Jim Davis

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Do evangelicals mistreat gay children? AP weighs viewpoints, but not evenly

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Small but increasingly connected knots of conservative Christians are advocating a new approach to homosexuality, says a well-done feature from the Associated Press.

Well done, as in more than 10 quoted sources and nearly 1,400 words. Well done, as in talking to educators and institutional leaders, not just aggrieved activists. And well done, as in showing a variety of approaches to church leadership, and the variety of responses from gay activists.

The article, by veteran religion writer Rachel Zoll, is less confrontational than suggested by the headline: "Evangelicals with gay children speaking out against how churches treat their sons & daughters." You could get that impression if you stopped after the first four paragraphs. If you continued with the other 22 paragraphs, you'd get a different view.

It does start by retelling the case of a 12-year-old dying of a drug overdose when so-called "reparative therapy" failed to quell his gay impulses. But it adds some qualifiers, starting with the parents of the suicidal boy:

"Parents don't have anyone on their journey to reconcile their faith and their love for their child," said Linda Robertson, who with Rob attends a nondenominational evangelical church. "They either reject their child and hold onto their faith, or they reject their faith and hold onto their child. Rob and I think you can do both: be fully affirming of your faith and fully hold onto your child."
It's not clear how much of an impact these parents can have. Evangelicals tend to dismiss fellow believers who accept same-sex relationships as no longer Christian. The parents have only recently started finding each other online and through faith-oriented organizations for gays and lesbians such as the Gay Christian Network, The Reformation Project and The Marin Foundation.

The article shows a lot of research in piecing together the various trends and incidents related to gays and evangelicals. It does include the headliners like the Rev. Frank Schaefer, who won his case in a Methodist church court case. Also Alan Chambers, who closed his Exodus International and apologized for pushing reparative therapy, a psychological process that claims to cure homosexuality.


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Serving God with mammon: 'Fortune' examines the faith of CEOs

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God and gold are usually a forbidden blend, but they combine in one of the premier journals of business and finance in a Fortune story on spirituality among CEOs of major corporations.

The story starts with Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, saying he considers his homosexuality "among the greatest gifts God has given me" -- then notes that Cook is "not forthcoming beyond that statement about his religious beliefs," probably fearing judgment about going public with those beliefs.

Then Fortune provides a great "nut graph":

Most CEOs, in fact, keep their faith squarely out of the workplace, according to Andrew Wicks, a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. “They specifically hide their religious faith, precisely because they fear people making a big deal out of their religious views,” said Wicks, who teaches a course called “Faith, Religion, and Responsible Decision Making.”
But Wicks says being open about faith is actually important because it is a powerful aspect of how business leaders define themselves.

Whatever else this 2,800-word article is, it ain't narrow. Besides Christians, it features Buddhist, Jewish and Hindu CEOs. And among the Christians are a Catholic, a Lutheran, a United Methodist and a Southern Baptist.

After an intro, the article is broken up into mini-profiles between about 280 and 450 words each. Business journal that it is, Fortune starts with each person's name and the stock performance of his/her company. For instance, Indra Nooyi's name is followed by "PepsiCo (#43)  PEP 0.75%."


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Who rescued Rusty? Art? God? Prison? Dallas newspaper doesn't clear it up

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"Lord, have mercy," Leonard "Rusty" Medlock says twice in a profile in the Dallas Morning News. Let's all pray the same as we puzzle over the newspaper's article.

On the one hand, Medlock is quoted several times saying that only God's grace awakened his artistic talent in prison, where he was serving time for a drug conviction. On the other hand, the newspaper says Medlock's very incarceration -- or his own talents -- turned his life around.

This dichotomy starts with the first two paragraphs:

No one has to sell Leonard “Rusty” Medlock on the idea of giving people second chances.
The same situation that threatened to marginalize him in society — a prison term for drug-related felonies — liberated him in a Texas prison.

See it wasn’t God, it was prison that liberated Medlock.

But wait, the headline says: "Set free by art in prison, ex-convict paints a new life for himself." So, it was neither God nor prison, it was art.


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Muslim terrorists in Kenya attack people who, uh, aren't Muslims

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Our GetReligion guru, tmatt, likes to complain how news media talk about "generic Christians" in the Middle East. Well, much of the coverage of Saturday's mass murder in Kenya goes one further -- making the victims into generic "non-Muslims."

