Louisville Courier-Journal

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Yet another theodicy news story: Where was God in the Mayfield tornado disaster?

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Yet another theodicy news story: Where was God in the Mayfield tornado disaster?

Words fail to convey the emotions in Mayfield, Kentucky, after last weekend’s devastating tornado.

Let’s try anyway, directly from the mouths of those relying on their faith in the EF4 twister’s aftermath.

It’s another “theodicy” story: It would appear that God is on trial.

“My little girl asked me, ‘Why would God let this happen?’ … I had to look at my little 8-year-old girl, who looks to me for answers, and I had to say … ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’” — the Rev. Wes Fowler, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Mayfield (via Associated Press story by Holly Meyer)

"Thanks be to God the parts of the building that came down didn’t come down on us. I realized it might be the last few moments of my life on this earth. … All I care about is the fact that the most valuable possessions in my life, my wife’s life, my children, they’re all safe. Everything else is replaceable." — the Rev. Joey Reed, lead pastor of First United Methodist Church in Mayfield (via Louisville Courier-Journal story by Christopher Kuhagen)

"As a parent, it's like there's only so much you can say or do to take the fear out of your children. The girls' room was — I say 'was' because, obviously, if you come in here and look around, there's no walls anymore; there's no ceiling. I mean, they know how much of it's in our hands and how much of it's, you know, up to the storm and up to God. ... We lost everything, but we didn't lose everything. I mean, everything that we have that is worth anything was in that closet." — Joseph Tyler, Mayfield resident who survived with his family in the closet and worships at His House, a local church (via CNN story)

“God is not in the devastation. He’s not in the destruction. He was not in the storm. But he’s in the response, and that’s where we are. That’s what we’re trying to be. We’re trying to amplify the response that is happening from the survivors and victims of the tornado.” — Susan Montalvo-Gesser, director of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Owensboro, Kentucky (via America magazine story by Michael J. O’Loughlin)

"It's awful. It's tragic. People who have lost loved ones, there is no way to take that pain away. I think you just have to embrace the pain and pray that God will guide you as you overcome it." — the Rev. Milton West, senior minister of First Christian Church in Mayfield (via WLKY story by Marvis Herring)


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Podcast: USA Today Network study of chaplain in COVID crisis avoids big, eternal questions

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For the last decade of his ministry, my father — the Rev. Bert Mattingly — was the Southern Baptist chaplain at the Texas Children’s Hospital. He assisted at several other facilities in the Texas Medical Center in downtown Houston, working with chaplains representing a number of other churches and traditions.

I went to work with him several times. During one visit, we passed a small sitting room and my father said this was his private “crash” spot where he would go when he was overwhelmed and needed to pull himself together. Each of the chaplains had a safe place like this and only the chaplains receptionist knew these locations. (This was before cellphones were omnipresent.)

I also remember lots of prayers and the big questions. A hospital chaplain prays all the time, especially in a facility full of families with children facing cancer or leukemia.

There’s no way around the fact that most of a chaplain’s prayers are linked to big, eternal questions that never go away. Questions like this: Why is this happening to my child? Where is God in all of this pain? Does God understand that I’m scared? What do I do with my guilt and my anger? Is heaven real?

I thought about my father (and a beloved uncle who was a hospital chaplain for half a century) as we recorded this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). That’s easy to understand, since we were talking about a massive USA Today Network feature — from The Louisville Courier-Journal — that ran with this title: “ 'Hurry, he's dying': A chaplain’s journal chronicles a pandemic's private wounds.”

This is a remarkable feature story, in terms of human drama and suffering. It was built on the kind of source reporters dream about, in terms of a body of written material packed with dates, times, places and human interactions — a chaplain’s personal journal of the coronavirus crisis.

