Godbeat

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Byzantine details: How are the Orthodox Christian churches organized, and why?

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Byzantine details: How are the Orthodox Christian churches organized, and why?

DAVID ASKS:

Most of us in the U.S. are aware of Orthodox Christians but don’t really understand their organization. Can you expand on their split around the world?

THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS:

Our previous Q and A about Islam’s founding Sunni-Shi’a split mentioned divisions within Orthodox Christianity. Orthodoxy, which means “correct teaching,” sees itself as preserving Christianity’s earliest and most authentic form. This faith is in the spotlight what with (1) history’s first meeting between a Catholic pope and a patriarch of Russia’s massive Orthodox church, and (2) the June 16-27 “Holy and Great Council” of all bishops in Crete, potentially (if it is held) Eastern Orthodoxy’s most consequential event in more than 12 centuries.

Writing online Feb. 10, sociologist Peter Berger (a Lutheran) said through recent centuries this faith has existed mostly in three contexts: as a state religion, as a “persecuted or barely tolerated” church under Islamic or Communist rule or in the diaspora outside its heartland (e.g. in the United States) where separate and competing churches under foreign hierarchies generate “ethnic cacophony.”

The ancient churches of Eastern Orthodoxy -- Orthodoxy dates its birth at Pentecost -- are organized into three branches that stem from the 5th Century debate on how to define the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ.

Caution: This gets technical.


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Al Jazeera America's demise and American concerns about Islam and Arabs

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Al Jazeera America's demise and American concerns about Islam and Arabs

Soliciting and editing opinion pieces was part of my job many times during my almost 50 years around the news and communications business. Being a highly opinionated sort myself, I enjoyed that work quite a lot.

However, I've often been unsure about just how much to pressure an op-ed writer to add to, better justify or delete something they wrote.

In the end, I generally left the final decision to the writer. An op-ed is, after all, the writer's opinion about a subject and what they think is most important about it. It's the writer's prerogative to cherry pick from among the "facts" available on whatever the issue. The editor's job is to edit for style, grammar, originality, organization, libel and slander, personal animus and logical cohesiveness.

It's true that this can -- and often does -- result in one-sided, unfair and even intellectually dishonest copy. But that's the nature of the beast. Don't like it? Well, if you're in a position of authority you can always decide not to publish a piece or solicit another writer to produce one more to your liking. Or you can write one yourself (and hopefully find someone willing to publish it, but that's another issue).

A recent New York Times op-ed about the soon-to-close Al Jazeera America is a case in point.  (I'll get more precise shortly.)

One of the main reasons GetReligion was founded was to note this sort of imbalance when it shows up in basic, hard-news copy, specifically as it relates to religion news.


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OMg! OMg! Journalists continue to ignore the Associated Press Stylebook!

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Yes, here we go again.

I was interested in this Syracuse, N.Y., dateline story already, because of its obvious religious overtones -- both in terms of the scientist in the lede and the metaphysical, to say the least, nature of the issues involved in this breakthrough.

Then, later on, we had -- OMG! -- that whole revisionist Associated Press Stylebook thing going on again. But let's be patient and look at the actual story for just a second:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Peter Saulson sat in a synagogue for the Jewish new year Sept. 14, cut off from the rest of the world. He had turned off his cell phone and computer to observe the holiday.
Saulson was oblivious that his email inbox had started exploding around 7 a.m. with 75 messages that carried the same subject line: "Very interesting event."
Saulson wouldn't get word until that night, when he finally turned his computer back on, that he was on the verge of culminating his life's work, and the work of a thousand other scientists across the world.
That was the day two massive telescopes, one in Louisiana and the other in the state of Washington, detected for the first time gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes from 1.3 billion years ago.

I like the fact that this story opens in a synagogue, where one must assume that folks would upper-case the "G" in "God," as well as the "E" in Einstein, as in Albert, if for different reasons under Associated Press style.


