Church & State

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Playoff or prayoff? Media still muddying matters over praying at a stadium

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Geez, the months-long fracas with Cambridge Christian School lends new meaning to the term "political football."

And like a hotly contested game, much of the coverage has moved the ball up and down the field, without a goal.

At least an NPR outlet in Florida has spelled out the basic constitutional conflict that could affect freedoms for the rest of us. With a few glaring omissions, which we'll get into later.

The immediate issue is over prayer. As a Christian school, the Tampa-based Cambridge does a lot of it. So does its football team, the Lancers, including over stadium sound systems.

That brought them toe to toe after regional playoffs in December. Just before the championship game at Camping World Stadium in Orlando (aka the Citrus Bowl), the Lancers wanted their amplified prayer time. The Florida High School Athletic Association said no.  Now the matter is in court.
 
What's new in the NPR story is clarity: having an outside expert explain the clashing values in the nation's founding document:


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Some matters religious Americans, and journalists, might ponder as Trump era begins

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Some matters religious Americans, and journalists, might ponder as Trump era begins

Donald Trump’s narrow Electoral College victory came accompanied by a narrow popular vote loss and some worrisome exit polling.

Yes, 60 percent of voters had an “unfavorable” opinion of the President-elect, 63 percent did not deem him “honest and trustworthy,” 60 percent said he’s not “qualified” for the job and 63 percent felt he lacks the needed “temperament,” while 56 percent were either “concerned” or “scared” that he might win. (Hillary Clinton’s numbers were nearly that dismal.)

Religious believers and journalists concerned for their nation should  contemplate whether a President has ever entered office with anything like that poor reputation.

Campaign 2016 was the ugliest since -- when? 1824? 1800? It damaged the stature not only of Trump but loser Hillary and husband Bill, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, even the Libertarians, the FBI and the Department of Justice, the American political system, and -- yes -- religious elements.

Amid the rubble, we also find all those caught-off-guard pundits, mistake-ridden pollsters, and news outlets whose prestige and influence are eroded by sensationalism and partisanship.

Some writers continue to proclaim the imminent demise of the Religious Right, that movement of evangelical Protestants, conservative Catholics, Mormons, some Orthodox Jews and other activists. As with frequent assurances that Trump could not possibly win the nomination or the presidency, that’s wishful thinking. Such efforts will persist as long as the issues do, for instance palpable alarm over religious freedoms.

On that, future  Supreme Court appointments were “the most important factor” for 21 percent of U.S. voters but fully 56 percent of Trump voters.


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Death penalty foes are 'abolitionists,' says the Los Angeles Times -- but does the name fit?

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Are death penalty foes modern abolitionists? Some mainstream media are reaching for that innocence by association, seeking the reflected glory of the 19th century anti-slavery movement. In so doing, however, they ignore its religious nature.

Those media include the Los Angeles Times, which uses that word three times -- once in the headline -- in its follow-up on two ballot items that fought for Californians' attention along with whom they wanted for president.

Capital punishment was the focus of two ballot items in California this week. Proposition 62 would have repealed the death penalty; voters defeated it by 53.9 percent. Proposition 66 would "expedite" the penalty, with measures like referring such cases to lower courts instead of the state Supreme Court. That one was narrowly approved, by 50.9 percent.

The issue resounds beyond the borders of the nation's most populous state, as the Los Angeles Times explains:

California had been one of the most significant states to watch regarding its decision on the death penalty, legal experts said. With nearly 750 inmates awaiting execution, almost double the number in Florida, the state has the second-highest death row population in the country.
The ballot race results showed a large divide over capital punishment in keeping with national trends and followed voter decisions in favor of the death penalty in Oklahoma, which became the first to approve state constitutional protections for it, and in Nebraska, where voters overturned bipartisan legislation repealing it.

For crossfire, we hear from District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, Sacramento County, in favor of the death penalty. Following her is former star Mike Farrell of the M*A*S*H TV series, opposing capital punishment.  


