Religious Liberty

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An elite newspaper kisses President Obama's liberal brand of Christianity, but here's what they left out

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"Merry Christmas! Our president is too Christian for America!"

That's how one person — in an email subject line to the GetReligion team — boiled down today's mammoth, front-page Washington Post story on "The quiet impact of Obama's Christian faith."

Now, the fact that an elite, inside-the-Beltway newspaper seems to really love Obama's brand of faith won't trigger any breaking news alerts.

Obama is, after all, the kind of Christian even a non-Bible-thumping journalist could love. GetReligion's editor, Terry Mattingly, has described the president this way: "a liberal believer who made a profession of faith and joined the United Church of Christ, a denomination that has long represented the left edge of free-church Protestantism." 

What prompted today's 3,000-word Post homage to Obama's faith? There appears to be no strong time element. Instead, this is one of those evergreen stories on which the writer noted on Twitter that he worked for a while.

 

"Hope it is revealing," the writer said in that same tweet.

Is it revealing? Yes and no. 

On the positive side, I enjoyed reading the Post story and appreciated the behind-the-scenes insight into some of Obama's perspective concerning his Christianity and its role in his policy approaches. I found myself thinking: This story would make a great "West Wing" episode. 

Imagine this opening scene, only with real-life Obama instead of the fictional President Josiah Bartlet:


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Catholic school vs. gay cafeteria manager: Why media are siding with him...

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Here we are again with a story line that seems to repeat itself at least once a month these days: Catholic school takes a firm stand on gay employees and decides to 1. Tighten up their code of conduct or 2. Actually ask certain employees to leave or 3. Refuse to hire publicly homosexual employees. The staff or students then decide to 1. Sign petitions or stage demonstrations or 2. Go to the media or maybe the local bishop and 3. File a lawsuit.

Reporters cover the would-be, present or former employees as sacrificial lambs ready to be roasted by the Inquisition. They 1. Mostly quote one side, usually the more telegenic one that says they are being discriminated against and 2. Fail to look up the school’s employee manual and any agreements employees agreed to adhere to when they signed on and 3. Insist that if Pope Francis was around, he would embrace everyone and 4. Run a disapproving editorial on said college or school.

But the school that I’ll be covering in this piece is a bit different. As the Associated Press described it:

BOSTON -- An all-girls Catholic prep school in Massachusetts violated state anti-discrimination law by rescinding a job offer to a man in a same-sex marriage, a judge ruled.


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Christmas flap gets Palm Beach Post coverage, but it's wreathed in questions

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"All politics is local," goes a saying often attributed to "Tip O'Neill Jr. Much the same could be said of the so-called War on Christmas -- as in West Palm Beach, where a condo association threatened a resident for hanging a wreath on her door.

The Palm Beach Post takes a look in a story that is at once flawed and laudable. The rather preachy lede says:

Donna Sozzio’s “infraction” — placing a wreath on her condo door.
In these days when religious tolerance is such an issue, the resident of West Palm’s Lands of the President complex can’t understand why she should face a $100 a day fine for displaying a symbol of her faith. The condo rule violates her religious freedoms, she says.

The paper then spells out the condo rule at the Lands of the President Condo: no changes to "exterior surfaces" without written approval of the board. Balconies, yes, until New Year. But "hallways must be free of any decoration."

Sozzio's reaction: "I feel like I’m being bullied. It’s very intimidating."

She tossed the first notice away a couple of weeks ago because she thought it was ridiculous. When the second one came on Thursday, she pulled down the wreath, afraid they’d come after her for the money. But she replaced it with a small cross.

Controversies over Christmas displays are, of course, a staple of December coverage. Just in Florida, at least two other cities -- Plantation and Jacksonville -- are seeing their own flaps. But most such debates fall into two categories: public displays of nativity scenes and megawatt home shows that snarl traffic. The one in West Palm Beach is interesting for focusing on a homeowners' association taking down a single seasonal decoration. It's interesting also for the religious and legal angles, as we'll see.


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'Happy Holidays Charlie Brown'? So what happened in that Kentucky play?

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So what happened? What did Linus van Pelt say?

I am referring, of course, to the controversy that unfolded this past week in Johnson County, Ken., where school officials -- after receiving complaints from some in their community -- removed the speech by Linus at the pivotal moment in an elementary school production of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Click here for the previous GetReligion post focusing on the Lexington Herald-Leader coverage of this Christmas wars showdown.

