In what can only be called a stunning defeat for those who still considered him a Muslim, President Barack Obama yesterday confirmed that he is, in fact, a perfectly ordinary liberal Protestant Christian.

So far, the content of the media storm accompanying the president’s endorsement of the legalization of same-sex marriage has been very predictable. Those of us who subscribe to The New York Times must wait with fear and trembling to learn why he did not go far enough in this pronouncement. I predict the next wrinkle will have to do with that whole states vs. federal thing (that and, of course, whether this is the new and improved litmus test for U.S. Supreme Court nominees). Americans have Obama’s pledge that his views will be coupled with a defense of religious liberty, but I don’t expect that profession to settle much.

The key, however, is that the president chose to frame this as a highly personal religious conviction, one consistent with his approach to faith and, one must assume, his views on centuries of Christian doctrine. At some people, reporters in the mainstream press will need to unpack that a bit. The same, by the way, goes for Mitt Romney. If he brings it up, plunge in there with questions.

Thankfully, the editor in charge of the journalism side of the On Faith equation at The Washington Post put together an online news report that started this journalistic process. I plan to keep looking there for updates. Here’s the top of Elizabeth Tenety’s wrap-up:

President Obama threw his support behind same-sex marriage Wednesday after years of “evolution” on the issue, and invoked Christ and the Golden Rule in detailing how he has changed.

In an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, the president painted his endorsement of same-sex marriage as an outgrowth of his Christian beliefs:

“ … [Michelle and I] are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the
views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is not only Christ sacrificing
himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president.”

Obama also acknowledged the religious issues at play in his previous hesitance to embrace gay marriage:

“I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the word ‘marriage’ was something that evokes very powerful traditions,
religious beliefs and so forth. …”

In terms of fallout, journalists will be focusing on how this decision affects a number of different groups, starting with active churchgoers in African-American denominations and, perhaps, spreading into charismatic and traditional Catholic parishes in heavily Latino zip codes. Once again, the “pew gap” will almost certainly be vindicated — the fact that the more people attend worship services, the more likely they are to vote for culturally conservative Republicans or Democrats.

We can expect more coverage of “emergent” evangelicals and how their approach to moral issues (which means biblical authority) differs with that of older evangelicals. As GetReligion has long stressed, the left side of the evangelical world deserves more coverage and not simply as a political phenomenon. Someone needs to focus on how an evangelical approach to faith — with its tension between personal experience and largely undefined concepts of biblical authority — allows a surprising amount of wiggle room on moral theology. Ask Bill Clinton about that.

(Speaking of needing to hear from voices on the left side of the Baptist world — as I requested yesterday — here’s an Associated Baptist Press report quoting Baptist leaders on both sides of the North Carolina Amendment 1 vote.)

In addition to the usual suspects on the right, the Associated Press (quoted by Tenety) talked to key figure in the middle of the evangelical world:

The Rev. Joel Hunter, who Obama calls his spiritual adviser, told the Associated Press that Obama called him before the announcement and that he told the president he disagreed with his interpretation of what the Bible says about marriage. Hunter, who leads the 15,000 member Northland church near Orlando, said it is now harder for him to support Obama, but that he would continue to do so. He said the president reassured him he would protect the religious freedom of churches that oppose gay marriage.

So far, nothing specific about this development on Twitter from the Rev. Rick Warren, other than the following — which I take as cryptic, timely advice to reporters.

Rick Warren ? @RickWarren

Generalizations are generally wrong — especially about churches, pastors, or members of a generation. Each is unique.

Amen. When in doubt, let believers provide the details of their own beliefs.

Meanwhile, please help your GetReligionistas look for serious coverage of this rather predictable development, by which I mean coverage that moves beyond the simple rounding up of reaction quotes. In particular, I will be interested in comments from — of course — the religious left, especially liberal Catholics, Baptists and others aligned with the world of liberal Protestantism. The goal is to find coverage that takes the president’s statement seriously as a faith statement, not as an act of political chess.

It goes without saying that, before punching “comment,” readers should ask if what they have to say is linked to journalism, as opposed to simply praising or attacking Obama, his supporters or his critics.

The general consensus in the press this morning was that the North Carolina marriage amendment vote was all about religion. This is certainly the theme that emerges in some of the stories and photographs featured in The Politico email round-up.

LOCAL COVERAGE HIGLIGHTS RELIGIOUS CELEBRATIONS AS AMENDMENT ONE PASSES: The lead centerpiece photo on the front of the Raleigh News and Observer is an African-American pastor cheering the returns showing a ban on gay marriage over the sub-headline: “State to become 31st to Constitutionally forbid same-sex marriage”: http://bit.ly/JvJ9v9. The lead image on the front of the Shelby Star is a Baptist pastor holding a sign supporting the ban as cars drive by under the headline “Voters say ‘I do’”: http://bit.ly/L9UtOX. The Wilmington Star-News headline is “Marriage defined” with a photo of a Methodist Church sign in front of a polling place that says “A true marriage is male and female and God”: http://bit.ly/Jd98ft. The two-column banner headline in the Fayetteville Observer is “Amendment One sails to easy passage” with pictures of cheering religious women: http://bit.ly/IKptHx.

