Baptists

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Baltimore Sun finds the faith angle in the Baptist officer ensnared in Freddie Gray case

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The Baltimore Sun is no longer the dead-tree-pulp newspaper that lands in my front yard each morning. Thus, logically enough, there has been a sharp decline in the number of Sun stories that show up here on GetReligion.

Also, the newspaper's website features a numbing array of intrusive auto-cue forms of advertising, so sane readers would only go there when there are no other options. However, my many Charm City-area friends still let me know, from time to time, when something interesting shows up.

In this case, the Sun recently offered an in-depth profile of Alicia White, the only female officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray, the infamous case that still hangs over life in Baltimore like smoke from burning urban neighborhoods. This was a big story for one simple reason, as stated in the headline: "Baltimore Police Officer Alicia White, charged in Freddie Gray case, becomes the first to speak out."

The surprise in this story is that it truly explores the human side of this woman, as well as the legal and political angles of the story. As is often the case among public servants in Baltimore's African-American community, that led the reporters into spiritual territory.

Right from the get-go, the story stresses that this case has had painful consequences for White as a person and as an officer.

For the past 18 months, her co-defendants either went to trial or were called to the stand to testify while she awaited her own trial. Out of public view, White spent much of the time grappling with crippling anxiety, and at one point was rushed to a hospital. The stress led her and her fiance to call off their engagement, and she spent months unemployed. Then, in July, all charges were dropped.

In addition to the interview material from White, it's clear that the Sun team did extensive background work in the community, digging into her life and work. That's where her educational background and church ties show up.

In other words, her Christian faith was and is part of her identity and, in the past, it affected her actions. Thus, it's part of the story.


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Better late than never: New York Times gets around to running a Cliff Barrows obituary

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Through the decades, I have been assigned many different tasks as a journalist -- but I have never had to write a full-scale obituary. Thus, I admit that I don't know how long it takes to write one of those features.

Oh, I've written plenty of columns about religious leaders who have died, columns that served as features or sidebars adding (I hoped) interesting details to the coverage that newsrooms were providing in traditional obits. But I have never written one of those long, detailed obituaries that attempts to provide an overview of a public figure's life.

Of course, the more important the public figure -- at least in the eyes of journalists -- the earlier editors will assign an obit specialist or feature writer to put some basic material on file, "just in case." I am sure that elite American newsrooms already have large packages of features ready on Caitlyn Jenner and the Kardashian crew.

So what does it mean when a newspaper of record -- that would be The New York Times -- produces its own obituary about someone's life almost two weeks after the person died and obits ran in other publications? In other words, what is the statute of limitations on an obituary? Better late than never?

Quite a ways back -- Nov. 16, to be precise -- I ran a post focusing on the obituaries for the Rev. Cliff Barrows, the musical director for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association who was also one of the famous evangelist's closest friends and advisors. The local paper on this story, The Charlotte Observer, tried to show the behind-the-scenes role that Barrows played in Graham's life and work. In other words, there was much more to this story than a man directing giant choirs at evangelistic crusades. The Associated Press obit? No need to go there.

I noticed, at the time, that The New York Times ran the AP story on its website. This did not surprise me. I would imagine that the life and work this Graham associate was not on the radar of many editors in that newsroom.

Later -- as in Nov. 25 later -- the Times ran its own Barrows obit. Why the delay? Did someone simply forget to do one? Did it take that long to get an in-depth feature done?


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Castro's death: For a follow-up, Associated Press story misses big religious angles

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The banging pots and honking horns have faded on Miami's Calle Ocho, where Cuban-Americans noisily celebrated the death of Fidel Castro. Thus, it's time for some reflection on what it means for peace and freedom -- including freedom of religion.

So the Associated Press shows the right instinct in its Sunday story out of Miami on the aftermath of El Comandante's death. Yet it largely leaves ghostly trails in what could have offered some spiritual insights on the story.

We get early warnings of a scattershot story:

MIAMI (AP) -- Celebration turned to somber reflection and church services Sunday as Cuban-Americans in Miami largely stayed off the streets following a raucous daylong party in which thousands marked the death of Fidel Castro.
One Cuban exile car dealer, however, sought to turn the revolutionary socialist's death into a quintessential capitalist deal by offering $15,000 discounts on some models.
And on the airwaves, top aides to President-elect Donald Trump promised a hard look at the recent thaw in U.S. relations with Cuba.

Cuba, as you may or may not know, is on the watch list of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. USCIRF's 2016 report tells of increased surveillance, harassment, closure and destruction of churches there -- on a level with the likes of Russia, Malaysia, Turkey and Afghanistan.

But here is AP's version of the religious facet in this story:


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AP reports churches transcend racial barriers after Mississippi arson — but do they really?

