Charities-Nonprofits

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Next big pandemic news story: Missionaries brace for coronavirus in the Third World

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Next big pandemic news story: Missionaries brace for coronavirus in the Third World

While fighting the coronavirus, medical professionals have offered a strategy now seen everywhere in America, Europe and other First World cultures.

Here's the battle plan: Stock up on food and other essentials and then stay home. Wear masks when in public and practice safe social distancing. Everyone should wash their hands frequently for 20 seconds using soap and hot water. People with fevers or other symptoms should go into quarantine.

There's more. City and state lockdowns are essential to "flatten the curve" of new cases. Governments encourage waves of coronavirus tests. Hospitals collect ventilators to save critically ill patients. Mass transit is discouraged. Scientists rush to create a vaccine and develop new treatments, such as transfusions of antibody-rich blood serum from recovered COVID-19 patients.

Now, imagine selling those plans to the million-plus people jammed into the Kibera shantytown near Nairobi, Kenya -- Africa's largest urban slum.

“Our solutions are primarily for those who can afford it," said Dr. Mike Soderling, organizer of the Health for All Nations network for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. "To whose advantage? … The big question: What are we going to do -- what can be done -- in the slums of Kibera?"

In America, news coverage of the crisis continues to be dominated by infection rates and death statistics, while politicos focus on the New York Stock Exchange and political polling about the 2020 elections. The lockdown-weary public celebrates any signs of normality witnessed in restaurants, big-box stores and sports stadiums.

Missionary doctors and activists active in Third World lands have a different point of view. Thus, 200 or more took part in a recent Lausanne webinar focusing on strategies for the COVID-19 battles they know will eventually reach the people they serve. Participants in this discussion kept asking painful questions, such as:

* How do slum-dwellers practice "universal hand-washing hygiene" without running water?

* Is it possible to practice respiratory hygiene in cultures in which masks are a stigma -- signs that individuals are carrying a life-threatening disease?


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New podcast: Franklin Graham comes to Central Park, earning solid quotes in Gray Lady

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It’s easy to argue about Franklin Graham.

For starters, he is the heir of much of the ministry of the Rev. Billy Graham, and it’s hard to name a figure in mainstream Christianity who was more beloved than Billy Graham.

At the same time, Franklin Graham has openly aligned himself with Donald Trump, turning away from even the modest criticisms he offered during the primary season before the 2016 shocker. His theological critique of all of this has been blunt, to say the least.

That’s his style, and people love to argue about that. As I said in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), Franklin Graham has rarely used a flyswatter when a baseball bat will do.

But the fact that so many people ARGUE about Franklin Graham implies that there are good things to say about him (from multiple points of view) as well as bad things to say (from multiple points of view). It should be easy to write provocative, balanced news stories about him because there are so many people, with so many different perspectives, who have strong opinions about him.

However, mainstream press coverage of Franklin Graham tends to portray him as — let me state this mildly — the tacky son of a great man who is now one of the bigoted evangelical vandals who want to sack the American Rome (that would be New York City).

This brings me to an interesting, and in many ways admirable, New York Time story that ran the other day with this sprawling two-deck headline:

Franklin Graham Is Taking Down His N.Y. Hospital, but Not Going Quietly

His critics accuse him of discriminating against L.G.B.T. people. “Just because I don’t agree doesn’t mean I’m against them,” he said.

This lengthy story contains quite a bit of material in which Graham defends his organization and his own beliefs. It helps that he came to New York City — there is a lesson here for other religious leaders, especially evangelicals — and was willing to stand in front of microphones and answer questions.

The story, however, doesn’t include much in the way of information about what Samaritan’s Purse does and how long Graham and his team has been doing what they do.

Does that matter?


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Journalists should be gearing up for big 'culture war' cases at U.S. Supreme Court

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The COVID-19 emergency shouldn’t divert the media from getting prepared for an unusual pileup of big “culture war” news that will break at the U.S. Supreme Court during the weeks through early July.

