Scriptures

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What did God say? Mike Pence prayed and then changed his mind on needle exchanges

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What we have here is a rather complex, not-so-shallow, for the most part fair-minded New York Times news feature about (wait for it) a crucial political event in the life of Gov. Mike Pence, the evangelical Protestant running mate of Citizen Donald Trump.

Yes, faithful GetReligion readers, there are times when this story actually allows people close to Pence to talk about issues linked to religious faith and you cannot hear a snarky newsroom Greek chorus in the background. I know that you are all asking the same question: How did this miracle happen?

Actually, it's not a miracle at all because this story fits some rather familiar patterns that can be seen in work at the Gray Lady, as well as in other prestige newsrooms from time to time. What are these patterns?

(1) The story is about a complex and controversial moral and cultural issue -- in this case needle-exchange programs to stop the spread of H.I.V. among drug users -- but it is not an issue linked to the Sexual Revolution.

(2) Savvy evangelicals (Catholics, Mormons, etc.) who work in the public square know that all they have to do to improve their press coverage is to take actions that some would see as progressive and/or offensive to their core constituents in evangelical pews and pulpits.

(3) The politico in question, as part of his or her decision making process, goes to God in prayer and, lo and behold, in this case the voice of God is said to agree with the editorial-page policies of the New York Times.

So take a quick read through the feature that ran under this headline: "Mike Pence’s Response to H.I.V. Outbreak: Prayer, Then a Change of Heart." Do you see what I see?


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California journalists give a free pass to Lara's amended religious colleges bill

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Over the past two months, we’ve written lots and lots about the news coverage of a California bill that would strip several dozen private Christian colleges and universities of the ability to enforce the doctrinal and lifestyle covenants at the heart of their identities. As recently as Tuesday, an interfaith coalition including Muslim and Jewish leaders as well as evangelical heavyweights Rick Warren and Russell Moore had denounced Senate Bill 1146 as a death knell to religious freedom.

Not to be outdone, Archdiocese of Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez and Bishop Charles Blake, presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ, turned to Fox News to claim that Lara’s bill would hurt minorities and the poor. Coming from the region’s two preeminent Hispanic and black leaders, the Gomez/Blake combo was a powerful one-two punch.

Unable to fight on all these fronts, Ricardo Lara, the state senator behind it all who is pictured above, backed down on Wednesday. For now. As the Los Angeles Times explains it:

Faced with intense opposition from religious colleges in California, a state Senator said Wednesday he has decided to amend a bill by dropping a provision that would have allowed gay and transgender students to more easily sue private universities for discrimination if they are disciplined for violating church teachings.
Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) is removing a provision of his bill that sought to take away the exemption of religious schools to anti-discrimination laws. Instead, he will press forward with the amended bill that would still require such schools to disclose if they have an exemption and report to the state when students are expelled for violating morality codes.
“The goal for me has always been to shed the light on the appalling and unacceptable discrimination against LGBT students at these private religious institutions throughout California,” Lara said.


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Historical facts rock solid on female deacons? RNS story makes it seem that they are

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As he promised, Pope Francis has set up a commission to study whether or not the Church of Rome should ordain women as permanent deacons.

A previous Vatican study of the issue but a spotlight on a key question. Yes, there were female deacons, or deaconesses, in the New Testament. However, did they serve as ordained clergy at the altar -- in a clearly liturgical role -- or did their duties center elsewhere, especially in work with the poor and other women?

Let's flashback for a second to an earlier post -- "Deaconesses or female deacons? Journalists do you know the history of these terms?" -- before taking a look at a new Religion News Service report.

Everyone involved in this debate knows that the word used in Romans 16:1 to describe the woman named Phoebe is diakonos. However, some translations render this as "servant," while others use "deacon. The New International Version, beloved by Protestants, says: "I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae."

In an earlier news report, the Crux team noted that the earlier Vatican study of women deacons offered "two points for reflection."

First, the document says that deaconesses in the ancient Christian church “cannot purely and simply be compared to the sacramental diaconate” that exists today, since there is no clarity about the rite of institution that was used or what functions they exercised.
Second, the document asserts that “the unity of the sacrament of orders” is “strongly imprinted by ecclesiastical tradition, the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and the post-councilor magisterium,” despite clear differences between the episcopacy and priesthood on the one hand and the diaconate on the other.

