TV-Radio

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New York Times digs into 'The Messiah' and finds emotions, art, politics and very little Christianity

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Gentle readers, please allow me a second moment of reflection on the challenges of secular journalists attempting to cover news stories centering on great works of sacred choral music. I have, after all, been a choral musician since I was 6-years-old and I didn’t jump into journalism until I discovered that it’s hard to major in music at a major university if one cannot play the piano.

The other day, I took a look at a New York Times feature about the unsuccessful efforts at the KIng’s College at Cambridge University to carry on — damn the coronavirus, full speed ahead — with its world-famous Christmas Eve performance of “The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.”

As you can tell from my snarky headline, I thought it was strange that the Times team didn’t include anything about the contents of this Anglican worship service, including the fact that the “lessons” are, in fact, lengthy passages of scripture. Thus, the headline: “New York Times asks: Did COVID shut down live festival of content-free lessons and carols?”

I didn’t expect a religion-beat story. However, I still thought it was strange (or, alas, not so strange) to completely skip over the religious intent and message of a worship service held in a chapel. After all, as noted in this Cambridge essay about the rite:

Wherever the service is heard and however it is adapted, whether the music is provided by choir or congregation, the pattern and strength of the service, as Dean [Eric] Milner-White pointed out, derive from the lessons and not the music. ‘The main theme is the development of the loving purposes of God ...’ seen ‘through the windows and words of the Bible’. Local interests appear, as they do here, in the bidding prayer, and personal circumstances give point to different parts of the service. Many of those who took part in the first service must have recalled those killed in the Great War when it came to the famous passage ‘all those who rejoice with us but on another shore and in a greater light’. The centre of the service is still found by those who ‘go in heart and mind’ and who consent to follow where the story leads.

So might these Bible passages about life, death, suffering and new hope have been relevant during the COVID-tide of 2020? Apparently, that is not a topic one could expect to read about in The New York Times.

But what about the even more famous scripture passages, images and themes in “The Messiah” by George Frideric Handel?

Surely the Times team couldn’t produce a feature story — “Meet the People Who Can’t Bring You ‘Messiah’ This Year” — about why this work is so important to listeners and performers without discussing the content of this sacred classic? Maybe a tiny splash of digital ink, like one or two paragraphs?


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New York Times asks: Did COVID shut down live festival of content-free lessons and carols?

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For a certain kind of Christmas music lover (tmatt raises his hand high) there are few words richer and more emotional than, “Once in royal David’s city, stood a lowly cattle shed. …”

The former choirboy in me — yes, there are fine choirs in some corners of Texas — has always tried to imagine the pressure on the boy soprano chosen to sing those words at the start of the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the gothic chapel at King’s College, Cambridge.

Whatever the word “tradition” means in Anglicanism these days, tuning into the live radio broadcast of this rite is an example of something sacred that still plays an important role in British life. I mean, everyone is listening — including the Queen.

But in 2020 ... And what about that mutant variation on COVID-19 … Isn’t choral music really dangerous? … Of course the chapel is empty … Are there masks that match robes worn by the choristers? Etc., etc.

I’m happy to report that several news organizations thought ahead and wrote stories about the Christmas Eve challenges of COVID-tide, including The New York Times: “A Choir Tries to Keep Its Christmas Tradition Alive.”

The story starts exactly how you would imagine that it would start — with a rehearsal as the choir prepared for the ritual that everyone is hoping will be allowed to proceed:

CAMBRIDGE, England — On a recent evening, the 16 boys and 14 men of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, stood in the gothic chapel where they perform, spread out in the flickering candlelight.

A few of the choristers gazed at the vaulted ceiling about 80 feet above them. Then Daniel Hyde, the choir’s music director, signaled that he was ready to begin, and all slipped off the masks they had been wearing to sing “I Saw Three Ships,” a sprightly carol that will be heard by about 100 million people. …

Each Christmas Eve, the choir’s “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” is broadcast live on radio stations worldwide, including about 450 in the United States.

What are the stakes here?

In a typical year, the choir performs in religious services in the college chapel several times a week and tours worldwide. It has sung the Christmas Eve carol service every year since 1918, and the event has become a cherished holiday tradition.


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New podcast: What's God got to do with it? There's more to Hillsong drama than celebrities

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Nearly 40 years ago, I wrote a story for The Charlotte Observer about a rapidly growing megachurch on the south side of town. Yes, there were megachurches back then. In fact, there were already academics studying the factors that turned ordinary churches into megachurches.

