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Divine intervention: Survivor of motorcycle crash points to God, but questions remain

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The Knoxville News Sentinel has a gripping interview with a man who survived a motorcycle crash that killed his friend.

The East Tennessee newspaper's lede sets the scene:

Mice and chipmunks scurried across Kevin Diepenbrock's body as he lay immobile on the earth beneath "The Dragon." As a seasoned outdoorsman, he listened to the sounds of the night and knew something bigger lurked in the darkness – he feared a bear.
The day before, Diepenbrock and Phillip Polito, his riding companion and co-worker at a natural gas plant near Philadelphia, Pa., tumbled more than 100 feet down a rocky embankment after their motorcycles collided on a notorious stretch of U.S. Highway 129 near mile marker 4 called "The Dragon."
Polito, 29, of Perryville, Mo., was killed in the Oct. 15 crash, and the 41-year-old Diepenbrock — with two punctured lungs, 17 breaks in 12 ribs, and multiple spinal fractures — could barely move.
"Phil reminded me of me, a younger version of me," Diepenbrock said on Monday, sitting up in a chair at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. He was doing much better, he said: he had managed to walk a couple laps around the room that morning.
"There wasn't a whole lot of seriousness between us," he continued. "We'd always joke around and clown around and stuff like that. Phil could bring people together. He was just a character."
Due to the steepness of the embankment, Diepenbrock, Polito and the two motorcycles were flung out of sight, hidden from the many motorists who get a thrill from the road's sharp curves and scenic views. Every time Diepenbrock heard the exhaust of a passing motorcycle, he called out in desperation, but no one could hear his voice.

Go ahead and read the whole story, and the News Sentinel shares more harrowing details about the 30 hours that Diepenbrock spent beneath the embankment — with no cell phone signal and afraid he'd die before anyone found him. He recorded videos on his cell phone to say goodbye to his wife and parents.

What's religion got to do with it?


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The Los Angeles Times hears the voices: A nun, a dying woman and prayers that last forever

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On one level, it was a simple assignment. The metro desk at The Rocky Mountain News had received a call about a wedding that was sure to be poignant. The bride had cancelled her church rites several months in the future so that a simple ceremony could take place beside the deathbed of her father, whose cancer had taken a sudden turn for the worse.

My editor's instructions: Make me cry by the third paragraph or you're fired. His advice: Look for crucial details and let their voices tell the story. One symbolic detail was the copy of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" on the father's nightstand.

I thought about that story, which generated more letters from readers than anything else I wrote in Denver, when I read the Los Angeles Times feature that ran the other day with this headline: "People don’t want to die alone. With Sister Maria standing vigil, they've got company."

There isn't much I can say other than this: Listen to the voices and pay attention to the crucial details in this very human, yet deeply spiritual, story. Here is the overture:

Esperanza Calderon stared at Sister Maria Socorro with half-closed eyes. The nun hunched over her as she reclined in a living room chair, wrapped in a blanket and slowly but inexorably dying.

As the 70-year-old woman’s sister clasped her hand, Socorro held a book open across her palms. Together the three women prayed.

“Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof,” the woman followed along in Spanish, her voice fragile. “But one word from you would be enough to heal me.”

At the heart of the story is the humble work of the Servants of Mary.


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CNN scores hit with its well-sourced take on Donald Trump, guilt and the Gospel

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It’s rare that an article about Donald Trump’s faith can say something new and fresh, yet a recent CNN.com piece managed to pull that off. It helped that the reporter had some very good sources.

The headline was pretty apropos: “The guilt-free gospel of Donald Trump.” (A similar piece about Hillary might, as my colleague Jim Davis has suggested, have a headline like "Hillary Clinton offers gospel-free guilt.") 

There's been a lot written about the puzzle that is Donald Trump's religious beliefs, but this story manages to break some new ground less than three weeks from Election Day. 

(CNN) -- Donald Trump was ashamed -- contrite even -- as he spoke to Paula White hours after the video of him bragging about groping women was released.
"I heard it in his voice," said White, a Florida pastor who, outside of Trump's family, is his closest spiritual confidant. "He was embarrassed." ...
During his phone call with White, the GOP nominee said he regretted his remarks and was grateful for the evangelicals still supporting him. Later that evening, he publicly apologized in a video that was remarkably free from the usual rituals enacted by disgraced politicians.
Trump didn't stand beside his wife, Melania. He didn't ask for forgiveness. He didn't lament that he had fallen under sin's sway but that by God's grace and with his family's support he hoped to earn a second chance. In fact, Trump didn't mention faith, family or reconciliation at all.

The article goes on to cite several of Trump’s vapid responses to questions about religion.