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Red counties and blue collars: As it turns out, folks in America's heartland still exist

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Help me out here, readers.

I have been traveling so much in the past few weeks that lots of things I have read and heard have merged into a kind of fever dream in my 60-something brain. Somewhere out there I saw an advertisement for a last-moment fundraiser by liberal comedians who described their program as "like the Blue Collar Comedy tour," only for "smart, moral people" -- or words to that effect.

Did I just dream that? It's a perfect statement of half of what happened last night and this morning. In the end, Hillary Clinton did not get enough votes from blue-collar Democrats and lots of other people who used to be in the old Democratic Party coalition that included the Midwest and large parts of the Bible Belt.

When I wrote my Election Day post about the religion and culture angles hidden in Tennessee's rural vs. urban divide, I didn't realize that I was, in effect, writing about the whole United States. Click here for a final NPR verdict on the numbers, with rural areas going 62-34 percent for Donald Trump and cities voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton to the tune of 59-35 percent.

City people are happy with America, just like London people were happy with life trends in the European Union. The people in depressed towns and smaller cities? Not so much. The 2016 election map, broken down by counties, is going to be Jesusland: The Sequel.

As the exit poll numbers roll out, we are going to find out all kinds of religion-angle things that we already knew.


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Who is Father Rodgers? San Diego Tribune doesn't ask, even after he pickets a church

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Father Rodgers, who are you?

He's a Catholic priest, if you go by some of his latest coverage, picketing a church over a voters' guide. But what kind of Catholic? Some media don’t seem to ask further.

And it matters.

Take the San Diego Union Tribune, which wrote up the protest:

A Catholic priest and handful of picketers gathered outside an Old Town Catholic church Saturday to protest church messages linking presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to Satan and warning that voting Democrat is a mortal sin.
Father Dermot Rodgers of St. Peter of Rome Roman Catholic Mission in Allied Gardens wore a priest’s robe and held a hand-lettered sign saying, "Separation of Church and State."
He and four like-minded men and women, including two of his parishoners, stood in front of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church on San Diego Avenue amid church-goers and puzzled tourists.
They sparked spirited sidewalk debate on whether a flyer inserted in a bulletin at the church last month should have taken a political position that "It is a mortal sin to vote Democrat" and anyone who died in that state would immediately "descend into hell."


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Painful think piece: Has the year of Donald Trump killed off traditional journalism?

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This weekend's think piece is not about religion-news reporting, at least not directly.

Rather, this Vanity Fair piece -- "Maybe the Right-Wing Media Isn’t Crazy, After All" -- is about the degree to which the loaded-dice political coverage of this year's White House race has pushed our elite media in a dangerous direction, towards open advocacy coverage in favor of Democrats and against Citizen Donald Trump, the sort-of Republican candidate.

It's crucial to note that the author of this piece is one Ken Stern, the former CEO of National Public Radio. This is not your normal wingnut critic of media bias. The thesis: Many elite newsrooms in mainstream journalism have become almost as unhinged as the alternative press on the right, making the latter -- tragically -- a more viable alternative source of news for millions of heartland Americans.

If that sounds familiar, it should. This essentially the point of view voiced -- over and over -- in the past decade or so by readers' representatives at The New York Times. At some point, the leaders of great Gray Lady simply started preaching to their choir, on many key subjects, and wrote off their responsibility to do accurate, balanced, respectful coverage of news and trends in much of America.

Yes, say hello to former Times editor Bill Keller and the doctrines of what your GetReligionistas call "Kellerism." This is where we make contact with many crucial stories in mainstream religion news, especially those related to marriage and sexuality.

Before I offer a slice or two of the Vanity Fair piece, let's flash back to "Is The New York Times A Liberal Newspaper" essay in 2004, written by readers' representative Daniel Okrent. He is focusing on how issues of morality, culture and religion are at the heart of most complaints about bias at the Times.

If you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world.


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'Down-ballot issues': Religion News Service offers a look, but not balance

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A quick quiz: How many horses does it take to make a race?

