Terry Mattingly

, , , , , ,

Yo, New York Times: Religion ghost in your update on Baylor's Kenneth Starr?

, , , , , ,

When your family is full of Baylor University graduates, there is a very good chance that someone is going to send you a link to an A1 piece in The New York Times about the president of the school that many refer to as "Jerusalem on the Brazos."

Baylor's current president is one Kenneth W. Starr, a name familiar to people here in DC Beltway-land and a name that may show up in Google searches more often as Hillary Clinton makes a run at (returning to) the White House. Yes, there is a religion ghost in this fine story about Starr.

This particular story focuses on Starr's role in current NCAA debates about the amateur status of the athletes whose skills bring millions of dollars into the bank accounts of American colleges and universities. I love the fine details and close connections in this summary passage near the top of the story:


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

The dance continues: Pope Francis, the U.S. bishops and alleged confusion in the press

, , , , , , ,

The U.S. Catholic bishops are meeting in Baltimore and, as you would expect, the coverage -- so far -- has been framed in terms of the the liberal, friendly, compassionate agenda of Pope Francis and the nasty, legalistic, orthodox point of view of the bishops who are "culture warriors" on abortion, marriage, religious liberty, etc.

The top of this Associated Press report is perfect, in terms of capturing this framework:

U.S. Roman Catholic bishops are gathering at a moment of turbulence for them and the American church, as Pope Francis moves toward crafting new policies for carrying out his mission of mercy -- a prospect that has conservative Catholics and some bishops in an uproar.
The assembly ... comes less than a month after Francis ended a dramatic Vatican meeting on how the church can more compassionately minister to Catholic families.
The gathering in Rome was only a prelude to a larger meeting next year which will more concretely advise Francis on church practice. Still, the open debate at the event, and the back and forth among bishops over welcoming gays and divorced Catholics who remarry, prompted stunning criticism from some U.S. bishops.

Actually, that is the top of an earlier version of the AP story, recovered via Wayback Machine. That text is now missing and the current version of that AP story, at the same URL, can be found by clicking here. There are some interesting differences ...


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Yes, I saw the New York Times piece on Marvin Olasky and World magazine

, , , , , ,

It's interesting -- "ironic" may be a better word -- how many people sent me emails asking if I saw the New York Times "Beliefs" column this week focusing on the work of Marvin Olasky and World magazine, the one with the headline: "A Muckraking Magazine Creates a Stir Among Evangelical Christians."

"Ironic"? We'll get to that.

Columnist Mark Oppenheimer later noted, on Twitter, that many readers didn't seem to realize that the word "muckraking" is -- among real journalists -- a word that can be used as a compliment. That was the point of his column, in a word.

Before we go further, please understand that Olasky is I friend of mine, yet a friend with whom I have enjoyed many years of debates over very important questions about faith and journalism. You could not ask for a more interesting man with whom to have a meaningful and productive argument.

It is very old hat that many people on the political and religious left (liberal evangelicals, in particular) really, really, do not like Olasky's brand of advocacy journalism, which is interesting since he is a convert to Calvinist Christianity who was once a Jewish atheist and a member of the Communist Party. Oppenheimer focused -- note the headline -- on the fact that Olasky also gets under the skins of many people on the political and religious right because he is not a PR man for the Republican establishment. Ditto for the evangelical establishment, come to think of it. The typical World issue contains few, if any, ads from evangelical book publishers.


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

Your weekend think piece: Former GetReligionista discusses anti-Catholic story up in Seattle

, , , , , , , , ,

This is one of those stories that could have shown up with a "Got news?" notice in a GetReligion headline. It's rather amazing that this Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog item -- it's hard to tell if it was given serious news treatment -- did not receive more attention from the national press.

It's a classic example of a "mirror image" story. Try to imagine the coverage if a liberal Catholic or a traditional Muslim had been the target of this kind of ad. 

Here's the top of the PI report:

A website erected by local Democratic activists mocked the Catholic faith of Republican state Senate candidate Mark Miloscia, showing a cartoon of Miloscia waring a bishop’s mitre and holding a rosary and claiming that Miloscia represents “the Vatican.”
Democratic opponent Shari Song asked that the posting be taken down. It was, but has been replaced by an equally crude posting entitled “Pope Francis vs. Mark Miloscia,” which appears to argue that Miloscia is opposing the pope by being pro-life and upholding church teaching on same-sex marriage.


