Law & Order

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Amid Israel-Hamas War, Hanukkah 2023 Mixes Fears With Festivities

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Amid Israel-Hamas War, Hanukkah 2023 Mixes Fears With Festivities

I’m excited to be back after a two-week break while I traveled on a reporting trip to Vanuatu and Australia.

Believe it or now, among the big headlines last week was this: Taylor Swift is Time magazine’s Person of the Year. For fans, Swift’s concerts are “a religious experience,” according to Sam Lansky’s insightful cover story.

Meanwhile, the presidents of three elite American universities are facing a backlash “over their refusal to say whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates their policies against bullying and harassment,” as USA Today’s Michael Collins explains.

The backlash at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania includes “threats from donors, demands that their presidents resign and a congressional investigation,” the New York Times’ Alan Blinder, Anemona Hartocollis and Stephanie Saul point out.

This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start with the concerns that the Israel-Hamas war has brought to Hanukkah.

What To Know: The Big Story

The war and Hanukkah: The eight-day holiday commenced at sundown Thursday, prompting veteran religion writer Cathy Lynn Grossman to ask here at ReligionUnplugged:

With Israel at war and antisemitism, particularly on college campuses, showing a sharp upswing across America, is this any time to put a menorah in the window — to “publicize the miracle” of Hanukkah by celebrating boldly, according to Jewish tradition?

Grossman — best known for her time as a national religion correspondent for USA Today and later Religion News Service — talks to Jews across the nation “about yearning to be simultaneously joyful and careful, to be festive in fearful times.”

Light in darkness: The Hanukkah message feels uniquely relevant to U.S. Jews amid the war and antisemitism, The Associated Press’ Giovanna Dell’Orto writes.

“We need Hanukkah now more than ever,” a rabbi tells the Dallas Morning News’ Joy Ashford.

But parties have been canceled and celebrations toned down, and Hanukkah won’t be the same, according to Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron.


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Complicated question in the news: What do Jews believe about the death penalty?

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Complicated question in the news: What do Jews believe about the death penalty?

QUESTION:

What do Jews believe about the death penalty?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

There was relief last week when a unanimous Pittsburgh jury approved the death penalty for the man (not to be dignified here with a name) who in 2018 massacred 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Congregation, in the deadliest act of anti-Jewish violence in U.S. history.

There’s a strong aversion to capital punishment in the teaching across the branches of Judaism but, as we’ll see, this is not absolute, and Judaism’s biblical and textual tradition on this is complex.

There were mixed feelings in Pittsburgh’s historically close-knit Jewish community. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that capital punishment “was the preference of some but not all of the victim’ families” and “some local Jews openly opposed” execution. The New Light Congregation, which also worships in the Tree of Life building, said “many of our members prefer that the shooter spend the rest of his life in prison” and question feelings of “vengeance or revenge against him.”

As appeals grind away, presumably for years, the antisemitic murderer will join the 41 inmates awaiting execution at the federal prison system’s death row or “Special Confinement Unit” in Terre Haute, Indiana, which was established when Congress reinstated the federal death penalty in 1988.

Meanwhile, The Associated Press says the morality and practicality of capital punishment could become a big issue in the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign for the first time since 1988. Republican front-runners Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are both making execution central to their anti-crime messages.

And the opposite. Liberal Democrats are vexed that President Joe Biden pledged in 2020 to abolish the death penalty in federal statutes but has not done so. However, his Department of Justice currently has a moratorium in place while it conducts a thorough examination of problems with methods of killing and racial unfairness in judicial application.

Consideration of Jewish belief begins at the beginning.


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Questions for journalists: What would it take for Catholic church attacks to become news?

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Questions for journalists: What would it take for Catholic church attacks to become news?

I am venturing into Clemente Lisi territory with this post, and I know that. However, there are questions about the national wave of attacks on Catholic churches and sacred sites that have started to bother me. Maybe this is a test case of how the post-American Model of the Press marketplace is really going to work? Just how biased is the acceptable bias going to get?

Let’s start here: If bad people attack African-American sanctuariess, is this a news story? The answer, of course, is “Yes.” Everyone agrees, with the exception of unrepentant racists.

