Politics

, , , , , , , ,

Clock keeps ticking: Will Turkey dare to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque -- again?

, , , , , , , ,
Clock keeps ticking: Will Turkey dare to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque -- again?

Art historian Andrew Gould had studied many copies of the exquisite mosaic of Jesus found high in Istanbul's 6th Century Hagia Sophia cathedral.

But that didn't prepare the architect and sacred artist for what he felt when he stood under the icon, illumined by the soaring windows in the south gallery that overlooks the main floor, under the central dome that is 184 feet high and 102 feet in diameter.

The Deesis ("supplication") icon -- at least twice the size of life -- shows the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist with their heads bowed, framing an image of Christ Pantocrator ("enthroned"). The glass mosaic cubes were set at angles to create a shimmering effect across the gold background and the many-colored images, whether viewed in daylight or with lamps and candles.

Much of this icon was destroyed a century ago as workers probed to find priceless mosaics under layers of plaster and paint added through the centuries after 1453, when the Ottoman armies of Mehmed II conquered Constantinople.

Now, Turkish leaders want to convert Hagia Sophia -- a museum for decades -- back into a mosque.

"There is no more refined icon of Christ anywhere," said Gould, of the New World Byzantine Studios in Charleston, S.C. "Just in terms of information, we have copies we can study. … But visiting Hagia Sophia and seeing this icon under natural light, seeing it in the context of the sanctuary, was crucial to the development of my whole understanding of Orthodox art."

If the "Deesis" is covered again, along with other icons, "this is not something that can be replaced with photographs in art books," he said. "It would hurt artists and believers around the world in so many ways."

The current controversy is rooted in politics, more than lingering tensions between Muslim leaders and Turkey's tiny Christian minority, which has little power other than through ties to Greece, Europe and the United States.

Hagia Sophia became a museum in 1934, a symbol of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's drive to build a modern, truly secular state. Now, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sent many signals that he wants Turkey to return to Islamic principles.

Debates in Turkish media have swirled around whether modern leaders retain the "right of the sword" to reclaim Hagia Sophia, noted Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish journalist and author of the book "Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty."


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

Podcast: Why didn't @NYTimes mention complex political history of 'equal access' laws?

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

The church-state roller-coaster at the U.S. Supreme Court just keeps going and we’re not done yet.

The main purpose of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) was to talk about my recent post about Chief Justice Roberts and his decision to switch sides and defend the high court’s abortion legacy. SCOTUS, on a 5-4 vote, took down a Louisiana state law that would have required doctors working in abortion facilities to have the same kind of admitting privileges at local hospitals and those who work in other specialty surgery centers.

Mainstream journalists didn’t seem interested in the personalities behind that law. To get those ordinary facts, readers had to go to religious and/or “conservative” websites. Thus, I offered this headline: “Conservative news? White GOP justice strikes down bill by black, female pro-life Democrat.” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, who signed the bill, is a Democrat, too.

Why did so many journalists ignore that angle? It would appear that those facts didn’t fit into the white evangelicals just love Donald Trump template. Why muddy the political waters with coverage of two Democrats — a black Baptist and a white Catholic?

Lo and behold, by the time we did the live Lutheran Public Radio show, the court had released another 5-4 decision that, at first glance, had little or nothing to do with the Louisiana abortion bill. Here’s the New York Times double-decker headline on that story:

Supreme Court Gives Religious Schools More Access to State Aid

Religious schools should have the same access to scholarships and funds as other private schools, the justices ruled, in a victory for conservatives.

Readers who have followed church-state issues will recognize a key fact that the Times team — to its credit — got into that headline: Secular and religious private schools should be treated the same.

That immediately made me wonder if the Times, and other major mainstream outlets, were going to realize that this “equal access” principle was crucial to the church-state coalition of liberals and conservatives that accomplished so much working with (wait for it) the Clinton White House.

That’s interesting, right?