United Methodists? Yes, in the Bible Belt there were even United Methodist congregations that backed the amendment. That said, I would think the odds are good that this was either an African-American congregation, a heavily evangelical congregation or “both/and.”

Which brings us to the wrap-up that ran in The Charlotte Observer, the state’s most powerful newsroom. Starting with the lede, the Observer’s editorial team did a good job of jumping right on the big idea that this was a vote that crossed all kinds of political, racial and cultural lines — in large part because of religion. Here’s the top of the story:

Riding a Bible-influenced coalition that cut across political and racial lines, the marriage amendment stormed to approval Tuesday, making North Carolina the latest state to put stronger legal barricades before same-sex unions.

With 90 percent of the counties reporting, the constitutional amendment to make marriage between a man and a woman the “only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized,” won resoundingly, 61 percent to 39 percent.

It goes into effect Jan. 1. North Carolina has had a law banning same-sex marriages for 16 years. Turnout, fueled largely by the marriage debate, was the largest for a primary in decades, election officials said.

The story, as you would expect, contains quite a few religious voices and that’s one of its strengths, kind of.

However, speaking as the former religion-beat guy at the Observer, back in the early-to-mid ’80s, I thought the voices featured in this report were a bit too predictable. In particular, the story didn’t do enough to show the variety of voices on the religious left that opposed this amendment. Charlotte is a very complex town, when it comes to religion and this story was, on religion, a bit too simple.

The first person quoted, naturally enough in the Bible Belt, was the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Charlotte, a leader in the drive to pass the amendment. No surprise there. A few paragraphs later, readers heard from leaders on the other side of the church aisle.

The Rev. Robin Tanner of Charlotte, a leader in the effort to defeat the amendment, looked beyond Tuesday’s loss.

“Hope lives on in this place we all call home,” the pastor of Piedmont Unitarian Universalist Church said in a prepared statement. “Hope is our promised companion, and equality for all our promised land.”

Added the Rev. Murdoch Smith, pastor of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church: “The goal is not destroyed, just delayed for the moment.”

Now, raise your cyper-hands if you are surprised that the local Unitarians and (most of the) Episcopalians opposed the amendment.

What was I looking for? The story does a great job of showing how this issue divided people in unpredictable ways in terms of politics — quoting Republicans who opposed the amendment and Democrats who supported it. But things became much more predictable when the focus was on religion.

For example, I know from experience that Charlotte has many powerful, powerful “moderate” Baptist churches in which this amendment would have inspired fierce debates. There are even Baptist churches (my wife and I sort of got run out of one long ago) that can, on matters theological, accurately be described as “liberal.”

This is also a city and region in which the entire alphabet soup of Presbyterian life (PCUSA, PCA, EPC, ARPC, OPC, etc., etc.) is represented. When I moved to Charlotte in 1982, it was the only Southern city in which there were more Presbyterians than Baptists. Many of these churches would have been opposed the amendment, while many others would have been in favor.

And then there are the previously mentioned divides within United Methodism in the Carolinas.

Please know that I realize that the Observer team did not — on election night — have the time and space to dedicate an entire story to the role of religion in this vote. The odds are quite good, I would imagine, that precisely that kind of story will hit the newspaper’s front page on Sunday. Nevertheless, I think that, in this case, the newspaper left readers with the impression that this vote came down to, well, Billy Graham and the Baptists vs. the Unitarians and Episcopalians.

That’s too simplistic, especially on the religious left. The situation on the ground was much more complex than that and the story needed a few more voices — especially in terms of capturing the divisions among Baptists and Presbyterians.

For example, consider this quote toward the end of the story:

Charlotte area voters didn’t necessarily follow party affiliations in taking sides on the amendment.

At the Forest Hill Church precinct in south Charlotte, Democrat Don Hawley, 57, voted in favor. “I don’t know that we need to start protecting another class of citizens,” he said.

Mary Settlemyre, 49, a Republican, voted no. “My understanding of the Republican Party is it’s limited in your personal life,” she said. “That (intrudes) in the parts of your personal life they need not be in.”

That “Forest Hill Church” precinct reference brought back some memories for me. I would predict that this is the church formerly known as Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, a large congregation that left the oldline Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) way back in the mid-1980s. And what were the issues way back then that led to the church’s departure from the PCUSA? Let’s just say that, when push came to legal shove, there were three of them and many GetReligion readers would consider them very old news.

Meanwhile, here’s hoping that the Observer team — after talking to the usual suspects — dedicates some coverage to some of the less obvious voices on the left side of the Charlotte scene, especially the Baptists, and also on the right side, especially the various brands of Presbyterians and those United Methodist folks, too.

I have three questions, after reading the latest New York Times news report about why President Barack Obama is hurting his chances in the upcoming election with his ongoing reticence to let his beliefs on marriage completely evolve into agreement with, well, the great Gray Lady herself.

(1) Is the Times editorial staff, essentially, doing a Bill Maher riff here, chiding the president with story after story of wink-wink material that essentially says, “We think you’re lying on this issue, so you might as well come clean” or words to that effect?

(2) Is the goal, in this kind of coverage, to change the minds of traditional Christians in African-American churches, to shame them or merely to ignore them? To use the term popularized by the Poynter.org crew, the Times team does seem to be deliberately ignoring a major group of “stakeholders” in this debate.