Yes, this is a stunning story. The writing is first rate. However, it’s strangely silent when it comes to the content of this chaplain’s ministry — in terms of the big questions and the prayers that follow This Norton Healthcare chaplain has no specific faith tradition, church or approach to theology. Readers never even learn if Adam Ruiz is ordained and, if so, by whom. My research online found a clue that he might be part of the mainline Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Here is a crucial chunk of the intro material in this feature:

Like colleagues across the country, Ruiz’s already tough job providing spiritual care amid loss had grown exponentially more difficult. Illness and death multiplied. Fear and uncertainty gripped front-line doctors and nurses. Visitor restrictions meant suffocating isolation for patients and families. Grief was interrupted, funerals denied. A mountain of need sprang up overnight.


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Podcast: Who-da thunk it? Drive-in churches are First Amendment battlegrounds

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It didn’t take long to realize that there would be church-state clashes between independent-minded religious groups — from fundamentalist Baptists to Hasidic Jews — and state officials during the coronavirus crisis.

So that was the big story, at first: Lots of crazy white MAGA evangelicals wanted to keep having face-to-face church, even if it was clear that this put lives at risk in the pews and in their surrounding communities. That was the subject of last week’s “On Religion” podcast.

The real story was more complex than that, of course. The vast majority of religious congregations and denominations (you can make a case for 99%) recognized the need for “shelter in place” orders and cooperated. The preachers who rebelled were almost all leading independent Pentecostal and evangelical churches and quite a few of them were African-Americans.

So that was a story with three camps: (1) The 99% of religious leaders who cooperated and took worship online (that wasn’t big news), (2) the small number of preachers who rebelled (big story in national media) and (3) government leaders who just wanted to do the right thing and keep people alive.

However, things got more complex during the Easter weekend (for Western churches) and that’s what “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I discussed during this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in).

As it turned out, there were FIVE CAMPS in this First Amendment drama and the two that made news seemed to be off the radar of most journalists.

But not all. As Julia Duin noted in a post early last week (“Enforcement overkill? Louisville newspaper tries to document the ‘war on Easter”), the Courier-Journal team managed, with a few small holes, to cover the mess created by different legal guidelines established by Kentucky’s governor and the mayor of Louisville.

That’s where drive-in worship stories emerged as the important legal wrinkle that made an already complex subject even harder to get straight.

Those five camps?


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Enforcement overkill? Louisville newspaper tries to document the 'war on Easter'

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This past week was quite the drama-filled battle of church vs. state fought out in, of all places, Louisville/

Here you had a mayor saying one thing, a governor saying another, the nation’s oldest Southern Baptist seminary weighing in and members of Congress jumping in with angry tweets and phone calls. And a federal judge jumped into the drama, as well.

The Louisville Courier-Journal did yeoman work — with one or two small holes — in covering this battle that began with an announcement on Good Friday that cops were going to be taking down license plates in church parking lots and plunking quarantine notices on car windshields.

But there was a ton of confusion as to who was in charge.

Louisville Metro Police officers will be writing down the license plate numbers of those who attend church services over Easter weekend, Mayor Greg Fischer said Friday.

Fischer has asked Louisvillians to forgo in-person gatherings, including drive-in services, to lessen the spread of the coronavirus. He said the license information would be given to the city's health department.

"If we allowed this in Louisville, we'd have hundreds of thousands of people driving around the city Sunday, and boy, the virus would just love that," Fischer said.

Really? Is that what Louisville is like on a typical Easter? (Also, note the phrase “including drive-in services.”)

This is where the reporter should have pointed out there’s never “hundreds of thousands” of locals driving about the city on a Sunday morning.

Dr. Sarah Moyer, the city's public health director, said knowing who was at gatherings, such as in-person church services, can help the department notify those who might have been exposed if an attendee later falls ill.

"If we have a case, we have a list of names of who needs to quarantine and isolate," she said. "And it'll just make our investigation go quicker, as well."

Kentucky’s governor issued a similar order Friday, saying in-person attendance at religious services was forbidden — but not drive-ins.

So you’ve got two standards being pushed here by public officials who didn’t check with each other first. That confusion lingered over the online firestorm that grew out of this conflict.


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Concerning a Christian-school student and her rainbow birthday cake (and online pics)

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If GetReligion readers search the nearly 17 years of material on our site for this term — “doctrinal covenant” — they will find five or six screens (depending on browser settings) worth of posts. Click here and explore that if you wish.