Now, if bad people attack Roman Catholic churches, is that a news story? The answer appears to be “No.” This is news for “Catholic,” “religious” and “conservative” newsrooms. It appears to be a minor story, zip code by zip code, in local news. This violent trend is not news for elite, national-level media.

Why is that? Possible answers include: (a) These attacks are being done by people who are “good” in the eyes of journalists because their cause is just. (b) These are bad Catholic churches (they do not fly Pride flags, etc.). (c) There are just too many of these attacks for them to be considered “news.”

Finally, (d) if these attacks were news, public officials would have to ponder whether they are “hate crimes.” This would violate the unspoken law that it’s impossible to commit a hate crime against a group that has not been declared “oppressed” by The New York Times, National Public Radio, Yale Law School and others.

Would this trend be a story if the world’s second most famous Catholic delivered an Oval Office address on the subject? Maybe we will see, if President Joe Biden sees trouble brewing in New Hampshire.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind. Here is yet another one of those “local” stories: “Cross cut down at Santiago Retreat Center in Silverado Canyon, investigators looking for suspect.” The familiar details:

A 14-foot wooden cross at the Santiago Retreat Center was sawed down this week, leaving staff and counselors shocked while Orange County sheriff’s officials try to identify a suspect, authorities said.


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FBI war on 'rad trad' Catholics: Where's the outrage (or even fairness) in press coverage?

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FBI war on 'rad trad' Catholics: Where's the outrage (or even fairness) in press coverage?

There are several factors that, when put together, make an event or trend a news story. 

The first is that it is new. It’s not a coincidence that the first three letters of the word news helps to form the word “new.”

Then there’s timing. Not just “what,” but also “when” something happens makes it newsworthy. “What” and “when” are essential to the five W’s (which also includes “where,” “who” and “why”) that reporters and editors worry most when determining news coverage.

The inability for certain types of stories to register with the secular press, especially legacy media, is yet another sign of the political, cultural and moral divisions in our society and the dying American model of the press. 

While this space is very much dedicated to critiquing news coverage of Catholic issues and those involving Catholics, it is very difficult to do so when there is little to no coverage of important Catholic stories by a very sizable chunk of the American media ecosystem. 

This takes us to a trio of stories involving the federal government and the Catholic church that took place during the first half of this month. At a time of year where the mainstream media is seeking Christian storylines to coincide with Lent, Holy Week and Easter Sunday (beyond photos of elaborate hats), the three stories I am about to dissect here drew very little mainstream media attention.

Instead, it was the Catholic press (once again!) and “conservative” secular media that did the bulk of the reporting on, for my first example, the issue regarding the decision by Walter Reed Hospital to drop a contract for Franciscan priests to provide pastoral care of patients and, instead, hiring a secular firm to oversee those same services going forward. Try to imagine “secular” Last Rites for Catholics?

The second was the decision by the Department of Justice to recommend zero jail time in a plea deal involving a suspect charged with destruction of property at a Catholic church in Washington last year.

Finally, there were, according to documents, traditional Catholics who were targeted by the FBI because they could be considered domestic terrorists.


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Podcast: That Baltimore Catholic clergy sexual-abuse report is a big, but complex, story

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Podcast: That Baltimore Catholic clergy sexual-abuse report is a big, but complex, story

The inevitable clergy sexual-abuse report from the Archdiocese of Baltimore is a major news story, for legions of valid reasons.

Baltimore is this nation’s “premier see,” the oldest diocese in the United States. This city at the heart of a once-thriving Catholic region that now in a demographic death-dive that is extreme, even by the standards of 21st century America.

To move closer to issues discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), we are also talking about the city and Catholic culture in which the Sister Catherine Cesnik vanished in November of 1969. This is the murdered nun who left behind friends, colleagues and former female students who were convinced that she was about to blow the whistle on serial abuser Father Joseph Maskell, one of the villains at the heart of the famous Netflix who-done-it “The Keepers.”