(3) Is this another case, after the great Bill Keller confession in Austin, in which readers are simply supposed to assume that it is now Times policy that it is no longer necessary for the newspaper’s urban, sophisticated scribes to even attempt to accurately represent the views of leaders on the opposing side of a moral, cultural and religious issue such as this one?

The key to the timing of this story, of course, is that Vice President Joseph Biden, Jr., came within a whisker of endorsing same-sex marriage this past Sunday (during a talk show, as opposed to greeting reporters after Mass). White House aides said the statement was consistent with those previously made by the president, while gay-rights leaders (outside the administration) said Biden’s words were unique and newsworthy.

Once again, this meant that the Times story needed to offer an explanation — political, of course, not religious — for Obama’s silence. As usual, this background material mentioned religious beliefs, but did not explore them.

The political considerations for the White House and the Obama re-election campaign are complicated, and advisers are on both sides of the issue. But Mr. Obama’s senior strategists like David Axelrod and David Plouffe, confronting the prospect of a close election, are loath to raise a subject that could cost votes in swing states like Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado, say Democrats familiar with their thinking.

Yet Mr. Obama risks alienating gay Americans who have been among his strongest supporters and biggest donors, and same-sex marriage is strongly supported among many of the young and college-educated voters whom the campaign courts. But it is opposed by socially conservative blacks, particularly politically influential ministers, whose strong turnout Mr. Obama needs.

At the same time, some Democrats say that Mr. Obama, by continuing to straddle an issue that many supporters and gay activists believe he privately favors, risks looking politically calculating, even cynical.

Note, as usual, the lack of attributions for the ticklish statements in this part of the story.

Those who choose to read on will then note the complete absence of voices — even pro-Obama voices — explaining the point of view of these “politically influential” African-American ministers (as opposed to African-American ministers who are religious leaders and, thus, not all that important). Do Times editors realize how offended many African-American pastors are when told that they are important simply because of their political clout, and not their roles as pastors and community leaders?

Later on, the Times does offer this additional background on the North Carolina scene:

In North Carolina, polls indicated that the proposed state amendment banning same-sex marriage would be approved on Tuesday. While North Carolina has a law against same-sex marriage, Republican lawmakers said they worried that without an amendment, the law was in danger of being struck down by the courts.

The issue divides nearly all demographic groups, with ministers, lawyers, business executives, as well as black and white voters falling on both sides of the debate. …

Christopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said of the issue, “I think the less it’s talked about in a state like North Carolina, the better it is for Obama.”

The story accurately notes that ministers — white and black — can be found on both sides of this debate in North Carolina and nationwide. Once again, the goal here at GetReligion is to note that there are religious stakeholders on both sides and their views need to be covered fairly and accurately.

Meanwhile, over at The Washington Post, the same story received coverage that was just as one-sided and even more faith-free. In this case, the gay-rights side of the equation was backed by six sources (not including Biden) and there were no voices, in terms of new interview material, featured on the other side.

In this case, the big idea of the story is that Obama is attempting to balance African-American votes vs. the power of gay money:

Several people close to the White House said the episode has exposed internal tensions within Obama’s team between those who want the president to say he favors same-sex marriage before the November election and others who worry about a political backlash if he does — not just among conservatives and working-class voters but among African Americans who are Obama’s most loyal support bloc but tend to oppose such unions.

About one in six of Obama’s top campaign “bundlers” are gay, according to a Washington Post review of donor lists, making it difficult for the president to defer the matter. Activists are planning a campaign for the adoption of a pro-gay-marriage plank in this year’s Democratic Party platform.

Stay tuned. I predict new and/or renewed coverage, soon, of how young African-American pastors are clashing with old African-American pastors on this issue. Also, if any GetReligion readers are faithful Maher watchers, please keep us posted on his news coverage of this issue.

Meanwhile, the Post also reports — in a blog item — that the White House press conference exchanges on this “evolving” issue were almost certainly worthy of Saturday Night Live — with little or no editing needed. That is, if SNL still does skits gently poking Obama.

It’s one of the questions that veteran religion writers hear all the time in their newsrooms and usually struggle to answer.

You are sitting at your desk and, let’s say, a business writer walks up and asks: How many Jews are there in the state of Colorado? Or maybe it’s a larger-scale question, such as: How many Southern Baptists are there in the United States, really? Or try this one: News stories keep saying that liberal Protestant churches are in statistical free fall, but does anyone have hard numbers that people on both sides of that debate would agree are accurate?

The religion writer rolls her or his eyes, hearing this, and tries to explain that large-scale numbers of this kind are almost meaningless when covering religion stories because all of these groups use different standards for membership and some update their membership rolls more often than others and, and, and, so forth. The business writer scowls and says, “Gee thanks a lot (or words to that effect). All I needed was one solid number for the background paragraph in my story.”

So what are reporters supposed to do?

As a rule, I used to tell newsroom colleagues that you can quote national and regional statistics for individual groups, knowing that they are flawed, or you can quote the U.S. Religion Census or similar large-scale efforts, knowing that they are still flawed, but tend to be consistent over time.