Hang in there with me, because I’m working my way to the topic at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focuses on the New York Times coverage of the fall of that hip Hillsong preacher in New York City.

Anyway, this Charlotte church was fascinating because it had strong Presbyterian roots and its creation was linked to splits that were already taking place in the world of mainline Protestantism. This was not a rock-band-and-lasers church. It was offering conservative Reformed-Calvinist thought with a style that a bit more suburban than your ordinary Presbyterian congregation.

It was clear, at least to me, that the preaching was the key to this story. This was a mainline-esque church where they were still talking about salvation, sin, heaven and hell — all in a dramatic, but intelligent way. So I ended my long feature story with a big chunk of a sermon, built on images of heaven and the end of all things. This led into an altar call and more people streaming forward to join the church.

That works, when you’re in Billy Graham’s hometown. Bit didn’t work for a key editor. One newsroom wit once said that this particular journalist “grew up Unitarian, but then he backslid.” He wanted that ending removed. I stood my ground and — here’s the point — argued that what this church was proclaiming, in terms of doctrine and faith, was a crucial element in its success. This wasn’t just a story about politics, real estate and zoning laws. The editor just couldn’t GET IT. A short version of the ending made it into print.

So back to Hillsong. During the five years that I did some part-time teaching in New York City (on the ground there eight weeks or so, each year), I had lots of students who went to Hillsong. They talked about the music. They talked a lot about the preaching. Yes, they talked about the excitement of being in that crowd and feeling like they were part of all that.

It was clear to me that this Hillsong operation — in the world’s Alpha City — was a big story.

The journalism question is this: To what degree should the faith content at Hillsong, and even the DNA of sermons by the Rev. Carl Lentz, play a significant part of a story about Hillsong NYC and the scandal that took down its leader?


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What hath Trump wrought? New York Times helps fuel new journalism fires in 2020s

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The New York Times obituary for Seymour Topping, who died Nov. 8 at age 98, accurately summarized the 1969-1986 reign at the newspaper by this No. 2 man with legendary editor A.M. Rosenthal. We're told the team "above all prized high standards of reporting and editing, which demanded fairness, objectivity and good taste in news columns free of editorial comment, political agendas, innuendo and unattributed pejorative quotations."

That was not just a farewell to "Top" but to a fading ideal in American journalism that's steadily supplanted by opinionated and entertaining coverage that wins eyeballs, ears, clicks, digital subscribers -- and profits. Public trust in the news media is eroded to an alarming degree while social media inflame everything, reporters' tweets expose their biases and Donald Trump's attacks accompany media hostility.

This growing trust deficit shapes all aspects of our business, the religion beat included.

A lengthy Times piece Nov. 13 about why 2020 polls were so misleading said Republicans were wary about participating because Trump "frequently told his supporters not to trust the media."

That’s an easy answer. But is suspicion entirely the president's doing? Wholly apart from Trump smears ("the enemy of the American People!"), did mainstream media treatment of the Trump movement, Republicans and political, cultural and religious conservatives sew distrust? What's ahead if Trump succeeds in controlling the GOP and his 73 million voters through 2024?

Vest-pocket history: Starting in 1988 with Rush Limbaugh's outspoken show, conservative talk radio pretty much saved the AM industry. Fox News Channel and MSNBC arrived in 1996, with Fox partially imitating Limbaugh while MSNBC veered ever more leftward, eventually followed by pioneer CNN (founded in 1980). The Times, financially pressed dailies and broadcast networks were tempted toward a more cautious slant.

But with the Trump Era, traditional restraints all but vanished. This advocacy journalism approach — known as “Kellerism,” here at GetReligion — became the norm on coverage of moral and cultural topics in American life.

That brings us to last January's Pew Research Center report "U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided." Media personnel should delve into these data on how 12,043 respondents view 30 varied news outlets.

The Times, so influential among the cultural elite, educators, policy-makers and journalists, exemplifies the concrete news "silos" into which Americans now sequester themselves.


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New York Times went tone deaf when Matthew McConaughey started talking about God

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Let’s see. I feel an urgent need, right now, to write about news coverage that has nothing to do with Donald Trump, Joe Biden or Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick.

There is, you see, a side of my journalism personality linked to those long-ago days when I was an entertainment reporter-rock columnist. Also, when I taught at a seminary, I spent most of my time trying to get future pastors, religious educators and counselors to realize that, for ordinary Americans, “signals” sent via entertainment matter way more than those in news content. That’s tragic, but true.