Pending decisions the media will need to interpret involve abortion, religious conscience claims, gay and transgender rights, taxpayer aid for students at religious school and (yet again) religious objections to mandatory birth-control coverage under Obamacare. Next term, the court will take up the direct conflict between LGBTQ advocacy and religious conscience, an uber-important problem.

These cases will show us how the newest justices, Neil Gorsuch (age 52, seated 2017) and Brett Kavanaugh (age 55, seated 2018), will be reshaping court edicts on religio-cultural disputes.

Here are the imminent decisions to be ready for.

Espinoza v. Montana (docket #18-1195) — This regards the venerable “Blaine amendments” in many state constitutions that forbid religion-related aid by taxpayers. Does a state violate the U.S. Constitution’s “equal protection” clause if it denies generally available public scholarships to students who attend religious schools?

Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, incorporating Trump v. Pennsylvania (19-431) — Last week, the court heard arguments in this case involving claims of religious rights vs. women’s rights. Did a Trump administration setup properly exempt religious objectors from the Obamacare mandate that requires employers to arrange birth-control coverage?

June Medical Services v. Russo (18-1323) — Louisiana requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, which pro-choice advocates say hobbles women’s access to abortion. In 2016, a Supreme Court with different membership threw out such a regulation in Texas

Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, incorporating St. James School v. Biel (docket # 19-267) — The court heard the argument on this Monday via a COVID-era telephone conference. This Catholic school case from California poses whether under the Constitution’s religious freedom clause schools and agencies can discriminate in hiring workers who are not officially ordained “ministers” but may carry out some religious functions. In a similar Lutheran case in 2012, the high court said yes.


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Awkwardly timed issue: Should hard-pressed churches still want to be tax exempt?

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Awkwardly timed issue: Should hard-pressed churches still want to be tax exempt?

THE QUESTION:
Should hard-pressed churches want to be tax-exempt?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

“Religion Q & A” has pondered tax exemption three times already, in items posted on November 9, 2013; January 22, 2017; and then on October 25, 2019, when stripping of tax exemption from houses of worship erupted as a surprise issue in the Democratic campaign for president.

The 2019 round involved CNN’s “Equality Town Hall” when anchorman Don Lemon asked candidate “Beto” O’Rourke if “colleges, churches, charities” that “oppose same-sex marriage” should lose their tax exemptions. O’Rourke said yes, that no tax break should be granted to “any institution, any organization” holding that belief. No-one else on stage (Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Harris, Klobuchar, Steyer, Warren) expressed disagreement.

But later, Pete Buttigieg (himself in a gay marriage) clarified that such religious colleges and social-service agencies should lose exemptions — but it would be too divisive to penalize religious congregations.

He didn’t mention it but there’d be a major legal tangle if churches and other non-profit groups that favor gay marriage retain tax exemption, but it is denied to those who dissent. The courts say it’s illicit for government to discriminate this way on the basis of viewpoint or to get entangled in one side of doctrinal disagreements.

Now there’s a new twist. Instead of complaints from liberal politicians, secularist lobbies or cities hungry for revenue (which in the Covid era means all of them), a cover story in the January-February issue of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today said churches should not even want to be tax exempt.

Talk about awkward timing. Only weeks later, COVID-19 slammed everything, churches included.


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Podcast: Do journalists doubt that the Little Sisters of the Poor are doing ministry work?

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It should be an obvious question for journalists who have been covering the Little Sisters of the Poor drama at the U.S. Supreme Court.

What do the sisters do in their ministry work that downgrades their First Amendment rights? What are they doing that undercuts their vows to follow the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church?

There has to be something that creates a legal gap between Catholic parishes and a religious order like the Little Sisters of the Poor, who specialize in taking care of the elderly and the poor.

Maybe the problem is that they do something other than “worship” inside the doors of a chapel or convent? Maybe the problem is that they hire other people to assist them in their ministries? Is that what turns them into a vaguely religious non-profit organization?

