Politics

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In Russia coverage, the National Prayer Breakfast is a convenient whipping boy

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I covered the National Prayer Breakfast once or twice, which sounds glamorous, but it was a thankless job in that the organizers loathed the media and the only sure way to get access was to be part of the White House press pool.

One rises at some ungodly hour to get to downtown Washington, D.C., through the security at the White House and into the press room, where we were all crammed into three black SUVs at the end of a long line of cars headed for the Washington Hilton.

Reporters were ordered into one corner of the room, then told to leave as soon as the president took his leave. This was confounding in that I’d been told I needed to report on the main speaker, which the president doesn’t always linger to listen to. During my first time at this event, as the pool headed out the back door, I leapt into the audience where I grabbed an empty seat. The Secret Service was not happy with me.

You see, I knew that the real story of the gathering wasn’t so much the massive breakfast, but all the wheeling and dealing going on before and afterwards. A lot of foreign officials showed up, with the mistaken impression they could get face time with the president, while a small army of people did their best to introduce these foreign contingents to Christianity. 

Which is why I was pleased to see the recent New York Times story on the machinations behind the breakfast. Unfortunately other publications have chimed in by alleging that what’s behind the breakfast is actually a right-wing conspiracy involving the Russians.

The truth is more complex. Here is the top of the Times piece:

WASHINGTON -- With a lineup of prayer meetings, humanitarian forums and religious panels, the National Prayer Breakfast has long brought together people from all over the world for an agenda built around the teachings of Jesus.

But there on the guest list in recent years was Maria Butina, looking to meet high-level American officials and advance the interests of the Russian state, and Yulia Tymoshenko, a Ukranian opposition leader, seeking a few minutes with President Trump to burnish her credentials as a presidential prospect back home.


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Political speeches? Hey AP! This NFL Hall of Fame class stopped just short of giving an altar call

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GetReligion readers know that I am a big sports fan, even during these days of NFL confusion. I lived in greater Baltimore for 12 years and followed the Ravens quite closely.

So, yes, I watched the NFL Hall of Fame speeches the other day, in part because Ray "God's linebacker" Lewis was a first-ballot pick and he spoke at the end of the program.

Now, you knew that Lewis was going to go into full-tilt preacher mode when given this kind of platform. Right? 

So imagine my rather cynical surprise when I picked up my Knoxville News Sentinel the next day and saw this headline on the Associated Press story covering this event: "Hall of Fame speeches get political." That was a shorter version of the AP's own headline: "Hall of Fame speeches get political in Canton, Chattanooga."

Ah come on. Yes, there was obvious political implications to many of the remarks. I get that.

But several of the speakers packed their speeches with so much Godtalk that I thought the NFL police were going to have to rush in to prevent them from ending with an altar call. Many of the most striking remarks, in terms of politics, were mixed with religious content. I mean, Lewis -- in a plea for safer schools -- even talked about prayer in American schools.

This was a classic example of one of GetReligion's major themes: "Politics is real. Religion? Not so much." Here is the AP overture, which is long -- but essential. You have to see how hard AP worked to stress the political over the spiritual.

CANTON, Ohio (AP) -- Just as the demonstrations of players during the national anthem have become a means of expression for NFL players, the stage at the Hall of Fame inductions often turns into a political platform. It certainly did Saturday night.

Ray Lewis did so with his words, and Randy Moss with his tie.

There even were political tones with a different target 600 miles away during Terrell Owens’ speech at his personal celebration of entering the pro football shrine.


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She kept stacks of journals: Bill Hybels drama enters a shocking new #MeToo chapter

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Is there any phrase that investigators -- in police departments, newsrooms or even in churches -- fear more than "he said-she said"?

We are talking about accusations in which one person insists that something happened. The only other person with first-person, direct knowledge of what happened is the person on the other side of the alleged incident. This person denies the facts presented by the accuser.

What is the investigator supposed to do?

Here is a hint of where we are going in this post: One of the best editors I ever had would always say something like the following, whenever I brought in a story in which crucial voices disputed what happened behind closed doors. This editor would say: Is there anything on paper? Can we prove that one or more of these people shared this information with others?

Hold that thought.

The big story, in this case, is that there has been another #MeToo development linked to the painful exit of the Rev. Bill Hybels, the founder of the massive Willow Creek Church outside of Chicago -- one of the most influential institutions in "moderate" or even "progressive" evangelicalism. Here is the dramatic double-decker headline at The New York Times:

He’s a Superstar Pastor. She Worked for Him and Says He Groped Her Repeatedly.