Let me note, speaking as an Eastern Orthodox layman, that this is pretty much what I have heard in similar discussions of this issue in the churches of the East.


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(Cue: loud sigh) AP report about private colleges has a familiar doctrine-shaped hole in it

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One of the questions your GetReligionistas hear the most from friends of this blog, as well as critics, is this: Do you ever get tired of having to write about the same journalism issues over and over and over?

Yes, this can be tiring. It's frustrating to watch reporters, especially at major news organizations, leave the same religion-shaped (or First Amendment-shaped) holes in their news stories and longer features about important issues and events.

But we keeping doing what we do. We remain pro-journalism. We remain committed to the basics of old-school reporting and editing, holding out for values such as accuracy, balance and fairness.

So, as you would imagine, this post is about a familiar topic. First, here is a flashback to a recent Julia Duin post that spotted an important hole in several news reports about SB1146, a bill in California that would shake the church-state ground under all of the state's private schools. At the time Julia wrote this post -- "Christian colleges on chopping block: Why are California newspapers ignoring the story?" -- mainstream news organizations were simply missing the story -- period.

But there was a more specific problem in a report from The Sacramento Bee:

... The Bee does not add that students have a choice whether or not to attend these private schools. In most cases they sign documents in which they affirm the school's stands on doctrinal issues, including those linked to sexual behavior. Here at GetReligion, we’ve brought up again and again the fact that religious schools tend to have something called covenants whereby the students who attend them and those who teach and work at them agree to live according to the doctrines affirmed by that institution.

Let me stress that this is true for private schools on the cultural and religious left, as well as the right.


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Rolling Stone, Slate note the lack of God-talk during Donald Trump's victory lap

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Although he threw in everything but the kitchen sink, Donald Trump barely mentioned religion or culture wars themes during his 116-minute speech Thursday night. As the Charlotte Observer noted, were it not for Mike Pence, the God mentions by major speakers at this convention would have been pretty sparse.

Maybe that's because Trump knows that nearly every time he refers to the Bible, he makes some kind of mistake? It's one thing to mess up in front of Liberty University students; it's another to goof up when you're accepting your party's nomination for President. 

For the record, here's the only religion content in Trump's speech:

At this moment, I would like to thank the evangelical and religious community in general who have been so good to me and so supportive. You have much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits. An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson, many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views.
I am going to work very hard to repeal that language and protect free speech for all Americans.

An earlier draft of Trump's speech that got leaked did not have the words “and religious.”

Here's an explanation of that Johnson amendment, courtesy of Politifact. Thursday night was such sparse pickings for anyone looking for divine content that Slate termed it "The GOP's Godless Convention." Fortunately for us, Rolling Stone -- yes, Rolling Stone -- released this analysis Thursday afternoon about infighting among evangelicals over the GOP nominee.


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Washington Post bait and switch: When pushy Twitter posts change the rules of the game

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For years now, your GetReligionistas have been explaining why it is wrong to blame reporters for the contents of the headlines that run with their stories.

Many readers never make it past the headline, you see. That's bad if the headline is, to be blunt, inaccurate or misleading, in terms of summing up the contents of the story. By the way, I spent a couple of years on a newspaper copy desk early in my career, where one of my primary jobs was to write headlines.

Nothing does more to pull readers into a story than a good headline. Nothing hurts a story more than a bad one.

Now we live in the age of Twitter, which is a completely different kettle of fish. In an effort to promote their work, while also building their personal "brands," many reporters now push out waves of tweets, many of them right on (or just over) the edge of snark. Some of these tweets deserve their own corrections. Hold that thought.

Consider, for example, that "Acts of Faith" feature that ran at The Washington Post under the headline, "God might not want a woman to be president, some religious conservatives say."

This essay struck me as interesting, since I have seen absolutely zero discussion of this issue online. I guess I don't read enough commentary by doctrinally conservative Christians, Jews and Muslims. The big idea of this piece, with Hillary Clinton on the verge of winning it all, is this:

Clinton is poised to be nominated for president by the Democratic Party next week. And so religious hard-liners of all faiths -- the most conservative Christians, Muslims and Jews -- are debating: Do their Scriptures prohibit a female president?


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Please ask this basic question: Does Mike Pence sit in an evangelical pew or a Catholic pew?

