Marriage & Family

, , , , , , ,

Birth control and the Bible belt: The Atlantic says they're mutually exclusive

, , , , , , ,

You’ve got to hand this to The Atlantic; at least they are trying to do interesting religion stories, which is a lot more than I can say about certain other national magazines. And every so often, I think: They get it, as there’s a story that shows unusual insight.

More often than not, though, there’s a lot of insight all right, but it only involves one side of the issue. Such is their June 14 offering: “Can the IUD Revolution Come to the Bible Belt?” Being that copper IUDs were invented in the 1960s, this headline is telling us that the Bible Belt is a good half century behind the times.

There’s very little religion mentioned in the story. But, the main photo for the piece shows two hands holding an open book.

On one page is a T-shaped IUD. On the other is a similarly shaped wooden cross. That's subtle. Reading further:

AMARILLO, Texas -- In the dimly lit, one-room portable building, Abril Vazquez held up a beige, bulbous model of a human tricep. The high-schoolers had pushed their desks into a circle. Vazquez invited them to pass it around. When they pressed down into the fake flesh, they could feel the rigid shape of a rod about the size of a toothpick.
“What does that do again?” a boy asked. The kids ranged in age from 14 to 16, and some seemed like their minds were in the process of being blown.
“It's birth control,” said Vazquez, who works at a reproductive clinic in town. “It releases hormones into her body in small doses and in even amounts.”
“How does it get in there, Miss?” another boy said.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey Washington Post editors: Why is Donald Trump in trouble in Utah? Think about it

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For many elite journalists, it has been the big, nagging existential question for more than a year: Who is to blame for the rise of Donald Trump?

For starters, his popularity must have something to do with a revolt among blue-collar and Middle Class white Americans. The press seems to get that, in part because this trend can also be linked to some of the supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But from the get go, journalists have been fascinated by the fact that some religious conservatives have -- no matter how outrageous the past actions of the proud playboy called The Donald -- been willing to forgive Trump's many sins against faith and family.

In other words, when in doubt, blame all those yahoos on the Religious Right.

The problem, of course, was the evidence that the more religious conservatives, you know, spent time in pews and pulpits the less likely they were to support Trump, especially with any sense of enthusiasm. The split between "cultural evangelicals" and the leadership class in their churches kept showing up in the exit polls. And what about Catholics? And Mormons? Is there a reason that someone like Mitt Romney is the face of the #NeverTrump world?

The bottom line: How can journalists cover the "lesser of two evils" story that dominates this year's White House race without weighing the moral and religious issues linked to that dilemma? What kinds of voters are in the most pain, right now, as they contemplate a choice between Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton?

This brings me to two items from The Washington Post that I am convinced are linked. It appears that the political editors at the Post don't see it that way.

Let's start with this headline at the reported blog called The Fix: "This new Utah poll is amazingly bad for Donald Trump." At the heart of the story is a truly shocking set of numbers, if you know anything about GOP life.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Bold M.Z. offers New York Times Magazine a lively update on Lutheran sex

, , , , , , , ,

I don't know. Maybe there are elite journalists who have trouble understanding that it is actually possible to put the words "Lutheran" and "libertarian" -- with a small "l" -- in the same sentence? Maybe that is why M.Z. "GetReligionista emerita" Hemingway is a bit of a mystery in some blue zip codes.

Anyway, it was fun to read what amounts to the CliffsNotes edition of the "Talk" interview -- "Mollie Hemingway Hates How Feminists Talk About Sex" -- that Ana Marie Cox of The New York Times Magazine did recently did with the one and only M.Z.

Via email, I asked M.Z. if there was any way that the public might be able to see a full transcript of this affair. Alas, she only has her half of the 90-minute talk, so that's a "no." But what we have here is lively enough.

The interview, as you can see in the screenshot above, starts with the obligatory question about Hemingway being a conservative who doesn't think highly of one Donald Trump. What a shock. All conservatives are alike, of course, and if you've met one then you've met them all. I mean, how can anyone follow M.Z. on Twitter for, oh, an hour and not see the Grand Canyon that yawns between her cultural and moral views and those of Citizen Trump?