At the local level, all you could really do is quote the number of congregations and then focus on attendance patterns. When in doubt, you have to go sit in pews and count people and then ask the congregational leaders to discuss the patterns. In the end, the numbers you really want for local coverage are (a) the number of congregations and (b) the average attendance in weekly services.

I experienced this Godbeat flashback while reading a short, but very clear, report by the Peggy Fletcher Stack in The Salt Lake City Tribune that focused on a question that will probably be asked a zillion times or more in the next six months. That urgent question: How many Mormons are there in the United States, anyway?

In this case, this veteran religion-beat pro had to walk readers through several levels of statistical twists and turns. The result is complex, but clear.

The hook for the story, she explains, was an eyebrow-raising number in the U.S. Religion Census:

Its report pegged U.S. Mormon growth at 45.5 percent, jumping from 4,224,026 in 2000 to 6,144,582 in 2010. The 2000 figure, though, was much lower than the 5,208,827 listed in the LDS Church’s almanac. If researchers had been given that figure, the percentage of growth would have been considerably smaller, closer to 18 percent. …

Here’s how the LDS Church explains the discrepancy between the 2000 Religion Census figure and its own almanac for the same year.

“Total [LDS] Church membership numbers are derived from those individuals who have been baptized or born into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” spokesman Scott Trotter said Wednesday. “They are neither projections nor estimates.” Trotter acknowledged that, in past years, LDS membership figures reported to the census researchers “were understated.”

For those years, he said, the LDS Church “left out numbers of members who, although baptized, were not currently associated with a specific congregation. This year, we included total membership numbers to more accurately reflect all of those found on church records.”

You can see clearly the dilemma in this shift. If accuracy is the goal, should religious leaders pick one big computer-records-based statistic or attempt to nail down a number that is real, but almost impossible to know — which is the pew-level reality, which is then projected nationwide?

A Church of the Nazarene official, given several paragraphs to explain the basics, says that Mormon leaders have essentially decided to use a method that resembles the formula used in most Protestant bodies.

What you end up with, of course, is a number that includes Mormons who rarely ever pass through the doors of their local stake, let alone the doors of a regional temple. This is where Stack’s story gets especially interesting.

The LDS Church does not remove any name from the list unless the person is excommunicated, asks to be removed or is dead. That means that a large number of members remain on the rolls who no longer attend or even consider themselves to be Mormon.

“We estimate that only 40 percent of LDS Church members in the U.S. attend church regularly,” said Matt Martinich, an independent researcher who studies Mormon demographics for cumorah.com. “That number varies by region — some areas have very high attendance like 70 percent and some as low as 20 percent.”

Martinich gets that activity rate by comparing the ratio of members to congregations, LDS seminary and institute enrollment, and member and missionary reports.

Personally, I was fascinated that the Mormon pew rate estimate — 40 percent — was so similar to the national rate for Americans who claim (think decades of Gallup Polls) to attend some kind of worship service on a weekly basis. I was also intrigued by the reference to regional differences among Mormons. Where is that 70 percent number the norm? What region has so many “Jack Mormons” that the attendance figures are down around 20 percent? Is that Utah or Nevada?

Looking ahead: Is it time to admit that there is no monolithic “Mormon voter” or, to cut to the chase, “Mormon donor”?

Back in the days when I was a full-time religion reporter (soon after the cooling of the earth’s crust), the annual event that pulled the most religion writers into the same zip code was the annual slugfest between the left and right wings of the Southern Baptist Convention. This was especially true in the years before the conservatives firmly took control, back when one hold-up-your-red-cards vote to name a convention president could literally determine who appointed the trustees that ran the whole shooting match.

During one of those tense affairs, I think it was in Dallas (correct me, folks), Louis Moore of The Houston Chronicle walked into the press room with a smirk on this face, the kind of smirk a reporter has when he or she knows something that nobody else knows.

Everyone in the room noticed this smirk, of course. Beat reporters aren’t dummies.

When asked what was up, Moore declined to answer — of course. All he said was this cryptic phrase: “It’s a nuclear bomb.”

As things turned out, Moore was the only person who had learned that, at this crucial stage of the game, the Rev. Billy Graham had done something he rarely if ever did. He had chosen to endorse one of the candidates.

Do YOU want Billy Graham on your side in a Bible Belt tussle?

I thought of this when reading the following Associated Press report, which is (in my opinion wisely) the story that is running in many of the nation’s major newspapers:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The Rev. Billy Graham urged North Carolina voters Wednesday to support an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage, a move that an observer said was highly unusual but another said was in keeping with the minister’s moral beliefs.

“Watching the moral decline of our country causes me great concern,” said Graham, 93, who lives near Asheville. “I believe the home and marriage is the foundation of our society and must be protected.”

His complete statement about Amendment One will be part of full-page ads slated to appear in 14 North Carolina newspapers throughout the weekend. …

“At 93, I never thought we would have to debate the definition of marriage,” Billy Graham’s statement said. “The Bible is clear — God’s definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. I want to urge my fellow North Carolinians to vote for the marriage amendment” Tuesday.

Now, my point here is not to start a debate about Graham’s statement or even the wisdom of the world’s most famous Protestant making that statement. Don’t click “comment” to talk about that.

