, , ,

For chaplains helping folks find peace after police deaths, generic religion's the best religion

, , ,

Forgive me for that clickbait of a post title.

But that's exactly the impression given by a front-page Dallas Morning News story this week on chaplains comforting police and crime victims in their darkest hours.

It's one of those stories that you read and then scratch your head. 

"Something's missing," you tell yourself. "What could it be that I'm not seeing here?" 

Hang with me for a moment, and I bet we can figure it out.

The lede is compelling enough:

Win Brown's heart sinks when his other phone rings.
His ministry phone signals that he'll soon be comforting people on the worst days of their lives.
Across 17 years, the volunteer chaplain has been there -- for search crews scouring East Texas for the seven Columbia astronauts, for Hurricane Katrina victims in Louisiana, and for police officers as they go to the homes of families shattered by violence.
After a gunman killed five police officers following a peaceful protest in downtown Dallas, he and other chaplains rallied for a Thanks-Giving Square prayer service. It was just the beginning of their healing work. 
Some people needed a hug. Many wanted to pray. A few just needed to know that the emotions welling up within them and streaming down their faces were normal reactions to an abnormal event.
“Everyone grieves differently and needs something different,” Brown said. “But I’ve seen the proverbial light bulb go on many times when you say, ‘You’re not going crazy.’ ”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

Bracing for Trump, Clinton TV: Are Americans as cynical as the French about morality?

, , , , , , , , , ,

If you hang out with lots of #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary people, either in digital or analog life, you know that one of the things pushing them toward despair right now is the knowledge that in the near future the White House will be turned into a reality TV franchise.

Anyone who lived through the Clinton years (or checked out the book) knows what that was like. And does anyone doubt that -- win or lose -- Citizen Donald Trump will find a way to increase his brand's profile via opinion and entertainment screens large and small?

Can you imagine the lurid advertisements the Democrats could run about Trump's private and business affairs if they were running a candidate other than Hillary Rodham Clinton?

This brings me, logically enough, to that Washington Post feature that ran with this headline: "2016 is the year of the messy private life -- and the year when it no longer matters." As best I can tell, the goal of this story was to ask two painfully valid questions:

(1) Is this the year when Americans finally achieve the maturity of the French and and admit that the moral lives of politicians don't matter?

(2) How are so many evangelical Christians rationalizing their support for Donald "You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass" Trump?

As you would expect, the emphasis is on the second half of that equation:

HOLMES COUNTY, Ohio -- In this deeply conservative part of Ohio, full of cornfields and horse-drawn Amish buggies, people know all about Donald Trump’s two very public divorces, his extramarital affair with a beauty queen who became his second wife and his five children from three marriages.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Women, rape, Germany and immigrants: What's missing in the news coverage?

, , , ,

Only once in my life have I been surrounded by a mob of men.

I had just celebrated my 30th birthday in Jerusalem with friends and was heading for the southern Israeli city of Beersheva. To get there, I had to head through the Old City, out of the Damascus Gate, then somehow find the Egged bus terminal for the two-hour trip. I had just embarked on this route on a Friday afternoon just when crowds of Muslim men began leaving the Temple Mount after prayer. I was dressed modestly in a long skirt and long sleeves, but my head was not covered.

The street went from empty to packed in a few minutes. So many men –- I could see no women -- were pressed against me, I could have picked up my feet and been carried along. Then I felt someone reach under my skirt and make his way up my leg. Terrified, I whirled around and ordered him in English to back off. All the men around me laughed. Knowing things could get out of control fast and that I’d be on the losing end, I pushed my way through the crowd until I got through the gate.

A few years later when I was back in town with a different tour, I insisted that at least one of the men in our group accompany me at all times in the Old City to cut back on the harassment. Which is why I have a lot of sympathy for the 1,000-plus German women who have reported that they were sexually assaulted in Cologne and other cities on New Year’s Eve. You cannot imagine what it's like when it’s you against a crowd.

