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Church of the New York Times keeps preaching its own brand of faith

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It's time for another "Kellerism" update, as The New York Times continues its efforts to highlight religious institutions with doctrines that are unacceptable to the newsroom's theologians and, perhaps, the U.S. Department of Justice. This time, the drama shifts out West, where another Christian college community is trying to find a way to live out its faith commitments.

NEWBERG, Ore. -- A growing number of openly transgender students have forced schools around the country to address questions so basic that they were rarely asked just a few years ago, much less answered: What defines a person's gender, and who gets to decide?

A small Christian college here, George Fox University, has become the latest front in this fight, refusing to recognize as male a student who was born anatomically female. The student calls himself a man, and as of April 11, when a state circuit court legally changed his sex, the State of Oregon agrees.

But George Fox University sees him as a woman, and it prohibits unwed students from living with anyone of the opposite sex.

Notice the question that was not asked, in an alleged news story that opens with an editorial assertion: If a private -- as opposed to state -- college is a doctrinally defined voluntary association, what happens when a student decides that he or she does not believe those doctrines? Think of it this way: If a student at a Muslim college decided to convert to Christianity, thus contradicting the covenant he voluntarily signed when he came to the campus, would the college be able to say that this student had to accept the school's doctrinal authority?


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The Atlantic: What happened to all those Catholic liturgical rites?

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Long-time GetReligion readers, do you remember that typology that a wise, older priest -- a veteran of life inside the DC Beltway -- gave me a few years ago that proposed that there are essentially four kinds of American Catholic voters?

It went something like this (amended a bit):

* Ex-Catholics. Solid for the Democrats. GOP has no chance (unless these ex-Catholics have converted, as many have, to conservative Protestant flocks)

* Cultural Catholics who may go to church a few times a year. This may be an undecided voter -- check out that classic Atlantic Monthly tribes of American religion piece -- depending on what is happening with the economy, foreign policy, etc. Leans to Democrats.

* Sunday-morning American Catholics. This voter is a regular in the pew and may even play some leadership role in the parish. This is the Catholic voter that is really up for grabs, the true swing voter that the candidates are after.

* The “sweats the details” Catholic who goes to confession. Is active in the full sacramental life of the parish and almost always backs the Vatican on matters of faith and practice. This is where the GOP has made its big gains in recent decades, but this is a very small slice of the American Catholic pie.

Now, I know that this will be hard, but try to strip the political content out of that typology (note, if you will, that I did not click the "politics" box in the categories list). Focus on the issues of religious discipline and practice of the ancient sacraments of an ancient church.

Think about the sacrament of marriage.


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Mariam goes free, at last, while some questions linger

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Other than editors trying to figure out the correct spelling of her name, there were very few journalistic questions this past week when the long-suffering Mariam Ibraheem Ishag was finally spirited out of Sudan to freedom.

Several people sent me notes to coverage of this event, with one stating the obvious in a note that said: "Okay, so nothing to do with press a critique -- I've just got to share with you the news! Hallelujah!!!!"

However, I did notice two rather interesting wrinkles in some of the coverage. The first was rather subtle and the second was -- well -- just a puzzling hole in many stories.

First, there was the issue of how to describe her "crime." Here is the top of the solid report in The New York Times.

ROME -- Mariam Ibraheem Ishag, a Christian woman whose death sentence in Sudan for refusing to renounce her faith set off an international protest, arrived in Rome ... to a hero’s welcome and a private audience with Pope Francis.

The pope spent a half-hour speaking with Ms. Ishag; her husband, Daniel Wani, who is an American citizen; and their two young children, Maya, born in prison just days after Ms. Ishag’s conviction two months ago for apostasy, and Martin, a toddler. Apostasy carries a death sentence in Sudan, where President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has imposed Islamic law.

Here's the question: Is it accurate to bluntly state that apostasy carries a death penalty under "Islamic law" or is the matter more complex than that?

However, I did notice two rather interesting wrinkles in some of the coverage. The first was rather subtle and the second was — well — just a puzzling hole in many stories.

First, there was the issue of how to describe her “crime.” Here is the top of the solid report in The New York Times.


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What is this? Forbes goes to bat for Eden Foods critics

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Several years ago, your GetReligionistas created a new item in our archives list of news "categories." As faithful readers know, we focus on hard-news material produced by mainstream news organizations. The only time that we write about editorial columns, op-ed pieces, academic essays or the like is when they focus directly on issues in our home turf -- religion-beat news.

