Ethics

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Former Episcopal bishop Heather Cook is off to prison, but who took the financial fall?

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It certainly appears, at this point, that the sad drama of former Maryland Episcopal bishop Heather Cook is over, at least the public part of this tragedy. She has been sentenced to seven years in prison for killing cyclist Thomas Palermo in a crash in which she was driving while drunk and distracted by the act of texting on her smartphone.

The Baltimore Sun report on the sentencing opens with gripping personal material about Cook and the Palermo family, and it's hard to fault the newspaper's staff for doing that.

But keep that smartphone in mind, because we will come back to it. You see, there was huge news in this story for the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and the national Episcopal Church, but the Sun editors elected to bury it deep, deep, deep in the text.

I thought the following, near the top, was the most powerful passage, jumping right into the theodicy -- Where was God? -- angle of the story:

Prosecutors said Cook was far above the legal limit for alcohol and sending a text message as she drove her Subaru Forester in Roland Park on the afternoon of Dec. 27. She struck and killed Palermo, a 41-year-old software engineer and father of two young children, as he enjoyed a ride. She left the scene twice, a fact that weighed on judge Timothy J. Doory.

"Your leaving the scene at that time was more than irresponsibility, it was a decision," Doory said.

Cook, 59, pleaded guilty last month to automobile manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident and other violations.

Patricia Palermo told the court that she had asked God many times why he let her son die -- until she had a revelation.

"God didn't do this," she said. "Heather Cook killed Tom."


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The Guardian describes 'rice Christians' equation in North Korea, but only one side of it

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Talk about a story that raises some prickly questions linked to faith, evangelism, oppression and religious freedom -- in North Korea, no less.

I am talking about a recent piece from The Guardian -- "Christianity was the only way out, says North Korea defector" -- about Joseph Kim and his journey out of one of the world's darkest dungeons and, rather reluctantly it appears, into Christianity.

I want to stress that this is certainly an interesting and important story. The issue, in this case, is whether The Guardian has only told half of it, leaving a Christian ministry accused of the old "Rice Christians" approach to evangelism, with no way to defend itself. Here is a dictionary definition of that term: 

rice Christian
* a convert to Christianity who accepts baptism not on the basis of personal conviction but out of a desire for food, medical services, or other benefits

Now, here is the top of The Guardian report:

The first time Joseph Kim heard the words “Christian” and “church”, he had no idea what they meant. He had never seen a church and Christianity was as unfamiliar to him in his famine-ravaged North Korea as Disneyland.
“Kwang Jin”, a friend said to him, using the Korean name by which Kim was then known, “if you ever go to China, the churches will give you money.”
To which Kim replied: “What’s a church? Why would they just give you money?”
“Because they’re Christians,” the friend said.
“What are Christians?” Kim asked.


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Religious freedom bill: Sarasota newspaper knows how you should view it

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Florida's Protection of Religious Freedom Bill was only born on Wednesday, and pro-gay advocates already want to strangle it in the crib. Unfortunately, some of them are in media that are supposed to inform, not propagandize.

HB 401 would protect a "health care facility, health care provider, person, closely held organization, religious institution, business owned or operated by religious institution, or private child-placing agency that refuses to perform certain actions that would be contrary to religious or moral convictions or policies." The bill was inspired by lawsuits in other states against people who didn’t want to make cakes or shoot photos for gay weddings, as its sponsor has said.

That was enough for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune to take off running. Here are the first three paragraphs:

Florida adoption agencies could turn away same sex couples for religious reasons and certain businesses in the state could deny them products or services under a bill filed Wednesday by state Rep. Julio Gonzalez that echoes highly-controversial legislation from other states.
The bill – slammed by gay rights leaders as one of the most discriminatory anti-LGBT measures in the nation – is a response to infringement on religious liberties around the country said Gonzalez, R-Venice.
“There have been various situations where there are increasing possibilities of subsections of society having their religious freedoms encroached on,” Gonzalez said. “Over time it became obvious to me we need to adopt some statutory protections.”

So we start with two negative paragraphs, finally followed by a quote from Gonzalez. The newspaper then adds background on similar legal measures -- in Florida, Indiana and Arkansas -- that failed to pass or withered under boycott threats and negative publicity.

Given all that, can you guess what attitude the newspaper wants to impress on you?

The Herald-Tribune article did make an impression: Within a day, the story rippled through gay media.


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Jerusalem violence: Associated Press pretty much blames Israel for it all

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It's Israel's fault. Again.

Jews can get shot, stabbed, stoned and run down in their own homeland, and what do you get for coverage? "Arab areas of Jerusalem blocked off in Israeli crackdown."