These are some of the questions discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which dug into some of the news coverage of this order’s latest visit to SCOTUS. This is, of course, linked to the order’s rejection of the Obamacare mandate requiring most “religious institutions” to offer their employees, and often students, health-insurance plans covering sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including "morning-after pills."

What’s the problem? Consider this passage from the NPR coverage of the sisters and the high court:

At issue in the case is a Trump administration rule that significantly cuts back on access to birth control under the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare, the massive overhaul of the health care system, sought to equalize preventive health care coverage for women and men by requiring employers to include free birth control in their health care plans.

Houses of worship like churches and synagogues were automatically exempted from the provision, but religiously affiliated nonprofits like universities, charities and hospitals were not. Such organizations employ millions of people, many of whom want access to birth control for themselves and their family members. But many of these institutions say they have a religious objection to providing birth control for employees.

Maybe the problem is that all churches and synagogues do is “worship,” inside the doors of their sanctuaries, while schools, charities and hospitals (often called “ministries”) do “real” things, like education, medicine and social activism. Thus, even if religious doctrines are at the foundation of their work, these groups are not as “religious” as houses of worship?


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Plug-In: This Woodward-and-Bernstein fan's way to strengthen ministries? Investigate them!

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Warren Cole Smith wants to strengthen Christian ministries.

A major way he intends to do that: through investigative journalism.

Smith, 61, has served since October as president of the independent donor advocate MinistryWatch.com.

“Our overarching goal is to create transparency and accountability in the Christian ministry world,” the 1980 University of Georgia journalism graduate told me.

Rusty Leonard, who founded the nonprofit with his wife, Carol, in 1998, serves as board chairman. Leonard reached out to Smith after a donor provided funding for the new position.

Smith’s past experience includes serving as vice president and associate publisher of World, a leading evangelical magazine, and owning a chain of Christian newspapers. He is working on a book titled “Faith-Based Fraud,” which MinistryWatch hopes to publish in August.

His interest in reporting stretches back nearly five decades to the 1970s Watergate scandal uncovered by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

“When we’re doing investigative journalism, there are two audiences that I care most about,” Smith said. “What do donors need to know to make them more effective stewards? And how can we serve the victims?

“There’s an old saying that I use a lot in this kind of work: Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims,” he added. “So we want to be an advocate for the victims, which is why we will not only cover financial abuse, but we will also cover sexual abuse as well.”

See examples of Smith’s recent work here, here and here.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. DNA points to former suspect in 1985 church murders: Here’s a real whodunit with a major break in the 35-year-old case, thanks to digging by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.


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Faith-based colleges face waves of red ink: Thinking about a news story that won't go away

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The headline on this Inside Higher Education piece seemed prophetic: “What Led Concordia Portland to Close?”

The date, however, was the Feb. 14, 2020. In other words, this story broke just ahead of the national wave of headlines about colleges and universities struggling to deal with scary economic realities linked to the coronavirus crisis.

This story was linked to the OTHER life-and-death crisis facing higher education — especially private schools and, to be even more specific, faith-based private schools. I’m talking about the demographic cliff that looms just down the road when the massive millennial generation has moved past its college years.

The Concordia Portland story had it all. Administrators had tried to grow their way out of the crisis, adding on degree programs and remote campuses that were not linked to their original mission. There was a strange deal with a third-party recruiting agency. Finally, there were theological tensions with the school’s doctrinally conservative denomination — the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. This chunk of the story begins during an era when enrollments were headed up:

By all accounts, Concordia was massively successful. … Total enrollment more than doubled from over 3,000 students in 2012 to more than 7,400 in 2014, according to federal data. Much of that growth was among graduate students, where enrollment spiked from about 1,700 students to more than 6,000. Enrollment of adults aged 25 to 64 went from about 1,100 in 2011 to 3,697 in 2014.

Fast-forward several years to this week, and Concordia shocked the Portland area and many of its own students by announcing that it will close at the end of the spring semester. A statement from the institution said the university’s board decided to close after “years of mounting financial challenges” and a changing landscape for education.

