Julia Duin

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Washingtonian lands boffo take on sex abuse in an evangelical Protestant empire

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The piece I’m about to describe is a news feature that I very much wanted to write once, earlier in my religion-beat career.

In the mid 1970s, I attended charismatic prayer meetings at the Assemblies of God congregation called Christ Church, located on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., where 2,000 of us packed the sanctuary. The two preachers were two gifted young men named Larry Tomczak and C.J. Mahaney. I was a college student at the time and their sermons were electric. I heard later that the meetings had morphed into a church.

Twenty years later, I moved back to the area as a reporter for The Washington Times and I learned the congregation was now known as Covenant Life Church and was located in Gaithersburg, a DC suburb in Maryland. It was quite successful. Then I heard rumors that Tomczak had been forced out. In late 2003, I did a large piece on Covenant Life for the Times (they had just finished a new sanctuary) and it was then that I contacted Larry and got his side of the story. I also interviewed Mahaney and visited the huge church. I had the uneasiest feeling about the place -- and Mahaney himself -- and couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

So I wasn’t too surprised to hear a few years later that major rifts had developed there. I began reading blogs about the place. Then Mahaney quit in 2011, which is when I pitched an idea to a magazine for a major piece on his rise and fall. It was turned down because it seemed like too much inside baseball to the editors.

Five years later, this piece appeared Feb. 14 in the Washingtonian magazine:

Pam Palmer was at a barbecue when she heard the news.
It was 2011, five years after her family had left Covenant Life Church. But the Gaithersburg congregation and its founder, C.J. Mahaney, remained on her mind. Now one of her relatives was telling her that amid controversy Mahaney had surrendered the top post at the organization he had built into an international empire. “Literally,” Pam says, “that moment changed my life.”


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And now, the real pope news: Francis ties media in knots with contraception/Zika remarks

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If you didn’t hear all the excitement about Pope Francis seeming to bless contraception during his hour-long presser on the flight back to Rome, you were apparently on another planet because lots of folks were writing about it (just not on A1).

It seems that the pope also said something about Donald Trump. As one Catholic-media professional said, in an email to GetReligion:

Pope Francis signals openness to birth control for Zika virus is the big story, not the Trump thing. The possibility of changing that doctrine because of a mosquito is huge news, far more important than a spat with a multi-billionaire. ... So once again, we see that for the secular media in the U.S., it's all about politics.

So back to the real news. On the plane back to Rome after his Mexico-Cuba trip, Francis let loose once again. Veteran Whispers in the Loggia blogger Rocco Palmo rightly called it an hour-long 12-question extravaganza.

The pope's thoughts on the Zika virus and contraception were among them, albeit they were worked in such a way that it was hard to be sure exactly what he was approving. It takes a theologian to slice and dice the pope’s remarks during a flight, when it’s tough to get reaction from church officials or moral theologians thousands of miles away.

Lengthy airplane pressers are a recent invention in papal history and they have resulted in some of a pope’s most memorable phrases. Francis’ famous “who am I to judge?” quote came during a press conference on the press plane returning to Italy from Brazil in 2013. Most popes are quite tired on the flight home and sometimes let loose some zingers.

So now -- is Francis OK with using birth control in the hard cases or not?


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Why is The Atlantic surprised that early pro-lifers were, uh, liberals?

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It always amuses me when a large magazine discovers something about the religious world or culture wars issues that many of us have known about for decades.

Recently, the Atlantic made the surprise discovery that the pro-life movement had some liberal founders. The piece, by Emma Green, is actually a book review of “Defenders of the Unborn,” by University of West Georgia professor Daniel Williams. You may remember Williams from his 2012 book “God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right.” This time around, he’s come out with a tome reminding people that it was the left that first opposed abortion.

The Atlantic's treatment has considerable less snark than a similar New York Times review last month that assumed readers were liberals who can't imagine how someone reasonable could oppose abortion. But it does have some gaps. It starts thus:

Ronald Reagan. Barry Goldwater. George Wallace. These men probably won’t be featured on pro-choice pamphlets any time soon, but during at least some point in their political careers, the Moral Majority-era president, conservative stalwart, and infamous segregationist all favored the legalization of abortion. In the four decades since the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade, the political debate over abortion in America has become stale and polarized, with two sides utterly divided and little change in public opinion. But in the years leading up to Roe, many people’s views on abortion didn’t fit neatly into either liberal or conservative ideology. In fact, early anti-abortion activists viewed their cause as a struggle for civil and human rights, of a piece with social programs like the New Deal and the Great Society.
In a new book, "Defenders of the Unborn," the historian Daniel K. Williams looks at the first years of the self-described pro-life movement in the United States, focusing on the long-overlooked era before Roe. It’s somewhat surprising that the academy hasn’t produced such a history before now, although Williams says that’s partially because certain archives have only recently opened. But the gap in scholarship is also partly due to the difficulty of putting abortion into a single intellectual framework.