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So the "evangelical Catholic" thing is making a comeback, with Donald Trump's decision to make Gov. Mike Pence his running mate in the White House race.

Before we dig into the roots of this a bit, let me note that the Washington Post "Acts of Faith" feature in the middle of the current discussion ("What it means that Mike Pence called himself an ‘evangelical Catholic’ ") is clearly labeled as "analysis." Thus, veteran reporter Michelle Boorstein has more room to maneuver.

Normally, your GetReligionistas steer away from writing about analysis features, unless we point readers to them as "think pieces" linked to discussions on the Godbeat. In this case, I think it's important to discuss the "evangelical Catholic" term again, because it may surface again in campaign coverage of Pence.

The key, of course, is that "evangelical Catholic" is primarily a political term. However, Boorstein starts her analysis with an attempt to pin down this man's actual religious history, in terms of his faith experiences. Here is a sample of that:

One of the more publicly shared accounts of Pence’s transition from a Catholic youth minister who wanted to be a priest to an evangelical megachurch member came in 1994. That’s when he told the Indianapolis Business Journal about an intense period of religious searching that he underwent in college. “I made a commitment to Christ,” Pence said, speaking of the late 1970s. “I’m a born-again, evangelical Catholic.”


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Yes, reporters ignored that Gospel of John flub in President Obama's speech in Dallas

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Clearly, President Barack Obama knew that if he was going to speak during a public memorial service in Dallas, it would be wise -- metaphorically speaking -- to bring a Bible and to quote it early and often. Obama did precisely that.

After all, former President George W. Bush was also going to be speaking during this event and, since he is a native who speaks Texan, you just knew that he would be quoting scripture. Sure enough, he did.

But if you are looking for news reports that explored the biblical elements of this important Obama address you will need to do some digging. In fact, there are fewer biblical references in the relevant news reports than there were in the early hours after that speech, for a very interesting reason. Hold that thought.

At the top of the news media food chain, the current version of the New York Times report on the speech at least mentions, vaguely, that the Bible played a role in this interfaith memorial rite:

DALLAS -- President Obama said on Tuesday that the nation mourned with Dallas for five police officers gunned down by a black Army veteran, but he implored Americans not to give in to despair or the fear that “the center might not hold.”
“I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem,” Mr. Obama said at a memorial service for the officers in Dallas, where he quoted Scripture, alluded to Yeats and at times expressed a sense of powerlessness to stop the racial violence that has marked his presidency. But Mr. Obama also spoke hard truths to both sides.

Now, after reading that, I expected to see some biblical quotations in the news coverage. However, they didn't make the cut into the final version of the Times story. Yes, there is a reason for that -- as noted by one M.Z. "GetReligionista emerita" Hemingway.

Here's a hint, in the report at NBC News:

Invoking scripture and the nation's long civil rights struggle, Obama urged all of them to remember their shared goals of justice and peace.
He quoted from the Gospel of John: "Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth."


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A broken nation hears, according to elite press, vague sermons on unity and reconciliation

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As America wrestled with bitter realities in Dallas, Baton Rouge, La., and the St. Paul, Minn., area, editors of The Washington Post and The New York Times reached the same conclusion -- this was a good time to send reporters to church, as in black and white churches in these troubled communities.

I agree with that decision, in part because I reached the same conclusion during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, when I was teaching at Denver Seminary. Let me pause, for a second, to explain what that was all about.

The seminary had created a unique seminar -- it was planned long before the riots. Half of the students were black and half were white and our goal was to combine a class on the Old Testament prophets and my mass-media-framed class, "The Contemporary World and the Christian Task."

When the riots broke out, I decided the syllabus outline needed an update. I told the white students to contact black churches and find out (a) what the pastors had preached about on Sunday (days after the riots) and (b) what biblical texts they used. I asked the black students to call white churches, talk to the ministers, and ask the same questions.

So what did our students learn? Before I tell you, let's find out what happened when -- under very similar circumstances -- reporters at these two elite newspapers took on, sort of, the same assignment. Let's start with the Times story, "On a Somber Sunday, ‘One Nation Under God Examines Its Soul.' "

First things first: Times reporters covered several services focusing on justice and racial reconciliation. However, it appears that none of the services included spoken prayers or references to scripture, even when white pastors preached on the sins of white racism and the deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile on Minnesota. Here is a typical anecdote:


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