Yes, the former chaplain at the famous (now closed) Keough High School was mentioned 200 times in the 450-page Maryland Attorney General report on child sexual abuse by clergy (and others) in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

But here is the key point that I want to make — as part of a broader discussion of the hellish, I would argue demonic, sexual-abuse sins and crimes being committed against children, teens and adults in many different secular and religious institutions. Most journalists see this abuse crisis through a specific lens, and it’s a narrow Catholic lens with events beginning with the The Boston Globe and it’s pivotal Spotlight investigations that went public in 2002.

But, as “The Keepers” series on Netflix makes clear, Father Maskell had already abused children in Baltimore, abuse that was reported to superiors, before he was transferred over to Keough.

Note that this was long before Father Gilbert Gauthe was assigned to St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Henry, La., where he began abusing young boys — creating a landmark 1984 case that opened the modern era of media coverage of clergy sexual abuse in America. That media coverage took place early in my own journalism career and I’ve been covering this story ever since.

The whole point of this week’s podcast is that journalists need to think all this over. Do we want to keep painting the sexual abuse of children, teens and adults as a “Catholic” story that began a decade or two ago, or do we want to broaden the lens and look at the bigger picture — which would be an even bigger, more important and, yes, more difficult story?


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Campaign for thorough reform of Muslim law deserves mainstream coverage -- now

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Campaign for thorough reform of Muslim law deserves mainstream coverage -- now

The world’s largest organization of Muslims is campaigning for thorough worldwide reform of how to understand the faith’s religious law (Sharia) and applied jurisprudence (Fiqh).

Such an ambitious goal may seem unlikely and, to date, western media have given the effort minimal coverage. It’s time for that trend to change.

Far from some esoteric intellectual discourse, such a philosophical change could potentially affect the future of the world’s second-largest faith regarding democracy, blasphemy laws, human rights, education, the role of women, treatment of other religions, warfare, extremism, terrorism and crime and punishment.

The organization in question is Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, meaning Revival of Islamic Scholars) in Indonesia, the nation with the largest Muslim population. Consider these numbers from James M. Dorsey, a freelance writer and adjunct senior fellow in international studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University: NU encompasses an estimated 90 million lay followers, tens of thousands of religious scholars, 44 universities and 18,000 lower schools.

NU upholds Sunni orthodoxy, but with a more tolerant tone than is customary in the Mideast. Its legal reform program was prominent during the massive February celebration of its 100th anniversary, analyzed in Dorsey’s March 31 Substack column. His article is a good starting point for journalists, but its opinionated viewpoint warrants careful follow-up interviewing. Also note this 2021 NU backgrounder by political scientist Ahmet T. Kuru (akuru@sdsu.edu).

Moderate Muslim thinkers have long favored some sort of move away from rigid legal traditionalism. Dorsey depicts a two-sided struggle among them, pitting allies of NU’s fully democratic and tolerant outlook against religious leaders beholden to rulers in the Mideast, as in Saudi Arabia, where certain social liberation is being allowed without fundamentally rethinking Islamic law or politics.


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Weeks before the attack, Covenant's pastor preached on death, grief and the tears of Jesus

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Weeks before the attack, Covenant's pastor preached on death, grief and the tears of Jesus

The Bible's shortest verse -- "Jesus wept" -- is also one of its most important.

That was the message delivered by the Rev. Chad Scruggs in a March 5 sermon -- "Death's Conqueror" -- as the faithful at Nashville's Covenant Presbyterian Church continued their Lenten journey toward Holy Week and Easter's promise of new life after death.

"How do we face death in our world," he asked, "especially untimely deaths, without the pain and confusion of death leading us to despair?"

That was three weeks before a gunman crashed through the glass doors of his church's Covenant School and killed three staff members and three 9-year-old students -- including the pastor's daughter, Hallie Scruggs. Police fatally shot the attacker, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, a former Covenant student who had taken the name "Aiden" and male pronouns online. 

Police confirmed that Covenant had been targeted. But Nashville officials and the FBI have declined to release a "manifesto" referenced in Hale's final social-media warning: "One day this will make more sense. I've left more than enough evidence behind."

The families of those killed have mourned in private, even as solemn Holy Week rites flowed toward Easter (April 9) -- surrounded by a whirlwind of familiar arguments about gun control and a mental-health crisis that has shattered so many lives.