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

Pod people: That 'mushy middle' in American religion and an old mystery on the religious left

, , , , , , , , ,
Pod people: That 'mushy middle' in American religion and an old mystery on the religious left

For several decades now, I have been hearing pollsters -- with organizations on the left, right and in the middle -- asking some very similar questions about trends on the left side of the marketplace of ideas that is American religion. In fact, they have often, been asking precisely the same question.

That doesn't happen very often. So when it does, I think that it behooves those of us who report and write about religion to pay attention.

Here's the key question: If more and more Americans are moving toward liberalism on questions of faith and morality, then why are the membership statistics continuing to spiral down in doctrinally liberal churches?

That question came up again this week in our "Crossroads" podcast, when host Todd Wilken and I talked about the heritage of research done by the late George Gallup, Jr., and how it related to a new LifeWay Research survey -- the "Theological Awareness Benchmark Study" conducted for Ligonier Ministries of Orlando, Fla. Click here to listen in.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Strangely anonymous anti-Catholics come to Beltway land

, , , , , ,

Something rather interesting and important is missing from the Washington Post story that ran under the headline, "Anti-Catholic protesters with bullhorns appear at several D.C.-area parishes." However, and this is the strange part, it does not appear that the Post team is to blame.

See if you can spot the problem at the very top of this report:

Roman Catholic leaders have sent e-mails of warning to dozens of Washington and Maryland priests after protesters with bullhorns yelling anti-Catholic slogans appeared at several parishes and in a couple of cases “stormed the inside of the church just before Mass,” a bishop-administrator wrote in the e-mail.
A spokeswoman with the Archdiocese of Washington, which oversees 139 parishes in the District and suburban Maryland, said Wednesday that “really small” groups of protesters have appeared on the property of three or four parishes in the past couple of weeks near Mass time. They were shouting at parishioners going in and out and were handing out “fundamentalist” Christian literature, said Chieko Noguchi.
She would not identify the parishes or share the literature or what it said, saying it was unclear whether the protesters had created it or were using something they got elsewhere.

No, it's not the scare-quotes use of the familiar and often abused "fundamentalist" epithet that troubles me. 


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Strangest Ebola religion story yet? What, pray tell, is a 'non-religious' church?

, , , ,

Talk about a tough call. Is this the strangest religion-angle Ebola story yet?

There are so many strange things to note in the following report from way down under, care of The New Zealand Herald. First of all there is the deceptively simple double-decker headline:

Warning over 'miracle' Ebola cure
Warning ahead of NZ seminar to push church’s ‘miracle’ potion

OK, so you have the word "miracle" in the same headline with the word "church." That's a somewhat logical connection, I know, but what kind of church are we talking about that says it has a cure for miraculous Ebola? 

Read the top of this story very carefully:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

Flashback to George Gallup, Jr., and very early roots of the tmatt trio

, , , , ,

It's an experience that most journalists have had, at one time or another. You have just interviewed someone who is really interesting and, perhaps, an important leader in their field. The interview eventually turns into a conversation, usually about the topics linked to the topic being discussed or the details of the person's work.

I had several chances -- over the space of a decade or two -- to talk to the late pollster George Gallup, Jr. It is not surprising that he enjoyed talking about trends in American religion. Me too. He enjoyed talking about interesting questions linked to religious issues. Me too.

This brings us, of course, to the "tmatt trio" -- the three basic doctrinal questions I have long used to probe fault lines among Christian leaders and their followers. The goal is to ask the questions and then listen to the content of the answers, which are almost always highly nuanced and are often revealing.

Gallup and I discussed these questions on several occasions.


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

USA Today recycles that out-of-context Chaput quote and other pope riffs

, , , , , , , , ,

Oh great. Here we go again, back into the media debates about whether the archbishop of Philadelphia really said, during a speech in New York City (full video here), that Pope Francis was working with Satan to destroy the Catholic Church.

So, once again, what did Archbishop Charles Chaput actually say? Back to the transcript:

Audience member: I would be very grateful for your comments on the recent Synod on the Family in Rome.
Chaput: Well, first of all, I wasn’t there. That’s very significant, because to claim you know what really happened when you weren’t there is foolish. To get your information from the press is a mistake because they don’t know well enough how to understand it so they can tell people what happened. I don’t think the press deliberately distorts, they just don’t have any background to be able to evaluate things. In some cases they’re certainly the enemy and they want to distort the Church.
Now, having said all that, I was very disturbed by what happened. I think confusion is of the devil, and I think the public image that came across was of confusion.

So, who did he say caused the confusion in the "public image" of the synod and its work?


Please respect our Commenting Policy