Bill Hybels built an iconic evangelical church outside Chicago. A former assistant says that in the 1980s, he sexually harassed her 

The story opens with this anecdote:

SOUTH BARRINGTON, Ill. -- After the pain of watching her marriage fall apart, Pat Baranowski felt that God was suddenly showering her with blessings.

She had a new job at her Chicago-area megachurch, led by a dynamic young pastor named the Rev. Bill Hybels, who in the 1980s was becoming one of the most influential evangelical leaders in the country.


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How much do you trust Pope Francis? Here's why death penalty debate is heating up

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How much do you trust Pope Francis? Here's why death penalty debate is heating up

St. Pope John Paul II condemned the death penalty and urged government leaders to end it. 

Pope Benedict XVI did the same, in language just as strong as that used by his beloved predecessor.

Now Pope Francis has gone one step further, saying that the church can now say that the faith of the ages has evolved, allowing the Catholic Catechism to condemn the death penalty in strong, but somewhat unusual language. Is use of the death penalty now a mortal sin, like abortion and euthanasia? Well, the word is that it is "inadmissible."

This is, of course, a major news story and, no surprise, host Todd Wilken and I discussed the early press coverage in this week's "Crossroads" podcast. Click here to tune that in.

But what does this change really mean?

Did Pope Francis simply take the work of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI one step further? Thus, Catholic traditionalists can chill. 

Or is this an example of Pope Francis the progressive, moving one piece on the Jesuit chessboard to prepare for further shifts in the future on other doctrines? If the church was wrong on the death penalty for 2,000 years, who knows what doctrine will evolve next?

So, is this doctrinal shift a big deal or not? 

It appears, after looking at lots of commentary on social media, that the answer to that question depends on whether someone trusts Pope Francis or not. 


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Death penalty doctrine: Francis builds on insights of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI?

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Have you ever noticed that the amount of news coverage granted to the writings of Pope Francis tends to rise or fall based on the degree to which his pronouncements mesh with the editorial pages of The New York Times?

Notice, please, that I said the "amount" of coverage, not the "quality." This pope has made important, and complex, statements on hot-button topics that led to the spilling of oceans of ink and pixels in coverage that missed the point of his words. His comments defending traditional Catholic teachings -- think gender, for example -- often draw little or no response.

Then again, who am I to judge?

The news, today, is that Rome has changed the Catholic Catechism on an important issue linked to the defense of life, from conception to natural death. We are, of course, talking about the death penalty (confession: which I have always opposed, with no exceptions).

So far, the coverage has been good -- since this is a change welcomed by the religious left. However, let me note some information that really needs to make it into the coverage, to show readers how this change came to pass. So, here is a question: Who said the following?

"A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary."

That would be the late St. Pope John Paul II, of course, in a 1999 sermon. That wasn't the only time that he signaled that the death penalty didn't align with pro-life doctrines.

Did the words of John Paul II make it into the early coverage that you read?

I am pleased to note that the evolving Times story about this issue now includes the following. Yes, this language pushes a political button, but that button is real:


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News mystery: Why so little interest in 'mainline' Protestants' liberal politicking?

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News mystery: Why so little interest in 'mainline' Protestants' liberal politicking?

The dominant religion theme in the U.S. news media across the past two years, without question, has been political fealty to Donald Trump and his works among grassroots evangelical Protestants and a like-minded coterie of old-guard clergy celebrities.   

In the same period, “mainline” Protestant groups have been ardent in politicking for leftward and anti-Trump causes, perhaps even moreso than with the typical evangelical congregation.

You would barely know this, if at all, from reading or viewing most news media reports.  

Take the United Methodist Church (UMC), America’s second-largest Protestant body with 7.7 million members and millions more in overseas jurisdictions. Yes, the UMC is much in the news but only regarding its internal doctrinal dispute over whether to liberalize LGBTQ policy, per last week’s Guy Memo. 

UMC proclamations come from the General Board of  Church and Society, whose office hard by Capitol Hill is more than strangely warmed (to quote John Wesley) about President Donald Trump. The board has issued repeated directives urging churchgoers to phone or e-mail protests against Trump's actions to members of the House and Senate. (Years ago its former leader Jim Winkler, now National Council of Churches president, called for impeachment of President George W. Bush, a fellow Methodist, over his war policy.)        

Recently, U.S. religious bodies across the board denounced the Trump policy, now  rescinded, of separating “undocumented” immigrants from their children. But the UMC went further, urging funding cuts for immigration enforcement and border protection, and an immediate halt to all arrests and detentions of undocumented border-crossers.