Anyway, GetReligion readers will want to read this interview for themselves. However, I will offer this slice as an introduction, for obvious reasons:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

A family of 10, a 25,000-mile road trip and a ghost the size of the Grand Canyon

, , , ,

Why?

It's such a crucial question, particularly for journalists.

One of the first lessons young reporters learn is the importance of the five W's and H. The five W's are, of course, who, what, when, where and, yes, why. The H stands for how. Answer those six questions in a news story, and you've got a good start, as every student who has ever taken Journalism 101 knows.

Which leads us to a front-page feature in today's Dallas Morning News on a family of 10 who crammed into a 30-foot camper during a yearlong road trip to advocate for foster care:

The Kendrick family traded their 3,000-square-foot Melissa home for a 30-foot camper for a year, and visited every state in the continental U.S., parts of Canada and Mexico. They outran hurricanes, survived frigid temperatures — and potty-trained the youngest of their nine children.
They also ran out of gas — about 1,000 feet away from a filling station on the last day of their trip.
“We had been good about keeping it filled during the trip, but on that last day, it came back to bite us,” Bruce Kendrick said.
So why did Bruce, 35, and his wife Denise, 36, drive 25,000 miles with eight of their nine children?
Eight years ago, the Kendricks founded Embrace, a nonprofit that provides aid and resources to at-risk, fostered and adopted children and their families, as well as faith-based children’s homes.
“We got so many requests for workshops that we said, ‘OK, let’s knock it all out in a year,’” Denise Kendrick said.

Way up high, the Morning News asks the why question.

But here's my sincere question: Does the Dallas newspaper ever really provide the answer? Do readers ever find out — at a most basic level — why providing loving homes for children is such a passion for Bruce and Denise Kendrick? 


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

News in the 2015 Southern Baptist statistics: Baptisms, babies and crucial ethnic churches

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

As you would expect, reading the Religious News Service story about the continuing decline in Southern Baptist Convention membership statistics is rather different than reading the Baptist Press feature on the same trends.

This is exactly as it should be, since one is a secular wire service and the other is a denominational press office. However, it's interesting to note that neither of these stories buried the bad-news lede and both included interesting secondary issues that could point toward important news angles in the future.

Truth is, the slow decline of the SBC is several news stories rolled up into one.

Let's look at the very short RNS story first, starting with the hard-news lede:

(RNS) The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the country, but it continues to lose members and baptize fewer people each year.
The latest statistics, compiled by LifeWay Christian Resources from church reports, show membership has dropped by more than 204,000, down 1.3 percent to 15.3 million members in 2015. It’s the ninth year in a row there has been a membership decline. Baptisms, which have declined eight of the last 10 years, totaled 295,212, a 3.3 percent drop, researchers said Tuesday (June 7).

So what is happening here? For starters the RNS report notes that another doctrinally conservative denomination -- the charismatic Assemblies of God -- experienced some growth in 2015.

This raises questions about the "Why?" element in this news story.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Think pieces for a finals weekend: The extended Curry family talks hoops and faith

, , , , , , , ,

Everyone is still trying to figure out Steph Curry and, you know, What. It. All. Means.

In this case the word "All" refers to Curry's life off the court as well as his often transcendent powers on it.

Of course, there's the basketball player that journalists need to deal with. But then there's Curry the man, Curry the black man and Curry the maybe not-black-enough man. This leads to Curry the husband, Curry the father, Curry the family man and, in a few cases, Curry the son of disciplined Christian parents who taught him right and wrong, as well as that lightning flash jumper (care of an NBA sharpshooter faith).

This week I ran into two very different stories that set out to deal with the mystery of Steph Curry and company.

Here is your challenge. Look at the two excerpts. Which of the following is an ESPN essay and which is from the magazine of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes?

First, here are two samples from a piece called "The Revolution," that starts with a focus on Steph's parents, Dell and Sonya Curry.

... Watching their highlight-reel child lead a once-woebegone franchise to great heights can be exhausting. Dell, a TV analyst for the Charlotte Hornets and a longtime NBA veteran, and Sonya, the owner and headmaster of a Christian Montessori school, live in Charlotte, North Carolina. Both their sons play for West Coast NBA teams (25-year-old Seth just completed his first full season with the Sacramento Kings). So whenever at least one of the boys is playing a West Coast night game and Dell isn’t traveling with the Hornets, he and Sonya stay up late to watch the games live, often toggling between TVs in separate rooms. A late tip in the Pacific time zone can mean Dell and Sonya aren’t falling asleep until 1:30 or 2 a.m.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Sensing a ghost on NPR: So why did that white DC suburban family move to Anacostia?

