International News

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Final #2020 podcast: The year when religion news went viral, and that was a bad thing

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When you have been studying the Religion News Association’s Top 10 religion stories poll for as many years as I have (starting around 1980), it’s easy to spot patterns.

In normal years, religion-beat specialists tend to place several familiar items at or near near the top of the poll. You can see that by looking at Internet-era polls (click here). Like what?

* Whatever the pope did or said that drew headlines, especially if there was a USA tour.

* Religion affecting American politics (especially following the birth of the Religious Right after Roe vs. Wade). Big Supreme Court decisions often fit into this niche.

* Major religion-related wars or acts of terrorism around the world.

* What happened with liberal Protestantism — especially Episcopalians — and the whole God vs. the Sexual Revolution thing?

* For a decade or so, Southern Baptist warfare was a year-to-year story (stay tuned for future developments).

* Sex scandals involving bad conservative religious groups or leaders (since hypocrisy is more newsworthy than mistakes made by good liberals as they evolve).

As always, the year’s final “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on the results of the RNA poll and what might happen in the year ahead. My own “On Religion” column about the 2020 poll is running in mainstream newspapers this weekend and it will be posted here and at Tmatt.net in a day or so.

This was not, as you would expect, a “normal” year in the poll — unless you want to say that, instead of wars or acts of terrorism, the world experienced a pandemic. COVID-19 showed up twice in the RNA poll and even those two items understated the size and complexity of this story.

Looking forward: How many congregations and clergy will we lose in the next few years because of the impact — in terms of stress, as well as finances — of this pandemic?

Anyway, I thought GetReligion readers might want to see my own ballot in this poll, which was similar to the poll final results (click here for those) — but with some crucial variations. For starters, I took the two RNA coronavirus pandemic stories and turned them into items 1(a) and 1(b) by placing them at the top.

I have added a few bites of commentary to this list. Let me stress that this list is my ballot, but features the RNA-poll wordings that describe each “story” or trend.


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Despite the return of kidnapped boys, it's time to cover Nigeria like the failed state it is

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Nigeria has been a religious, economic and political disaster for many years, which is why it took the kidnapping of some 300 boys on Dec. 11, supposedly by Islamic militants, to raise the outrage threshold about how unlivable the entire northern half of that country has become.

Then — miraculously — the boys were returned within a week. It’s not clear as to whether all the boys were returned or what happened to those who may have been killed during the kidnapping or a whole host of other questions. As always, there are so many questions and, in major media, so little coverage seeking answers.

Chief among the missing angles is the religious component (the religion “ghost” in GetReligion language). For instance, when 276 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014, we knew these were Islamic militants doing the job. What we weren’t told is that the Chibok girls were Christian, not Muslim (even though northern Nigeria is majority Muslim) and how that made a huge difference as to whether they’d be released or not.

To this day, more than 100 of those girls remain missing. Imagine if that was your teen-aged daughter.

Four years later, mostly Muslim girls were kidnapped from Dapchi , 170 miles northwest of Chibok, but later returned. The lone Christian girl among them, Leah Sharibu, was held back because she refused to convert to Islam. She has never been released and reportedly was forcibly “married” to a Boko Haram commander and delivered a baby boy earlier this year.

Thus, if the victims are Muslim, they stand a good chance of being returned. If they’re Christian, not so much.

The Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall unfortunately) gave this account about the return of the boys:

KATSINA, Nigeria—More than 300 Nigerian boys were reunited with their parents Friday, a week after militants stormed their dormitories in one of the largest kidnappings of schoolchildren in history.


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New podcast: What's God got to do with it? There's more to Hillsong drama than celebrities

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Nearly 40 years ago, I wrote a story for The Charlotte Observer about a rapidly growing megachurch on the south side of town. Yes, there were megachurches back then. In fact, there were already academics studying the factors that turned ordinary churches into megachurches.

Hang in there with me, because I’m working my way to the topic at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focuses on the New York Times coverage of the fall of that hip Hillsong preacher in New York City.

Anyway, this Charlotte church was fascinating because it had strong Presbyterian roots and its creation was linked to splits that were already taking place in the world of mainline Protestantism. This was not a rock-band-and-lasers church. It was offering conservative Reformed-Calvinist thought with a style that a bit more suburban than your ordinary Presbyterian congregation.