The purpose of this post is to praise two specific journalism points in this ticklish, “nuclear” story.

First of all, note the balancing act in the second half of the lede. It notes, accurately, two crucial points about Graham’s history in public life, especially in the second, post-Watergate part of his life. Graham rarely enters politics and, when it does so, it’s when he believes a Christian doctrine demands that he do so. His stance on nuclear weapons, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, is a perfect example.

Second, the AP team (Godbeat veteran Rachel Zoll was involved) got the right source to nail this down.

William Martin, who wrote the authorized Graham biography “A Prophet With Honor,” couldn’t recall another effort by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association like the one the ministry plans in support of Amendment One. The elderly evangelist preached often on the need for sexual purity, but rarely spoke about same-sex marriage, Martin said.

“I am somewhat surprised that he would take that strong a stand,” said Martin, professor emeritus of religion and public policy at Rice University. “In the past, I have heard him say with respect to homosexuality, there are greater sins. … (It) sounds as if this is Mr. Graham expressing his own will.”

Martin, of course, is a mainstream, if not progressive, scholar who is the author of one of the essential studies of Graham’s career — “A Prophet With Honor.” While he is not part of the evangelical world, he speaks the language fluently. Martin is also accurate in his statement that Graham never spoke about sexuality issues without stressing that all of American culture been reaping what it has sown, when it comes to sexual ethics. I have never heard of the elder Graham address sexual issues without framing the discussion in terms of the moral status of all sexual acts outside of marriage — period.

In other words, the Associated Press got the right source in terms of giving information that added another layer of complexity to this report. Everyone knows what conservatives are going to say on this matter and the story, as it should, quotes one or two, including Graham’s daughter (and in many ways, his heir in terms of pulpit talent) Anne Graham Lotz.

Getting Martin’s voice into the story was crucial for mainstream and progressive readers. Kudos.

NOTE: Once again, we are here to talk about the content of the AP story, not the North Carolina amendment and the arguments for or against it. Take your political comments elsewhere.

Let’s face it, gentle readers, if I am going to be corrected — something that happens to all of us from time to time — it really helps to be corrected by one of the best in the business. I am referring to Pamela Constable of the foreign desk at The Washington Post.

To understand the context for my correction, let’s start with the following reference in my post that ran with the headline, “Chen Guangcheng, generic human-rights activist,” which focused on the fact that Chen is more than a generic activist who is backed by a generic “activist network.”

I stand by that emphasis in the piece. However, I also wrote:

This generic activist, you see, is actually a pro-life activist, the kind of Christian activist who sees China’s often brutal one-child policy as a violation of human rights as well as religious liberty. The abortion angle in this story has begun to show up in some mainstream media reports. …

That’s close, but not accurate. It appears that we can strike the word “Christian.”

However, before we move on let me note that a reader who is active in human-rights issues wrote in with some interesting information related to this issue. He pointed GetReligion readers toward an article in the Far Eastern Economic Review — headline, “Faith and Law In China” (.pdf) — which argues that the “weiquan movement” for human rights, in which Chen is a highly visible leader, includes many Chinese Christians and draws much of its support from Christian groups and networks.

It is also true that Chen’s most public supporter, Bob Fu, is a Christian pastor and leader in a Christian network that is at the forefront of support for the blind Chinese activist. I mentioned Fu and his network in my post, because of an op-ed piece he wrote for the Post.

Now, Constable has headed down to West Texas in order to contribute a timely news feature about Fu that contains tons of information shedding light on the work of pro-Chen activists. Right up top readers learn:

In the past 72 hours, Fu has become an international media figure at the center of the most sensational human rights crisis in China in a decade. It erupted when blind lawyer and dissident Chen Guangcheng fled house arrest and took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing — just as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was arriving this week for critical and wide-ranging talks with Chinese officials.

Fu, who helped engineer Chen’s escape and describes himself as Chen’s “ambassador,” has since been besieged with media calls, rumors and tips in half a dozen languages. At 6 a.m. Wednesday, American officials called Fu from Beijing to inform him that Chen had made a deal with Chinese authorities — a deal that appeared to quickly unravel. Now, Fu is rushing to Washington to testify on Capitol Hill about Chen’s unfolding case.

“Bob is our hero, but before this we were mostly below the radar. Now everyone in the world is trying to reach him,” said Celia Harris, the white-haired secretary at China Aid. Like many local supporters, she is a member of the large Christian community church in Midland that helped Fu settle when he fled China in 1997. He is now a pastor there as well as the founder and director of China Aid.

As you would expect from a reporter who has long dug into the religion angles of her stories, Constable quickly notes the role of faith in the very familiar outline of Fu’s life and work. He became a Christian after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, was arrested in 1996 while teaching in secret Bible schools and fled to the United States when his wife failed to obtain a pregnancy permit (and thus faced a forced abortion).

This brings us to a crucial piece of information, which I assume comes directly from Fu, a highly authoritative source on such matters.

Fu was born in the same rural province as Chen, who is not Christian but who has long been a passionate and outspoken opponent of Beijing’s policy of forced sterilizations and abortions. The issue is at the heart of U.S. religious groups’ criticism of China.

