Evangelicals

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Agitprop from NPR? Concerning Evangelical culture wars in Brazil

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Is National Public Radio (NPR) biased? 

Ask its supporters -- many of whom are on the political left in the United States -- and they will tell you the publicly funded network is a model of balance and journalistic integrity. Ask its critics -- many of whom are on the political right – and they will tell you it is hopelessly biased in support of progressive causes.

An August 1, 2014, story on the network’s All Things Considered show on the influence of America and evangelicalism on Brazilian politics gives credence to conservative claims of bias. It is hard not to see this NPR story as being anything other than mendacious agitprop. Unbalanced, lacking in historical and legal context and factually challenged -- this story is a mess.

The charges of bias at NPR are not new.


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It's a 'miraculous day' for Ebola patient Dr. Kent Brantly, but what role did prayer play?

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Here at GetReligion, we frequently refer to holy ghosts.

Holy ghosts are important religious elements of news stories that often go unnoticed or unmentioned by the mass media.

In watching today's news conference on the release of Ebola patient Dr. Kent Brantly from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the faith angle was impossible to miss.

“Today is a miraculous day," Brantly said. "I’m thrilled to be alive, to be well and to be reunited with my family.”

He also said: "I can tell you, I serve a faithful God who answers prayers. … God saved my life, a direct answer to thousands and thousands of prayers.”

Just a few weeks ago, after Brantly contracted the often-deadly virus while serving as a medical missionary in Liberia, a fellow doctor characterized his prognosis as "grave." But "thousands, even millions" of people around the world prayed for him, Brantly said at the news conference.

But will Brantly's focus on prayer make it into news reports?


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Touching story from Globe tells of once-doomed Haleigh's new life

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From a reader comes word of a Boston Globe feature from earlier this month that we missed: "A New Life for Haleigh: For Child at the Center of an End-of-Life Battle, Family Created a Loving World." "A good story about Christians who walk the walk" is how the tipster describes the piece. I couldn't agree more.

The nearly 3,000-word article by award-winning Globe staff writer Patricia Wen begins with a scene that, in a sense, gives the entire story in microcosm:

WESTFIELD — The minister winds up his welcome to some 400 people, and soon lyrics flash karaoke-like on a large screen. A spirited Christian pop song, “Blessed be Your Name,” fills the Westfield Evangelical Free Church.
In the back row, a young woman, sitting in a wheelchair next to her adoptive parents, lights up.
Though she can’t read all the words, she sways to the music and claps her hands, the nails painted pink with white polka dots. She loves cheerful tunes and a crowd, and on this Sunday, she has both.
Keith and Becky Arnett could have predicted that Haleigh, 20, would brighten at this part of the service.


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Yo, Washington Post: All those disaffected evangelicals are singing a very old song

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Does anyone out there remember the wave of press coverage for the gigantic Promise Keepers "Stand In The Gap" rally on the National Mall long, long ago?

I was there as a color commentator for MSNBC, believe it or not, and all through the day I watched the national press try to turn the event into a Republican rally. That was hard, since nearly half of the speakers were African-Americans and the crowd of a million or so included lots of men whose views were focused on moral and cultural issues, as opposed to partisan politics.

This was the Woodstock of the multiracial charismatic movement, I noted, and by the end of the day it was very clear that most of the speakers were convinced that they were not going to be able to count on the Republican Party to defend centuries of Judeo-Christian doctrines on marriage, family and sex. Forget Bill Clinton, I said, if anyone had reason to worry at the end of that rally it was Newt Gingrich.

That was Oct. 4, 1997.


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Ebola and missionaries: CNN feature offers an intense look

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The sacrificial lifestyle of medical missionaries in the worst known Ebola outbreak -- with two of them coming down with the virus themselves -- cries out for thoughtful, sensitive coverage. So it was a pleasure to see CNN provide it. And in a refreshingly long-form newsfeature.

Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, the missionaries, get a searching, respectful look in this 2,087-word piece from a news outfit known better for soundbites and surface treatments. The many-sided article deals with the missionaries' backgrounds and with the number and types of Christian missionaries. It sketches the history of the American missionary initiative and even takes up the question -- as a subhead asks -- of whether Writebol and Brantly were "heroic or foolish" for putting themselves in harm's way.

The heavily researched story cites more than a dozen sources, either directly or via other media. Writers Daniel Burke and Ashley Fantz draw from several reputable groups -- not only missions like Serving in Mission, which Writebol works for, but also think tanks like the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.

Their fact-finding yields some interesting insights. One is that, according to the center at Gordon-Conwell, about 71 percent of the world has heard the gospel as of this summer. Another insight is that although missionaries have worked for centuries, their numbers have "exploded" -- as high as 2.4 million -- since the rise of short-term missions in the 1970s.