Here's the lead of the widely used version by the Associated Press:

Somalia’s Islamic extremist rebels, Al-Shabab, attacked a bus in northern Kenya at dawn Saturday, singling out and killing 28 passengers who could not recite an Islamic creed and were assumed to be non-Muslims, Kenyan police said.
Those who could not say the Shahada, a tenet of the Muslim faith, were shot at close range, a survivor told The Associated Press.

AP later says the killers "separated those who appeared to be non-Muslims  — mostly non-Somalis — from the rest." Their source for much of this? A "non-Muslim head teacher of a private primary school in Mandera [who] survived the attack." (Emphasis mine.)

The Los Angeles Times account follows suit in 800 distressingly vague words.  It says the killers "separated Muslims from non-Muslims," then shot the latter. Even when giving background -- saying the attack "follows the pattern of previous terror attacks in Kenya in which Muslims have been spared" -- it's fuzzy on Muslims as opposed to whom.

If the victims' religion made a difference, what was it? Buddhism? Hinduism? The answer should be obvious  to anyone who checks a database like the World Factbook by the CIA: 82.5 percent of Kenyans are Christian. While the nation also includes people of "traditionalist" faiths, and 2.4 percent are "nones," it's safe to say the main targets last weekend were Christians.

Especially when the Times quotes an Al-Shabab spokesman using the term "crusaders":


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When they want your head: Veteran journalist tells risks of Middle East reporting

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At some point, reporters in the Middle East stopped covering murders and started getting murdered.

Jeffrey Goldberg remembers the turning point in Before the Beheadings, aptly named article in The Atlantic. Goldberg once enjoyed his dangerous beat, covering terrorism and religious wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.  

At least he did, until the danger spread to reporters like himself -- a danger that preceded the killings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff this year:

The attacks of 9/11 weren’t the decisive break in the relationship between jihadists and journalists. It was the decision made by a set of extremists in Pakistan to kidnap the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002 that represented a shift in jihadist thought. To his kidnappers, Pearl was not a messenger to the outside world, but a scapegoat to be sacrificed for the sins of his fellow infidels. Murder was becoming their message.

Goldberg describes the paradoxical sense of danger and safety in reporting on various jihad groups. He writes about interviewing terrorist leaders on willingness to use nuclear bombs if available, and on how one even thought the Jews were "from Satan." But the jihadis gave safe passage to reporters, even Jewish ones like Goldberg, in order to tell their stories via news media.

Goldberg describes one such meeting, with Pakistani terrorist Fazlur Rehman Khalil:

I had glimpsed a treacherous and secret subculture, and I was happy, because a reporter’s deepest need is to see what is on the other side of a closed door. In exchange, I would tell people in the West about Khalil and his beliefs. I was appalled by his message, and I wanted readers to understand the horror of it. But Khalil believed he was doing good works, and he wanted the world to celebrate his philosophy. Back then, the transaction worked for both parties. Today, when I think about the meeting, I shudder.

He relates a fellow journalist's attitude: “I used to tell people that as a reporter for an American news organization, it was like we were wearing armor. “People just didn’t go after American reporters.”


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Murder in the synagogue: Newspapers excel in coverage, not on analysis

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When people hack, stab and shoot their way into a synagogue -- especially in Jerusalem, a nexus of three world religions -- you can expect a second wave: of news coverage. The killings of Jews at prayer in Jerusalem set a tragic yet vital instance of the value of news media in a world where some want to kill a few of us and blind the rest.

Pretty much all of the accounts are loaded with gory details -- as frankly, they should after such a gory event. The New York Daily News, with its tabloid heritage, was ready to tell the brutal story of meat cleavers and guns:

About 25 people were praying in a synagogue when the Palestinians burst inside screaming “God is great!” in Arabic and began killing.
“I saw people lying on the floor, blood everywhere,” survivor Yosef Posternak told Israel Radio. “People were trying to fight with (the attackers), but they didn’t have much of a chance.”
The carnage ended when three Israeli traffic cops responding to the scene opened fired on the intruders and killed them in a wild gun battle.

With a well-warranted warning of "graphic images," the Daily News also posted a photo of a tefillin-wrapped arm lying in a pool of blood, and the corpse of one of the attackers, stripped to his underwear to make sure he wasn't wearing a bomb.

Like other newspapers, the article includes other clashes -- but the Daily News also ran a photo of a three-month-old baby who was killed in October when a terrorist ran over her stroller.