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Yes, Jerry Falwell, Jr., spiked an anti-Trump column (Dang it, publishers do things like that)

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Several times a year, either to students at journalism conferences or in a classroom at The King's College in New York City, I deliver a lecture that I call "Up Against the Wall: Getting along with administrators at private colleges."

The big idea of this talk is that private schools are difficult, but not impossible, places in which to do traditional journalism -- because in a private school the administration is both the publisher of the newspaper and the "local government" that student journalists need to cover.

The goal, I stress, is to do as much journalism as possible, with an emphasis on hard-news reporting. Thus, one of my guidelines -- while serving as newspaper advisor at two Christian private schools -- was to address campus controversies with real reporting, as opposed to taking the easy way out and writing splashy opinion columns.

This brings us, of course, to news reports about Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., yanking an opinion column critical of Donald Trump out of the Liberty Champion. Here is the top of The Politico report on this development:

The president of Liberty University censored an article critical of Donald Trump, according to the sports editor of the school's official newspaper, the Liberty Champion.
The editor, Joel Schmieg, posted a statement on his Facebook account claiming it was Jerry Falwell Jr., the university's president and a Trump supporter, who spiked the column, which criticized Trump for lewd comments he made on a hot mic during a 2005 taping of "Access Hollywood."
"Yesterday I was told [Falwell] was not allowing me to express my personal opinion in an article I wrote for my weekly column in the Liberty Champion about Trump and his 'locker room talk,' " Schmieg wrote.
"I understand Joel's frustration regarding the situation," Cierra Carter, the opinion editor for the Liberty Champion, told POLITICO. "Our president has been very vocal with his opinions during this election season and we'd like that same privilege."


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'Kum Ba Yah': AP serves up a vanilla puff piece on Hillary Clinton's 'private' faith

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We've seen some rather shallow coverage of Hillary's Clinton faith this election cycle.

Here, here and here, for example.

Over the weekend, The Associated Press served up another such piece with this cheesy headline:

For Clinton, a daily dose of faith along with politic

AP's lede takes us straight into Clinton's private inbox (no, not that one):

At about 5 a.m. each day — maybe a little later on weekends — an email from the Rev. Bill Shillady arrives in Hillary Clinton's inbox.
The contents? A reading from Scripture. A devotional commentary. And a prayer. They're sometimes inspired by the headlines — focusing recently, for example, on the role of women in the Bible.
"I know she reads them, because she responds to me," says Shillady, executive director of the United Methodist City Society in New York. "We've had some interesting emails back and forth about some of the concepts."
It's no secret that Clinton is a lifelong Methodist. But Shillady — who officiated at Chelsea Clinton's wedding, led a memorial service for Clinton's mother, Dorothy Rodham, and gave the closing benediction at the Democratic National Convention — feels that many people don't really know how much her faith "is a daily thing."

Keep reading, and AP explains — with seemingly no need for actual sources — why Clinton keeps her faith so "private":


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New York Times says Pastor A.R. Bernard has evolved on marriage -- but how far?

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Every decade or two, The New York Times hires a conservative columnist.

There are exceptions to the rule, but most of the time these conservative columnists are what critics refer to as "New York Times conservatives." This means that, while they may be Republicans who lean to the right on economics and global issues, they lean left on the cultural issues that really matter -- such as abortion rights and gay rights.

Is there such a thing as a "New York Times conservative" when it comes to religious leaders, and Christian clergy to be specific?

I raise this question because the Times -- in its Sunday magazine -- has produced a long profile of the Rev. A.R. Bernard, a pastor, author and civic leader who has deserved this kind of attention from the Gray Lady for a long, long time. He is an African-American megachurch star whose clout and fame has completely transcended that community label.

The Times even refers to him as smart and stylish. You can clearly sense this respect in the overture.

One Saturday in mid-September, the Rev. A. R. Bernard took to the blue carpeted stage of the Christian Cultural Center, the 96,000-square-foot megachurch he built 16 years ago at the edge of Starrett City, in Brooklyn, with his usual accouterments: a smartphone, a bottle of water and a large glass marker board that he would soon cover in bullet points drawn from the playbooks of marketing specialists. Mr. Bernard, 63, is tall and slender, and on this day he wore a distressed black leather jacket, a white polo shirt, bluejeans and white tennis shoes -- casual Saturday attire. On Sunday, you would find him impeccably tailored in a light wool suit and tortoiseshell glasses, looking more like the banker he once was than the pastor of a congregation of nearly 40,000.

So why do this piece now? Yes, Bernard has a popular self-help book out at the moment -- "Four Things Women Want From a Man." There are even hints that he is pro-monogamy. Oh my. Hold that thought.


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Testaments Old and New? Bob Dylan's story is baptized in all of that, chapter and verse

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Want to watch a really interesting fight?