So let’s flashback to that New York Times feature that ran not so long ago under this headline: “Matthew McConaughey Wrote the Book on Matthew McConaughey.” Let’s skip the second deck of that headline since it contained the obligatory reference to “all right, all right, all right (or in Texan, that would be '“alright” or some other spelling with an extra “w” or “h” in there somewhere).”

I was curious if this book — or perhaps I should say this Times feature about the book — would make any references to this complex superstar’s take on Christian faith. Maybe a reference to his infamous, by Hollywood standards, Oscar acceptance speech in 2014? You remember, when he said:

First off I want to thank God, because he's the one I look up to, he's graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human kind. He has shown me that it's a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late (British actor) Charlie Laughton, who said, 'When you got God, you got a friend and that friend is you.’ “

There was more, but we’ll leave it at that. It was kind of a short “Pilgrim’s Progress” with his trademark twang.

The Times feature does use the safe b-word — “beliefs” — but doesn’t seem very interested in the who, what, when, where, why and how. Thus, readers are told:

... McConaughey wants readers to look beyond the boldface name on its cover and focus on its fundamental message. No one can escape hardship, he said, but he can share the lessons “that helped me navigate the hard stuff — like I say, ‘get relative with the inevitable’ — sooner and in the best way possible for myself.”


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Plug-in: What spiritual ramifications of the fly that landed on Mike Pence's head?

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My journalist son Keaton and I were watching the vice presidential debate Wednesday night when he burst out laughing.

“Is that a fly on Mike Pence’s head?” my 23-year-old son wondered out loud.

I glanced up from the Words With Friends game on my iPad and squinted at the TV.

“It sure looks like it,” I said.

We both rushed to check Twitter. Confirmation of our suspicion came quickly. And suddenly, a nation weighted down by too much heavy news had a reason to giggle again.

The New York Times dutifully reported:

Vice President Mike Pence, his hair perfectly coiffed, never reacted to the fly’s appearance on the right side of his head. It stood out against his bright white hair, standing still for the most part but moving around slightly before, well, flying away.

A local TV news reporter from California clocked the fly’s screen time on Mr. Pence’s head at 2 minutes, 3 seconds.

Despite the buzz that it created, the fly did not respond to an interview request. However, America’s most famous insect did start a viral social media account.

Please don’t whack me with a fly swatter, but that “spiritual ramifications” title at the top of this week’s column was clickbait.

If that bugs you, though, Sojourners’ Jenna Barnett has you covered with “5 Bible verses about flies.” See, there’s always a religion angle. Even with Flygate.

Concerning the actual debate, Pence and California Sen. Kamala Harris clashed briefly over religious belief. Religion Unplugged’s Timothy Nerozzi delves into the specifics.


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Two Orthodox podcasts: Fake news and blunt talk about parish life after COVID-19

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Let’s just call this a podcast day — period.

This week’s “Crossroads” GetReligion podcast will be posted later, focusing on an often overlooked religion-related niche in American politics. Think “nones” and the 2020 White House race and related issues.

n the meantime, here are two rather strange — for GetReligion readers and listeners — Orthodox media podcasts that may still be of interest to some people, including religion-beat pros.

Both of these chats are directly related to newsy topics that come up here all the time. What makes them different is that the topics are framed in ways that appeal directly to an Eastern Orthodox Christian audience, as opposed to be handled straight on as topics linked to mainstream news coverage.

In the first, I was invited on the national Ancient Faith Today podcast hosted by Father Tom Soroka, who serves at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in McKees Rocks, Penn.

The topic for this hour-long show was “Media Bias,” with a focus on explaining to clergy and laypeople the complex nature of news in the age of the Internet. How did we end up with a blurred line between news and the op-ed pages? How can news consumers stay sane in an age when elite, high-quality newsrooms produce solid, old-school journalism on some topics and then, on the very next “page,” offer agitprop on other topics, especially those linked to religion and culture?

Click here to tune that in. At the heart of the discussion was the varying ways that professionals and laypeople struggle to define the term “fake news.” That will sound familiar to GetReligion readers (“Fake News? The Economist team doesn't know where Liberty University is located.”

This podcast is one of the flagship offerings of Ancient Faith Ministries, which started out long, long ago as a trailblazing online radio ministry — years before podcasts and other related podcasts were the norm. (Trivia: I donated an early slogan for this crew — “Ancient faith: All digital.”)