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

U.S. Catholics divided by #BlackLivesMatter strategies as 2020 elections loom ahead

, , , , , , , ,

The video of 75-year-old activist Martin Gugino being pushed to the ground earlier this month by police in riot gear highlighted the divide between protesters seeking criminal justice reforms and the very officers tasked with ensuring the safety of all citizens.

Gugino suffered a fractured skull in the June 4 incident in Buffalo, a city in upstate New York. He quickly became an example of officers using excessive force, one of many captured on video during protests that arose following the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis. Gugino is described by friends as a devout Roman Catholic and a lifelong advocate for the poor.

“I think it's very unnecessary to focus on me. There are plenty of other things to think about besides me,” Gugino said in a statement.

Gugino’s activism and the Black Lives Matter protests have not only drawn attention to deep fissures in American society on the issue of race, but have further polarized American Catholics. This intra-Catholic doctrinal debate, which began in the 1960s with the Second Vatican Council, remains relevant regarding the relationship between faith and politics.

Progressive Catholics, dating back to Dorothy Day and her social activism of the 1930s, see it as their role to help the United States achieve racial equality.

Traditional Catholics, however, see Black Lives Matter — the actual organization with a detailed policy platform, as opposed to the #BlackLivesMatter cause — as part of a sinister force that wants to spread Marxist ideology. Journalists need to investigate the differences between Black Lives Matter the cause, with many peaceful protests across the nation, often with strong support from churches, and the actual political organization.

While Catholics agree that racism is an issue in American society, the proposed remedies for those ills differ wildly. Again, there are fierce debates here worthy of news coverage.

For example, many Catholics, particularly Latinos, were angered when protesters toppled a statue of Catholic missionary St. Junipero Serra in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco this past weekend. The same was done to Serra’s statue in Los Angeles. Some have accused the Spanish-born Serra, an 18th century Franciscan friar who is credited with bringing Roman Catholicism to California, of brutalizing Native Americans and forcing them to convert.

The events of recent weeks and the looming presidential election continues to fuel the divide among Catholics across the political spectrum.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

Kneeling or rising: Should readers be told both sides of Emancipation Memorial debates?

, , , , ,

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words. This does not, however, mean that everyone who views an image will agree on what it is saying. The same thing is true for statues.

Americans have been arguing about the meaning of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., ever since the image was created, erected and then dedicated. At the heart of the debates is a basic question: What is this statue saying? What is happening in this image?

Apparently, there are two ways of “reading” this statue. People who know the story that the artist was telling may — repeat “may” — see the statue differently than those who do not. The question for journalists is whether readers need to hear from people on both sides of this debate as it has unfolded over the decades and now, in the #BlackLivesMatter age, has reached a boiling point.

Here is the top of a recent Washington Post story that offered a summary of the speech that the great Frederick Douglass delivered when the statue was dedicated. Here is the overture:

On April 14, 1876, Frederick Douglass arrived at the unveiling ceremony for the Emancipation Memorial, the statue now under attack by some protesters in Washington’s Lincoln Park.

A crowd of 25,000, many of them African American, had gathered to hear Douglass speak on the 11th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

By all accounts, Douglass, the great orator and abolitionist, was not pleased with the monument, which depicted Lincoln holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation while towering over a kneeling black man who had broken his chains.

Yes, note that the freed slave had the strength to break his own chains. Other crucial questions: Is the slave kneeling or, with one knee raised, is he rising to his feet? Also, is he rising because Lincoln has told him he should not kneel to a man? That would be the opposite of what critics see in this image.


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

Conservative news? White GOP justice strikes down bill by black, female pro-life Democrat

, , , , , , , , , , ,

No doubt about it, there were some interesting political angles linked to the latest U.S. Supreme Court setback for Americans who want to see more safety regulations applied to the abortion facilities.

Much of the news coverage of this 5-4 decision focused — with good reason — on Chief Justice John Roberts voting with the court’s liberal wing. Once again, press reports stressed that Roberts showed maturity, independence and nuance as he voted against his own alleged convictions, as stated in a dissent in an earlier case on a similar bill.

The coverage also stressed — with good cause — the potential impact of this decision on the Election Day enthusiasm of (wait for it) evangelicals who back the Donald Trump machine.

