Terry Mattingly

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That New York Times headline about Catholics witnessing to Jews? Look again ...

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Trust me, I know that it is hard to write accurate, easy-to-read articles about complicated Vatican theological documents. This is especially true when dealing with materials focusing on very nuanced issues that continue to cause behind-the-scenes debates among Catholics.

It's even harder to write informative, catchy and, yes, accurate headlines for these kinds of stories.

This brings me to a recent New York Times report that ran with this headline: "Vatican Says Catholics Should Not Try to Convert Jews."

The problem with that headline is that it is simplistic to the point of being inaccurate -- that is, if the goal is for readers to understand the document ("The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable") addressed in this story.

Now here is the ironic part. You can tell that the headline is inaccurate by carefully reading the actual Times story, which means reading past the flawed lede on which the headline is based. Let us attend.

ROME -- Catholics should not try to convert Jews, but should work together with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said on Thursday in a far-reaching document meant to solidify its increasingly positive relations with Jews.

Then, in the third paragraph, there is this:

Addressing an issue that has been a sore point between the two faiths for centuries, the commission wrote that the church was “obliged to view evangelization to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views.” It specified that “the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews.”

Did you catch the subtle, but very important, difference between the lede and the actual quote from the document? 


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I know this may be hard: But let's take the Jedi faith folks seriously for a moment

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Can't you feel the excitement building as the holy day draws near?

No, not Christmas. A am referring to the media build-up during this advent period before the arrival of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."

I am old enough to remember the early conversations in newsrooms about whether, under the doctrines of the Associated Press Stylebook, stories about the Star Wars franchise should refer to "the force" or "the Force." Just about everyone on the religion beat back in those days wrote features about whether parents should tell their children that the Force was or was not another name for God.

If you follow discussions of Star Wars as a pop-culture religion, you surely know that fans on the other side of the pond took this discussion to a higher level about 15 years ago. Here is the background section of a new story in The Telegraph about the impact of the new film on the leaders of the Church of Jediism.

Jediism started as a joke, ahead of the 2001 census, in which respondents were asked to declare their religion for the first time. At the time, 390,000 people declared that they were Jedis, a number that fell by more than half, to 177,000, at the following census, in 2011.
Now the organisation, described by its members as “a set of philosophies based on focusing, learning and becoming one with the Force”, claims to have more than 250,000 followers. Patrick Day-Childs, a member of the church’s five-strong UK ruling council, said that more than a thousand people a day are signing up for the religion. He said: “It’s gone up substantially in the past couple of days. The real test will be in a couple of weeks when the film hype has died off. “
Daniel Jones, who founded the religion and who goes by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, said: “We’ve been rushed off our feet. People want to know more about it. It’s great for us.”

Now, the "leading figures in the Church of Jediism," as the Telegraph team identifies them, are saying that they are gaining about 1,000 new members a day as the holy release day nears for the new film.


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Got those bad headline blues again: Did Falwell take a shot at all Muslims or not?

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At this point, I really, really wish that I didn't have to address the whole "who is to blame for bad headlines" thing again. I mean, your GetReligionistas have written so many posts about this issue in the past.

Let me make this comment again: (click here please).

Now, what's up? I have received several questions about the recent Washington Post "Acts of Faith" story about the remarks by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., in which -- in the aftermath of the San Bernardino massacre -- he urged qualified Liberty University to get legal permits to carry concealed weapons.

The problem is that it appears there were radically different headlines used on different versions of this story. In my opinion, what appears to have been the early headline is journalistically problematic, to say the least. Hold that thought.

But first, let me stress once again:

... It's important for readers to understand that reporters rarely write the headlines that accompany their stories. Editors and specialists at copy desks write the headlines. It's tough work, and I say that as someone who did that job for several years early in my career.
A good headline can really help a story. A bad one can warp the framework in which the reader encounters the ideas and fact in the text. Alas, that's just the way the business works.

Now, with that in mind, please listen to the full context of this very controversial Falwell quote -- using the YouTube file from CNN that is featured at the top of this post. Here is the quote as published in the Post:


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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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Why hire experienced religion-beat scribes? The goal is to get the top sources, right?

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Time for a religion-beat flashback to a few short months ago. Does anyone remember when most of the mainstream press was absolutely sure that Donald Trump was the darling of evangelical voters from sea to shining sea? Click here for some background on that.

The only problem, of course, is that the GOP field was (and is) so gigantic that the evangelical vote was split a dozen different ways and Trump's modestly large chunk consisted primarily of born-again folks who rarely visited pews. And then there was that interesting WORLD magazine poll of evangelical leaders that found Trump at the bottom of the barrel. I mean, even NPR spotted that poll.

Now, with real, live caucuses and primaries still in the future, the state of mind among evangelical voters remains a crucial variable for Republicans. Ask Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio.

This brings me to an important new Washington Post piece that ran under the headline, "Evangelical leaders are frantically looking for ways to defeat Donald Trump."

Now, your GetReligionistas rarely critique the work of former GetReligionistas. However, it's hard to avoid mentioning one of our former colleagues when she goes to work in a setting as prominent as the Post. So let's just consider this report from Sarah Pulliam Bailey a kind of weekend think piece, to help update readers on the whole Trump-and-evangelicals thing. You can also consider this a promotional piece to to show newsroom managers why they should hire experienced religion-beat professionals.

Now, here's what I want you to do. I want you to read this Post story and then answer this question: What was the most shocking sentence in this report?

OK. Read the story.

Now, are you done? Read to answer the question?


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Concerning the Church of England, the Lord's Prayer and the Star (culture) Wars

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It was a question that nagged defenders of the English monarchy for years: If and when he ever became king, would Prince Charles declare himself to be the "Defender of Faith," as opposed to "Defender of the Faith"?

