Same-sex Marriage

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Is there a religion ghost in Brexit victory for angry old Brits who keep clinging to the past?

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Is there a religion ghost in the shocking, to many, Brexit vote?

Of course there is. Any issue this, well, HUGE is going to have links to religious beliefs and institutions, on both sides of the debate. However, it will take a while for that shoe to drop, methinks, as secular journalists begin their work -- of course -- with waves of news about the political and economic fallout.

That is to be expected. However, we can begin our search for the religion ghost in this story by asking two rather basic questions: In terms of media and cultural elites, who is upset about the Brexit victory? And these grieving people in the mainstream media (looking at you, Christiane Amanpour), who are they blaming for this defeat for rational thought and the world's glowing future?

For example, I have no idea who this young journalist is -- Rebecca Pinnington -- but I would imagine that there were plenty of professionals in major newsrooms thinking this exact same thought in the wee hours of this morning. What does it say that CNN has this quote on its front page, as I write this?

"When Donald Trump congratulates you on a political decision, that’s how you know you’ve made a mistake #EUref"

So who is to blame for this attack on the European Union and its supporters? It would appear, based on my early reading, that the chattering classes see this as a victory for old people who yearn for the values of the past and fear the wide open, evolving future. The word of the day appears to be "xenophobia."


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Journalism 101 lesson: What's wrong with this story on challenged Mississippi law?

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If you read GetReligion regularly, you know that we advocate a traditional American model of the press.

Under that model, journalists report news in a fair, impartial manner with statements of fact attributed to named sources.

When a news organization frames a story in such a way that clearly favors one side, it obviously fails to meet that standard.

Such is the case with Reuters' slanted coverage this week of a judge's decision concerning a challenged Mississippi law.

Did Mississippi, in fact, pass an "anti-LGBT law?" That is one side's perspective. But the other side argues that the measure is, in fact, a religious liberty law.

GetReligion has, of course, written about the Mississippi debate a time or two. Or three or four. Or, well, you get the idea


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Gays and Islam: Even after Orlando shooting, many news media skirt the hard questions

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After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, I suggested a story on the verses in the Quran that dealt with killing unbelievers, including how local imams interpret them. My editor hesitated and said, "I'd rather do stories about diversity in the community."

That looks like the attitude among most mainstream media, 15 years later. We know that Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at an Orlando gay club, was Muslim and anti-gay. But what exactly does Islam say about homosexuality?

Many mainstream media seem to have been avoiding answering that, even when asking it themselves. They’ve chattered about how he checked Facebook and traded texts with his wife. They say he tried to buy body armor. And of course, they talk about gun control and homophobia.

But few have ventured into the minefield where Muslim communities border homosexuality. And of those that do, most concentrate on LGBT Muslims themselves.

In Florida itself, I could find only one newspaper -- my alma mater, the Sun Sentinel -- reporting on a "confused, broken community that lies at the intersection of the tragedy," as it calls them. One of its three subjects is college student Hytham Rashid:

There are not a lot of terms to describe gender identity or sexual orientation in Arabic, Rashid said. The word "transgender," for example, translates to "You are like a woman" or "You are like a man," which can be considered offensive, he says.  
As a gay Muslim, Rashid says he faces both Islamophobia and homophobia every day. He said in the wake of the Orlando tragedy, he doesn’t feel safe going to memorials and events.
"We can put up our stickers and wave around our rainbow flags in Wilton Manors, but the core issue is, there isn’t a safe space for us," he said.

The Sun Sentinel also imports a statement by the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity that there is "no religious justification or precedent in Islam for mass shootings targeting any population, regardless of identity." But it doesn't look at the Quran or the Hadith (the record of Muhammad's words and deeds).  Nor does it ask any leaders of the 15-20 mosques in its circulation area.


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Kind of a GetReligionista clash: An alternative take on that big AP evangelical feature

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The other day our own Bobby "no pickles on my Chick-fil-a" Ross Jr. has some strong words of praise for an Associated Press story that tried to explain why American evangelical Protestants -- a phrase that almost always means white Republican conservatives -- are currently feeling rather down about their place in the public square.

The big idea of Bobby's post was to salute AP for dedicating plenty of space and effort to this topic. This wasn't your ordinary dash-it-off wire story. It offered lots of people space to share their views:

Thus, Bobby noted:

This 2,500-word piece -- about as long a story as you'll ever see on the AP wire -- has it all from a journalistic storytelling perspective:
• Regular people (such as the Kentucky pastor and others at his congregation).
• Respected experts (such as Lifeway Research's Ed Stetzer and Southern Baptist public policy guru Russell Moore).
• Real nuance (as opposed to boiling down the issues and concerns to cardboard caricatures, as so often happens).

Now this is where things get interesting, from a GetReligionista point of view.

This particular AP story has been promoted online for a week or so and people keep writing us with their own opinions of it. As often happens in the social media age, this piece has developed cyber-legs on Twitter and elsewhere. Thus, people keep asking: Will GetReligion offer a critique of the story?

Well, we explain, Ross already did.


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Powder-puff press: Tutu's daughter marries a woman, and media hand her the mic

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"Tell us how the bad men hurt you": As she often does, M.Z. Hemingway adroitly blends humor and precision in finding the nugget of a story.  Her suggestion for a GR post on the daughter of Desmond Tutu was devastatingly accurate, not only for the BBC but for the Guardian.

The Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth recently married a woman -- an atheist, at that -- and now she's complaining that the church yanked her preaching license. And the BBC and the Guardian help her complain. Not just by reporting her quotes, but enshrining every word as gospel.

