Bobby Ross Jr.

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When Donald Trump proposes banning Muslims, five crucial sources to quote

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I keep thinking Donald Trump will smile like the Devil and admit his entire presidential campaign is an elaborately orchestrated "Punk'd" prank on the American public.

Until then — and as long as The Donald remains, somehow, a serious Republican contender — journalists must take him and his crazy statements/antics seriously.

The latest from The Onion — er, The Associated Press:

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) — Donald Trump called Monday for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," an idea swiftly condemned by his rival GOP candidates for president and other Republicans.
The proposed ban would apply to immigrants and visitors alike, a sweeping prohibition affecting all adherents of Islam who want to come to the U.S. The idea faced an immediate challenge to its legality and feasibility from experts who could point to no formal exclusion of immigrants based on religion in America's history.
Trump's campaign said in a statement such a ban should stand "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." It said the proposal comes in response to a level of hatred among "large segments of the Muslim population" toward Americans.
"Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life," Trump said in the statement.

Here at GetReligion, we advocate a traditional American model of the press in which reporters quote key sources, refrain from editorializing (such as calling Trump an idiot, as a blogger like me might do) and letting readers judge the facts for themselves.

In the case of Trump's Muslim proposal, here are five crucial voices that news reports would do well to reflect:


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Social drinking, Wednesday night youth sports and Southern churches' waning influence

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Not everybody drives a truck. Not everybody drinks sweet tea. Not everybody owns a gun, wears a ball cap, boots and jeans. Not everybody goes to church or watches every NASCAR race. — "Southern Comfort Zone," song by Brad Paisley

• • •

I'm not sure what to make of a just-published Associated Press story making the case that the once-dominant influence of churches in the South is waning.

On the one hand: Duh.

I mean, haven't we all read enough about the "Rise of the Nones" to know that a societal shift has occurred?

On the other hand: I'm not certain that the small town of Sylacauga, Ala., allowing Ruby Tuesday's or O'Charley's to sell beer on Sunday afternoon is a sign of the End Times — or the best example of churches losing their dominance.

The top of the AP story:

SYLACAUGA, Ala. (AP) -- Prayers said and the closing hymn sung, tea-drinking churchgoers fill Marble City Grill for Sunday lunch. But hard on their heels comes the afternoon crowd: craft beer-drinking, NFL-watching football fans.
Such a scene would have been impossible just months ago because Sunday alcohol sales were long illegal in Sylacauga, hometown of both the actor who played TV's Gomer Pyle and the white marble used to construct the U.S. Supreme Court building. While the central Alabama city of 12,700 has only one hospital, four public schools and 21 red lights, the chamber of commerce directory lists 78 churches.
Yet few were surprised when residents voted overwhelmingly in September to legalize Sunday alcohol sales. Churches lacked either the heart or influence to stop it.
That shift is part of a broad pattern across the South: Churches are losing their grip on a region where they could long set community standards with a pulpit-pounding sermon or, more subtly, a sideward glance toward someone walking into a liquor store.


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'Muslim Killers,' declares New York Post as followers of Islam again voice 'backlash' fears

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"God isn't fixing this," blared the New York Daily News in the wake of the San Bernardino bloodbath. 

While that Big Apple tabloid fixated on gun control, the New York Post went a different — albeit equally inflammatory — direction, casting blame for the mass murder of 14 people on "Muslim Killers."

So it's no surprise that once again — as happened after the Paris attacks — the media have rushed to report on Muslim fears of a "backlash."

This storyline is, of course, sadly familiar by now. 

This was the headline for a story I wrote on Sept. 11, 2001, when I served as religion editor for The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City's major daily:

City's Muslims fear backlash of blame

The lede on that story:

A distraught Muslim woman called the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City on Tuesday morning as terrorist attacks rocked the nation.
"She's completely terrified," said Suhaib Webb, imam of the society's mosque. "She's a single woman. She's like, 'What if someone tries to kill me?'
"She's worried that society is going to blame her for this killing."
American Muslim groups rushed Tuesday to condemn the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They cautioned other Americans not to blame followers of Islam until investigators determine who was responsible.
As Oklahoma's roughly 20,000 Muslims dealt with the shock experienced by most Americans, they grappled with another emotion as well: fear. Fear that people would blame them for the tragedies. Fear that 10 years of work to change Oklahomans' perspectives of their religion had been shattered.

More than 14 years later, this is the headline on a Washington Post story today:

After Paris and California attacks, U.S. Muslims feel intense backlash


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Concerning the Planned Parenthood shooting suspect: Did the Devil make him do it?