"That's easy," you say; "at least two."

That's right. So you'd want to know about them both.

So it is with the Religion News Service' guide to ballot issues that religious people are watching for the upcoming ballot.

"The nation’s attention may be on the presidential election, but there are a number of down-ballot issues of interest to religious and nonreligious voters," RNS says, and they're right. Their list -- marijuana, gun control, minimum wage, the death penalty, assisted suicide, "public money for religious purposes" --  suggests the range of religious thought in the public sphere.

But in some of the issues, one side seems to enjoy favored status. In some, only one side gets to talk. And in some, only one side is even acknowledged.

Take the death penalty, which is up for review in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma. RNS grants that there are two sides: "In California, almost 30 different religious groups support a death penalty repeal, while in Nebraska, celebrity Christian author Shane Claiborne has spoken in support of retaining a repeal of the death penalty at anti-death penalty events."

But who gets the direct quote?


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Atheist ranks aren't solid, even in politics, says an eyebrow-raising RNS piece

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Atheists differ strongly on views of religion, of themselves, even what group to join; Richard Dawkins famously compared organizing atheists to herding cats. But I'll confess that I never thought of political differences also -- not until I read a new story from the Religion News Service.

The article is couched in terms of the presidential race -- as almost every American news story this season seems to be -- but have patience. It's a fresh approach to a little-reported facet of religious (or non-religious) life.

RNS veteran Kimberly Winston starts with the event that may have gotten her attention: a video by atheist blogger Hemant Mehta. He gets pretty strident in his opposition to Trump and to whoever supports him:

"I don’t want a president who couldn’t even explain evolution. I don’t want a president who can’t tell fact from fiction and seems to believe anything someone tells him on Twitter," Mehta says in a recent You Tube video that has garnered a lot of attention in atheist corners.
"If I wanted to hear people whose best evidence for their belief is, ‘Well, some people have said,’ then I’d go to church."
So, Mehta, best known as "The Friendly Atheist"  on his popular blog, will vote for Hillary Clinton — and he spends more than seven minutes trying to persuade other atheists to do the same because, he believes, she — a lifelong Methodist — is the only candidate who shares their core values of separation of church and state, LGBT equality and science-based education.

Winston then reveals what may surprise: Despite their commitment to pluralism and liberal politics, Democrats cannot expect a bloc vote from atheists.  "For some, the choice is not clear," the story says of the 2016 race.


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Another sigh: Washington Post leaves theology out of big Mormon story containing theology

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The other day, I posted a piece that underlined a point that I have made several times during this long and depressing season of political/religious news. That headline: "Hey, Washington Post political scribes: So religion will have zero impact in GOP civil war?"

In that post, I argued (once again) that the political desk of The Washington Post just doesn't seem to get religion -- especially when it comes the role of evangelical Protestants, Mormons, traditional Catholics and others in the #NeverTrump #NeverHillary phenomenon. That's an important point to ponder as we prepare for the GOP wars that are ahead.

Some folks (including a former student who now works at NPR) were concerned that, while I said my target was the political desk, I had not done enough to note that other Post reporters (think religion-beat specialists) had done lots of coverage on other election-year religion angles, especially developments among evangelicals.

So let's stress that by making a similar point -- looking at two Post stories focusing on developments in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Can you spot the story by a religion-beat specialist?

The first story ran under this headline: "‘Mormon and Gay’? The church’s new message is that you can be both." It focuses on the content of an official LDS website with that title -- Mormon and Gay. As you would expect, the website supports the church's teachings on marriage and sex. Thus, the bitter debates about those teachings continue. The Post notes:

You can be gay while being Mormon, the new website says -- as long as you don’t have gay sex.
“They’re loved. They’re supported. They’re part of the church,” said L. Whitney Clayton, who serves on the Presidency of the Seventy, making him one of the most powerful leaders in the Mormon Church. “We want them to feel happy and included in the kingdom of God.”


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