Here was my main point in my previous post: If Linus could not recite the key lines from the Gospel of St. Luke -- in response to Charlie Brown's anguished cry of "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?" -- then what was Linus going to say? It appeared, in previous coverage, that no one asked that question.

In the comments on that previous post, several readers tipped us off to what happened. So here is an update from the Herald-Leader, to stay with the same news source used before.

Though Johnson County school officials deleted a Bible passage from a student production of A Charlie Brown Christmas despite protests, several adults in the audience at Thursday’s performance recited the lines normally spoken by the character Linus, a video shows.
The scene at W.R. Castle Elementary School followed a firestorm of controversy in Johnson County this week.

And there is more information later:

Castle Elementary principal Jeff Cochran said in an interview Thursday that as instructed by school officials, no student in the play performed the scene in which Linus recites the passage from the Bible in explaining the meaning of Christmas:
“Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in the manger. And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men.’ ”


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Inside Higher Education takes lazy road on covering sex and theology at Biola University

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A short article in Inside Higher Education drew our attention this week, as it talks about Biola University going against the grain in contemporary American culture by strengthening its public opposition to sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

Once again, the key here is the school's statement of Christian doctrine -- as opposed to a set of legal "rules" -- that define it as a voluntary association of believers.

Biola is a private liberal arts Christian college in La Mirada, a suburb of Los Angeles that was described thusly by Inside Higher Education:

A few Christian colleges have moved in 2015 to change their rules to permit the hiring in some circumstances of gay and lesbian faculty members. Those colleges are in the distinct minority among evangelical colleges, most of which require faculty members, employees and students to abide by conduct codes that bar any sex except in heterosexual marriage.
At least one Christian institution in California, Biola University, has responded to shifts in public attitudes about sexuality and gender identity by twice in recent years making its rules more strict. While the university characterizes the changes as clarifications, some gay and lesbian employees have complained that the additions make it more difficult for them to sign a required statement that indicates their adherence to the college's rules.

 


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On the red-hot Islam beat: (1) Helpful, if recycled, info, (2) far-fetched 2016 scenarios

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On the red-hot Islam beat: (1) Helpful, if recycled, info, (2) far-fetched 2016 scenarios

The Council on American-Islamic Relations reports that 2015 has produced at least 63 incidents of vandalism and harassment against U.S. Muslims, the most since it started counting in 2009 and three times the 2014 total -- a spot story to pursue.

The biggest spike of such crimes occurred in November, likely a reaction to “Islamists” downing a Russian plane in Egypt October 31 followed by atrocities in Lebanon, Nigeria and Paris that together slaughtered  429 innocent victims and injured hundreds more. Next came the San Bernardino attack that murdered 14 partygoers and injured 22, then the December 15 announcement of an anti-terror military alliance among 34 Muslim nations.

CAIR provides new news. But recycled information can be manna on the red-hot Islam beat as newswriters prepare explainers. The ever-reliable Pew Research Center has assembled prior data for a valuable online report, “Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world.” Thank you Pew. 

We learn – or are reminded -- that Pew surveys show 86 percent of U.S. Muslims think violence against innocent civilians is rarely or never justified, compared with 7 percent who think it’s sometimes justified, and 1 percent saying it is often justified. 

That’s somewhat reassuring, though the “sometimes” number is worrisome and, by Pew’s estimate of 1.8 million U.S. Muslim adults, 1 percent saying “often” equals 18,000 radicals. Notably, 48 percent of U.S. Muslims think their religious leaders haven’t done enough to oppose Islamic extremists.


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Washington Post makes nice to Liberty University -- again!

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Has lightning struck twice at the Washington Post? In November, the newspaper ran a nuanced, fair-minded look at Liberty University. And this week, they did it again!

"For many at Liberty University, guns and God go hand in hand," says the new headline, which used to be equivalent to "Coordinates set -- commence bombardment." But no, this is a full-bodied, 2,100-word feature that uses a broad array of voices and avoids cheap shots.

True, the story is occasioned by the "fiery call" by university president Jerry Falwell Jr. for staff, students and faculty to start carrying firearms in the wake of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. "Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here," WaPo reports him saying Dec. 4 at a student convocation.