But there was another crucial element of this story that I expected to receive some coverage. I am talking about the origins of the actual Louisiana legislation that was struck down by the court.

Who created this bill and why did they create it? Was this some kind of Trump-country project backed by the usual suspects? Actually — no. The key person behind this bill was State Sen. Katrina Jackson, an African-American lawyer from Monroe, La. The bill was then signed by Governor John Bel Edwards, also a Democrat.

But wait, you say: Democrats in Louisiana are different. The Catholic church and the black church are major players, when it comes to the state’s mix of populist economics and a more conservative approach to culture.

In other words, there is a religion angle to this story, as well as the obvious political hooks that dominated the coverage. Hold that thought, because we will come back to it. First, here is the top of the Associated Press story that ran across the nation:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Louisiana law regulating abortion clinics, reasserting a commitment to abortion rights over fierce opposition from dissenting conservative justices in the first big abortion case of the Trump era.

Chief Justice John Roberts and his four more liberal colleagues ruled that a law that requires doctors who perform abortions must have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals violates abortion rights the court first announced in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

Plug-in: Trump vs. Biden -- four months before Election Day and religion angles abound

, , , , ,

President Donald Trump came to my home state of Oklahoma last weekend, and I kept my social distance (read: stayed in my living room).

I followed developments via social media, including tweets by my son Keaton Ross, a reporter for Oklahoma Watch. The president even gave Keaton — and all of the news media — a shoutout.

As you may have heard, the symbolic relaunch of Trump’s re-election campaign drew an underwhelming crowd of about 6,200 to a Tulsa arena.

Already, some are pointing to polls that show Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by a wide margin. Honk if that sounds familiar. With Election Day four-plus months away, religion angles — no surprise! — abound.

Among the most interesting pieces of the last week:

• Gabby Orr, White House reporter for Politico, writes that Trump allies “see a mounting threat: Biden’s rising evangelical support.”

• Isaac Chotiner, staff writer for The New Yorker, interviews Albert Mohler about “How the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary came around to Trump.”

• Jeff Sharlet, in a piece for Vanity Fair, goes inside what the magazine characterizes as “the cult of Trump,” where “his rallies are church and he is the Gospel.”

• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writers Bill Glauber, Molly Beck and Annysa Johnson report on Vice President Mike Pence’s focus on religious faith in a campaign stop in battleground Wisconsin.

• Nicholas Casey, a national politics reporter for the New York Times, travels to Alabama to highlight a Baptist church touched by differing opinions over the Trump era. (Be sure to read, too, Terry Mattingly’s GetReligion analysis of this story, making the case that the Times ignores doctrine to focus on politics.)


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

Strange Nashville media storm: What to do when a 'prophet' advertises in your newspaper

, , , , , , ,

Residents of Nashville, Tennessee — the ones who still read a printed Sunday newspaper — received quite a shock when opening the June 21 edition of The Tennessean, a Gannett Co. newspaper not generally known for tabloid-style contents.

A full-page advertisement from a little-known outfit, “Future For America,” was clearly designed to stun readers.

“Dear Citizen of Nashville,” the ad’s text read. “We are under conviction to not only tell you but provide evidence that on July 18, 2020, Islam is going to detonate a nuclear device in Nashville, Tennessee.” The text went on to make a range of bizarre predictions, including an assertion that Donald Trump would be the “last” President of the United States.

Surprisingly — to this observer at least — the ensuing media coverage was, by and large, accurate, explanatory and helpful to readers. Journalists quickly put the fringe group in its context, and even though the advertisement mentioned the Seventh-day Adventist Church (a denomination of 21.4 million worldwide, whose membership includes this writer), the church was not associated with either the group or Jeff Pippenger, its “speaker.”

That’s largely because Pippenger had been disfellowshipped — expelled from Adventist membership — in 2015. The North American Division of the church disavowed the group, though not naming the individual in their statement.

“[T]here is no connection between the Seventh-day Adventist Church and this group and their teachings,” the statement read.