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Being a media critic means sometimes asking pesky questions about warm-fuzzy storylines. 

Please forgive me for being that guy, especially on the day before Thanksgiving.

And if I'm just being a crank, feel feel to tell me so. In fact, this is one of those rare cases where I'd love to be persuaded that I'm wrong.

But here's the deal: The Associated Press has a story out of Mississippi today with this inspiring headline:

2 Mississippi churches transcend racial barriers after arson

However, after reading the story, my annoying question is this: Are they really transcending racial barriers? 

The lede sets the scene by highlighting the racial divide in many churches nationwide:

GREENVILLE, Miss. (AP) — Back in the 1960s, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. observed that Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week in America, a fact that remains true in many communities today.
But three weeks after their church in the Mississippi Delta was mostly destroyed by arson and someone spray-painted "Vote Trump" outside, an African-American congregation has been welcomed into the church of its white neighbors.
The bishop of Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church, Clarence Green, says the generosity of First Baptist Church of Greenville demonstrates that "unlimited love" transcends social barriers. And his host, First Baptist's senior pastor James Nichols, says their brothers and sisters in Christ are welcome to stay as long as they need a home.
The Hopewell congregation, about 200 strong, is holding services a mile away at 600-member First Baptist. The guests are using the chapel, a space with dark wooden pews and bright stained-glass windows where small weddings and funerals are usually held. It's on the downtown campus of First Baptist, a few steps from the larger main sanctuary.


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A word from Australia: Rural voters ruled 2016, but journalists should keep an eye on ...

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As you would imagine, I am still digging through stacks and stacks of emails and (digital) news clips in the wake of the Election Day earthquake and the news-media meltdown that followed. You don't even want to know the size of my email in-box right now.

While doing that, I came across a think piece on the election results -- from Australia, of all places -- that contained a useful typology that journalists might want to study. This is especially true for reporters who are sincerely interested in what happened with American evangelicals, especially those in predominately white congregations.

It helps to know that the author of this piece. the Rev. Michael Bird, is an Anglican priest and theologian, linked to Ridley College in Melbourne, who also blogs and writes essays of this kind for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The bland and rather wonkish headline on this particular piece was: "US election: Why did evangelicals vote for Donald Trump?"

The key to the piece is that this is not the question that interested him the most. The heart of the essay focused on another question that should be more interesting to journalists: Who are these Americans who everyone keeps calling "evangelicals" and leaving it at that?

Early on, Bird notes that he was in Houston during the GOP primaries and delivered a lecture attended by quite a few conservative Christians.

I began my talk by asking three questions: Why don't Americans use the metric system? Why is the cheese orange? And who are the evangelicals who are voting for Donald Trump?
I got a response of riotous laughter because just about everyone there supported Ted Cruz and hoped a local Texan would defeat the vulgar New Yorker. I asked the last question because, among my hundreds of American evangelical friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, I could count all of the Donald Trump supporters I knew on one hand.


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Thanks for the (attempted) correction, Dallas Morning News, but your story is still wrong

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Last week, I tried to help the Dallas Morning News fix some incorrect biblical information in its newspaper.

And as the folks who know how to get clicks on social media like to say: You won't believe what happened next!

Really, you won't. Or maybe you will.

Short version: The Dallas newspaper attempted to fix its mistake online (with no note to readers) and even ran a Page 3 correction in its printed newspaper. But I apparently didn't explain the error well enough because the corrected story is still wrong eight days later. So I'm going to try again.

But first, let's back up and catch up everybody on the background.

My original post explained to the Dallas newspaper — which used to have full-time religion writers but obviously does not anymore — that the Bible contains two books of Timothy and that Peter didn't write them.

This was the original Dallas Morning News paragraph with which I took issue:

In another video he posted Wednesday morning, Jeffress pointed to the Book of Timothy, where Peter instructed Christians to pray for all leaders. He tweeted that he would have the same message if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency.

 


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News reports aside, battle for hearts, souls and LGBT stances of Texas Baptists is complicated

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For decades, a battle has waged for the hearts — and souls — of Texas Baptists. I covered this battle during my time as a Dallas-based religion writer for The Associated Press.

More than a decade after I left AP, a new skirmish has erupted in the Lone Star State over some Baptist churches embracing same-sex marriage. I mentioned this clash briefly last week in a post that highlighted the Dallas Morning News' tone-deafness on Baptists who describe themselves as "welcoming but not affirming" of LGBT behavior.

The Washington Post — a national newspaper that, to its credit, devotes multiple full-time journalists to religion news — jumped on the Texas Baptists story with a report published both online and in print.