“I always felt a natural connection with Chen,” said Fu, speaking in short snatches between a barrage of phone calls late Tuesday. The queries intensified as midnight approached and rumors swirled across the Internet that Chen was about to make a deal. “I chose a peaceful life in the United States, but he believed the system in China could change, and he wanted to stay and be part of it, even after suffering so much. He believes that a million ants can move a hill. He is a symbol of courage for all of us.”

By all means, read on. It’s good to know that Fu, like Chen, is not a simplistic China basher. He is skeptical, yet also hopeful. At the moment, however, he greatly fears for the safety of Chen, his family and the network of Chinese activist — Christians and others — who have risked so much to help Chen.

As the tense negotiations continue, here is a key element for which to watch in future coverage. Chinese authorities tend to define “religious freedom” in terms of what happens in churches. Clearly, the religious opponents of the one-child policies have a much broader view, one in which religious freedom is part of a larger package of human rights that must be defended.

Often, the kinds of people who work in the U.S. State Department (and not just in the current administration) tend to view this stance as rather idealistic, if not naive.

Stay tuned. Meanwhile, my thanks to Constable and the Post for her fine story.

Anyone who has been following the news in recent days has almost certainly read numerous stories about the remarkable blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng and his dark-of-night escape from house arrest.

Truth is, there are too many stories about his work and dramatic escape to review in a single blog post. However, I would like to ask GetReligion readers a rather simple question: Why does Chen do what he does?

In other words, we know that he is an activist and that he is blind. This makes him a blind activist, I guess. However, he is not an activist for the rights of the blind.

Consider the following Washington Post report from several days ago about Chen and his plight. The background language in this report remains rather typical, however.

In the lede, he is identified simply as “blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng.” Later, readers are told:

The men who kept Chen contained in his farmhouse, who he says beat him and his wife, and who harassed journalists and activists trying to see him were operating as an extrajudicial force, with no official standing. But they were clearly doing the bidding of local party bosses who wanted to keep Chen silenced and isolated.

When Chen escaped, climbing over a high wall and walking hours alone at night to evade detection, the blind activist had not been linked to any crime. And members of the activist network who assisted Chen — driving him to Beijing, shuttling him around to avoid capture — also were not committing crimes, since Chen was not charged with anything. Yet police have been rounding them all up.

Chen made a video that was broadcast on YouTube, directly appealing to Wen to take action against those who he says abused him and his family, to protect his family and to investigate corruption in Linyi city, which oversees his village. By appealing personally to [Premier Wen Jiabao], Chen was deftly avoiding the accusation, often used against dissidents in China, that he was “subverting state authority.”

Thus, Chen is a activist, supported by an “activist network,” who opposes local corruption. Later, readers learn that he is known for his “longtime advocacy for protection of the poor, the marginalized and the abused, and the application of the rule of law.”

Duly noted. The Post story then proceeds into a detailed analysis of how the case is affecting, you got it, developments in Chinese politics. The case is also raising questions for Obama administration officials, too.

But that’s it for Chen.

However, the same issue of the same newspaper featured an op-ed page column written by Bob Fu, a leader in one of the groups that is backing this generic activist. This column included the following background material:

Chen is often described as a “dissident,” but that is a misnomer. Despite years of brutal treatment for seeking to bring attention to those victimized by China’s “one-child” policy, he has never established a political party or organization. He has never advocated overthrowing the Communist Party. In the video he posted online after his escape, he says that the injustices his family experienced “hurt the image of our Party.” And the first thing he told me after escaping was that he wanted the outside the world to know that he was not going to leave China but to “fight to the end for the freedom of my family. … I want to live a normal life as a Chinese citizen with my family.” …

This blind lawyer, whose first name, “Guang Cheng,” means “light” and “integrity,” has been silenced for almost six years because the Chinese government views his assistance to the vulnerable as a threat. Chen’s desire for justice and freedom should put him firmly on the “right side” of history.

To no one’s surprise, the short bio for the author states:

Bob Fu is founder and president of the China Aid Association, a Texas-based Christian human rights organization campaigning for Chen Guangcheng’s freedom.

It is natural that Fu is working on Chen’s behalf. This generic activist, you see, is actually a pro-life activist, the kind of Christian activist who sees China’s often brutal one-child policy as a violation of human rights as well as religious liberty. The abortion angle in this story has begun to show up in some mainstream media reports, including this subsequent piece in the Post. (The Washington Post also had a breakthrough piece on Chen and the one-child policy back in 2005. Check it out.)

But the faith angle? The religious liberty angle? Or, wait, is that the so-called “religious liberty” angle?

Still missing. Please use the comments pages to let us know if you find mainstream news reports that spot this ghost.

Correction: See this new GetReligion post on this issue.

A story with a strong religious element showed up today in The Baltimore Sun business pages, of all places. This is precisely where this religion-news story should have been, methinks, but this does not mean that the editorial team needed to leave out a few highly relevant religious facts.

At the heart of this story is two powerful trends in American religion. Alas, only one made it into the newspaper.

The news hook is that a synagogue in a major suburb of Baltimore is facing foreclosure. This is part of a trend, as the story makes very clear:

Once nearly unheard of, foreclosures on houses of worship jumped to record numbers nationally in the past two years, showing that religious facilities are not immune to the wave of foreclosures that followed the bursting of the credit bubble.

