Academia

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Pro-abortion bias in news story on Catholic universities? Well, duh

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"Biased much?" asked a reader who passed along a link to a San Francisco Chronicle story on two Catholic universities limiting employees' abortion coverage.

You mean the fact that the news report is slanted — from the very top — toward the abortion-rights point of view and leans heavily in that side's favor in the amount of ink given to direct quotes?

OK, maybe you have a point, dear reader.

Pro-abortion bias seeping into mainstream media reports is not exactly breaking news, of course. But the Chronicle makes a noble effort at perfecting the craft.

The lede sets the stage:

California has some of the nation's strongest protections for abortion rights. But the recent decisions by two Catholic universities, Santa Clara and Loyola Marymount, to eliminate most abortion insurance coverage for their employees were cleared in advance by state agencies.
Now Gov. Jerry Brown's administration is taking another look.
The state Department of Managed Health Care is conducting "an in-depth analysis of the issues surrounding coverage for abortion services under California law," said Marta Green, the department's chief deputy director.
What the department is reconsidering, as first reported by California Lawyer magazine, is whether the universities are violating a 1975 state law that requires managed health plans to cover all "medically necessary" procedures.

 


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Church of the New York Times keeps preaching its own brand of faith

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It's time for another "Kellerism" update, as The New York Times continues its efforts to highlight religious institutions with doctrines that are unacceptable to the newsroom's theologians and, perhaps, the U.S. Department of Justice. This time, the drama shifts out West, where another Christian college community is trying to find a way to live out its faith commitments.

NEWBERG, Ore. -- A growing number of openly transgender students have forced schools around the country to address questions so basic that they were rarely asked just a few years ago, much less answered: What defines a person's gender, and who gets to decide?

A small Christian college here, George Fox University, has become the latest front in this fight, refusing to recognize as male a student who was born anatomically female. The student calls himself a man, and as of April 11, when a state circuit court legally changed his sex, the State of Oregon agrees.

But George Fox University sees him as a woman, and it prohibits unwed students from living with anyone of the opposite sex.

Notice the question that was not asked, in an alleged news story that opens with an editorial assertion: If a private -- as opposed to state -- college is a doctrinally defined voluntary association, what happens when a student decides that he or she does not believe those doctrines? Think of it this way: If a student at a Muslim college decided to convert to Christianity, thus contradicting the covenant he voluntarily signed when he came to the campus, would the college be able to say that this student had to accept the school's doctrinal authority?


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Why do some Protestants teach 'young earth' chronology?

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Why do some Protestants teach 'young earth' chronology?

ANNE ASKS:

What is the explanation for today’s “young earth” movement among evangelicals?

THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS:

This question highlights the split between many Christians in science and a wing within conservative Protestantism that believes Genesis chapter 1 requires a “young earth” chronology with earth and all living things originating some 10,000 years ago, not the billions of years in conventional science.

Confusingly, this is -- especially in news reporters -- called “creationism” though Christians who accept the long chronology also believe God created earth and life. Most “creationists” also say God literally formed the world in six 24-hour days, immediately fixed all species and humanity without evolution, and caused a flood that covered the globe.

In the 19th Century, geologists shifted to the vast timeline that was later confirmed by measuring radioactive decay in earth’s minerals. Long chronology was essential for Darwin’s theory that gradual evolution produced all biological species.

Whatever they thought of Darwinism, leading evangelicals and fundamentalists originally saw no biblical problem with the new geology.


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Trend or not? Evangelicals reportedly questioning the Bible

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Ted Olsen is managing editor for news and online journalism for Christianity Today, the popular evangelical magazine. He's an excellent journalist who recently co-authored an intriguing piece titled "Meet the Non-Christians Who Take the Bible Literally, Word for Word." As a matter of full disclosure, I write freelance stories for CT.

All that said, if Olsen has concerns about a news report on evangelicals (see the above tweets), then I'm inclined to agree. He has the street cred.

The Orange County Register (which earlier this year laid off veteran Godbeat pro Cathleen Falsani) reports that some evangelicals are rethinking the Bible and "growing numbers are asking whether their reading has become too rigid, too simplistic and too alienating."

The top of the story:


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Study: Religious kids believe the Bible and other 'fiction'

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Is this Clutching at Straws Month? Because I don't know how to dress or what to buy for it. I do know how to celebrate, though. Just publish a study that counters traditional beliefs. And don’t ask questions that might uncover flaws. The latest example emerged this week in the July issue of Cognitive Science. Three researchers alleged that young children who are "exposed to religion" -- gotta love that wording -- have trouble telling fact from fiction.

This claim is in an appallingly brief, 291-word article in the Huffington Post -- which, true to form, swallows and regurgitates the stuff without chewing. We'll get to that in a bit.

First, here's how it went down:

Researchers presented 5- and 6-year-old children from both public and parochial schools with three different types of stories -- religious, fantastical and realistic -- in an effort to gauge how well they could identify narratives with impossible elements as fictional.

The study found that, of the 66 participants, children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school were significantly less able than secular children to identify supernatural elements, such as talking animals, as fictional.

By relating seemingly impossible religious events achieved through divine intervention (e.g., Jesus transforming water into wine) to fictional narratives, religious children would more heavily rely on religion to justify their false categorizations.

“In both studies, [children exposed to religion] were less likely to judge the characters in the fantastical stories as pretend, and in line with this equivocation, they made more appeals to reality and fewer appeals to impossibility than did secular children,” the study concluded.

