World Religions

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Time to wrap up 2016, starting with: 'Religion still matters, whatever your beliefs'

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If you have followed GetReligion through the years, the you know that we never completely close our cyber-doors during the 12 days of the Christmas season -- but we do slow down a bit.

We also mark the end of the religion-news years with quite a bit of commentary from hither and yon about the news events and trends of the year that is ending. We'll post the Religion News Association Top 10 stories list, as well as my annual "On Religion" commentary on that, along with a podcast about both of those. Religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling has already turned in a pair of memos looking ahead to 2017.

You get the idea. We will also post more than the usual number of think pieces about subjects we assume will be of interest to people who care about the state of religion news and topics linked to that.

So let's start that off with a piece from The Times on the other side of the pond that ran with this GetReligion-friendly double-decker headline:

Religion still matters, whatever your beliefs
From US politics to Middle East terror, it has never been more important to understand how faith shapes our world

Commentator Tim Montgomerie begins with the rather obvious -- now -- observation that Hillary Rodham Clinton probably wishes, when looking back on the year that was, that she had hired a few more people to pay attention to religious voters in the American heartland, especially the Midwest, when picking out the 4,200 members of her campaign staff.

For example, there wasn't a single Clinton campaign staffer -- saith Slate magazine -- who was assigned to investigate the concerns of evangelical Protestants. If Clinton had done half as well with evangelicals as did Barack Obama, she would be president-elect.

So what's the bigger story here? It's the fact that many journalists just don't get religion, of course.


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Perfectly valid (even if rather bizarre) Christmas wars stories in Texas and South Florida

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Not all Christmas wars stories are created equal.

The most important ones have something to do with religious believers of all kinds attempting to carve out some space in what is usually called the "public square." We're talking about government or business controlled environments ranging from public schools to shopping malls, from county court house lawns to public parks.

In other words, we're talking about battles over what the Peanuts character Linus can or cannot say in a public-school holiday musical or in a poster about such an event. Here is a case in point, care of The Washington Post, complete with the perfectly normal term religious liberty being wrapped in scare quotes. You know the drill. Let's start with Charlie Brown asking, "Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

Linus, his thumb-sucking and blanket-toting best friend, speaks up.
“Sure, Charlie Brown,” he says. “I can tell you what Christmas is all about.”
Then the character recites a lengthy Bible passage, from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, when angels descend upon the flock-tending shepherds to announce the birth of baby Jesus.
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord,” Linus says. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
It is that quote, extracted from the special’s most overtly Christian scene, that has thrust a Texas middle school nurse’s aide, the school district she works for and the state attorney general into a very public -- and unseasonably bitter -- debate over what “religious liberty” means inside the walls of the state’s public schools.

You can almost write the rest of this story yourself, can't you? 

The key, this time, is that the story actually includes large chunks of material about some of the laws that frame this debate, such as the Merry Christmas Law in Texas that was passed to clarify some U.S. Supreme Court material on such matters.


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Journalists: Religious lessons you (could have) learned from Trump win can help explain Putin

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Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.

Everywhere you look in the news right now, journalists are trying to get a handle on Vladimir Putin and Russia. This post is about Russia -- consider it a sequel to the earlier "Dear editors at The New York Times: Vladimir Putin is a Russian, but Putin is not Russia" -- but that is not where I want to start. Please be patient, because I want to start with an American parable.

Surely, some journalists have learned by now that our recent presidential race was more complex than Hillary Rodham Clinton vs. Citizen Donald Trump. There were, fore example, Democrats who wanted to vote for Clinton. However, there were others -- #feelthebern -- who did so reluctantly, but felt they had to vote against Trump.

On the Trump side, there were people who sincerely backed his campaign (including a large number, perhaps even a majority, of white evangelicals). Then there were millions of people (including blue-collar Democrats) who didn't like Trump at all, but supported some elements of his alleged platform, so they voted for Trump. Then there others who actively opposed Trump, but felt they had to vote for him -- think U.S. Supreme Court -- to oppose Clinton. It will be interesting to learn how many people (like me) voted for an alternative candidate.

What does this have to do with Putin? Well, lots of elite journalists (hello, New York Times) have been trying to figure out why so many American conservatives are fond of Putin or think it's important to improve U.S. relations with Putin and Russia. In Times speak, anyone who sees anything positive in Putin's actions and worldview is automatically an "extremist." Thus that recent headline: "Extremists Turn to a Leader to Protect Western Values: Vladimir Putin."

Everyone pretty much goes into that "extremist," pro-Putin bag, including the alt-right, lots of Trump voters, racists, extreme nationalists everywhere, anti-Semites and, ultimately, the Russian Orthodox Church. Was Brexit in there too?

