an editorial, but the New York Times ran something about how the real meaning of Christmas is — sleep.

So an actual news story offering a religious angle to a religious holiday is important. Townsend takes the novel approach of dissecting the religious significance of this Christian holy day:

At some point during the holiday season, most Christians take a break from the cookie baking, card sending and gift wrapping to reflect on what Christmas really means.

One Hebrew word — Emmanuel — captures that meaning for many.

As the writer of the Gospel of Matthew explains in the Christmas story, Emmanuel means “God is with us.”

For nearly 2,000 years, Christians have found comfort in their belief in God’s omnipresence.

I find it intriguing that Townsend uses Christmas as an opportunity to discuss the Christian belief in God’s omnipresence. It seems to me that the Christian doctrine of the incarnation might be a better discussion point for the Christmas season — the belief that God’s Son took on flesh and was born of a virgin.

Of course, Townsend then uses his “meaning of Christmas” story to present a one-sided discussion that questions whether or not Jesus’ birth fulfilled an Old Testament prophecy.

When the Hebrew scriptures were translated from Hebrew into Greek, and later into Latin, the Hebrew word “almah,” or “young girl,” was translated as “virgin.”

A New Testament scholar, the Rev. Raymond Brown, has written that from as early as the second century, “… the variation between ‘young girl’ and ‘virgin’ has given rise to some of the most famous debates in the history of exegesis. …”

In 1952, when a new Bible translation, the Revised Standard Version, was published, some conservative Christians burned it because the translators used “young woman” instead of “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14.

Some rabbis note that if the author of Isaiah had wanted to use the word virgin, he could have. The more precise word for “virgin,” “bitulah,” is used in other books of the Hebrew Bible such as Exodus and Leviticus.

The charge — that the prophecy was merely of a young woman rather than a virgin — is left without a response.

It is true that with the dramatic rise of modern rationalism in the early 20th century, some scholars sought to explain Jesus Christ as the child of a completely normal pregnancy. (And indeed, with promiscuity the norm these days, the notion of virginity even apart from Christ’s birth is somewhat miraculous.) Anyway, some scholars — particularly those associated with mainline Christian denominations — began teaching that Christ’s birth was not miraculous, per se, and they began refuting not just this story but other accounts of Jesus fulfilling ancient prophecies or performing miracles.

This is not new. But I think it’s somewhat offensive to not let traditional Christians respond to this. This simple Catholic Q&A refutes several of the points in Townsend’s account:

The Hebrew word translated as virgin, almah, can also be translated as “young woman” but as Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon notes “there is no instance where it can be proved that almah designates a young woman who is not a virgin.”

Additional evidence that the correct translation is “virgin” is supplied by the Septuagint version of the Bible, a Greek translation of the Old Testament made several centuries before Christ. It was translated by Jewish scholars for use by Greek-speaking Jews, mainly in Alexandria.

The Septuagint translates the Hebrew almah into Greek as parthenos. This Greek term has the precise meaning of “virgin.” So several centuries before the birth of Christ, before there was any reason to attack his Church, the meaning of Isaiah 7:14 was clear: almah = parthenos = virgin.

The Townsend article has some good quotes from Archbishop Raymond Burke and Lutheran theologian Jeffrey Gibbs — but they aren’t responding to the diversion in Townsend’s Christmas story. I, for one, get tired of mainstream media rehashes that cast doubt — from 2,000 years away — on the story of Christ. But if you’re going to go with that angle, the least you can do is let those who believe in the divinity of Christ and his miraculous birth respond to those who don’t.