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Foreign Policy magazine: Chinese students in U.S. are converting like crazy

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Several years ago while teaching a course at the University of Maryland, I became aware of a group of Chinese Americans who took it on themselves to personally welcome every international Chinese student to the school. They’d do airport pick-ups, get-togethers, parties and field trips.

It was a godsend for the new arrivals in more ways than one. First, they instantly had a group of friends that spoke their language.

Secondly, this group was made up of evangelical Christians whose mission was to see that before these students returned to China four years later, they’d gotten exposure to a Christianity they’d never get to see in their native land. I was dimly aware of similar groups doing similar outreaches on other campuses, but not until I saw a pair of articles from Foreign Policy magazine on foreignpolicy.com, did I realize how wide the evangelistic net is spread.

The magazine has come up with two very detailed stories of how Chinese students are flooding into private secondary U.S. schools with the full knowledge and blessing of their atheist parents and how the vast amounts of Chinese studying in American universities have turned out to be an enormous mission field for American Christian groups. The first piece starts thus:

It is no secret that Chinese students are pouring into the United States; over 300,000 of them attended U.S. colleges and universities in 2015 alone, and Chinese are filling up spots in U.S secondary schools in search of a better education and an easier route into U.S. universities. Less widely known is that at the secondary level, most Chinese attend Christian schools -- even though they come from the world’s largest atheist state.

Because of restrictions on foreign student enrollment in U.S. public high schools, Chinese secondary students headed Stateside overwhelmingly attend private institutions. And Chinese parents don’t seem to care if that institution has a Christian underpinning.


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Crisis pregnancy wars: No one, including the New York Times, asks some obvious questions

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Six years ago, when I was still writing for the Washington Times, I heard that the city of Baltimore was compelling crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) to post notices saying they don’t do referrals for abortion or birth control services.

This struck me as a bit odd, in that how many businesses must post notices saying what they do not offer? I couldn’t think of any.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore, which operated some of those CPCs, sued the city and eventually won. I covered that debate and a similar law that was floated in Montgomery County, Md., just outside of Washington DC. The latter was also struck down in court. Similar efforts were mounted in Austin, Texas and in New York, but both also lost in court.

Which is why I was surprised that the same law was being proposed in California. Here is what the New York Times said:

EL CAJON, Calif. -- “Free Pregnancy Testing,” reads the large sign in front of the East County Pregnancy Care Clinic, on a busy intersection of this impoverished city east of San Diego.
Inside the clinic, a woman will not only receive a free pregnancy test, but she will also see a counselor to discuss her options. She will see models of fetuses at early stages of development, which show that “at Week 12, you see a recognizable human,” said Josh McClure, the executive director of the clinic. If she is pregnant, she can receive a free ultrasound and attend childbirth classes. If she gives birth, she may receive help with diapers and a car seat.
What she will not receive from this center is advice on where to obtain an abortion.


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Making mass murder personal: The Pakistani newspaper Dawn finds a way with '144 Stories'

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In the midst of humdrum life here and entranced as we were by Lady Gaga’s stirring rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner” at the opening of the Super Bowl, we often forget how the other half lives many time zones away.

A recent piece in the Los Angeles Times reminded us of a place where schools are a death trap and the martyrs tend to be in their teens.

What Malala Yousafzai went through in 2012 is something other kids are still living through. Every now and then, this madness makes headlines.

On Jan. 20, the Taliban did a raid at a university in Charsadda, northwest Pakistan, that left 21 people, mostly students, dead. It’s hard to imagine the depth of insanity that propels grown men to mow down defenseless girls and boys, but that’s life today in that tense, often splintered, Islamic republic.

The Times reminded us that the security crisis in Pakistan is not going away and how schools and universities are “soft targets” for the Taliban, which strikes at will.

So, how do you keep reporting on a place where massacre follows massacre?


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Young, gay Mormons and suicide: The Salt Lake Tribune tries to do the real numbers

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It was one of the odder headlines I’ve seen lately: "Suicide fears, if not actual suicides, rise in wake of Mormon same-sex policy."