But the Post counters the image of wild-eyed yahoos that many mainstream media might have raised. One way is quoting students like senior Kyle Garcia: "It's not about Christians waving guns around. It's about protecting yourselves from some people who want to kill." Another is noting, as the Post did in November, that Liberty has hosted talks by the liberal Bernie Sanders as well as the conservative Ted Cruz.

Here's a good summary from the new story:

Falwell’s comments on guns — including pointed language about "those Muslims," which he later said was referring only to Islamic terrorists — put a fresh spotlight on a fast-growing university with a distinctive blend of cultural conservatism, religious faith and academic ambition. Liberty aspires to be a flagship for the nation’s evangelical Christians, a position that would offer power to influence society far beyond the campus. Politicians already recognize the potency of Liberty’s stage, which can reach the nation’s evangelical audience on a mass scale.

The sizable workforce -- reporting by Godbeat veterans Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, with Nick Anderson as the main writer -- gets a satisfying range of facts in this article. We learn that the university is big on sports but not fraternities; that morality is left more to individual judgment than a few years ago (although shorts are still banned from class); that the campus includes an osteopathy college and a cinematic arts program that produces full-length films. And although Liberty teaches creationism, readers may be surprised to know it boasts a gene sequencer and a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer.


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Their blood still cries out: Crux opens series investigating global presecution of Christians

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If you follow religion news carefully, and you have been on Twitter over the weekend, you are probably aware that John L. Allen, Jr., and the team at Crux -- a Catholic-oriented news site operated by The Boston Globe -- have published the first in what will be a series of occasional stories about the persecution of Christians around the world.

This is not surprising, in light of the fact that Allen (surely one of the most productive reporters working on the religion-beat these days) has produced a book entitled "The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution."

It is also significant that a recent Pew Research Center study found, as Allen noted in his opening report in this series, that Christians were harassed either by the government or social groups (think militias or mobs) in 102 of 198 countries -- more than any other religious group. Under normal circumstances, Pew surveys on this kind of news topic tend to lead to bumps in mainstream coverage.

However, talking about the persecution of Christians is not your normal subject, for a variety of reasons. There are people on the cultural left who simply cannot see Christians as anything other than oppressors. For two decades, powerful forces in Washington, D.C., have fought attempts to promote religious liberty at the global level.

Meanwhile, there are also people on the cultural right who -- when looking at the Middle East in particular -- struggle to identify with the groups being persecuted and slaughtered because these ancient flocks are not the right kinds of Christians. (For more information on that topic, see this "On Religion" column that I wrote nearly two decades ago.) Focusing on human rights can also be bad for business, you know.

In light of this deep and diverse skepticism, it's crucial that Allen's main story -- The New Christian Martyrs: Globally, religious persecution is Christian persecution -- includes the following:

Christians are, of course, hardly the only community facing savagery and oppression.


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What's the future of the Dalai Lama? New York Times magazine poses the right questions

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The Dalai Lama was the topic of a New York Times magazine profile recently, and unlike the laudatory sort of write-ups one usually sees about this 80-year-old religious icon, this one calls his leadership into question.

Not only his leadership, but his legacy is questioned this time around.

We've written about how he decided four years ago to give up his political role as head of the world's exiled Tibetan community. The Buddhist leader will be dying sooner or later, the article says, and maybe sooner.

So what will happen then to Tibetan Buddhism and the cause of free Tibet?

So you get paragraphs like this:

The economic potency of China has made the Dalai Lama a political liability for an increasing number of world leaders, who now shy away from him for fear of inviting China’s wrath. Even Pope Francis, the boldest pontiff in decades, report­edly declined a meeting in Rome last December. When the Dalai Lama dies, it is not at all clear what will happen to the six million Tibetans in China. The Chinese Communist Party, though officially atheistic, will take charge of finding an incarnation of the present Dalai Lama. Indoctrinated and controlled by the Communist Party, the next leader of the Tibetan community could help Beijing cement its hegemony over Tibet. And then there is the 150,000-strong community of Tibetan exiles, which, increasingly politically fractious, is held together mainly by the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan poet and activist Tenzin Tsundue, who has disagreed with the Dalai Lama’s tactics, told me that his absence will create a vacuum for Tibetans. The Dalai Lama’s younger brother, Tenzin Choegyal, was more emphatic: ‘‘We are finished once His Holiness is gone.’’


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