Hold that thought. I am headed toward this weekend’s think piece from a former GetReligionista, Steve Rabey, writing at MinistryWatch.com.

Now, I took on some of these themes in an “On Religion” column the other day entitled “Concerning the coronavirus crisis and these Darwinian days in faith-based higher education.”


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Podcast: Faith-based colleges face coronavirus crisis (and hard identity questions, too)

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What is going to happen on college and university campuses this fall?

That’s a huge question, right now, and nobody knows the answer yet. Parents and students want to know. Football fans want to know. Trustees want to know since, in the end, they’re the people who will end up trying to handle the financial fallout of the coronavirus crisis (including predictions of a second wave hitting with the flu-season in November).

But there is more to this story than COVID-19, if you have been paying close attention to higher-education trends in recent years. Leaders in higher-ed were already bracing for the year 2025 — when the enrollment surge linked to the massive millennial generation would be coming to an end.

Now, look past all of those state-funded schools — big and small. How will these trends hit private schools, including faith-based private schools. Many have been facing rising tides of red ink, and that was before the arrival of the coronavirus.

“Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I talked about all of these issues, and more, during this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in). The hook for this discussion was my “On Religion” column for this week, which included this crucial passage:

… The coronavirus crisis is forcing students and parents to face troubling realities. A study by McKinsey & Company researchers noted: "Hunkering down at home with a laptop … is a world away from the rich on-campus life that existed in February."

What happens next? The study noted: "In the virus-recurrence and pandemic-escalation scenarios, higher-education institutions could see much less predictable yield rates (the percentage of those admitted who attend) if would-be first-year students decide to take a gap year or attend somewhere closer to home (and less costly) because of the expectation of longer-term financial challenges for their families."

This could crush some schools. In a report entitled "Dawn of the Dead," Forbes found 675 private colleges it labeled "so-called tuition-dependent schools -- meaning they squeak by year-after-year, often losing money or eating into their dwindling endowments." While it's hard to probe private-school finances, Forbes said a "significant number" of weaker schools are "nearly insolvent."

How many of America’s truly faith-defined private colleges are in that “Dawn of the Dead” list?


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A baseball flashback (sort of): Kudos to MLB.com for getting some Tebow details right

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So does anyone else miss baseball right about now?

I really do. I especially love, near the end of spring training, following the stories of the minor-league stars who suddenly get hot and rise into the major leagues. Is there anything more inspiring than watching a rookie who is 28, 29 or even 30 run down the red carpet on opening day and be introduced to The Show?

With that in mind, I would like to mix that story — tragically cut off this year, of course — with another ongoing story. That would be the evolving life and career of one Tim Tebow.

This MLB.com story ran quite some time ago, before our world turned inside out, but I filed it away since it managed to gracefully handle an interesting development in the Tebow story. I saw some other news reports that, as usual, were cranked out by journalists who seemed to go out of their way to turn this story into another chance to mock this man or ignore relevant facts about his life.

So here is a small dose of baseball news. Do you remember the news when this story broke? Here’s the MLB.com headline: “Tebow to represent Philippines in WBC qualifiers.” I am sure the lead-ups to the 2021 World Baseball Classic have been messed up — but let’s hope that our world is sorted out by next summer. Here is the overture:

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- Calling the opportunity “a really cool thing,” Tim Tebow has agreed to play for the Philippines in 2021 World Baseball Classic qualifiers.

Tebow, a former Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who has spent the past four years as a Mets Minor League outfielder, was born in the Philippines. When the country’s national baseball team invited him to participate in WBC qualifiers, Tebow ran it past Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen and manager Luis Rojas, who signed off on him leaving this year's Spring Training to play.

“I’ve just got such a heart for the Philippines,” Tebow said. “I’ve just really had a love for the people for a long time. To be able to represent them will be really cool -- really, really cool. You don’t get a lot of chances to represent people or places that mean something to you.”

Many journalists left it at that — Tebow was born in the Philippines. End of story. The implication was that he was some kind of baseball hired gun for a day.


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