Underneath is a narrative of how last fall’s announcement of a revised policy on membership requirements for gay Mormons may have vastly increased Utah suicides.

After seven paragraphs came the whopper: The premise behind the story has no basis in fact. But it sounded true. It may still be true. Lots of observers think it's true.

We've heard this before: Truthiness strikes again. We can debate the facts later.

It’s not the way I would have written such a piece, but it does draw you in. You almost have to read the entire overture up to the clincher paragraph to see how it is done. Here’s how it starts:

The fears were there right from the start -- that the LDS Church's new policy on same-sex couples would make gay Mormons feel more judged, more marginalized, more misunderstood and that more of them would take their own lives.
Since early November -- when the edict labeling gay LDS couples as "apostates" and denying their children baptism until age 18 took hold -- social media sites have been buzzing with tales of loss, depression and death. Therapists have seen an uptick in clients who reported suicidal thoughts. Activists have been bombarded with grief-stricken family members seeking comfort and counsel.
Wendy Williams Montgomery, an Arizona-based Mormon mom with a gay son, says she began receiving email or Facebook messages from bereaved families nearly daily, mourning a loved one's suicide.


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Of football and faith in Fairbanks: The News-Miner tells half the story

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I spent nine months at the University of Alaska this past academic year teaching journalism and one of the courses I offered was on religion reporting.

It’s a needed quantity in the 49th state, as the only Alaskan on the rolls of the Religion Newswriters Association was one of my students and there’s no one really covering the beat anywhere in the state. Which is odd, and sad, since Alaska has a varied religious history ranging from Russian Orthodox missionaries to much more recent Muslim immigrants.

Every once in a blue moon, I’d spot a piece about religion in the Alaska Dispatch News, the state’s largest paper. In the fall of 2014, I asked its publisher, Alice Rogoff, about hiring a full-time specialist, and she sounded interested but a year later, I am still waiting for news. I should note the ADN has Chris Thompson, a religion columnist who fills in some of the gaps, but in terms of hard news, there’s not much out there. The ADN is based in Anchorage but I lived to the north in Fairbanks, where the biggest religion story last year was the installation of a new Catholic bishop.

Which is why I was a bit surprised to see a piece in the News-Miner, Fairbanks’ daily newspaper, about an unwanted Christian message at a local public school. It starts as follows:

FAIRBANKS -- A speaker who visited several Fairbanks public schools may have run afoul of federal law last week when he handed out religious ministry material to students during at least one all-school assembly.
The speaker, Randy Rich, visited most of the secondary schools in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. His talk was titled “Dare to Dream” and focused on conceiving and achieving life goals.
The speech itself avoided adhering to a specifically religious message, but some teachers expressed concern after Rich, following his speech, offered a ministry pamphlet to students that he reportedly billed as his football card from his time playing in the National Football League.


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New York Times takes another look at Ben Carson, offering perception without the snark

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Ben Carson may be the most openly religious candidate in the still-crowded GOP presidential field, but his poll numbers have recently taken a slide down into the single digits and he's facing a David-vs.-Goliath battle to hold on.

On Thursday, the New York Times gave us a view of what's happening behind the scenes in a campaign that once soared. As you would imagine, religion has a lot to do with this story and, suddenly, the tone of the coverage has become less snarky.

DES MOINES -- As Ben Carson got ready for a television interview beside the pulpit of a Pentecostal church this week, campaign aides asked his supporters to move across the room and sit in the empty pews behind him.
They wanted the campaign gathering to appear full, but few of the voters who had turned up for the event could hear the soft-spoken Mr. Carson explain how he is on the upswing in Iowa. Some wandered away in disappointment.
“I thought he would be louder,” said Jody Kunanan, who drove from Ankeny, Iowa, to see Mr. Carson. Still, she remains hopeful that he will somehow pull out a victory in the state next week despite polling in the single digits.
Such is life for the Carson campaign these days, where disappointment and frustration have overtaken last year’s sense of optimism. … “It is much better to do what’s right and lose an election than to do what’s politically expedient and lose your soul,” Mr. Carson said with a sense of resignation during a Tuesday night event that mixed a campaign pitch with a Christian prayer service.

We learn later that the Pentecostal church is an Assembly of God congregation. The piece goes on to say he’s hoping to pick up the evangelical Christians and social conservatives who once went for Sen. Rick Santorum and Gov. Mike Huckabee. There are quotes from religious Iowans about praying for the Carson campaign and information about how evangelical leaders are opting for Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz and how there’s a new leadership team in place after Carson's original team fell apart.


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