It was clear, at least to me, that the preaching was the key to this story. This was a mainline-esque church where they were still talking about salvation, sin, heaven and hell — all in a dramatic, but intelligent way. So I ended my long feature story with a big chunk of a sermon, built on images of heaven and the end of all things. This led into an altar call and more people streaming forward to join the church.

That works, when you’re in Billy Graham’s hometown. Bit didn’t work for a key editor. One newsroom wit once said that this particular journalist “grew up Unitarian, but then he backslid.” He wanted that ending removed. I stood my ground and — here’s the point — argued that what this church was proclaiming, in terms of doctrine and faith, was a crucial element in its success. This wasn’t just a story about politics, real estate and zoning laws. The editor just couldn’t GET IT. A short version of the ending made it into print.

So back to Hillsong. During the five years that I did some part-time teaching in New York City (on the ground there eight weeks or so, each year), I had lots of students who went to Hillsong. They talked about the music. They talked a lot about the preaching. Yes, they talked about the excitement of being in that crowd and feeling like they were part of all that.

It was clear to me that this Hillsong operation — in the world’s Alpha City — was a big story.

The journalism question is this: To what degree should the faith content at Hillsong, and even the DNA of sermons by the Rev. Carl Lentz, play a significant part of a story about Hillsong NYC and the scandal that took down its leader?


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Hong Kong media titan Jimmy Lai jailed: Do journalists realize he's an outspoken Catholic?

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If you have followed events in Hong Kong for several decades, then you know this name — Jimmy Lai.

Journalists certainly should know that name, since this free-swinging billionaire founded Apple Daily, one of the city’s most popular newspapers. Using his clout as a businessman and as a publisher, he has been one of the most outspoken defenders of human rights in the face of crackdowns by Communist authorities.

One other thing: Lai is concerned about freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. There’s a logical reason for that, since he is an outspoken Catholic and one of Hong Kong’s best known Christian leaders. See this recent Catholic News Agency story: “Catholic Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai — ‘The Lord is suffering with me’.”

Surely journalists know that Lai wears several hats during pro-democracy protests — a role that has landed him in jail, without bail. To state this in American terms, Lai is trying to promote both halves of the First Amendment, since freedom of conscience affects both the press and religious institutions. That has been obvious during all the hymn-singing (click here for Julia Duin post on this topic) in Hong Kong protests.

Don’t elite journalists know all of that?

It would appear that this is not the case, considering a faith-free story that ran recently at The New York Times with this headline: “Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong Media Tycoon, Is Denied Bail on Fraud Charge — Mr. Lai, who founded the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, was ordered jailed until April.” Here is some crucial material at the top of the story, which has a Hong Kong dateline:

The detention of Mr. Lai, 72, came a day after three leading Hong Kong activists were sentenced to prison for participating in a protest last year, the latest blow to the territory’s pro-democracy movement.

The Chinese government imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong at the end of June, and Mr. Lai became the law’s most high-profile target in August, when he was arrested along with his two sons and four executives of his media company, Next Digital.

But the new fraud charges are unrelated to the security law. Rather, they accuse Mr. Lai of violating the terms of the lease of Next Digital’s headquarters, the public broadcaster RTHK reported.

This is a classic, and rather obvious, example of what GetReligion writers have, since Day 1, called a “ghost” — as in a crucial religion-news hook that is mysteriously missing in an important story.


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Old questions about megachurch authority: New York Times dips into Hillsong sins

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What brand of Christianity is offered at Hillsong Church? Does that matter?

Basically, it’s a slightly tamed version of evangelical Christianity, blended with Gen X pop-rock music, delivered by talented preachers with tattoos and ripped jeans. And then there are the celebrities who show up from time to time — which really helps create viral social-media stuff.

That’s the formula readers encounter in a must-read New York Times feature that ran the other day, when what was already an important story about evangelicals in the Big Apple gained the kind of editorial punch provided by sex, scandal and ties to Justin Bieber. Here’s the double-decker headline on this latest story by religion-beat pro Ruth Graham:

The Rise and Fall of Carl Lentz, the Celebrity Pastor of Hillsong Church

A charismatic pastor helped build a megachurch favored by star athletes and entertainers — until some temptations became too much to resist.