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Turn, turn, turn: It's time to take religious stock of the Obama Era

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Turn, turn, turn: It's time to take religious stock of the Obama Era

As journalists look back to take stock of President Obama’s legacy, religious aspects deserve some attention. The Washington Post’s “Acts of Faith” blog posted an example January 12 from  Peter Manseau, co-founder of the pleasantly skeptical KillingTheBuddha.com, who scanned America’s history of pluralism in last year’s “One Nation Under Gods.”

Pursuing his book’s theme, Manseau proposed that this president “has embraced a more inclusive approach to religion than any of his predecessors.” But in making himself “the nation’s pluralist-in-chief” Obama “seems to have had an opposite effect in much of the country.” As his presidency wanes, he “leads a nation more divided along religious lines than at any other time in recent history.”

All of Manseau’s assertions are open to debate and worth pursuing by journalists.

Biographical recap: The president’s father Barack Senior, who abandoned Barack Junior, was born Muslim in Kenya but was an atheist as an adult. (Nonetheless, under a strict interpretation of Islamic law the son is automatically a Muslim, and in certain jurisdictions would be subject to execution as an apostate for forsaking his birth religion.)

Obama Junior was raised by a freethinking mother who taught her son about various religious paths. During their years in Indonesia he attended both Muslim and Catholic schools. Later, Obama was raised by grandparents who had been sometime Unitarians.

As an adult, the president-to-be converted to the liberal wing of “mainline” Protestantism. He was baptized at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, led by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, attended regularly, was married at Trinity and had his daughters baptized there.


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The New York Times is very, very, very cautious when describing Billy Graham's career

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Believe it or not, news consumers, journalists really do not like to make mistakes. Reporters and editors are also trained to be skeptical, to say the least, when it comes to accepting statistics provided by activist groups.

In practice, this leads to two syndromes: (1) Using language that fudges the numbers, making sure readers know that they are estimates and (2) trusting statistics from trusted organizations that fit the newsroom's editorial template, while distrusting statistics from organizations that the newsroom, well, doesn't trust.

Case in point: In a story on abortion, which organization to you think the editorial team at The New York Times will trust when it comes time to offer statistics on, let's say, abortions (or perhaps mammograms) -- Planned Parenthood or the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops?

However, there may be another explanation from time to time for some of the strange factual statements that one encounters in news copy. Call it "bizarre caution." This can happen when journalists do quick, hurried work in unfamiliar territory. For example, consider the overture on a new Times report that ran with this headline: "Heirs to 2 Evangelical Empires Take Different Paths Into Political Fray."

OK, the goal is to spot the two #LOL references -- think cautious, fudged language -- in this copy about the Rev. Billy Graham.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- One, the president of the Christian university his father founded, raised eyebrows and provoked an outcry among some evangelicals when he endorsed Donald J. Trump before the Iowa caucuses.


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Trump, Sanders and how globalization has brought European political values to the U.S.

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Trump, Sanders and how globalization has brought European political values to the U.S.

There's a great deal of wisdom encapsulated by the idiom, "be careful what you wish for." The inevitability of unforeseen -- or perhaps just conveniently ignored -- consequences routinely popping up to bite humanity's collective posterior seems obvious.

Which brings me to the 2016 American presidential campaign. The connection? How about the human revolution we call globalization. Obviously, there is a religion angle here.

Sure, globalization gave American consumers cheaper foreign-made goods. But how was it not obvious to all that in return for T-shirts from Bangladesh we were sentencing American manufacturing to economic collapse? The ensuing loss of middle class jobs took quite a bite out of the American backside.

Love it or hate it, there's little doubt that globalization has reconfigured notions about the relationship between us and them. What was once foreign is now domestic. Their problems are now ours to an unprecedented degree.

GetReligion readers know that globalization has shaken up the American religious landscape. (Notice all the new mosques? That some American Episcopalians are now Anglicans loyal to African bishops?)

And politics? Immigrants and refugees, international trade pacts, overseas military entanglements and the limits of U.S. power, what constitutes authentic American culture and religion in a period of demographic transformation -- these issues loom large in the presidential campaign.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of globalization's influence on the candidates are the separated-at-birth outsider campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.


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Bible puzzler: Did John write the Gospel of John or not?

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Bible puzzler: Did John write the Gospel of John or not?