, , , , , ,

Truth be told, it's hard for your GetReligionistas to do much in the way of blogging about news reports that show up in media settings other than digital print or in video reports that make it into the sprawling universe called YouTube.

Take visual media, for example. When it comes to covering television news reports, we have found that the software gods rarely get along. It is rather hard, in some online platforms, to embed videos from the major video newsrooms. We are talking Tower of Babel level coding issues here, unless something -- like I said -- ends up on YouTube. Sigh.

And then there is radio. Luckily, NPR has a fantastic website that handles most of its content in a multi-platform manner, offering news consumers print versions of reports or transcripts of what went out on the air. That really helps.

But here is a case in which a faithful GetReligion reader who lives in DC Beltway-land thought she heard a religion-news ghost slip past during a feature on WAMU (American University Radio) in Washington, D.C.

If you follow the link she sent us, you hit a wonderful audio-only "Anacostia Unmapped" feature with this headline: "Meet The New Neighbors." ... You really need to listen to this piece in order to "hear the ghost." So click here and do so, please.

OK, what was the key moment?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Washington Post reports: Hey, not all parents with lots of kids are fundamentalist wackos!

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oh my. Folks at The Washington Post have just published an interesting story about non-religious large families that raises all kinds of questions. If you thought journalists had run out of valid new angles for coverage of the whole Pew Forum "none" phenomenon, this piece will convince you otherwise.

Nevertheless, there is a religion-angle problem -- maybe two -- in this story, which ran under the headline, "Stop assuming that families with lots of children are religious."

For starters, the Post team did a pretty good job of telling readers what parents such as Timothy and Kyla Buller do NOT believe. However, the story makes little or no attempt to describing what they DO believe. Hold that thought.

The story also managed, creating an LOL moment for this GetReligionista, to combine two of this blog's least favorite nasty and shallow labels into one all-purpose journalistic insult. Here is what that looks like:

As younger adults elect “none” as their religious preference more and more often, the number of large “none” families in the country may well rise.
But if large non-religious families are getting more common, Tracey Stoner hasn’t noticed it yet. “It’s hard to find support as a large family that’s not religious,” she said.
Raising seven children who range in age from 6 months to 16 years old, Stoner has sought advice in Facebook groups for large families. But the members seem to be “95 percent Christians,” she said, often with fundamentalist ideologies.

You got it! The Post managed to use both the journalism F-word and an ISIS-era application of the word "ideology" at the same time!


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , ,

Houston Chronicle team shows (again) that it just doesn't 'get' the struggles at Baylor

, , , , , , , , , , ,

How many Southern Baptists are there in the greater Houston area, out of a population of four to six million people?

This is not an easy question to answer, just poking around online. It doesn't help, of course, that Texas Baptists are a rather divided bunch and things have been that way for several decades. But one thing is sure, there are hundreds of Southern Baptist congregations in the area and several of them are, even in Donald Trump terms, YYHHUUGGEE.

Now, the important journalism question -- when looking at Houston Chronicle coverage of Baylor University issues -- is whether there are any Southern Baptists, or even former Southern Baptists, who work on this newspaper's copy desk or in its suite of management offices.

Can I get a witness?!? Is there anybody there who knows anything about events in recent Southern Baptist life and how they affect the news?

It would appear that the answer is "no." I base that judgement on the following passage in a rather bizarre Chronicle report about the current Baylor crisis (it's much bigger than a football crisis) about sexual assaults involving Baylor students.

Baylor is the nation’s largest Baptist school and has deep Christian roots. As the university has moved into the modern era -- allowing dancing on campus, adding non-Baptist board members and, most recently, removing a long-standing ban on “homosexual acts” -- it has angered some Baptist leaders. In recent years, school officials have acted to dilute the influence of the state’s Baptist convention. In return, the convention has cut its financial support by millions.
Baylor leaders must walk a fine line.


Please respect our Commenting Policy