However, every now and then people would send us URLs for items published by religious wire services, denominational magazines or non-profit sources linked to religious causes that -- from their point of view -- focused on a valid news story that wasn't getting mainstream-press ink. After pondering this dilemma for a while, we began using a "Got news?" headline slug and created a new category.

Now it's time for another category, one that we have been pondering for quite some time. The headline slug is, as you see above, "What is this?" We seriously considered "WTF?" but decided that didn't mesh well with the sober tone that we strive to maintain around here. I mean, other than Jim Davis and his wild puns, and Father George Conger and his off-beat illustrations, and ... You get the point.

So what is the point of this new category? What is this new niche?

One of our main goals, here at GetReligion, is to defend the basic values of what historians have long called the "American" model of the press, with its commitment to accuracy, fairness and even balance in coverage of the news (especially on hot-button topics). The alternative is often called the "European" model of the press, with editors and reporters producing stories that fit into an editorial template that supports the publication's political slant.

In other words, these publications are biased and the editors admit that right up front. No one expects balanced coverage of social issues at Rolling Stone or World magazine, to name two publications with radically different moral perspectives.

But, to cut to the chase, what about The New York Times?


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A little more context on that charismatic pastor, please

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Your friendly neighborhood GetReligionistas always love story tips from readers.

I appreciated this one from Matt Carney in my home state of Oklahoma:

@bobbyross did you happen to catch Sunday's Tulsa World A-1? Had a nice profile of Billy Joe Daugherty's son taking over the family business

— matt (@OKmattcarney) July 14, 2014

I had not seen it.

The top of the story:

Paul Daugherty will turn 29 on Aug. 27, three days after he becomes the senior pastor of Victory Christian Center, one of Tulsa’s largest churches. His parents, Sharon Daugherty and the late Billy Joe Daugherty, were about the same age when they founded the church 33 years ago, and watched it quickly grow to one of Tulsa’s leading charismatic churches.

He will oversee a ministry that draws 7,600 weekly worshipers to its state-of-the-art facility at 7700 S. Lewis Ave., runs an international Bible school network of 1,542 schools in nearly 100 nations, and operates a major Christian school and the Tulsa Dream Center, an outreach to the north Tulsa community.

And he will remain in a neighborhood that has been central to his entire life.

I'll second Carney's opinion: It was a nice profile. Maybe too nice, but then we journalists tend to be contrarians.


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The New York Times warns: Evangelistic speech near the National Mall!

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Are there any GetReligion readers out there who remember the mini-media storm back in 1999 when the Southern Baptist Convention published a series of booklets to guide church members in their prayers for the conversion of members of other faiths?

As you would expect, some faith leaders were quite offended by this, especially Jews who -- readers with really long memories will recall -- had previously been involved with a Southern Baptist or two about issues linked to prayers and Judaism.

I went to an event in 1999 at a Washington, D.C., think tank in when some Jewish leaders dialogued with Southern Baptists, in a very constructive manner, about the wisdom of these guides, the centrality of evangelism to Baptist theology, etc., etc.

In the question-and-answer session, a Washington Post scribe asked, in a rather blunt manner, why Southern Baptists were allowed to print and circulate these kinds of materials.

I was stunned. So was the very liberal rabbi in the chair next to me. I asked a question that went something like this: "Did I just hear someone from the Washington Post question whether evangelistic speech is covered by the First Amendment?" The Reconstructionist rabbi said, "I think that's what just happened."

Why do I bring up this story? Well, this is what I thought of when I hit an interesting passage in a New York Timesstory about the Green family (of Hobby Lobby fame) and its attempt to build a massive Bible museum on prime land in Washington, D.C.

Here is the key pasage from the report:


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Concerning the latest (alleged) interview with Pope Francis

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So how would you like to be a press officer for the Vatican these days? Honestly, they should be getting combat pay. Here is the question that I have been asking, during the latest round of the game called, "What did the pope say and who says that he said it?"

In terms of basic journalism craft and ethics, what is an "interview"? Here is the top of a Reuters report that shows why I am asking this:

ROME, July 13 (Reuters) -- About 2 percent of Roman Catholic clerics are sexual abusers, an Italian newspaper on Sunday quoted Pope Francis as saying, adding that the pontiff considered the crime "a leprosy in our house".