By referring to the Dallas church "getting kicked out of the Texas Baptists," of course, the headline gives a pretty clear idea of the direction the Post story will take: Rather than a Dallas church voting to "sever ties" with Texas Baptists by defying their theology, this is a case of a heroic, victimized church doing what it considers right and suffering unfortunate consequences for it.

Certainly, that's one side of the story. But shouldn't a fair, impartial news report play it more down the middle?

The Post's lede is equally slanted toward the pro-LGBT side:

A young man came to the Rev. George Mason, wanting to talk about his parents’ wedding.
The youth, of course, hadn’t been at the wedding. But Mason had, and he remembered it well. Some 800 or 900 people. Pillars of the community. One of the largest weddings in the history of Wilshire Baptist Church.
“You performed the wedding of my parents in this church,” the young man said to Mason. “If I fall in love and want to get married, my question is, will my church community support me?”
The youth would want to marry a man. And in that moment, as in other moments in recent years, Mason realized something that would have shocked him when he started out as a pastor 37 years ago: He would want to officiate at that gay wedding.
Now, after putting the issue to a contentious popular vote that has torn his congregation, Mason, 60, can do just that. Wilshire Baptist Church voted 577 to 367 to welcome LGBT people as full participants in every aspect of the church — as members, as lay leaders, as potential clergy, and yes, as brides and grooms.
As soon as the Dallas church completed its vote, the Baptist General Convention of Texas started proceedings to kick the church out of the denominational body. “All Texas Baptists are loving, respectful and welcoming to all people. But while we are welcoming, we are not affirming,” said a spokesman for the denominational association, which often goes by the name Texas Baptists. The spokesman talked with The Post on the condition that his name not be published.


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Arlene's Flowers vs. Washington state: This religious liberty battle keeps on going

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Unfortunately, I missed quite the event in my back yard on Tuesday: A hearing before the Washington State Supreme Court on what’s known as the “Arlene’s Flowers case.” Seated in an auditorium about seven miles from where I live, legal teams in argued the crucial church-state case, Robert Ingersoll & Curt Freed v. Arlene's Flowers, Inc.

I’ve covered the saga of Baronelle Stutzman before in GetReligion, so please click on that link to refresh your memories about the mainstream press coverage of what led to the lawsuit as well as what certainly appears to be the animus that the local American Civil Liberties Union and State Attorney General Bob Ferguson have against this florist.

Outside the auditorium where the hearing was held, there were a lot of pro-Stutzman demonstrators clamoring for her; an unusual sight in this bluest of blue states. The Tri-City Herald, a daily in eastern Washington that’s Stutzman’s hometown newspaper had the best reporting on the hearing, so I’ll start with that: 

BELLEVUE  -- Hundreds packed a college theater Tuesday to hear arguments in the case of a Richland flower shop and the same-sex couple who say they were discriminated against when the owner refused to make arrangements for their wedding.
Barronelle Stutzman, who owns Arlene’s Flowers, cited her relationship with Jesus Christ when she turned down the request of longtime customer Robert Ingersoll and his partner, Curt Freed.
On Tuesday, after 3 1/2 years of legal wrangling, Stutzman, Ingersoll and Freed found themselves seated in the front row before the state Supreme Court.


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If Donald Trump seeks a Presbyterian pew in Washington, will he pick the mainline brand?

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I really had my hopes up when I saw this "Acts of Faith" headline in the Washington Post: "Will D.C. churches invite Donald Trump to come worship?"

As someone who worked in Washington, D.C., during much of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama era, I heard quite a bit of chatter related to the whole issue of presidents trying to go to church "for real," as opposed to occasionally finding a pew as a media event. There are, after all, legitimate security issues involved in a president going to the same sanctuary at the same time over and over. Plus, the security teams can be an inconvenience for other worshipers.

But people do talk. Washington is an amazingly small town, when it comes to people chatting about these kinds of symbolic issues (and my old office was only a few blocks from Obama's apartment during his short U.S. Senate stay).

Now we have Donald "Baby Christian" Trump coming to D.C., with a very photogenic family. What's the plan? Here is the overture of the Post story:

Every four or eight years, after the nation goes through the ritual of picking a president, some of Washington’s churches go through another ritual -- getting a president to pick them.
When Bill and Hillary Clinton came to town in 1993, preachers from Baptist (his denomination) and Methodist (hers) churches across town picked up their phones and their pens to invite the new first couple to their pews. After hearing from at least half a dozen congregations, the Clintons picked Foundry United Methodist Church on 16th Street NW, where they became active members.
George W. Bush, like Ronald Reagan before him, opted for the convenience of St. John’s Episcopal Church, just across from the White House. Ministers from numerous denominations tried to woo the Obamas, but the first family never picked one church, instead visiting many churches over the course of their eight years in the White House.

Hidden inside those summary paragraphs are some interesting news stories that never really got covered.


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