Politics

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From one reporter to another: An insider's primer on Seventh-day Adventism

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I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating: At dinner one evening with a Boeing Corporation division president, the topic of my “day job” came up. Because this person, long since retired, was involved with Boeing’s satellite systems, I told him my principal employer at the time had a large satellite network of its own. That employer was the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s world headquarters.

His face lit up: “Oh, you’re the guys with the bicycles.”

I grimaced: this high-level executive, well exposed to the world, thought Adventists tooled around wearing white shirts and name tags. (Nothing wrong with that, but the guys on the bikes most likely are missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a different group.)

His publicist, who was at the table, piped up: “No, you’re the guys with the magazines that go door to door.”

Mercy. This person --  a former Seattle-area television news reporter, no less -- imagines Seventh-day Adventists don’t celebrate birthdays or take blood transfusions.

Well, if Mr. Now-Retired Boeing person is listening, he probably knows a bit more about Adventism and Adventists, thanks to one Donald J. Trump.

Terry Mattingly asked me, a former GetReligionista and former employee of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (the Church’s formal name) to offer current Godbeat professionals a few pointers -- from my perspective on both sides of a reporter's notebook -- on covering the religion which claims, among others, Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, M.D., a 2016 GOP Presidential contender, as one of its nearly 19 million members worldwide.

Here goes.


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Reading, writing, arithmetic — and the Rapture: Welcome to a real Texas Supreme Court case

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Hypothetical question: If you home-schooled your kids, and they were about to be raptured, would you bother to teach them reading, writing and arithmetic?

Just curious.

I ask because of this real Texas Supreme Court case making headlines this week:

AUSTIN, Texas — Laura McIntyre began educating her nine children more than a decade ago inside a vacant office at an El Paso motorcycle dealership she ran with her husband and other relatives.
Now the family is embroiled in a legal battle the Texas Supreme Court hears (this) week that could have broad implications on the nation’s booming home-school ranks. The McIntyres are accused of failing to teach their children educational basics because they were waiting to be transported to heaven with the second coming of Jesus Christ.
At issue: Where do religious liberty and parental rights to educate one’s own children stop and obligations to ensure home-schooled students ever actually learn something begin?

A little deeper in that Associated Press story (published in many newspapers throughout Texas, including the front page of The Dallas Morning News), the writer notes:

Like other Texas home-school families, Laura and her husband Michael McIntyre weren’t required to register with state or local educational officials. They also didn’t have to teach state-approved curriculums or give standardized tests.
But problems began when the dealership’s co-owner and Michael’s twin brother, Tracy, reported never seeing the children reading, working on math, using computers or doing much of anything educational except singing and playing instruments. He said he heard one of them say learning was unnecessary since “they were going to be raptured.”

What do we mean by "rapture?"


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Wait! Donald Trump isn't the anointed leader of the Religious Right after all?

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OK, is everyone ready for tonight's next big contest linked to good and evil and the religion beat?

No, I am not talking about game two in the World Series, although as a new semi-New Yorker (living in the city two months out of the year, including some prime baseball weeks) I will be cheering for a comeback by the team that I totally prefer to the Yankees. And when it comes to baseball and God, as opposed to the baseball gods, you still need to check out Bobby's post on that missionary named Ben Zobrist.

No, I am talking about the latest gathering of GOP candidates for the White House, which is always good for a religion ghost or two or maybe a dozen.

Right now, the mainstream media has its magnifying glasses out to dissect the theological and cultural views of the still mysterious Dr. Ben Carson, which was the subject of my GetReligion post this morning ("A complicated trinity in the news: Dr. Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Ellen G. White").

This is a very interesting development, in part because -- when it comes to press coverage of moral conservatives -- it represents such a snap-the-neck turnaround from the gospel according to the pundits that was in fashion just a few weeks ago.

What has changed? Check out this material at the top of this New York Times pre-debate poll story!


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As Associated Press extols LGBT protections, looking for an anti-HERO in Houston

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As Houston voters prepare to go to the polls next week, there's a major battle in that Texas city over an LGBT nondiscrimination measure.

Both supporters and opponents are fired up over the proposed Houston Equal Rights Ordinance — dubbed "HERO."

Regrettably, an Associated Press report on Tuesday's ballot measure tilts heavily in favor of one side. 