All of the glamour and celebrity details are important and valid. However, there is another angle of this story that is totally missing. The words “Assemblies of God” do not appear anywhere in this lengthy Times feature.

Truth is, Hillsong grew out of the Assemblies of God, an important Pentecostal and charismatic Christian flock with about 70 million members around the world. And why did Hillsong cut its ties to the Assemblies, other than a yearning for independence from denominational authorities and perhaps to erase a some bad memories?

Hold that thought, because we will come back to it. Here is a crucial chunk of summary material containing the important themes that provide the structure for this Times piece:

Even in the contemporary era of megachurches, Hillsong stands apart. Founded in Australia under a different name in the 1980s, its great innovation was to offer urban Christians a religious environment that did not clash with the rest of their lives.

At a time when many Americans have abandoned regular churchgoing, Hillsong attracts thousands of young churchgoers through soaring music and upbeat preaching. If anything, it is cooler than everyday life, with celebrities like the actor and singer Selena Gomez and the N.B.A. star Kevin Durant showing up at Sunday services.

By now, Hillsong is not just a church, but a brand.


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India's 'love jihad' interfaith marriage story may be political spin -- but its effects are real

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I don’t recall ever watching it but I do remember the brouhaha that erupted within the Jewish community when the short-lived TV sitcom “Bridget Loves Bernie” debuted in 1972.

Despite the show’s audience popularity it was cancelled after just one season because of the high-profile flak it drew from establishment American Jewish community leaders who objected to the show’s premise — an interfaith romance between Bridget, a Catholic, and Bernie, a Jew. (Neither of its stars, Meredith Baxter and David Birney, were Jews.)

Given the entertainment media’s level of religious, racial, and gender mixing and matching today, “Bridget and Bernie” probably strikes you as pretty tame. However, the show’s timing couldn’t have been worse; the American Jewish community was just starting to publicly debate, with alarm, its growing intermarriage rate.

Leading Orthodox, Conservative and even theologically liberal Reform rabbis lambasted the show as an insult to one of Judaism’s most sacrosanct values, marrying within the tribe, which was particularly strong in the decades after the Holocaust. Boycotts were organized and meetings were held with the TV execs who backed the show. The radical, and sometimes violent, Jewish Defense League issued threats.

Yet in the end, “Bridget Loves Bernie” turned out to be a Jewish-American harbinger. Today, an estimated 50 percent-plus of American Jews marry non-Jews, though it’s still relatively rare within traditionalist Orthodox circles..

But as scandalous as “Bridget Loves Bernie” was in its day, it pales in comparison to the controversy now engulfing the contemporary Indian TV drama “A Suitable Boy.”

That’s because the show — which became available to American audiences via the streaming service AcornTV today (Monday, Dec. 7) — features a love story between a Muslim man and a Hindu woman. For India’s fervent Hindu nationalist politicians, that constitutes “love jihad” — a calculated attack by Muslims on the nation’s Hindu heritage.

In India, “A Suitable Boy,” a BBC production, was broadcast by Netflix. And even though the platform has a relatively small subscription base there it was enough to create quite a stir.

Here’s the top of the New York Times piece that alerted me to this story just before Thanksgiving.


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At last, it's time for reporters to look abroad, with decline of Islam in Iran a brewing story

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Enough with U.S. politics and punditry. How about more news-media reportage on major developments abroad?

One top hot spot in the coming Joe Biden era is Iran, with the regime's intensified rivalry with Arab neighbors led by Saudi Arabia, ongoing hatred toward a supposedly satanic United States and ambitious pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Journalists give far less notice to Iran's religious situation, perhaps because they tend to emphasize Islam's dominant Sunni branch more than the minority Shi'ism that became Persia's official faith in 1501, and because we assume rigid theocracy is frozen in place and that's that.

But what if the religo-political rule so famously imposed in 1979 upon this large and pivotal land has lost so much public respect that we see "the near collapse of official Iranian Islam"? That startling quote comes from Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins in a column for The Christian Century. If true, that's a huge story just waiting for thorough examination through interviews with stateside experts or, for media so equipped, on-the-ground coverage.