But think of that Trump parable. The problem is that there are lots of people who either loathe or totally distrust Putin (they see him for what he is), but they do not reject everything that he stands for in his warped version of a pro-Russian agenda. Thus, they are sort of "voting" for Putin, or they want America to deal with him more realistically, because the alternative, to be blunt, is the postmodern worldview of the European elites.

The religion angle? The press needs to grasp that, often, Orthodox leaders are not backing Putin when they support elements of Putin's policies that just happen to run parallel with centuries of Orthodox teachings. Oh, and they would really like to prevent the massacre of millions of Christians in Syria and what remains of the church in the Middle East.

This brings me to a recent, and typical, Associated Press report related to all of this. Here is the overture, care of Crux: 

MOSCOW, Russia -- The Russian Orthodox Church is expanding its influence in what was once an officially godless state -- and President Vladimir Putin appears eager to harness that resurgent power of faith to promote his own agenda.


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New York Times pays timely visit to ancient, threatened home of the real St. Nicholas

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Let us now pause to offer a word of thanksgiving and modest praise for a New York Times story about religion.

Of course, this particular news report has nothing to do with sexuality or religious liberty, so the editorial bar was set a bit lower. However, this story does have a few kind words to say about Russian Orthodox believers, which is a kind a miracle in and of itself right now.

The dateline for this report is the city of Demre, in southern Turkey, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Taurus Mountains. In other words, this comes from a region that is absolutely crucial to the history of the early church and the people of the New Testament, although most readers (the story takes this into account) would not know that. 

The headline focuses on an all-to-often overlooked hero of the Christian faith: "In Turkey’s Home of St. Nick, Far From North Pole, All Is Not Jolly."

Now, why is this story appearing in the Times on Dec. 19th? I would assume that this is because a Times correspondent noted an increase in the number of Christians coming to Demre for events celebrating the life and faith of St. Nicholas of Myra.

But why Dec. 19th? The story never tells us why.

This raises an interesting question: Does the reporter, or the Times copy desk, even realize that Dec. 19th is the Feast of St. Nicholas, according to the ancient Julian calendar used by the Orthodox Church in Russia and in many other Eastern lands? In the West, the feast of St. Nicholas -- with its emphasis on almsgiving for the poor and small gifts (think chocolates wrapped to look like gold coins) -- is celebrated on Dec. 6th, on the newer Gregorian calendar.

But let's look at a key summary of facts early in this story:

Yes, Virginia, you heard that right, Santa Claus is from Turkey. But this year, Christmastime in Demre is far from cheery.


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Ultra-orthodox Jews: BBC offers an enlightening potrayal of women who want out

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It’s often very tough to get the inside story on closed communities such as the Amish, the Scientologists and Hasidic Jews. 

The big chink in the armor is when someone defects and that’s how BBC came up with its fascinating take about divorced Hasidic Jewish women in their multimedia presentation, “Scare the mother, save the child.”

The story starts with a photo of a woman who’s knocking at a door, her back to the camera. She’s wearing shoulder-length brown hair in a pageboy cut and it’s later when we learn that’s a wig, as married women in that culture don’t show their real hair. This is the only photo that runs with this piece. The rest of the images are lovely, sketched multimedia illustrations (all of which are  copyrighted, so we offer you a screen shot of the opening page). Then:

Inside the closed world of Hasidic Jews in the UK are stories of mothers who risk everything in order to leave their communities, with their children.
Emily and Ruth are two women who found themselves locked in lopsided battles - facing harassment, intimidation, and crowd-funded lawyers.
Neither of them realised what it would cost them.

The story goes on to tell of how the door finally opened into a room with two men sitting there. One spoke to her.

We hear that you intend to end your marriage, he said. Ruth would write down their conversation in a diary later. The men had been told that Ruth would be willing to leave her children with their father after their divorce. “No, that's not the case,” she replied, confused. This was not the conversation she had been expecting.
Then her interrogator mentioned some pictures.


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So the New York Times executive editor said, 'We don't get religion" ... So what? Now what?

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So the New York Times executive editor said, 'We don't get religion" ... So what? Now what?

People keep asking me a predictable question: "Did you and the whole GetReligion team feel vindicated (or words to that effect) when New York Times editor Dean Baquet admitted (or "confessed," or words to that effect) that elite newsrooms, including his own, just "don't get religion"?

What do you think, Einstein?

Sure enough, this was the first question that Crossroads host Todd Wilken asked this week when we were on the air, recording the basics for the podcast. Click right here to tune that in.