Guess which one:

HOUSTON — After a drawn-out showdown between Houston’s popular lesbian mayor and a coalition of conservative pastors, voters in the nation’s fourth-largest city will soon decide whether to establish nondiscrimination protections for gay and transgender people.
Nationwide, there’s interest in the Nov. 3 referendum: Confrontations over the same issue are flaring in many places, at the state and local level, now that nondiscrimination has replaced same-sex marriage as the No. 1 priority for the LGBT-rights movement.
“The vote in Houston will carry national significance,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT-rights group. She noted that Houston, with 2.2 million residents, is more populous than 15 states.
The contested Houston Equal Rights Ordinance is a broad measure that would consolidate existing bans on discrimination tied to race, sex, religion and other categories in employment, housing and public accommodations, and extend such protections to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

Rather than treat the nation's news consumers to an impartial account of the Houston debate, AP frames the issue totally from the perspective of the gay-rights movement. 


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Complicated trinity in the news: Dr. Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Ellen G. White

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If you are looking for an authoritative figure who represents the views of mainstream Protestant evangelicalism in America, I would trust the Rev. Billy Graham way more than I would Donald Trump.

Take, for example, how evangelicals view the evolution (a dangerous word in this context) of some of the core doctrines in Seventh-day Adventism. While there are still evangelicals who like to use the word "cult" to describe this movement -- in a theological, not sociological sense of that word -- there are many more who, following in the footsteps of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, have come to view Adventists as small-o orthodox Christians.

There are complicated issues at stake here linked to the views of early Adventist leaders about the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), the divinity of Jesus Christ, biblical authority and other doctrines, including the role of Ellen White as a prophet. Journalists who are covering the GOP primaries do not have to master all the fine details on these matters, but they do need to find some quality sources for background as long as Dr. Ben Carson is on the scene and his critics -- like Trump -- are using fighting words to describe the candidate's faith.

Consider, for example, this chunk of a USA Today story in the wake of Trump's sucker-punch comment about Seventh-day Adventism. The scene is Iowa, of course:

Carson's Seventh-day Adventist connection concerns Cedar Rapids retiree Barbara Nuechterlein.
"I just feel that -- how can I say it. All these religions are good, and none of us know which one is right, but I think Sunday is the day of the Sabbath created by the Lord, not Saturday," said Nuechterlein, who described herself as the first woman to work on a 17-man team at an Iowa electric company decades ago.
Nuechterlein also has qualms about Adventists who believe in the writings of evangelist Ellen White as much as they believe in biblical scripture.
"They're entitled to believe what they believe, and that's what makes America great," she said. 

Welcome to the debates about Ellen G. White and her recognized role as a prophet for Adventists.


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Increased press scrutiny of Ben Carson will involve his Seventh-day Adventism

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Increased press scrutiny of Ben Carson will involve his Seventh-day Adventism

Four polls in Iowa give candidate Ben Carson a solid lead over his rival Donald Trump. “The Hill” observed October 26 that this now raises “the possibility of Ben Carson becoming the Republican presidential nominee,” although he “has not yet faced real scrutiny.”

Inevitably,  scrutiny will include Carson’s well-known and devout affiliation with the Seventh-day Adventist Church,  a topic the New York Times just examined. There will be more, of course, if his numbers stay high.

Of course, Trump pulled that part of Carson's into the spotlight, telling a Florida rally, “I’m Presbyterian. I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about.”

Challenged about questioning a candidate’s religion, Trump said he had nothing to apologize for because “all I said was I don’t know about it.” But of course his words contrasted his “middle of the road” mainline Protestantism with   a faith people don’t know about, slyly suggesting there’s reason for wariness and relegating Carson’s creed to the cultural margins.

Note that SDAs number 1.1 million in the U.S. plus Canada, compared with 1.7 million in Trump’s Presbyterian Church (USA).

Actually it was Carson who started the religion warfare in September, saying his own devout faith is “probably is a big differentiator” with Trump, and that if Trump is sincere, “I haven’t heard it. I haven’t seen it.” Unlike Trump, Carson later apologized.


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Trumped-up quarrel fuels mainstream media campaign coverage

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Donald Trump is brash and boorish, and he seldom takes back anything he's said. So he set himself up for the garish headlines.

Still, that doesn't mean mainstream media had to write them. But (sigh) they did.