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Did the Devil make him do it?

In a massive front-page story today, The New York Times delves deeper into the background of Robert L. Dear Jr., the suspect in last week's shooting rampage at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Earlier this week, GetReligion highlighted the two prevailing media streams concerning Dear and the "Why?" factor in an attack that left three dead and nine wounded.

In today's report, that dichotomy of certifiable lunatic vs. religious anti-abortion warrior prevails again. The Times paints an in-depth portrait of "an angry and occasionally violent man who seemed deeply disturbed and deeply contradictory."

The Times opens with a focus on Dear's religion:

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The man she had married professed to be deeply religious. But after more than seven years with Robert L. Dear Jr., Barbara Micheau had come to see life with him as a kind of hell on earth.
By January 1993, she had had enough. In a sworn affidavit as part of her divorce case, Ms. Micheau described Mr. Dear as a serial philanderer and a problem gambler, a man who kicked her, beat her head against the floor and fathered two children with other women while they were together. He found excuses for his transgressions, she said, in his idiosyncratic views on Christian eschatology and the nature of salvation.
“He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but does not follow the Bible in his actions,” Ms. Micheau said in the court document. “He says that as long as he believes he will be saved, he can do whatever he pleases. He is obsessed with the world coming to an end.”

But then the story moves to Dear's views on abortion:


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A homeless man, Tony Romo and 'a flashing neon sign from God'

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Hungry for some leftover turkey?

Actually, this story from the Houston Chronicle is a Thanksgiving feast — an absolute delight from the newspaper's holiday front page last Thursday.

It's an amazing profile of a formerly homeless man who is now "paying and praying it forward," as the Chronicle describes it.

Let's start at the top with a longer-than-normal chunk of the story. I apologize for the length, but this superb intro sets the scene for the entire piece:

Bobby Depper slips his arm through the straps of a backpack. Then another. And another, until five are piled on his back like a stack of pancakes. It’s a 30-minute walk to the train station, then a 35-minute ride to north Houston. Depper doesn’t fidget with the bags or sit down on the empty train. He just grabs a handrail and waits for his work to begin.
Off the train, Depper bounds toward a strip of grass between a Wal-Mart and a parking lot, where a group of men sit on the ground beneath a cluster of trees. This is how he spends his days: searching for homeless people, giving them backpacks and, if they’re willing, treating them to meals. He has given away hundreds of backpacks in the last several months. Demand never dwindles.
Depper remembers when he needed a backpack.
Five years ago, he slept beneath a pile of newspapers in a Dumpster behind a Dallas restaurant, his clothes and medicine water-logged.
“I was just so angry, and I said, if (God) is real, I guess I’ll shout out at him. If he’s real, I guess he’ll hear me now,” Depper recalls. When he woke the next morning, he couldn’t see out of his right eye. He crawled out of the garbage and asked the restaurant’s valet for spare change so he could catch a bus to the hospital. Depper was an addict at the time, so parts of the morning are hazy. But he says he’ll never forget what happened next. A man stepped out of a car in the valet line.
“He said not to give me any change, and I thought, ‘How could anyone say that?’” Depper recalls. “But then I turned around and he was handing me a $100 bill.”
The man was Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, who asked Depper to “pay it forward.”
Romo remembers giving the $100 bill to Depper. It’s the kind of thing the quarterback does sometimes, though Cowboys spokesman Rich Dalrymple said Romo “isn’t really comfortable talking about it publicly.”
It was a quiet act for Romo. But for Depper, it was a flashing neon sign from God.


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A tale of two Colorado Springs media streams: crazed gunman vs. anti-abortion soldier

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In the wake of Friday's shooting rampage at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colo., there seem to be two major media streams going when it comes to the gunman and any link that he has to the "why?" factor in this story. 

The last two front pages of The New York Times are a perfect place to see what I'm talking about.

First is the stream that focuses on actual facts known about Robert L. Deal Jr., the man accused of killing three people and wounding nine in Colorado's second-largest city.

Yes, there is some religion in there if you dig deep. For example, Sunday's Times delved into Deal's bizarre personal history but found no institutional links between him and either organized religion or the pro-life movement.

Readers did learn a few details about Deal's religious background, as the Times quoted Deal's former wife, Pamela Ross (no relation to this writer):

Mr. Dear was raised as a Baptist, Ms. Ross said in an interview in Goose Creek, S.C., where she now lives. He was religious but not a regular churchgoer, a believer but not one to harp on religion. “He believed wholeheartedly in the Bible,” she said. “That’s what he always said; he read it cover to cover to cover.” But he was not fixated on it, she added.