The new edition of the authoritative World Christian Encyclopedia says its sources report that starting around 2002, Iran's Islamic rule has inspired the quiet spread of small underground Christian fellowships with thousands involved -- some say a million -- despite the fact that those forsaking Islam face prison, even death. This has been discussed in niche Christian circles online, but that’s about it.

Jenkins is iffy on the extent of Christian growth, since hard evidence is lacking, but is confident about Islam's collapse due to an important opinion survey in Iran last summer by a Dutch organization.

What is happening? Only 78% of the Iranians sampled believe in God in any sense, and just 32% consider themselves to be Shi'a Muslims any longer. A mere one-fourth expect the coming Imam Mahdi (messiah), a fundamental tenet of Shi'ism.

"The vast majority of mosques are all but abandoned, even during great celebrations" on the Islamic calendar, Jenkins reports.

His sardonic comment: "Forty years of ruthless theocracy will do that to a country."


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Why would CBS News say that Archbishop Wilton Gregory was the first 'Black' cardinal?

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It was the kind of newsroom error that lights up Twitter, while also inspiring more than a few folks in cyberspace to say to themselves, “I need to let GetReligion know about this!”

I am referring to the headline at CBSNews.com that currently proclaims: “First Black American Cardinal said he hopes to begin on ‘positive’ note with Biden after contentious relationship with Trump.”

When that story went online, it said that Washington, D.C., Archbishop Wilton Gregory was the first “Black Cardinal” — period.

See the difference?

Other news organizations made the same error. At Axios, for example, the headline eventually morphed to become: “Wilton Gregory becomes first Black cardinal in U.S.” Note that the URL for that story still contains this: “www.axios.com/washington-archbishop-first-black-cardinal-catholic …”

However, was CBS that left this headline in place for more than a day, until the headline and story were finally corrected.

What was the problem?

For starters, there are currently 14 cardinals from Sub-Saharan Africa alone.

The big question, of course, is why writers and digital producers at a major news organization would, well, forget one of the most important news stories in global Christianity over the past decade or two.

We are talking about the rising tide of believers and leaders from the Global South, and the continent of Africa in particular, and impact of this trend on Catholicism, Anglicanism, Methodism, etc. (Click here for “The Next Christianity,” the 2002 cover story at The Atlantic by historian Philip Jenkins that put this trend on the front burner for journalists who “get” religion.)

Why did this happen at an organization as famous as CBS News?


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Question: What is the world's worst government on religious liberty? Clearly, it's China

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THE QUESTION:

What is the world’s worst government in terms of restricting religious liberty?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

China. No contest.

That’s shown in an elaborate Pew Research Center accounting issued this month that covers all categories of official religion restrictions in 198 nations and territories as of 2018. The Communists who rule the world’s largest population expend incredible efforts on their atheistic crusades, and are equal opportunity offenders who attack both faith in general and a variety of specific religions.

Global religious conditions over-all are getting worse, Pew reports. It calculates there are other highly troublesome governments in this descending order of oppression: Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Syria, Russia, Algeria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Iraq, Morocco, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Brunei, Mauritania, Western Sahara and Yemen. (North Korea information is lacking).

Though Pew doesn’t say this, you’ll see most of the worst are Communist, or Muslim or post-Communist and Muslim.

Yet one of the most distressing crackdowns is in Buddhist Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma), with its forced displacement of at least 14,500 Rohingya Muslims. As with China’s mistreatment of Muslims, noted below, ethnic and religious enmity are combined.

Examples of other problems: Uzbekistan put at least 1,500 Muslims in prison on charges of extremism. Tajikistan’s new religion law gives the regime control over appointment of Muslim imams, religious education, and foreign travel, and there’s been a roundup of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Thailand has arrested hundreds of Christian and Muslim refugees fleeing mistreatment in Pakistan and Vietnam. Methodist missionaries were forced out of the Philippines for investigating human rights abuses.

Pew separately lists countries on a “Social Hostilities Index,” referring to serious harassment of religions by private individuals and groups as opposed to governments (though governments often encourage or turn a blind eye to these problems). Here, India has the worst track record.


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