Put a bunch of Bob Dylan fans -- true believers -- in a room with a really good sound system. Make sure the flock includes old-guard Rolling Stone subscribers, a couple of academics with doctorates in literature, some born-again Christians and some Jews -- cultural Jews and Jews who practice the faith.

Ask this question: Is Bob Dylan (a) a Jew, (b) a Christian, (c) some other brand of believer, (d) a mystic who has faith in faith, period, or (e) all of the above.

Each person gets to play three songs to help make his or her case. Let the arguing commence. Yes, the arguments will only get louder after Dylan the poet receives his Nobel Prize.

I'll state my prejudice right up front. I have never interviewed Dylan, but I have talked to people close to him (including a family member) and here is what I think: I see no evidence has Dylan has lost faith in God. I see no evidence, in this public remarks, that he has lost faith in Jesus. I see lots of evidence that he has lost faith in Bob Dylan.

How do you write about Dylan without exploring the religious themes in his work? Beats me, but here is a New York Times super-short summary of his art, in a hard-news story about the Nobel Prize announcement:

Within a few years, Mr. Dylan was confounding the very notion of folk music, with ever more complex songs and moves toward a more rock ’n’ roll sound. In 1965, he played with an electric rock band at the Newport Folk Festival, provoking a backlash from fans who accused him of selling out.
After reports of a motorcycle accident in 1966 near his home in Woodstock, N.Y., Mr. Dylan withdrew further from public life but remained intensely fertile as a songwriter. ...
His 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” was interpreted as a supremely powerful account of the breakdown of a relationship, but just four years later the Christian themes of “Slow Train Coming” divided critics. His most recent two albums were chestnuts of traditional pop that had been associated with Frank Sinatra.

Christian themes? That's it? What about the Jewish roots of much of his art?


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There he goes again: The media's ongoing struggle to cover Tim Tebow's faith

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That Tim Tebow guy, he sure does present some challenges to mainstream sports reporters who may or may not be all that comfortable with religious faith.

In the latest episode of this long-running drama, Tebow -- who has been taking a shot at professional baseball -- played his first game in an Arizona Fall League, along with other major- and minor-league prospects. He made contact in his at bats, but went without a hit. Tebow was his normal humble, practical self in this ESPN story about the game:

"Obviously, I wish I could have done a little bit more at the plate and got a couple of hits," Tebow said after his AFL debut. "But it was fun. You've got to knock a little rust off. ... Each day is not just about the result. It's about: What are you learning? How are you improving? How are you going to be able to take that over into spring training?"

However, the real story on this day had nothing to do with baseball. Afterwards, Tebow lingered along the third-base line to sign autographs and talk with fans, from a much larger than normal fall-game crowd. That's when there was a medical emergency.

Let's walk through this scene a bit, as described down in the body of this ESPN report:

When one fan had a seizure, Tebow opted to stay with him until paramedics arrived.
"I just remember just being very disoriented,'' Brandon Berry told The Associated Press by phone. "Then I saw Tim."

Now here is the question asked by some readers: Did Tebow -- the son of medical missionaries -- stay with the man or did he pray with the man?


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Maybe Twitter helped some editors see bigger puzzle of Trump and evangelicals

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After months of "Evangelicals love Donald Trump!" coverage, it appears some major news organizations are starting to put together a few key pieces in the American Evangelical Protestant puzzle.

Is this because, in the wake of the very well-timed "hot mic" tape leak, more of these news reports are being written by veteran religion-beat professionals, as opposed to the tone-deaf folks in the political-journalism pack?

That is certainly a big part part of the picture.

Is it because of Twitter and other forms of social media, which allow editors to see (without needing to meet any of these religious nuts) evidence that the world of #NeverTrump #NeverHillary has existed on the cultural right since the start of the White House race? After all, how many pros in the Acela Zone follow developments in Utah or know about the Gospel Coalition? I'm amazed, even at this point in the game, how many journalists have never heard of the Rev. Russell Moore.

Before we get to the Sarah Pulliam Bailey round-up for today, it is significant that the Associated Press has produced a feature with the headline, "Why Do Evangelicals Prefer Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton?"

Of course, this headline should have included the word "some," as in "some evangelicals." Down in the body of the feature, AP made it rather clear that many -- perhaps even most -- religious conservatives are not planning to vote for Trump, but against you know who. This is not news to people who follow religion trends, but it will be surprising to some editors at daily newspapers:

Recent polls show the GOP presidential nominee drawing about 70 percent of the white evangelical vote. Although some evangelicals defended Trump's character, many couched their endorsements in pragmatic terms, focused on Trump's promise that he will appoint conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.


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