In his sermon before the attack, Scruggs had already plunged into deeper, ancient, mysteries -- stressing that believers can trust that God understands the grief, anger and confusion caused by violence and death.

When meeting the grieving family of his friend Lazarus, Jesus responded with anger, as well as compassion. Thus, the importance of the Gospel of John's blunt words: "Jesus wept."


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Podcast: Do readers need to know the 'why' factor in the Covenant School shootings?

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Podcast: Do readers need to know the 'why' factor in the Covenant School shootings?

Before returning to mainstream news coverage of the attack on Covenant Presbyterian Church and its school, let’s look at a story that raises similar issues — in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Consider this new information linked to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

The headline on a KRDO report: “Manifesto details former student’s plans to carry out multiple Colorado Springs school shootings.” Yes, note the word “manifesto.”

In this case, police are dealing with threats, not actions. However, journalists covering this story face some familiar questions about content and emphasis. Let’s pick this up at the second paragraph.

According to the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, 19-year-old William Whitworth - who identifies as “Lilly”- was charged after an investigation into "threats involving schools in Colorado Springs Academy District 20."

The context for this story is Colorado Springs. What do we know about that “conservative” city, in terms of its media profile? Here is an interesting headline from The Guardian: “Colorado Springs: a playground for pro-life, pro-gun evangelical Christians.”

Back to the very low-key Colorado news report:

Once inside [the home], deputies noted in the affidavit two holes that appeared to be punch marks in the wall. The door to a bedroom was off its hinges and lying beside the opening. … The sister identified herself as Lilly, but further investigation determined her birth name is William Whitworth.

Once again, readers face that familiar, but suddenly controversial, question from the old-school journalism equation “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why” and “how.”

A dozen or so paragraphs and news-you-can-use bullet lists into the story, readers finally learn:

When asked if she was going to shoot up a school, the affidavit states Whitworth "visibly shook her head and down indicating yes." When asked why she'd do that, Whitworth stated, "Why does anyone do it." …

While waiting for the fire department, Whitworth was asked how much she had been planning the school shooting. She stated she was "about a third of the way from doing it," verifying again that Timberview Middle School was one of the "main targets" currently and other targets were churches.

There’s some (#triggerwarning) anti-Donald Trump material in this troubled young person’s writings, as well. But it would be interesting — since Colorado Springs is internationally known as a haven for evangelical ministries — to know just a bit more (as in anything) about the targeted “churches.”


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Plug-In: The Covenant School shootings -- media coverage focused on guns and victims

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Plug-In: The Covenant School shootings -- media coverage focused on guns and victims

Good morning, Weekend Plug-in readers. I wrote Plug-in a day early because headed to Arlington, Texas, for Opening Day, and I’ll be tied up with that important national holiday.

My beloved Texas Rangers open the 2023 season against the Philadelphia Phillies this afternoon. Surely this will be my team’s best season ever!

But first, we focus on the week’s big, tragic and violent news from Covenant Presbyterian Church and its school in Nashville, Tennessee, a city close to my heart.

What To Know: The Big Story

Three children, three adults slain: Once again, a mass shooting at a school shocked all of us and surprised none of us.

At a Wednesday night vigil in Nashville, “Each speaker echoed the names of those who did not return home earlier this week.”

The children who died were Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, all 9 years old. The adults who died were Mike Hill, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Cynthia Peak, 61.

The victims were people of strong faith with the children characterized as “feisty” and a “shining light,” according to an Associated Press team, including Nashville-based religion news editor Holly Meyer.

Peaceful day shattered: Monday started with a normal chapel assembly at The Covenant School, a Presbyterian elementary, Christianity Today’s Daniel Silliman and Kate Shellnutt report.

Within a few hours, though, the school, which is all about “celebrating” children, became a killing scene, as Reuters’ Sharon Bernstein describes it.

Traumatized survivors were taken to a nearby Baptist church that served as a reunification site for children and parents, as The Tennessean’s Molly Davis explains.

For ongoing coverage, follow religion reporter, Liam Adams.

Making sense of it: In the face of tragedy, petitioning God is an act of faith, New York Times columnist David French writes.


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