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Labor Day mix: Religion and presidential politics, Bobby's best and clashing images of protest

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In addition to spending some social-distanced time around a grill, this is a good day for a bit of extra reading. Please consider this a kind of “think piece” package to mentally munch during a relaxing day.

Yes, I realize that some of the topics are a bit heavy. It’s #2020.

For starters, here is a heavyweight Commonweal essay from retired Newsweek religion-beat pro Kenneth Woodward: “Religion & Presidential Politics — From George Washington to Donald Trump.”

As is usually the case with Woodward, there is plenty to think about in this lengthy piece and a few things to argue about, as well. In other words, it’s must reading. Here is the lengthy overture.

Sen. Eugene McCarthy, one of the few theologically sophisticated men ever to seek either party’s presidential nomination, liked to say that only two kinds of religion are tolerated along the Potomac: “strong beliefs vaguely expressed and vague beliefs strongly affirmed.” McCarthy had two particular presidents in mind: Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. But he could have been describing most of the men who have occupied the White House. Franklin D. Roosevelt would have understood what McCarthy meant. When he decided to run for president in 1932, his press secretary asked him what he should tell the press about his religious convictions. Roosevelt could have justly claimed that he was a warden of his Episcopal parish, prayed often, and regularly attended Sunday services. But all he said was: “Tell them I am a Christian and a Democrat, and that is all they need to know.” And it was. And so, with rare exceptions, it has always been in presidential elections.

Having written about religion and its relationship to American culture and politics for more than half a century, I am not inclined to minimize the effects of religious belief, behavior, and belonging on American public life. But I think it’s abundantly clear that religion has rarely been a significant factor in our presidential politics, and isn’t likely to be in the upcoming election. On the contrary, to treat religious identity as an independent variable, as many journalists, academics, and pollsters do, inflates the influence of religion on our politics and masks the ways in which politics has come to shape American religion, rather than the reverse. Still, after the returns are in next November, the media will carry stories about how Catholics, liberal Protestants, and Evangelicals — especially “non-Hispanic white” Evangelicals — voted. Why do we insist on connecting presidential choices with religious identity?

Let me give my answer to that question: We connect the two because candidates and their political parties take stands on moral and cultural issues that directly connect — for SOME (I cannot emphasize “some” enough), certainly not a majority, of voters.


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Plug-In: To kneel or not to kneel? That isn't a new controversy linking sports and faith

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Tim Tebow’s outward expressions of his evangelical Christian faith made him a polarizing figure during his college and professional football career.

There’s no doubt about that. But did Tebow’s prayers on the field upset the NFL — the league itself?

Ryan Fournier, a leading supporter of President Donald Trump, made that claim this week in a tweet to nearly 1 million followers.

“I’m old enough to remember when Tim Tebow kneeled for God on the field,” said the Twitter post by Fournier, founder and co-chairman of Students for Trump. “And the NFL got upset because that wasn’t the place for ‘divisive’ displays of one’s beliefs.”

However, the accuracy of that statement is highly questionable. More on that in a moment.

First, though, some relevant background: The tweet came amid renewed attention over athletes kneeling in protest — or not — during the national anthem before games.

Colin Kaepernick, then the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, started the practice in 2016 to call attention to social injustice. But in a reversal from then, athletes now are having “to explain why they chose to stand, not kneel, during ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’” as the New York Times noted in a recent story.

That was evident last week when a San Francisco Giants relief pitcher, Sam Coonrod, declined to take a knee with his teammates. A Sports Illustrated writer subsequently accused Coonrod of “hiding” behind his religion. (Click here for tmatt post on that that controversy.)

“I meant no ill will by it,” Coonrod told reporters. “I don’t think I’m better than anybody. I’m just a Christian. I believe I can’t kneel before anything but God, Jesus Christ. I chose not to kneel. I feel if I did kneel I’d be a hypocrite. I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”

Back to Tebow, whose faith is still making news — as in the recent Twitter decision to briefly spike one of his videos featuring Bible references and words of encouragement, due to “potentially sensitive content.”

The 2007 Heisman Trophy winner won two national championships with the University of Florida before stints with the Denver Broncos (2010 and 2011) and the New York Jets (2012). During his college career, he frequently inscribed Bible references, such as John 3:16, on the black patches worn under his eyes. Later, he gained attention by pledging to remain sexually abstinent until marriage.


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