In a way, the chance that the crucial "the" would go missing was the perfect symbol for decades of tense "multiculturalism" debates in Britain. Drop the "the" and the implication was that Christianity, and the Church of England in particular, would have lost its status as a foundation for English life and culture. The monarch would henceforth defend the IDEA of faith, as opposed to a particular faith. Theological pluralism would be the new norm.

It didn't help, of course, that the Church of England was on the decline, in terms of worship attendance, baptisms, marriages and just about any other statistic that could be cited. Meanwhile, Islam was on the rise. Wasn't dropping this telltale "the" simply a nod to the new reality?

Prince Charles has, fairly recently, stated that his title would remain "Defender of the Faith." However, the cultural identity debates roll on, as witnessed in the stark message of the new report by the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life entitled "Living with Difference: Community, Diversity and the Common Good (click for .pdf)." Its bottom line: England isn't Christian. Get over it. Reactions? Click here for commentary from veteran religion-beat specialist Ruth Gledhill and here for analysis by Jenny Taylor of the Lapido Media religious literacy project.

These painful debates loomed in the background during this week's "Crossroads" podcast. This time around, host Todd Wilken and I discussed the many implications of the decision -- by the principalities and powers of the movie theater business -- to reject the use of that Church of England ad featuring the Lord's Prayer before screenings of the new Star Wars epic. Click here to tune in our discussion of all of this.


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Marco Rubio reaches out to believers, pushing something called the 'free exercise' of religion

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If you are following the madness that is the GOP pre-primary season, then you know that one of the most interesting showdowns is over in the Cuban-American bracket, where Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio are facing off.

At the heart of that crucial battle is the bond between Cruz and large parts of the Sunbelt evangelical world, which is a huge advantage in crucial states such as Iowa, South Carolina and, of course, Texas. The Rubio people know that and have been making strategic moves to reach out to the world of cultural conservatives.

That effort is complicated, a bit, by two issues -- both of which are addressed in a recent New York Times news feature that ran under the headline, "As Marco Rubio Speaks of Faith, Evangelicals Keep Options Open."

The first issue is quite simple, and the Times team handles it quite well. Rubio's religious background is complex, to say the least. The world is not full of Cuban-Americans who were raised Catholic, converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and then went back to Catholicism, while also attending his wife's Southern Baptist congregation.

Also, The Times dedicates quite a bit of space to Rubio's ties to New York financier Paul Singer, a strong supporter of same-sex marriage causes.

This leads to the crucial passage in this report:

Mr. Rubio’s more open discussion about his religion is cracking a window into a part of his life he does not often discuss. Sometimes he goes on at length, as at the dinner in Des Moines, demonstrating a fluency with Scripture that surprises his audience. ...


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Holy Screwtape! Young C.S. Lewis secretly worked with MI6?

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I don't know about you, but for years now I have grown increasingly skeptical about a lot of the books and other products that continue to roll out from the publishing industry that surrounds the life and work of the great Oxford don and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis.

Don't get me wrong. I have an entire room of my house that, basically, is dedicated to Eastern Orthodox icons, my family and C.S. Lewis. My son's middle name is "Lewis" and we almost used "Jack" as his first name. I read "The Great Divorce" every year during Lent.

But, honestly, it's almost like we've reached the point where people would publish an annotated edition of this man's grocery lists, should they become available. There are still fine books being published about the Narnian, but I've grown more skeptical about some of work produced by the C.S. Lewis industrial complex.

And then someone comes up with an interesting twist in the life of Lewis. In this case, Christianity Today has just published an online essay -- by scholar Harry Lee Poe of Union University here in Tennessee -- that is a bit of a news scoop. It argues that, while no one is claiming Lewis ever ran around with a gun and a decoder ring, the young Oxford don appears to have done some work for MI6, as in Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Yes, you read that right. This kind of adds a new layer of meaning to discussions of an "Inner Ring" and talk about devilish high-ranking agents working with case officers to snare souls. Here is how it starts:


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A small step for women in Saudi Arabia, one that might have something to do with Islam

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It's an issue that your GetReligionistas have faced quite a bit in the past year or two, the simple question: Do the leaders of the Islamic State do what they do because of an "ideology," a "theology" or both?

The answer, of course, is "both." With its culture-shaping combination of doctrine, tradition and Sharia law, Islam is a complete package. If you look at history, it's pretty hard to find much of a case for the separation of mosque and state. How has that worked out in Turkey?

The Washington Post foreign desk has a feature today that offers news consumers another chance to see this equation at work without, in this case, some of the more hellish details of news about ISIS. In this case we are talking about women's rights in Saudi Arabia, specifically the right for women to vote and even to run for office.

Once again, a key element of the cultural equation is missing in this report -- the actual teachings of Islam. You can see this is an issue at the top of the story, with female candidates talking about recycling, day care and libraries:

These are hardly the rallying cries of revolutionaries. But, in the ultraconservative context of Saudi Arabia, such appeals are breaking new ground: They are coming from some of the more than 900 female candidates in the kingdom’s first nationwide election in which women are able to run -- and vote.
The balloting Saturday for municipal council seats across the kingdom -- from Riyadh’s chaotic sprawl to oil-rich outposts -- marks a cautious step forward in a nation where social change does not come easy. It must always pass muster through a ruling system that may be Western-allied but still answers to a religious establishment very wary of bold moves, particularly regarding the role of women.
Women still cannot drive. They must receive a male guardian’s permission to travel abroad alone, and face other daily reminders of Saudi Arabia’s strict brand of Islam and the state’s punishing stance against any open dissent.


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