PATRICIA’S QUESTION:

Who do you think authored the Fourth Gospel?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

This follows up on our Dec. 10 item about whether the apostle John wrote the Bible’s Book of Revelation. The Religion Guy will report what some experts say, not what a mere journalist thinks. The full question from seminary graduate Patricia shows she’s familiar with this debate. Bottom line, there’s no simple answer.

The headline sounds like a conundrum. But remember the Gospel text itself names no author; only later did Christians tack on “according to John.” (The other three Gospels, conventionally named for Matthew, Mark and Luke, are likewise anonymous compositions.) However, the tradition that the author was John, one of Jesus’ 12 apostles and thus an eyewitness, was firmly established by A.D. 180.

That’s when Bishop Irenaeus’ work “Against Heresies” said that “John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus” (3.1.1). Reinforcing this, it’s quite possible Irenaeus (born circa A.D. 125) learned such things from his hometown mentor Bishop Polycarp (born circa A.D. 70) who in turn had obtained information directly from the apostle John who was his boyhood friend.

Unlike the other three Gospels, the Fourth refers to a writer though without naming him, as “the disciple who had lain close to his breast at the supper . ... This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true” (John 21:20 and 24). Also, the crucifixion narrative says “he who saw it has borne witness -- his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth” (19:35).


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'Mainline' blues: A veteran on religion beat gives an old church trend fresh legs

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'Mainline' blues: A veteran on religion beat gives an old church trend fresh legs

How many stories have been written on the important demographic slide across the decades among America’s moderate-to-liberal Protestant churches, the "Seven Sisters" of the old mainline?

Such pieces typically report the latest membership totals and such. But newswriters should always seek new ways to freshen up old themes, and colleague David Briggs provides an example of just how to do that.

In case anyone doesn’t know the name, Briggs was the Religion Guy’s predecessor as an Associated Press religion writer, also covered the beat for the Buffalo News and Cleveland Plain Dealer, and has been president of the Religion Newswriters Association. He now edits the “Ahead of the Trend” blog for the Association of Religion Data Archives, an organization housed at Penn State that religion journalists are --  or should be -- well aware of.

By the way, the ARDA boasts that Briggs is considered “among the Top 10 secular religion writers and reporters in North America,” which sounds right. Who’d be on your own list? Leave me some notes in the comments pages.

Here’s the old-school Briggs formula: Pull together telling data that haven’t gotten much coverage, interview some of the usual suspects on the implications and then propose a strong conclusion about mainline woe: “Not only is there no end in sight, but there are few signs of hope for revival in rapidly aging, shrinking groups.”

These churches won’t disappear, we’re told, but their decline will not bottom out, much less turn around.


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Doctrinal questions? Chicago Catholics have fewer marriages, babies and, well, priests

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The big Catholic news out of the Archdiocese of Chicago -- the nation's third-largest diocese -- has become shockingly normal, perhaps so normal that journalists aren't even asking basic questions about this trend anymore.

The Chicago Tribune put one of the big numbers right up top in its latest report, noting that the Chicago archbishop -- a man closely identified with the tone of the Pope Francis era -- is now facing a crisis that will literally cost him altars. How many churches will he need to shutter? The current estimate is 100.

It's hard to keep Catholic church doors open without priests:

A radical overhaul in the nation's third-largest Roman Catholic archdiocese could shutter many of the Chicago church's houses of worship by 2030 as it reckons with decaying buildings and an expected shortage of priests, the church's chief operating officer confirmed Friday.
Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich told priests and advisers in meetings in recent weeks that the shortage -- an estimated 240 priests available in 2030 for the archdiocese's 351 parishes -- could necessitate closings and consolidations. The archdiocese governs parishes in Cook and Lake counties.

So what are the basic questions here? Yes, obviously, there is the question Catholic leaders have been asking for several decades: Where have all the seminarians gone? Why is a larger church producing fewer priests?

Looking at the hard-news coverage of the Chicago crisis, other questions leap to mind (or to my mind, at least). People keep saying that the "demographics" of the church have changed. This is true, but that only raises more questions that link demographics and doctrine. Hold that thought.


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