* "Trump Goes After Carson," Ken Walsh's blog in U.S. News & World Report trumpeted.

* "Trump Questions Carson's Faith, Won't Apologize," says a Newsweek headline, with an equally gossipy lede: "As the third Republican presidential debate approaches and the field narrows, Donald Trump and Ben Carson continue to use religion as a cudgel for beating each other over the head."

* "Donald Trump Attacks Ben Carson, and Highlights His Religion," says the usually restrained New York Times.

What-all did Trump say to deserve this? Not a whole lot, according to CBS News: "I'm Presbyterian. Boy. That's down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventists, I don't know about, I just don't know about."

That's it. That's what Trump said in toto.

"What did you mean by that?" Jonathan Dickerson asked on CBS' Face the Nation.

Trump's reply: "I don't know about them. I don't know about what that is. I'm not that familiar with it. I've heard about it, but I'm not that familiar with it.  That wasn't meant to be an insult, obviously. It's just that I don't know about it."

Some media, including the Washington Post, tried to have it both ways: first, a j'accuse of a headline -- "Donald Trump: No apology for questioning Ben Carson’s Seventh-day Adventist faith" -- then a more sober recap of the facts:


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The New York Times magazine finally connects Donald Trump with prosperity theology

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Every so often, you run across a piece of writing that is simply beautiful and, at the same time, laden with religion ghosts. Such was this New York Times Magazine piece on Donald Trump, written by a reporter fortunate enough to get significant face time with him. 

Ghosts? You may ask, what does this have to do with religion? More than you think.

First, the reporter doesn’t spare himself or his fellow media elitists for not deigning to cover Trump because he was plebian and, well, they were not. 

This is blunt: “I was, of course, way too incredibly serious and high-­minded to ever sully myself by getting so close to Donald Trump,” he writes.

And yet his lead in the polls kept growing. He was impolite company personified, and many Republican voters were absolutely loving him for that. They seemed to be saying en masse that even if Trump could be crass and offensive at times (or, in his case, on message), could he possibly be any worse than what politics in general had become?

Trump, the writer learns is infinitely easier to approach than Hillary Clinton. This was a relief:

... for political reporters accustomed to being ignored, patronized and offered sound bites to a point of lobotomy by typical politicians and the human straitjackets that surround them. 

Now, what comes next is long but essential. Pay close attention to this:


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It's thumbsucker time, after the 'tea party' bishops crash the synod on the family

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The 2015 Synod of Bishops is over and this weekend was, as required by the traditions of journalism, dedicated to the writing of thumbsuckers.

What was the synod on the family all about? What did it mean? And most importantly, from the everything-is-politics viewpoint of most journalists, which political party won, the "reformers" who back Pope Francis and his appeals for mercy or the tea-party-like radical conservatives who want people to follow all those old church rules? 

Tea party? More on that later.

Any journalist who has ever written a summary, reaction think piece after a major event like this knows that one of the crucial questions is: Who gets the first quote? Journalists may interview dozens of people, with a variety of perspectives, but a reporter has make a choice and give someone the first quote. This choice almost always points to the thesis of the piece.

For example, consider the opening of the New York Times reaction story that was built on the reactions of New York Catholics.

People streaming into Catholic churches across New York over the weekend were struggling to understand the meaning of a statement issued by an assembly of bishops in the Vatican on the place within the church of Catholics who divorce and remarry.

And the first quote:

Ann Moore, 71, of Pittsburgh, attended Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan on Sunday. She expressed disgust with the bishops, who had been summoned by Pope Francis for a three-week global assembly on family issues, for not letting divorced and remarried Catholics receive communion.
“It’s wrong,” said Ms. Moore, who was in town to celebrate her daughter’s 50th birthday. “If Jesus forgave everybody, why can’t these big shots?”

This quote, for me, raised an interesting question that had been nagging me throughout the coverage of the synod.

Whatever one thinks of the Catholic Church's teachings on divorce, and how these doctrines are fleshed out at the level of pews and altars, I was struck by the fact that journalists -- at least the mainstream reporters I was reading -- were not quoting a rather authoritative source in their reports. To understand the high stakes of the battles in Rome, one really needed to hear from this particular voice of authority.

That source? That would be Jesus, as in the Gospel of Matthew:


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