Adat Chaim’s leader, Rabbi David Greenspoon, declined to comment when reached by phone, saying: “Thank you for your call. Have a nice day,” and then hanging up. The synagogue board’s president, Art Wolf, did not respond to requests for comment. …

Adat Chaim is struggling with the same issues that plague houses of worship of all denominations. The synagogue, which opened its current building on Cockeys Mill Road in 1993, has seen its membership dwindle from as many as 300 to its current 95.

Steve Fort, the congregation’s membership chairman, said the synagogue would persevere.

“We’re not closing,” Fort said.

The key to the story, of course, is found in the phrase stating that this synagogue is “struggling with the same issues that plague houses of worship of all denominations.” And what are those trends? Readers need to know.

The story, essentially mentions two. One is, of course, the worst real-estate crisis since the Great Depression. And the other? Here’s the membership chairman, again:

He acknowledged that keeping and attracting new members is a challenge.

“With the way the economy is, when people give things up, the first thing they give up is their religious affiliation and synagogues lose members,” he said.

According to the Sun, this trend is found among all religious groups, which is probably true. However, this is not the same thing as saying that this decline is happening to all groups equally. I would imagine, for example, that few congregations are facing foreclosures if (a) they have healthy birthrates and (b) if they are part of a movement or tradition that is attracting new members, in general.

Thus, in this case, if would have been good to have mentioned that Adat Chaim is part of the Conservative Judaism movement. As strange as it sounds (note the witty art with this post), the Conservative movement is part of the liberal wing of Judaism in North America and elsewhere. It is also a movement that is in decline (read The Jewish Daily Forward on this), especially when it comes to attracting and retaining families and, even more so, in America’s urban Northeastern corridor.

On its website, Adat Chaim makes its cultural identity very clear, stating that it is: “An Egalitarian Congregation serving Baltimore and Carroll Counties, Maryland.”

Could the Sun have spared the time to compare this synagogue’s current situation with, let’s say, the Orthodox communities in Northwest Baltimore and nearby areas? At the very least, the story needs to qualify its statements that all movements and denominations are being hit by this trend. That is only half the equation.

Near the end, the story does contain some additional info that hints are what is really happening. You see, many religious believers are voting with their feet and their wallets, in this tense age. It’s especially crucial when flocks shrink to 100 and below, since that’s the level at which a congregation will even struggle to pay the salary and benefits of a clergyperson.

So what’s happening with membership numbers? Here’s a key source, Stephen Ferrandi, who works with “KLNB Worship, an Ellicott City-based subsidiary of real estate brokerage KLNB.”

Many houses of worship are up for sale, said KLNB Worship’s Ferrandi, whose company now has 10 listed. A few of those congregations are growing and seek larger quarters, but most are shrinking and can no longer afford to keep their property, he said.

“We have more listings today than we’ve ever had,” Ferrandi said. “The supply of churches has overwhelmed the demand for churches. More and more people are no longer going to their neighborhood church.”

Yes, many are leaving. Many are going elsewhere. This report needed a few more facts, to let readers know the religious trends that shaped this story, as well as the real-estate trends.

I have been waiting for someone to write a story about George Zimmerman and his family and it’s religious background ever since I saw a passing reference to him being a former altar boy.

The world is full of former altar boys, it seems, and every now and then that symbolic detail turns out to have meaning.

However, before we look at this Reuters report — “George Zimmerman: Prelude to a shooting” — let me note that this isn’t really a news story that appears to impact crucial questions linked to the tragic events at the heart of this case. Like many other journalists I know, I continue to sift through the coverage trying to find hard, factual references to the evidence describing the sequence of events that led to the shooting and what may or may not have happened in that struggle.

In other words, all citizens of good will are waiting for the physical evidence to be discussed and debated. It could be a long and very tense wait. Meanwhile, religion is and has been part of the whirlwind around the death of young Trayvon Martin.

So what is this news story about? Journalists at Reuters tried to find out more information about the complex background of the man who pulled the trigger:

… (A) more nuanced portrait of Zimmerman has emerged from a Reuters investigation into Zimmerman’s past and a series of incidents in the community in the months preceding the Martin shooting. Based on extensive interviews with relatives, friends, neighbors, schoolmates and co-workers of Zimmerman in two states, law enforcement officials, and reviews of court documents and police reports, the story sheds new light on the man at the center of one of the most controversial homicide cases in America.

The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather — the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.

A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men.

As you would expect, the story is rooted in biographical information about the multiracial Zimmerman family. The question, for GetReligion readers, is whether his “deeply Catholic” background is established in hard facts and then successfully linked to the man’s character and life before the shooting. Otherwise, why make the reference at all?

The key figure, it appears, is Zimmerman’s mother, Gladys — an active Catholic. His father Robert’s background is Baptist. The story includes some of the details that matter:

Gladys came to lead a small but growing Catholic Hispanic enclave within the All Saints Catholic Church parish in the late 1970s, where she was involved in the church’s outreach programs. Gladys would bring young George along with her on “home visits” to poor families, said a family friend, Teresa Post.

“It was part of their upbringing to know that there are people in need, people more in need than themselves,” said Post, a Peruvian immigrant who lived with the Zimmermans for a time.