The New York Times  went for irony, juxtaposing the sense of the sacred with the desecration of murder in a holy place:


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CBS loves NFL veteran's potato farm; his Christian beliefs, not so much

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Can a ghost haunt a football field or a potato farm? Yes, if spiritual motives make you leave one for the other -- and a news report skims over those motives.

CBS News did something like that in one of its On the Road segments. Steve Hartman found Jason Brown cheerfully bending his back over sweet potatoes instead of flattening opponents for the St. Louis Rams.

Hartman was curious about a number of things. How Brown could leave a $37 million NFL contract for 1,000 acres in North Carolina. Why he worked hard for his crop, then gave it away to food pantries. How he even learned to farm.

What the report didn't ask was why Brown changed his lifestyle so radically. It drops a few hints, like "FirstFruits Farm," the name of Brown's literal digs. Another hint:

"When you see them pop up out of the ground, man, it's the most beautiful thing you could ever see," said Brown. He said he has never felt more successful.
"Not in man's standards," said Brown. "But in God's eyes."

But those hints slip in and out of the report, like ghosts floating through the walls.

CBS does link to Brown's FirstFruits Farm, which explains it all in telling detail. Like this section:


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Associated Press feature says Hanukkah is beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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It's gone way beyond old-timey "Hanukkah Bushes" decorated like Christmas trees. Now, reports the Associated Press, Hanukkah includes items like Kippah Kantor, Mensch on a Bench, house decorations, even boxes of Hanukkah chocolates.

"Pinterest and Etsy are loaded with blue-and-white Hanukkah crafts like wreaths and stockings," says the deftly written feature for the holiday, which starts this year at sundown Dec. 16. "There are Hanukkah greeting cards, cookie cutters, and even tree ornaments shaped like the three symbols -- Stars of David, menorahs and dreidels -- that scream 'Hanukkah!' amid a sea of holiday merchandise adorned with Christmas trees and Santas."

The story's Star (of David) is the Mensch on a Bench doll, imitating the Yule-themed Elf on the Shelf. As AP relates, creator Neal Hoffman raised $22,000 on Kickstarter last year; now he's producing 50,000 Mensches for stores like Target and Toys R Us. I recognized a South Florida news station on a collection of TV reports Hoffman linked from his website.

Oy. The traditional eight nights of quiet family gatherings -- those are starting to look like the Ghost of Hanukkah Past. Maybe Steven Spielberg's next movie should be Dreidels of a Lost Art. Or, as tmatt once quipped, "It's beginning to look a lot like Hanukkah." 

But as a rabbi tells AP, it's not the first time Jews have drawn from the surrounding culture. He says latkes, the potato pancakes that are a favorite Hanukkah treat, come from eastern Europe. The dreidel itself comes from Germany, he adds.

But why Hanukkah, a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar? For answers, AP turns to someone who's written a whole book on the holiday:


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Nurses and Ebola: MSNBC story tells a story of faith and courage

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"MSNBC can do a decent religion story? Miracles do happen," a friend of GR said in a tip about an article on nurses volunteering to fight Ebola.

And the tipster is right. For a company whose founder called church a waste of time -- as Bill Gates did in 1997 -- MSNBC has produced a remarkably sensitive, respectful story on nurses' preparations to work in Ebola-stricken Liberia.

The article packs a lot in its 1,289 words. It updates us on the quarantine controversy -- the rush of states to isolate medical workers on their return from treating Ebola patients. It's full of touching personal details on the two women who are about to leave for western Africa. And it presents an unflinching, unapologetic look at the faith that drives them to risk their lives.

MSNBC's writer clearly liked Megan Vitek, her friend Sara Phillips and their well-wishers. She notes that Vitek's home, and that of her friends, is dubbed the "Scooby Doo Mansion." She tells of Vitek visiting an apartment building and greeting an inflatable Headless Horseman dummy. It's a clever device to show the contrast with where she's going. 

Here's the lede:

Before she left town on Sunday, there were a few things that Megan Vitek, a nurse, needed to get done: Return a big serving bowl to a relative, eat a scone from her favorite coffee shop in Washington, D.C., and pick up 25 pairs of goggles to protect her team from Ebola in Liberia.

But Vitek isn't cast as a Pollyanna or proselytizer. She is instead portrayed as humble, matter-of-fact, perhaps pushing away the enormity of what she's about to confront:


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