What we have here is story after story about disputes between private religious schools (or similar institutions) and students, parents, faculty members or staffers. The vast majority of the reports are about LGBTQ-related clashes rooted in centuries of Christian and Jewish doctrines about sexuality and marriage. There may be cases involving Muslim doctrine, but they don’t seem to make it into the news.

Private religious schools — whether on the doctrinal left or right — are voluntary associations, and the word “voluntary” is crucial. No one has to attend one of these religious schools or work for them. However, it’s important (from a legal point of view) that students, parents, etc., clearly acknowledge that they are consenting to follow — or at least not openly attack — the doctrines and traditions that define the life of a religious private institution.

Thus, most of these religious schools require students, parents, faculty, etc., to SIGN a “doctrinal covenant” that states these teachings and the school rules that are linked to them.

Readers who glance through those GetReligion posts about news coverage of these cases will notice that these media reports rarely mention the existence of these covenants (they are often referred to as mere “rules,” thus failing to note their doctrinal content) and, if they are mentioned, the stories usually fail to note that people involved in disputes with these schools voluntarily signed them. In other words, who needs to know that First Amendment issues are involved?

This brings us to the “rainbow cake girl” story, as covered by The Louisville Courier Journal, The Washington Post and other newsrooms. The headline in the Courier Journal shows how this story is being framed: “Louisville Christian school expelled student over a rainbow cake, family says.”


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Kick 'em out? Southern Baptists seek ways to fight sexual abuse in autonomous local churches

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Before we take a look at what appears to have been the key development at this year’s Southern Baptist Convention, let’s pause and discuss a few matters linked to how America’s largest non-Catholic flock does business.

One of the first things reporters learn (.pdf here), when they show up at national SBC gathering, is that the people attending are not “delegates” — they are “messengers” from local churches. Again, this is a sign of the degree to which Baptist identity is built on church authority residing in autonomous local congregations. The Southern Baptist Convention is a convention that exists when it is in session. It can vote to create a publishing house, or mission boards or an “executive committee” to do specific tasks in between conventions.

But SBC folks get testy when reporters assume that Southern Baptists are supposed to be organized like Presbyterians, Methodists or, heaven forbid, Episcopalians. What makes SBC meetings so wild is that all kinds of people in that big room can grab a floor microphone. With that in mind, let’s look at a crucial part of a New York Times story, focusing on efforts to handle sexual-abuse issues:

Thousands of pastors voted late Tuesday afternoon to address the problem in a concerted way for the first time, enacting two new measures they say are a first step to reform. Outside the arena where they were gathered, victims and their families protested what they considered an inadequate response.

The pastors voted to create a centralized committee that would evaluate allegations against churches accused of mishandling abuse. They also approved an amendment to their constitution that would allow such churches to be expelled from the convention if the allegations were substantiated.

“Protecting God’s children is the mission of the church,” the denomination’s president, J.D. Greear, said on Tuesday morning as he addressed the gathering. “We have to deal with this definitively and decisively.”

Wait a minute. SBC “pastors” voted to take these steps? Since when are all of the SBC “messengers” pastors?

The Times should correct that error immediately. It appears that the same mistake showed up in a 2018 Times story and I missed it at that time. As in:


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Surprise! It's time for another one-sided look at the birth of a new church -- the Women Priests

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It’s time for another GetReligion post about mainstream press coverage of the Women Priests (or “WomenPriests”) movement. So, all together now, let’s click off the key points that must be made.

(1) As Mollie “GetReligionista emerita” Hemingway used to say, just because someone says that he or she plays shortstop for the New York Yankees does not mean that this person plays shortstop for the world’s most famous baseball team. Only the leaders of the Yankees get to make that call.

(2) The doctrine of “apostolic succession” involves more than one bishop laying hands on someone. Ordination in ancient Christian churches requires “right doctrine” as well as “right orders.” Also, it helps to know the name of the bishop or bishops performing the alleged ordination. Be on the alert for “Old Catholic” bishops, some of whom were ordained via mail order.