Post recalls evening prayers before dinner in the ethnically diverse Zimmerman household, which included siblings Robert Jr., Grace, and Dawn. “It wasn’t only white or only Hispanic or only black — it was mixed,” she said. …

Zimmerman served as an altar boy at All Saints from age 7 to 17, church members said.

“He wasn’t the type where, you know, ‘I’m being forced to do this,’ and a dragging-his-feet Catholic,” said Sandra Vega, who went to high school with George and his siblings. “He was an altar boy for years, and then worked in the rectory too. He has a really good heart.”

So religion is part of the picture until this young man is 17. Then there is trouble, symbolized by conflicts with police and a fiance’s civil motion for a restraining order “alleging domestic violence.” “Anger management” is an issue — on the books. Eventually Zimmerman marries and seeks a career in criminal justice.

There are many details provided about race relations and crime in the Zimmerman neighborhood and the devastating impact of the recession on homeowners. Zimmerman is known for helping people — black and white — protect their homes. The question for GetReligion readers is simple: What happens to the religion angle? What happened to Zimmerman’s faith?

The answer? Silence. There is no more information. The angle completely vanishes.

Thus, readers are left to draw their own conclusions about the devout Catholic boy who helps his mother reach out to the poor. It’s key that part of Zimmerman’s defense will be that, as a young adult, he was still trying to help his neighbors, black and white. This story appears to document some of that.

But what happened to his faith between the ages of 17 and 27?

At that point, the clear info about his family turns into a ghost about his adult life — precisely at the moment that would interest readers. Is he still active in a local parish and it’s social-justice ministries? Does the report’s earlier information on his faith have any real meaning to recent events? How are we to know?

In the end, a very disappointing story.

OK, it’s finally time to mention that Ann Rodgers story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the quest for Orthodox Christian unity here in the United States.

The story is a couple of weeks old, of course. However (a) I continue to hear from people who want to know what I thought of it (because I’m Orthodox, etc.) and (b) it truly is an example of the positive side of what we write about here in GetReligion.org land.

I hesitated to write about the story, in part, because one of the crucial quotes in this thing is from a good friend of mine in my own parish. Also, there is this tendency to say, “This is another really fair, balanced and informed story about a really complex subject that is written by Ann Rodgers — but what’s the news in that? Ho hum.”

Well, it’s OK to write a post like this every now and then. After all, this is what religion writing looks like when it’s done by an experienced journalist with a studied commitment to working on this beat. In a perfect news world, there wouldn’t be anything really unusual about this.

The main challenge in writing about Orthodox unity in this land is that there’s so little of it. Also, unity is one of those positive subjects that everyone is supposed to be in favor of, yet many leaders have reasons to not want to see unity become a reality — but they will never say so when a journalist is listening.

Tough story, in other words. Here’s a sample:

On orders from patriarchs in Constantinople, Russia, Serbia and elsewhere, all Orthodox bishops in this country are working on a plan for one American Church.

The patriarchs say they want to approve such a plan at a yet-unscheduled Great and Holy Council of global Orthodoxy. The last such council was in A.D. 787. In 2010, 66 American bishops formed the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America, to devise the plan.

“This has great potential,” said Bishop Melchisedek of the Diocese of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania in the Orthodox Church in America, which is self-governing but has Russian roots. He cited existing differences on matters such as divorce or re-baptism of converts.

“The canon law of the church allows for only one bishop of a city, but here in Pittsburgh we have four. It’s a situation that can create unnecessary conflict. Now we have the potential for the church to speak with one voice.”

Skeptics say unity can be achieved immediately if the bishops really want it and that details could be worked out later.

The bishops assembly “is a façade,” said Cal Oren, a layman from Baltimore.

“They want us to believe that they are working together and are really unified. If they are really unified, where is the real unity? Why do we have nine bishops of New York? We don’t need more joint commissions on youth work. That just creates an excuse for never really unifying.”

Yes, Rodgers then has to step way back into the mists of church history and quickly get readers up to speed. She does so, with clear, strong language and quotes from all over the place. That’s journalism.

So how has this unity thing gone in recent decades?

In 1994, when all of the Orthodox bishops in the Americas gathered near Ligonier and called for unity, the ecumenical patriarch accused them of rebellion. …

Planning for a Great Council to redraw boundaries started in 1961. Little progress was made until the Iron Curtain fell. That freed the largest churches from persecution, and sent new waves of emigrants to the West. In 2009 the patriarchs asked the Orthodox bishops in 12 regions of the globe to plan for unity. The American bishops have asked the patriarchs to let them break into separate groups for Canada, the United States and Mexico-Central America. …

Both supporters and skeptics of the Bishops Assembly say the problem isn’t merely bureaucratic, but spiritual. In 1872 the idea of one bishop planting an ethnic church in another bishop’s territory was condemned as a nationalist heresy.

Keep reading, because things get more complex. And when you are done reading, please join your GetReligionistas in saying something like this.

Dear editors in major American newsrooms:

Please go hire someone with experience and training to work on the religion beat. See this story as an example of what can happen when skilled reporters are allowed to do their jobs.

Thank you.

PICTURE: The Orthodox bishops of North America, sort of assembled in a show of unity.