The Associated Press may call this one of their Big Story entries; but in telling the story of the latest Israeli roadblocks solely from the Arab point of view, AP runs a very one-sided story. It also pays little attention to a couple of religious "ghosts."

Several times, this article, has a sentence or two about the attacks on Jewish civilians that's gone on for a month thus far. It follows with two or more paragraphs on Israeli government actions that allegedly sparked the actions.

And who gets quoted? An Arab who resents the Israeli treatment, a representative of the Netanyahu government, and two Jews who scold the government for its land policies. Hardly what you'd call balanced treatment.

I don’t usually quote five paragraphs at a time, but the top of this story is telling in its setup:

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians in Jerusalem, more than a third of the city's population, have awoken to a new reality: Israeli troops are encircling Arab neighborhoods, blocking roads with concrete cubes the size of washing machines and ordering some of those leaving on foot to lift their shirts to show they are not carrying knives.
The unprecedented clampdown is meant to halt a rash of stabbings of Israelis. Many of the attacks were carried out by residents of east Jerusalem, the sector captured and annexed by Israel in 1967 and claimed by Palestinians as a future capital.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has portrayed the measures as temporary, in line with what his advisers say any police department in the U.S. or Europe would do to quell urban unrest. But some allege he is dividing Jerusalem, something Netanyahu has said he would never do.
Arab residents, who have long complained of discriminatory Israeli policies, say the latest closures are bringing them to a boiling point and lead to more violence.
"They want to humiliate us," said Taher Obeid, a 26-year-old janitor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He spoke over the din of car horns, as drivers stuck at one of the new checkpoints vented their anger.

Let's dissect this section. It starts with Israeli actions and Arab feelings, rather than the Arab actions that gave rise to the tough measures. The "rash of stabbings" is saved for the second paragraph, with the Arab viewpoint before and after that.


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Spotting two Catholic 'ghosts' in the lives of Paul Ryan and David Daleiden

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Spotting two Catholic 'ghosts' in the lives of Paul Ryan and David Daleiden

This week's "Crossroads" podcast (click here to tune that in) is about "religion ghosts" in mainstream news, which is about as basic a GetReligion topic as you can get, seeing as how that was the subject of the very first post on this weblog back on Feb. 1, 2004.

In this case, host Todd Wilken and I were talking about posts in which I focused on Catholic ghosts in the lives of two public figures caught up in very big stories in the mainstream press.

First there was this one: "Spot a religion ghost? Paul Ryan is a busy father who wants to help raise his kids." And the second post was about the young man at the heart of the hidden-camera Planned Parenthood videos: "Washington Post meets David Daleiden, whose Catholic faith is less important than his socks."

In both cases, we were dealing with features stories that were supported to help readers understand what makes these men tick, when dealing with major moral and ethical issues. In both cases, their Catholic faith was all but ignored.

Which brings us back to that "ghost" concept, as explained on GetReligion Day 1. Let us attend:

Day after day, millions of Americans who frequent pews see ghosts when they pick up their newspapers or turn on television news.
They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. There seem to be other ideas or influences hiding there.
One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels.


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Lifeboat ethics for sixth-graders, and media don't bother with religious insights

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You have your traditional leaky boat and 15 people aboard. Whom do you throw out first? Second? Third?

People get upset over stuff like that, you know: grading one human's worth over that of another. Especially when it's forced onto preteen children.

Yes, forced. Students in a middle school near Tampa were required to decide whether a variety of people -- from a Hispanic woman to a "black guy" to a pregnant woman to Justin Bieber -- were worth saving. Yet no one reporting it sought feedback from ministers, ethicists or anyone else who deals with such matters all the time. 

At least one parent was mad enough to raise hell to a local NBC affiliate, yielding a story that echoed in several states and even overseas.

Our saga starts at Giunta Middle School, where a history teacher set out the wrenching "activity." As WFLA tells it:

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) – Valerie Kennel is mad and she wants answers. She was furious when her sixth-grade daughter from Giunta Middle School in Riverview came home with something called "The Lifeboat Test," where students were forced to make a choice.
Who would they save on a sinking ship? Who lives and who dies? There are 15 choices listed on the test, but only nine people can be picked to survive. Their descriptions include race, gender and religion. Kennel tells News Channel 8, "It’s racist in every form."
"This had nothing to do with history, nothing to do with it, and what is it teaching them?" she added.

The very choices sound absurd, according to the list published in the London Daily Mail. Besides the above-mentioned, they include Donald Trump and Barack Obama, male and female doctors, black and white men, an ex-convict and a police officer, someone named "Mr. Bobo," and even the class teacher, Mr. Hagerman (no first name given).