The Methodists were aggrieved at the U.S. Supreme Court for upholding Trump’s travel ban against seven nations, five of them majority Muslim. Rejecting the court’s reasoning and the government’s national-security rationale, the church charged that the policy “institutionalizes Islamophobia, religious intolerance, and racism.”  



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Why Texas Sen. Ted Cruz getting a haircut wasn't just news — it was, believe it or not, religion news

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Dude.

Religion stories pop up in the most unexpected places. For example, the barber chair.

That's where U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz found himself over the weekend as the Texas Republican campaigned for votes in his re-election bid against Congressman Beto O'Rourke, Cruz's well-financed Democratic challenger.

In the nation's most expensive Senate race, perhaps it's no surprise that Cruz getting a haircut — "and an earful," as the Dallas Morning News described it — made headlines.

But was there really a religion angle in the snip, snip, snip?

Believe it or not, yes, as noted by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Bud Kennedy.

Check this off as example 3,127,629 why the religion beat is never boring.

Also, give credit to the Texas media who covered Cruz's retail politics (which later included Texas barbecue, which beats anything cooked in Tennessee, as I'm sure tmatt will attest) for not missing the faith angle.

The name of the barber shop offered the first clue: It's called Kingdom Cuts.


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Hey First Baptist Dallas: Your pastor's a real dolt, but your church isn't all that terrible, paper says

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The Dallas Morning News is no fan of Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas.

Or to be more precise, the newspaper's Metro columnists are no fans of Jeffress, the Southern Baptist megachurch leader best known as one of President Donald Trump's key evangelical defenders.

But given that the paper tends to cover Jeffress in the form of opinionated columns, it's frequently difficult to make much distinction between the paper itself and its columnists.

For those interested in impartial news coverage, that's a problem. We at GetReligion, of course, advocate for clearly marking news and opinion content so that readers know which is which. The Dallas Morning News does a reasonable job of that, running columnists' photos with their pieces as opposed to using normal bylines.

However, what if all the coverage a paper ever provides about a key public figure comes in the form of opinion — the kind of opinion (read: metro column) run on news pages beside regular news stories? In that case, couldn't a reader reasonably ask if the paper really offers impartial coverage of that person? I'll explain more in a moment.

First, some key background: In 2016, we noted it here at GetReligion when Dallas Morning News columnist Robert Wilonksy declared that "Robert Jeffress belongs in Dallas' past, not our future." At the same time, Wilonsky was doing regular news reporting on Jeffress, which seemed to be a conflict. Later that same year, we pointed it out when the Dallas paper couldn't even get the books of the Bible right when quoting Jeffress.

Now, First Baptist Dallas is celebrating its 150th anniversary. Given what a major player Jeffress and that church have become on the national stage, one might expect coverage by the Dallas paper. And indeed, the paper had a big piece on its Metro section cover. But it wasn't a news story. It was a column by Sharon Grigsby.

In fact, it was the most positive story I've read about First Baptist in the Dallas Morning News (feel free to send me links if I've missed something).

The headline sings the church's praises:

The light still shines from First Baptist Dallas

But the subhead makes it clear the writer doesn't like Jeffress' brand of politics:

Church's value speaks louder than pastor's political clamor


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Friday Five: Trump Baptists, Roe v. Wade detractors, Catholic sex abuse, top Bible app and more

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One of the most talked-about religion stories this week was the Washington Post's front-page Sunday narrative on a Baptist church in Alabama.

"Hit piece or masterpiece?" I asked about the in-depth news feature exploring why the rural congregation supports President Donald Trump. 

I invited readers to offer feedback, and I am pleased that several, including our own Terry Mattingly, did.

Here is what tmatt had to say:

Here is the question that kept bugging me: What is so crucial about this one congregation?

In terms of reporting methodology, how do we know that this congregation perfectly illustrates the state of mind in the complex world of American evangelicalism, even among SBC people?

Also, as always in this age, there is no serious attempt at all to engage the very, very conservative critics of Trump -- including some who said that they voted for him, but didn't want to do so. They wanted other options.

The story says that this congregation matters. Period. This is the perfect choir. Why?

By all means, check out all the comments. If you're so inclined, join the conversation.

In the meantime, let's dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: I earlier highlighted New York Times religion writer Elizabeth Dias' front-page story going "Inside the Ground Game to Reverse Roe v. Wade."

As I mentioned, Dias does an exceptional job of painting what feels, to me, like an authentic picture of these anti-abortion activists.


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