Later in the story, religion figured tangentially as the newspaper recounted Deal's interesting, to say the least, Internet postings:

He seemed to have a separate life online. An online personals ad seeking women in North Carolina interested in bondage and sadomasochistic sex showed a picture that appeared to be Mr. Dear and used an online pseudonym associated with him. The same user also appeared to have turned to online message boards to seek companions in the Asheville area with whom he could smoke marijuana.


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How to fix children's Sunday school? Get rid of the Bible, Wall Street Journal reports

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At my home congregation in Oklahoma, a dedicated volunteer named Mrs. Camey has taught the kindergarten Sunday school class for two-plus decades.

After 12 months in Mrs. Camey's class, these kindergartners — typically 25 to 30 of them — can recite all 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, name the 12 apostles and tell you the fruits of the Spirit (giggling when their teacher teasingly asks if these fruits include oranges and pineapples).

Most Sundays, Mrs. Camey will read a story to these 5- and 6-year-olds straight from the Bible — and then they'll use colorful markers, scissors and glue to make a craft that helps them remember that week's lesson. About midway through the year, the children will start thumbing through their own Bibles to locate various books with the help of Mrs. Camey and her two teaching assistants.

In late July, after 12 spiritually rewarding months in Mrs. Camey's class, these students will don caps and gowns and graduate to the first grade — and a new group of kindergartners will arrive the next Sunday morning to start the process all over again.

My church's experience — with the kindergarten class and other grade levels — is a far cry from what I read about in a recent Wall Street Journal story.

As best I can tell, this Journal feature makes the case for improving Sunday school by, um, eliminating the Bible.

Go ahead and read the lede, and tell me if my synopsis is an exaggeration:


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$15 million lawsuit threat: Muslim 'clock boy' Ahmed Mohamed looking to strike it rich?

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Muslim "clock boy" Ahmed Mohamed is back in the news.

You may recall that we first highlighted media coverage of the Texas teen after his disputed arrest back in September.

The 14-year-old made headlines again in October after his family decided to move to Qatar.

The latest news has dollar signs (15 million of 'em) written all over it.

For an editorialized spin on this new development, Fox News (as always) is happy to oblige:

Ahmed Mohamed is looking to strike it rich before the clock strikes midnight on the “clock kid” story.
Attorneys for Mohamed, 14, and his family want $15 million in damages and apologies from several officials stemming from Mohamed’s September 14 arrest, when he brought to school a homemade clock that a teacher flagged as a possible bomb.

CNN provides a less tilted lede:

(CNN) Fifteen million dollars and apologies from the mayor and police chief.
That's what an attorney says the family of Ahmed Mohamed is demanding from city and school officials in Irving, Texas, or they say they'll file a civil suit.

And The Associated Press goes old-school inverted pyramid (not a bad approach at all on a story such as this):

 


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Three things to know about 'Spotlight,' the new movie about journalists investigating clergy sexual abuse

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I saw "Spotlight" over the weekend and loved it.

Of course, I'm a journalist, so I obviously would appreciate a film in which all the actors dress as crummily as me.

Seriously, I identify with the reporters and editors who meticulously dig to tell an important story. They knock on doors to interview key players, sue for access to crucial court documents and develop relationships with inside sources.   

With cheap ink pens and notepads as their major tools, they change the world. That's journalism at its best.

For Godbeat watchers, here are three important things to know about "Spotlight":

1. It's a great movie.

A Wall Street Journal reviewer gushed:

To turn a spotlight fittingly on “Spotlight,” it’s the year’s best movie so far, and a rarity among countless dramatizations that claim to be based on actual events. In this one the events ring consistently — and dramatically — true.
The film was directed byTom McCarthy from a screenplay he wrote with Josh Singer. It takes its title from the name of the Boston Globe investigative team that documented, in an explosive series of articles in 2002, widespread child abuse by priests in the Catholic archdiocese of Boston, and subsequent cover-ups by church officials. The impact of the series, which prompted the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law and won a Pulitzer Prize for the paper, was cumulative and profound — what began as a local story ramified into an international scandal. Remarkably, Mr. McCarthy, his filmmaking colleagues and a flawless ensemble cast have captured their subject in all its richness and complexity. “Spotlight” is a fascinating procedural; a celebration of investigative reporting; a terrific yarn that’s spun with a singular combination of restraint and intensity; and a stirring tale, full of memorable characters, that not only addresses clerical pedophilia but shows the toll it has taken on its victims.


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