Oh yeah, they also got religion into the exercise. Among the candidates for sink-or-swim were a rabbi and a minister.  Maybe that's appropriate: The whole moral/religious aspect of the lifeboat drill was submerged, not only by the school but by the media.  More on that shortly.


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News hooks: Religion, politics and war and joining the home team's cheering squad

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News hooks: Religion, politics and war and joining the home team's cheering squad

Organized religion can support personal piety very nicely. Ditto when it comes to performing good works. But then there's the flip side. Religion can also serve as a fig leaf for nationalism, political schemes and militarism. 

We see this last dynamic at work today primarily within the Islamic world. However, it's certainly not confined to Islam. And its certainly not just a contemporary phenomenon. (Check your Bible, Qur'an or any number of history books about Europe, Asia and the Americas for ample examples.)

Moreover, we know the damage done by these dark-side impulses can linger in religious memories for decades and even centuries. And not just in connection with today's headline grabbers, such as when Islamists refer to Christians as crusaders. They're also there behind the scenes, providing the heat for simmering historical conflicts that can flare up without clear warning.

Take Japan's refusal to fully face up to it's shameful treatment of the so-called "comfort women," a euphemism for the women from occupied nations that World War II-era Japan forced into sexual slavery. (I'll get back to this below.)

What I view as the downside of organized religion is, I'm sure, no surprise to anyone who reads GetReligion.

However, it's always worthwhile to remember how easy it is for organized religions -- as well as the journalists who cover them -- to become part of the the home team cheering squad.


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Ripple effect: Reuters finds Catholics aiding generic Iraqi refugees in Lourdes

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Drop a rock in a lake, and you'll see a splash, then ripples. Everybody knows that. But it takes seasoned news people to spot ways that a story on one continent shows up on another. That's what Reuters did, with a smart, sensitive newsfeature on Christians fleeing from Iraq to Lourdes, France.

Reuters, BBC and others have (appropriately) thrown tons of time and resources into the human river of hundreds of thousands who have walked, floated, and sometimes died on the way from the Middle East to Europe. The Lourdes story takes a quieter, more personal look at the phenomenon -- and how believers in one town have responded.

In telling about the 60 Iraqis in Lourdes (so far), the article also adeptly works the story into the site's history:

For Iraqi Christians fleeing Islamic State militants in their native land reaching Lourdes, the French town long synonymous with miraculous religious visions, feels little short of a modern-day miracle.
Arriving in the town where peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous is said to have had visions of the Virgin Mary in 1858, the refugees have also experienced real Christian charity through the efforts of some dedicated, Lourdes-based compatriots, an ex-soldier and the local parish priest.
"We are split between sadness and joy. But Lourdes is like a flower offering us her perfume. It is the town of the Virgin Mary, giving us our faith," said one of the refugees, Youssif, 48, a former teacher of the Aramaic and Syriac languages.

Reuters fills in background on the Middle East war, noting that the Christian community in Iraq has fallen from about a million in 2003 to 400,000 by July 2014. It notes that the Islamic State has killed not only many Christians but also "members of other religious minorities," including some fellow Sunni Muslims. (Should have mentioned the Yazidi, though; they’ve gotten more than their share of violence.)

We read shot bios of what the Iraqi Christians fled and how they found hosts in Lourdes. Turns out some residents, like Nahren and Amer, left the country years ago:


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Human rights? Let's learn from Saudi Arabia. The UN does.

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Human rights? Let's learn from Saudi Arabia. The UN does.

Headed to Manhattan? Be careful. It's that time of year again. The 70th annual Grand Debate of the United Nations General Assembly has descended upon Gotham -- and Bruce Wayne is no where to be found.

Once again, we're knee deep in speeches by world leaders who muddy their talks with agenda-driven half-truths and outright lies, and, on occasion, lofty goals that never seem to manifest. Not to mention the finger-pointing, buck-passing, and pleas from the world's have-not nations for help from the wealthy -- another reason for general disappointment.

Plus, it's the cause of massive midtown Manhattan traffic jams. So watch yourself. Better yet, join Wayne, where ever he is.

Monday's opening day featured dueling speeches by President Barack Obama and Russia's Vladimir Putin. Guess what. Each had a better idea for turning the world toward the peaceable kingdom.

But this is GetReligion, so let's skip the headline-grabbing political theater and focus on another UN farce -- Saudi Arabia's growing role within the UN's Human Rights Council.

Why is this important to journalists, and religion writers in particular?

Because the skewed judgements and pronouncements emanating from the Human Rights Council are too often reported -- particularly in barebones wire-service stories -- as carrying legitimate moral authority with little or no information that adds important counter-balancing context.


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