Earlier this month, the news came out that 2,000 men were involved in the attacks. That’s a small army, folks. But when the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle described the incidents, a key detail was missing: 

A Federal Criminal Police Agency (BKA) inquiry into the wide-spread New Year's Eve sexual assaults uncovered 900 cases of sexual crimes with over 1,200 victims, German media reported on Sunday.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Who is Mark Burns? Prosperity gospel takes center stage at Republican National Convention

, , , ,

Who is the Rev. Mark Burns?

That's what some may be wondering after the South Carolina pastor's prayer caused a minor kerfuffle on the opening night of the Republican National Convention (as opposed to the major social media storm over apparent plagiarism in Melania Trump's speech).

Plenty of folks, on the left and right, were not amused by what Burns had to say.

Here's a hint for journalists: When delving into Trump's faith, it seems, the prosperity gospel is an appropriate place to start. That is not exactly breaking news. Nonetheless, it's certainly a relevant, timely topic for journalists to explore. Especially when it comes to Burns. So what happened in the coverage in this prayer mini-firestorm?

A personal note: I was not familiar with Burns until he stepped to the podium of a Donald Trump rally that I covered earlier this year for The Christian Chronicle:

As thousands welcomed Trump to the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City on Friday, an African-American pastor named Mark Burns -- who preaches for the Harvest Praise and Worship Center in Easley, S.C. -- led an opening prayer.

Burns assured the crowd that Trump believes in Jesus Christ and said -- with his election -- “Christians will again have a friend in the White House.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Please ask this basic question: Does Mike Pence sit in an evangelical pew or a Catholic pew?

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

So the "evangelical Catholic" thing is making a comeback, with Donald Trump's decision to make Gov. Mike Pence his running mate in the White House race.

Before we dig into the roots of this a bit, let me note that the Washington Post "Acts of Faith" feature in the middle of the current discussion ("What it means that Mike Pence called himself an ‘evangelical Catholic’ ") is clearly labeled as "analysis." Thus, veteran reporter Michelle Boorstein has more room to maneuver.

Normally, your GetReligionistas steer away from writing about analysis features, unless we point readers to them as "think pieces" linked to discussions on the Godbeat. In this case, I think it's important to discuss the "evangelical Catholic" term again, because it may surface again in campaign coverage of Pence.

The key, of course, is that "evangelical Catholic" is primarily a political term. However, Boorstein starts her analysis with an attempt to pin down this man's actual religious history, in terms of his faith experiences. Here is a sample of that:

One of the more publicly shared accounts of Pence’s transition from a Catholic youth minister who wanted to be a priest to an evangelical megachurch member came in 1994. That’s when he told the Indianapolis Business Journal about an intense period of religious searching that he underwent in college. “I made a commitment to Christ,” Pence said, speaking of the late 1970s. “I’m a born-again, evangelical Catholic.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

God, baseball and missionary work: Do people in Serbia really deny the Resurrection?

, , , , , , ,

Every now and then, journalists have rather technical arguments about the meaning of terms such as "truth" and "accuracy."

For example, what if a reporter quotes a person who is involved a complicated, even emotional, debate and people who reject this person's perspective later call the reporter's editor and insist that this information was untrue and should not have been included in the printed story?

Reporters often respond by saying something like this: "I was covering a very bitter debate. I could not prove that what this expert said is accurate, but my quotes were accurate. It is accurate to state that he said this and his claims are part of the story. Want to hear my recording of the interview?"

Arguments are like that. There are times when people with quite a bit of education, training, skill and personal experience disagree with one another about basic facts.

This brings me to a story that ran recently in The Claremore Daily Progress in Oklahoma -- one that talks about God, baseball and mission work. Here's how it starts:

Spreading the love of baseball and the love of Christianity seems like a perfect fit for Claremore High School Athletic Director Brent Payne.
The longtime baseball coach who hung up his cleats after the 2015 baseball season, is once again joining a local missionary group and heading to Serbia to teach the word of God, and also how to turn a double play. ...
Serbia, a country sandwiched between Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, has a population of just over 7 million.
Baseball, as would be expected, is not the country’s national pastime.

No problem, so far. However, an Orthodox reader out in the wilds of Oklahoma (such people do exist) had a spew-your-drink-of-choice moment when he hit this statement in the original version of the story that appeared in print, and on the newspaper's website.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

Who was behind the 'honor killing' of that Pakistani model? Conservatives!