Also, the ad referred to “the backslidden Seventh-day Adventist Church,” which signals — to say the least — a kind of distancing from that larger faith community.

There was what had to be a mad scramble at The Tennessean to do damage control. Media reports indicated the switchboard lit up with subscription cancellations, and online comments on Facebook and Twitter were not positive.

The paper’s initial story spelled out the details:


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

Podcast: Yes, religion plays a major role in battles over the Mississippi flag

, , , , , , ,

Editors at the Associated Press were on to something big with that recent story that ran with this headline: “Baptists and Walmart criticize rebel-themed Mississippi flag.”

That’s a story. If you were listing major forces in Sunbelt life, you’d have to include the Southern Baptist Convention and Walmart.

But the AP team did downplay a key angle to that Mississippi flag fight, one that many locals would — with a chuckle — say was a “religion thing.” I’m talking about this recent story, seen here in a New York Times headline: “SEC Warns Mississippi Over Confederate Emblem on State Flag.”

Religion? You bet.

If SEC football isn’t functionally a “religion” down here then I don’t know what is. Some kind of ban on SEC events taking place in Mississippi? That would be like the end of the world. The AP folks put a passing reference to the SEC action way down in the story.

Think about the clout of this trinity of social forces in a Bible Belt state — SEC sports, Walmart and the Southern Baptist Convention. Add Chick-fil-A and NASCAR (speaking of racial tensions) and life would come to s stop.

All of those topics were in the mix as host Todd Wilken and I recorded this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). We decided that it was pretty clear that folks behind the AP story really didn’t understand some of the forces affecting the battles over the Mississippi flag.

But let’s start with a chunk of the AP story that was spot-on accurate:

Mississippi has the last state flag that includes the Confederate battle emblem: a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. …

The conservative-leaning and majority-white Mississippi Baptist Convention has more than 500,000 members at more than 2,100 churches. Mississippi’s population is about 3 million, and 38% of residents are African American.


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

Bitter split in Baptist flock in Alabama: Was this about Donald Trump or ancient doctrines?

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

As part of its ongoing visits to flyover country in Middle America, the New York Times recently ran a long feature with this epic headline: “The Walls of the Church Couldn’t Keep the Trump Era Out — The young pastor wasn’t sure his congregation would like what he had to say and had no idea where it would lead all of them. He found himself at a crossroads of God, Alabama and Donald Trump.”

Now, that headline is — to be blunt — quite dishonest.

While I acknowledge that the Trump era plays a role in this Baptist drama — rooted in tensions surrounding the ministry of a progressive, the Rev. Chris Thomas — the Times article contains a thesis statement near the end that is much more honest. Here is that summary paragraph:

Racism had driven Mr. Thomas from his first church in Alabama; at Williams it had been gay rights that had caused the division.

In Times-speak, of course, debates about racism and gay rights are one and the same — ideological clashes about politics. The reality is more complex than that, pivoting on two ancient doctrinal questions: Is racism a sin? The orthodox (or Orthodox) answer is, “Yes.” The second question: Is sex outside of traditional marriage a sin? The orthodox answer there, for 2,000 years, has been, “Yes.”

There are other doctrines lurking in the background that may, or may not, have affected the crisis inside this particular Alabama congregation, which the Times piece describes as: “First Baptist Church of Williams, a relatively liberal church with a mostly white congregation.”

That’s a pretty good description of the world of “moderate” Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a network of like-minded churches that emerged after the Southern Baptist Convention civil war that began in the late 1970s.

There is no way for me to write about this story without saying, candidly, that this subject is directly linked to my life and that of my family, at all levels. My wife and I were married in a “moderate” church next to Baylor University, using a rite from a modernized version of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. The last Baptist congregation we attended — in Charlotte, N.C. — was to the theological left of FBC Williams.

A key moment, for me, was a conversation I had with one of the church deacons, a philosophy professor at a Baptist college near Charlotte. This church leader asked what, for me, was the most important doctrine in Christian faith.


Please respect our Commenting Policy