But the Vatican issued a statement saying some parts of a long article in the left-leaning La Repubblica were not accurate, including one that quoted the pope as saying that there were cardinals among the abusers.

The article was a reconstruction of an hour-long conversation between the pope and the newspaper's founder, Eugenio Scalfari, an atheist who has written about several past encounters with the pope.

And what precisely is a "reconstruction of an hour-long conversation"? Here is some additional information:

The Vatican issued a statement noting Scalfari's tradition of having long conversations with public figures without taking notes or taping them, and then reconstructing them from memory. Scalfari, 90, is one of Italy's best known journalists.

While acknowledging that the conversation had taken place, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi issued a statement saying that not all the phrases could be attributed "with certainty" to the pope. Lombardi said that, in particular, a quote attributed to the pope saying cardinals were among the sex abusers was not accurate and accused the paper of trying to "manipulate naive readers."

So this was a private conversation and the journalist did not -- perhaps as an homage to Truman Capote -- take notes or use an audio recorder. Instead, he left the hour-long conversation and then, with his razor-sharp (we can only hope) 90-year-old memory, he "reconstructed" the verbatim quotations from this event.


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Cruz bounces back, with the help of family and, maybe, faith

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There is a reason sports fans see so many media images of professional athletes wearing those omnipresent Beats headphones in locker rooms.

Most athletes these days use music as a way to get pumped up before games and then to cool down afterwards. The problem, of course, is that the typical locker room is going to have a lot of trouble coming up with a common play list for what will end up at high volume on the big speakers. Techno, rap, country, heavy metal and old-school R&B don't mix all that well. Thus, many athletes crank things up on headphones.

However, there are stars who have earned enough respect, veterans who have enough clout, that they get to play their music on their own sound systems at their lockers or even over the house systems in the weight room. Other players cut them some slack, because they've earned it (or they demand it). To one degree or another, everyone else in the room is going to know that this athlete needs that music. Often it's a symbolic thing, a link to particular culture or life experience. And that's that.

Thus, I noted with interest the following reference (a passing reference, with no follow-up information) in a Baltimore Sun article about the new shooting star in the Orioles locker room -- slugger Nelson Cruz.

Cruz quickly has become a part of the Orioles family in Baltimore.

He appreciates that his teammates let him play his Christian music in the workout room, even though O’Day joked that his singing is lacking. Cruz’s Twitter feed includes photos of him and fellow Latin players, like Ubaldo Jimenez, Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop, out at dinner together on the road.

Now that's interesting. There are some high-profile religious believers in that locker room (another former Texas Rangers slugger, Chris Davis, leaps to mind), but I had no idea that Christian faith played a role in the dramatic up-and-down drama surrounding Cruz. I wanted to know more about that. Honest, he cranks up Christian music in the team weight room? Outrageous.

I still want to know more about that. Even after yet another giant Sun feature on Cruz that ran Sunday on A1, instead of the sports page.

Why would a faith-angle matter? Well, for starters Cruz has lived a rather complex moral life in recent years. The story ran under this complex double-decker headline:


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Hero or troubled soul: Dallas pastor takes his life

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Right from the start, a long Page 1 story in The Dallas Morning News portrays the Rev. Charles Moore as a hero.

The headline on the weekend story:

In dying act, minister hoped to inspire social justice

The top of the 1,750-word story:

From segregated churches of East Texas to destitute slums of India, the Rev. Charles Moore fought for human rights.

He delivered sermons about racism and sexism. He stood vigil against the death penalty. He went on a hunger strike to protest discrimination against gays and lesbians.

But during retirement, the United Methodist minister questioned whether he had done enough. He saw the broken world around him.

So how did Moore — according to the Morning News — take his final, courageous stand?:

On a Monday afternoon in June, Moore, 79, drove from his home in Allen to Grand Saline, the town of his childhood about 70 miles east of Dallas. He traveled along country roads near fields of wildflowers and grazing cattle. In a strip-mall parking lot, outside a dollar store, beauty salon and pharmacy, he knelt down, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire.

As flames engulfed him, he screamed and tried to stand. Witnesses rushed to put out the blaze with shirts, bottled water and, finally, an extinguisher.

He was flown unconsciousto a Dallas hospital, where he died from burn injuries.

Keep reading, and the Dallas newspaper uses Moore's own terminology — self-immolation — to describe the nature of his death:


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