, , , , , , ,

"Honor killings": It's hard to think of a more ironic phrase. In some lands, like Pakistan, it means to kill a relative -- most often a girl or woman -- because of anxieties over actual or perceived immorality.

It happened again with the weekend murder of Qandeel Baloch, who has been called the Pakistani Kim Kardashian for her many tweeted cheesecake photos, Facebook posts and appearances in videos. Baloch, 26, was strangled by a brother for "honorable" reasons.

At GetReligion, we've complained for years about the reticence of many media professionals to link the killings with some versions of Islam. And here we go again, with USA Today  blaming nebulously described "conservatives":

Baloch, whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, shot to fame and notoriety with a series of social media postings that would be tame by Western standards but were deeply scandalous by conservative Pakistani societal norms. She cultivated an outrageous public persona, recently promising to perform a public striptease if the Pakistani cricket team won a major tournament.
Baloch had a large following of more than 700,000 people on her official Facebook page. She posted recently she was “trying to change the typical orthodox mindset of people who don’t wanna come out of their shells of false beliefs and old practices.”

You know conservatives. Those are the guys who oppress women and hold back progress and cut welfare and keep out immigrants. The heavy implication is that in Pakistan and in the U.S., conservatives are pretty much alike.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, ,

For slain Baton Rouge officer Montrell Jackson, 'it was God, family and police force'

, ,

First, Dallas.

Now, Baton Rouge.

After yet another massacre of police officers, some of the most chilling words came from one of the slain Louisiana officers, Montrell Jackson — in a Facebook post he wrote earlier this month:

"I'm tired physically and emotionally. Disappointed in some family, friends, and officers for some reckless comments but hey what's in your heart is in your heart. I still love you all because hate takes too much energy but I definitely won't be looking at you the same. Thank you to everyone that has reached out to me or my wife it was needed and much appreciated. I swear to God I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me. In uniform I get nasty hateful looks and out of uniform some consider me at threat. I've experienced so much in my short life and these last 3 days have tested me to the core. When people you know begin to question your integrity you realize they don't really know you at all. Look at my actions they speak LOUD and CLEAR. Finally I personally want to send prayers out to everyone directly affected by this tragedy. These are trying times. Please don't let hate infect your heart. This city MUST and WILL get better. I'm working in these streets so any protesters, officers, friends, family or whoever, if you see me and need a hug or want to say a prayer. I got you."

Jackson's mention of both God and prayer immediately made me wonder if he might be a man of faith.

That certainly appears to be the case, based on this quote from an Associated Press story:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Listen to the silence: It does appear that most evangelicals will reluctantly vote Trump

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In the beginning, when there was a massive GOP field of candidates for the White House, about 30 percent of America's white evangelical Protestants backed Citizen Donald Trump. There was evidence -- primarily the ongoing World magazine coverage of evangelical leaders and thinkers -- that Trump's supporters were "cultural" evangelicals, as opposed to folks at the heart of evangelical institutions and churches.

The headlines proclaimed: Evangelicals flocking to Trump.

As Trump rode waves of free press coverage, other candidates dropped out of the race. Slowly, the percentage of Trump evangelicals rose, backed in part by the endorsement of several old-guard evangelical leaders with strong, but old, Religious Right credentials. Trump support among white evangelicals passed 50 percent. See this April release from the Pew Forum team.

The headlines proclaimed: Evangelicals flocking to Trump.

Now, Trump stands alone and the world of mainstream conservatism, especially cultural conservatism, has not produced a ballot-box alternative. The Pew Forum has produced poll research that shows a solid majority of white evangelicals are now planning to vote for Trump.

The headline at Christianity Today, one of the voices of mainstream evangelicalism, states the trend like this:

Pew: Most Evangelicals Will Vote Trump, But Not For Trump
With half of voters dissatisfied with both presidential candidates, white evangelicals primarily plan to oppose Clinton.

Meanwhile, headlines in the mainstream press continue to proclaim: Evangelicals flocking to Trump. Here is what that looks like at Religion News Service. What is crucial, of course, is the framing language at the top of the report:


Please respect our Commenting Policy