Now let's dismantle this, starting with the sampling. I don’t often resort to italics, but c'mon -- sixty-six subjects? I saw several times that many kids yesterday at one Vacation Bible School. A sampling of 66 children is pretty small for an attempt to generalize to all children.


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'Sin' gets scare quote treatment in Portland, Ore.

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Be very, very afraid, Portland!

The Christians are invading Oregon — and they want to tell your children about Jesus.

That's scary stuff, I know.

But somehow I missed — until now — the newspaper story earlier this month about some residents' concerns about an after-school Bible study club. I promise this headline is from The Oregonian, not The Onion:

Evangelical Christian clubs coming to Portland-area public schools — opposition says curriculum is 'hardcore fundamentalist indoctrination'

If you need me, I'll be hiding under my desk.

Then again, it's probably best not to delay this dramatic news:

Hundreds of Portland-area residents are organizing to stop a network of Christian clubs from proselytizing to children on public school campuses.

The Good News Club has been controversial around the country, but Portland may be the first city to organize on such a large scale against the group.

"We think if people have enough information, they'll choose not to do it," said Robert Aughenbaugh, a co-founder of Protect Portland Children. His said the group purchased a full-page advertisement in Wednesday's Willamette Week.

The Good News Club's curriculum includes teaching children that every person is a sinner. In the eyes of many Christians, "sin" is any failure to meet God's standards. The Bible states, for example, that "all have sinned."

"We believe that these doctrines are harmful to 5-year-old children," Aughenbaugh said. "They teach fear. They teach shame."

Did you catch the scare quotes around "sin?"


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How should we define -- and assess -- atheism?

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How should we define -- and assess -- atheism?

DANIEL ASKS: Is it becoming possible to be religious without believing in god? (the lower-case “god” is Daniel’s usage)

THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS:

This is partially a repeat from March 22, 2013, when The Guy posted “Is atheism a ‘religion’? Is the Pope Protestant?” That headline indicated the idea seems ludicrous on its face. Yet, as the item explained, things are actually somewhat complicated.

The Guy won’t repeat that material here. Meanwhile there’s intense interest not only in definitions but in atheism’s role in society, to judge from the 69 lively comments posted in response to The Guy’s June 21 item on the unhappy “track record when atheists wield political power.” As an admitted theist, The Guy would like to thank all atheists who responded. These matters obviously deserve another look.

First, can people be “religious” without belief in God, or a god, or gods? Yes, absolutely. This is not “becoming possible” now but has long been true. The Buddha lived perhaps 26 centuries ago and everyone agrees Buddhism is as much a religion as, say, Islam. The Buddha Dharma Education Association, among others, states flatly that true Buddhists do not “believe in a god.” Yet teachers like Kusala Bhikshu tell us “a lot of Buddhists believe in God” while others don’t.

Or consider the modern Unitarian Universalist Association, self-defined as a “religion” yet creedless. It explicitly welcomes atheists as members in good standing alongside those with a God-concept. Humanistic Judaism likewise designates itself as a “religion” but eliminates the Jewish God.


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The New York Times warns: Evangelistic speech near the National Mall!

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Are there any GetReligion readers out there who remember the mini-media storm back in 1999 when the Southern Baptist Convention published a series of booklets to guide church members in their prayers for the conversion of members of other faiths?

As you would expect, some faith leaders were quite offended by this, especially Jews who -- readers with really long memories will recall -- had previously been involved with a Southern Baptist or two about issues linked to prayers and Judaism.

I went to an event in 1999 at a Washington, D.C., think tank in when some Jewish leaders dialogued with Southern Baptists, in a very constructive manner, about the wisdom of these guides, the centrality of evangelism to Baptist theology, etc., etc.

In the question-and-answer session, a Washington Post scribe asked, in a rather blunt manner, why Southern Baptists were allowed to print and circulate these kinds of materials.

I was stunned. So was the very liberal rabbi in the chair next to me. I asked a question that went something like this: "Did I just hear someone from the Washington Post question whether evangelistic speech is covered by the First Amendment?" The Reconstructionist rabbi said, "I think that's what just happened."

Why do I bring up this story? Well, this is what I thought of when I hit an interesting passage in a New York Timesstory about the Green family (of Hobby Lobby fame) and its attempt to build a massive Bible museum on prime land in Washington, D.C.

Here is the key pasage from the report:


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Changing climate -- of church views on the environment

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USA Today has been eroding its standard of short, shallow stories. And for a complex newsfeature like its recent story on religion and global warming, that is an exceedingly good thing. The article focuses on the effort to sell global warming to church people. Religion and the environment is an evergreen topic -- I wrote a long feature on it more than a decade ago -- but USA Today writer Gregg Zoroya takes the interesting tactic of leading with a rabbi in Kansas:

Rabbi Moti Rieber travels the politically red state of Kansas armed with the book of Genesis, a Psalm and even the words of Jesus to lecture church audiences, or sermonize if they'll let him, about the threat of global warming.

"My feeling is that I'm the only person these people are ever going to see who's going to look them in the eye and say, 'There's such a thing as climate change,'" Rieber says. "I'm trying to let them know it's not irreligious to believe in climate change."

He is at the vanguard of religious efforts — halting in some places, gathering speed elsewhere — to move the ecological discussion from its hot-button political and scientific moorings to one based on theological morality and the right thing to do.

An admiring nod not only to the canny rabbi, for combining verses from both testaments of the Bible, but also to Zoroya for grabbing our attention right from the lede.


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