The employers of the two American Ebola patients -- Samaritan's Purse for Brantly, Servants in Mission for Writebol -- naturally get a closer look. Burke and Fantz do so by smoothly working in the missionaries' backgrounds and how they felt called to the vocation.

Casual observers may be surprised to find out the language and cultural training that people undergo before they can represent a mission group like SIM. That agency's George Salloum offers this snapshot:


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Low-budget Bible Belt films meet the bright lights of Hollywood

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Hollywood has discovered the Bible Belt — again.

Here at GetReligion, our leader — Terry Mattingly — suggested in 2011:

Someone needs to copyright that phrase, "Tinseltown is rediscovering religion." You can make some money off it in three to five years.

Back in March, USA Today reported on Hollywood finding "religion and profits at theaters." Over at Religion News Service, Editor Kevin Eckstrom linked to a similar Los Angeles Times story in April and quipped:

Pretty sure we’ve seen about 5,429 versions of this story already

Right. We get it. Hollywood is trying to lure Christian audiences to the cineplex. Again. Meanwhile, in other news …

Which leads us to the subject of this post: an Associated Press feature this week with this headline:


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Wait? Who is calling who an 'evangelical' or 'conservative'?

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Bravo and a big amen to Religion News Service editor Kevin Eckstrom for a crisp bit of religion-label dissection work about a New York Times report that's been creating buzz among GetReligionistas past and present (and future) the past 24 hours or so.

Eckstrom, who last time I checked does not carry an official right-wing identification card, noted in one of those essential RNS morning listserv notes:

Where on God’s green earth ...

Religious advocates were out in full force here in DC the past two days, testifying in support of proposed EPA rules to cut down on carbon pollution. The NYT describes them as “conservative.” Looking at the list of speakers, I’m not totally sure I’d agree.

Right, right! I mean, left.

What's he talking about? Here's a crucial chunk of that Times report:

The E.P.A. on Wednesday ended two days of public hearings on its proposed regulation to cut carbon pollution from power plants, and mixed in with the coal lobbyists and business executives were conservative religious leaders reasserting their support for President Obama’s environmental policies -- at a time when Republican Party orthodoxy continues to question the science of climate change.

More than two dozen faith leaders, including evangelicals and conservative Christians, spoke at the E.P.A. headquarters in Washington by the time the hearings ended.

“The science is clear,” said Lisa Sharon Harper, the senior director of mobilizing for Sojourners, an evangelical organization with a social justice focus. “The calls of city governments -- who are trying to create sustainable environments for 25, 50 years -- that’s clear.”


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Portland, part II: Saving kids from 'fundamentalist sect'

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My colleague Bobby Ross Jr. picked the better article. As much fault as he found with a story in the Portland Oregonian about Child Evangelism Fellowship, the Associated Press version of the flap is even worse. CEF does a lot of summer Bible programs, rather like those conducted by the nation's thousands of churches. The difference is that the Fellowship does it outside church walls. That's what got a group in Portland upset -- and apparently the AP, as well.

As the AP sees it, CEF wants to "convert children as young as 5" in places like "apartment pools and public parks other gathering spots this summer." That's "got some residents upset," the story says:

They've banded together in recent weeks to warn parents about the Child Evangelism Fellowship's Good News Club, buying a full-page ad in the local alternative weekly to highlight the group's tactics.

"They pretend to be a mainstream Christian Bible study when in fact they're a very old school fundamentalist sect," said Kaye Schmitt, an organizer with Protect Portland Children, which takes issue with the group's message and the way it's delivering it.

Let's pause for a little dissection. Besides asking how many is "some" residents -- A hundred? Twenty? Five? -- why use a military term like "tactics," when something less pejorative like "methods" would suffice?


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Church of the New York Times keeps preaching its own brand of faith

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It's time for another "Kellerism" update, as The New York Times continues its efforts to highlight religious institutions with doctrines that are unacceptable to the newsroom's theologians and, perhaps, the U.S. Department of Justice. This time, the drama shifts out West, where another Christian college community is trying to find a way to live out its faith commitments.

NEWBERG, Ore. -- A growing number of openly transgender students have forced schools around the country to address questions so basic that they were rarely asked just a few years ago, much less answered: What defines a person's gender, and who gets to decide?

A small Christian college here, George Fox University, has become the latest front in this fight, refusing to recognize as male a student who was born anatomically female. The student calls himself a man, and as of April 11, when a state circuit court legally changed his sex, the State of Oregon agrees.

But George Fox University sees him as a woman, and it prohibits unwed students from living with anyone of the opposite sex.

Notice the question that was not asked, in an alleged news story that opens with an editorial assertion: If a private -- as opposed to state -- college is a doctrinally defined voluntary association, what happens when a student decides that he or she does not believe those doctrines? Think of it this way: If a student at a Muslim college decided to convert to Christianity, thus contradicting the covenant he voluntarily signed when he came to the campus, would the college be able to say that this student had to accept the school's doctrinal authority?


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