Here we go with the BBC:

Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth followed her father into a life in the Anglican church, but when she decided to marry the woman she loved, she had to leave.
She married her long-term Dutch girlfriend, Marceline van Furth, in a small private ceremony in the Netherlands at the end of last year, but they went public last month when they had a wedding celebration in Cape Town.
"My marriage sounds like a coming out party," explains Ms Tutu van Furth.
"Falling in love with Marceline was as much as a surprise to me as to everyone else," she tells me.

At least the BBC quotes church law: "Holy matrimony is the lifelong and exclusive union between one man and one woman." So why is Tutu van Furth making an issue of it? To advance what she calls a "very important conversation'" about same-sex marriage:


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Exiles in their home country? A deep dive into the changing status of evangelical Christians

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"Chosen & Exiled" was the sermon title at the First Baptist Church of Edmond, Okla., on a recent Sunday.

Pastor Blake Gideon's main text came from 1 Peter 1:1-2: 

1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, 2 who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

While interviewing Gideon for stories on Oklahoma culture-war politics that I wrote for the Washington Post and Religion News Service, I asked the 40-year-old Southern Baptist pastor about the context of his planned sermon that day.

A part of that conversation:

Gideon: He (Peter) talks about how Christians are exiles in a foreign land, and when you're an exile, you live differently. So I'm going to be addressing that and just talking about how, as Christians, we are exiles in a foreign land. And we are to respect and honor the government, but not to the degree that we compromise our moral convictions.
Me: Do you feel like Christians are becoming more exiles in America?
Gideon: Absolutely.

Me: In Oklahoma, or is it still a little easier here?
Gideon: I think being a Christian conservative is a little easier than other parts of the nation, but it's not going to remain that way.

I recalled that discussion this week as I read Associated Press national religion writer Rachel Zoll's excellent deep dive into the changing status of evangelicals in America.


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Will the waning Barack Obama administration rewrite religious hiring rules?

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Will the waning Barack Obama administration rewrite religious hiring rules?

Church-and-state disputes are a hot beat and it's getting hotter all the time.

We have religious objections over the government’s transgender bid to control school toilets and locker rooms nationwide, the Supreme Court’s bounce back of the Little Sisters’ “Obamacare” contraception case, states’ debates over whether merchants can decline gay wedding services on religious grounds, and much else.

Media coverage to date shows little interest in how church-state policy might be affected by a President Clinton, or a President Trump, or the jurists on Donald Trump’s recent Supreme Court list, or a Justice Merrick Garland. Will this be raised at a big June 9-11 “religious right” confab in D.C.? Speakers will include Trump and former challengers Cruz, Fiorina, Huckabee, Kasich, Paul, and Rubio, plus House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Meanwhile, interest groups are ardently lobbying the Obama Administration to change religious hiring policies during its waning days. At issue is application of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) under the 2007 “World Vision memorandum” (click for .pdf) from the Bush Administration’s Department of Justice.

World Vision, a major evangelical organization, had landed a $1.5 million grant to provide mentoring for at-risk youths. The memo ruled that it’s legal for such religious agencies fulfilling service programs through  federal grants to consider religious faith in their hiring. The Obama White House has thus far resisted pressure to abolish that policy, most recently in a Feb. 22 letter from ranking Democrats in the U.S. House.


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Dollars, demograpic decline and the gospel (or Gospel) of new Washington Cathedral dean

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Talk about candor. From the get-go, the recent Washington Post story about the selection of a new dean at Washington National Cathedral is very upfront about the fact that this highly visible Episcopal Church landmark faces a crisis of dollars and demographics. And then there was that earthquake thing, literally.

Consider the headline, for example: "Needing to raise ten of millions, Washington National Cathedral picks a fundraiser for its new dean."

Now, I realize that college and university presidents are frequently hailed as great fundraisers. However, I don't know of many pastors, preachers or priests who have welcomed that label. In this case the Rev. Randy Hollerith -- for some reason the Post editors drop "the Rev." or even "Father" on the first reference -- makes it clear that this isn't his label of choice, either.

There is also the question of whether he plans, as was the norm with the Hollywood-shaped previous dean, Gary Hall (once again, now clerical title on first reference), to use hot-button cultural and theological issues to push the cathedral into the headlines.

Hollerith says he won’t enter the position with plans to focus on specific social justice issues, a contrast to Hall, who was on the national news within a few months after coming in August 2012 by announcing that he’d open the cathedral to same-sex weddings.
“I’m not an issue-driven person. I’m a gospel-driven person,” he said. “Of course, the gospel at times is prophetic and has things to say to the world. But I don’t approach things from the point of view of hot-button issues, so to speak.”
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t share with Hall and other recent deans a focus on one topic in particular: race. The Episcopal Church -- a small Protestant denomination that until recent decades represented the faith of the American elite -- has become less diverse racially in the past few decades, Hall said. ...


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United Methodists punt on sexuality; some journalists try to cover from their newsrooms

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The United Methodist bishops punted.

This tense flock committee-fied. Kicked the can down the road.

All those clichés were coined for news events like the United Methodist Church conference this week. The Methodists faced a choice: to allow gays to be ordained and married in the church, as other old-line Protestant denominations have done; or to keep the belief that both are "incompatible with Christian teaching," as the denomination has said for more than four decades.

Either option might have split the denomination, especially in an era in which the denomination is in decline in America and growing in the more conservative Global South. So the conference voted instead to have a committee study the matter further.

Let's see how mainstream media covered the decision, starting with the Religion News Service -- which, again, distinguishes itself with onsite coverage in Portland, Ore., rather than just phones, emails and bits of other articles.

This 1,100-word article interweaves updates, background and balanced sourcing. It points out, for one, that the delegates did more than simply delay the day of reckoning. Instead, they allowed bishops to have a commission re-examine all references to sexuality in the Book of Discipline, their basic rulebook.

The ambivalent wording reflects denominational worries:


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