(3) Consecrating a Catholic bishop requires the participation of three Catholic bishops, and the “right orders” and “right doctrine” question is relevant, once again. A pastor ordained by an alleged bishop is an alleged priest.

(4) It may be accurate to compare the apostolic succession claims of Anglicans and Lutherans to those made by Women Priest leaders (although the historic Anglican and Lutheran claims are stronger). This is evidence of a larger truth — that the Women Priests movement is a new form of liberal Protestantism.

(5) It is not enough for journalists to offer an obligatory “Catholic press officials declined to comment” paragraph on this issue. Legions of scholars, lay activists and articulate priests are available to be interviewed.

(6) Sacramental Catholic rites — valid ones, at least — are rarely held in Unitarian Universalist sanctuaries.

Once again, let me make a key point: Would your GetReligionistas praise a mainstream news story on this movement that offered a fair-minded, accurate, 50-50 debate between articulate, informed voices on both sides? You bet. Once again: If readers find a story of this kind, please send us the URL.

That brings us to yet another PR report on the Women Priests, this time care of The Louisville Courier-Journal and the Gannett wire service. The headline: “Condemned by the Vatican, women priests demand place at Catholic altar.”

Kudos for the “Condemned by the Vatican” angle in the headline, which — sort of — addresses the New York Yankees shortstop issue. Another careful wording shows up in this summary passage at the top of the long, long, very long story, which opens with — you guessed it — a rite in a Unitarian church office:


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Homosexuality is 'amoral?' Dear newspaper, I don't think that word means what you think it does

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James A. Smith Sr., a Southern Baptist known to frequent this journalism-focused website, had a GetReligion-like response to a sentence he saw in a Louisville Courier-Journal story.

To set the scene, the news article involves the Kentucky Baptist Convention — “the powerful Kentucky Baptist Convention,” as the Courier-Journal likes referring to it — disassociating itself from congregations dually aligned with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Yes, these cut ties resulted from a dispute between a Baptist convention upholding traditional doctrinal beliefs and one taking more progressive stands. That’s certainly newsworthy, particular in a state where the Southern Baptist-aligned Kentucky convention reportedly has over 2,400 affiliated churches with more than 750,000 members.

But these type of reports in the Courier-Journal always seem to be slanted toward one side of the debate — the progressive one. (See past examples here and here.)

In the case of the latest story, the language again seems overly loaded, depicting the Kentucky Baptist Convention as “booting” and “targeting” and “kicking out” churches as opposed to standing by its beliefs. And of course, the first quote comes from a critic of the decision:

The Kentucky Baptist Convention on Tuesday cut ties with more than a dozen churches, including at least one in Louisville, for supporting a Baptist religious organization that earlier this year lifted a ban on hiring LGBTQ employees.

The Louisville-based Kentucky Baptist Convention, which has long opposed same-sex marriage, ordaining gay ministers and believes homosexuality is sinful, voted to end its relationship with KBC-affiliated churches that also made financial contributions to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship at its annual meeting in Pikeville, Kentucky.

The KBC targeted several local churches, including the 1,600-member St. Matthews Baptist, where leaders called the decision ending a 90-year relationship "historic and disheartening."

But I’ve seen worse, less balanced coverage of such decisions: To its credit, the Courier-Journal does quote a few supporters of the move, including the convention’s president:


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Friday Five: Atheists and hell, unsafe church vans, royal wedding, 'I'm Batman' and more

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There was breaking news this week in the world of religion, as noted by Religion News Service's Aysha Khan.

"We now believe in hell," American Atheists announced on Twitter.

The impetus for this major change in (lack of) theology?

It was a New York Times report that "a television show featuring Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who is suing President Trump on behalf of a pornographic film actress, and the former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was pitched to two cable networks in recent weeks." 

Yes, I believe we'll all be reassessing the state of the universe now.

In the meantime, let's dive right into this week's Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: The Louisville Courier-Journal's investigative report headlined "Is your church van a death trap?" is the must-read religion story of the week. 


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