For those of you who have been on another cyber-planet, or missed my earlier post on this topic ("New York Times editor: We just don't get (a) religion, (b) the alt-right or (c) whatever"), here is the most quoted piece of Baquet's interview with Terry Gross on National Public Radio's Fresh Air program, during a discussion of the alt-right and Donald Trump:

I think that the New York-based and Washington-based too probably, media powerhouses don't quite get religion. We have a fabulous religion writer, but she's all alone. We don't get religion. We don't get the role of religion in people's lives.

My reaction? Of course I thought this was nice, in a laugh to keep from crying kind of way. I mean, your GetReligionistas have published about 10 million words over the past 12-plus years making that argument. Sure, it's nice to hear the Times editor say those words.

But what about it? That was Wilken's next question: If I could say three things to Baquet about the implications of that statement, what would they be?

You'll have to listen to the podcast to hear the answer. So there.

But as a hint, check out this short Aleteia.org commentary about the Baquet statement -- "Dog bites man: New York Times editor admits ‘We don’t get religion’ " -- written by Deacon Greg "Headlines and Homilies" Kandra.


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How a British scribe's study of Islam helped explain Pakistani immigrant gangs' sex crimes

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How a British scribe's study of Islam helped explain Pakistani immigrant gangs' sex crimes

I haven't spent substantial time in London in several years, and, frankly, I generally feel little pull to revisit.

But I would have liked being there earlier this week to attend what promised to be an interesting talk by a leading British investigative journalist on how his knowledge of religion -- Islam in particular -- helped in his reporting a crime story that officials were loathe to explore too closely for fear they'd be accused of religious or racial bias.

I'm referring to a talk by Andrew Norfolk of The Times, the Murdoch-owned weekday daily,  organized by Lapido Media, the online arm of the London-based Centre for Religious Literacy in Journalism.

Norfolk was interviewed by Lapido for a piece published in advance of his talk. During the interview, he spoke about how his knowledge of South Asian Islamic culture in Great Britain enabled him to uncover what Lapido called "the grooming of teenage white girls by gangs of Asian men -- and the blind eye turned by the local council and police force."

 (At the Monday night event, Lapido also launched what it called -- incorrectly -- the "first guide in the world to religious literacy for media professionals." I say incorrectly because on this side of the pond journalists have long been able to profit from the similar work of the Religion News Association, to which I belong. Not that Lapido's effort, Religious Literacy: An Introduction, isn't a welcome contribution. I mean, our own tmatt wrote the last chapter.)

Norfolk's work on the gangs story led to his being named 2014 Journalist of the Year by the British Journalism Awards, the organization that doles out such accolades in the U.K.

Here's the top of Lapido's advance story.

ANDREW Norfolk remembers the time when mentioning religion at work was so taboo that ‘it was as if you had burped at a party’.
That was in a regional newsroom in the 1990s.


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Another attack on Copts in Egypt: Once again, the details make the horrors even worse

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Another bombing in a Coptic Orthodox sanctuary in Egypt, with at least 25 dead and that stunning number is expected to rise.

People, please allow me to speak as an Orthodox Christian for a moment. During recent years, it has been hard not to dwell on the hellish stories coming out of Iraq and Syria, with the Islamic State crushing Christians, Yazidis, traditional Muslims and members of other religious minorities. Ancient monasteries and churches, with irreplaceable libraries and works of sacred art, have vanished from the face of the earth.

It has been easy to overlook the horrors that have continued to unfold in Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt and elsewhere. In my own daily prayers, I have continued to pray for those dying in these lands, as well as in the ISIS zone. Quite frankly, it is easy to slide into despair about all of this.

The mainstream press coverage of this attack has been very straightforward and has -- appropriately so -- shown that Coptic believers, once again, are caught in a clash between two Islamic factions inside the tense religious and political culture of Egypt. The only confusion in the coverage concerns some basic and crucial facts, as in the specific location of the attack and why the vast majority of the dead were women and children.

So which church was bombed? Let's start with The New York Times, which has the actual location of the attack wrong:

CAIRO -- A bomb ripped through a section reserved for women at Cairo’s main Coptic cathedral during Sunday morning Mass, killing at least 25 people and wounding 49, mostly women and children, Egyptian state media said.
The attack was the deadliest against Egypt’s Christian minority in years. Video from the blast site circulating on social media showed blood-smeared floors and shattered pews among the marble pillars at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, the seat of Egypt’s Orthodox Christian Church, where the blast occurred in a chapel adjacent to the main building.


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Is the Islamic State 'crumbling'? Long-form magazine journalism excels on such topics

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Is the Islamic State 'crumbling'? Long-form magazine journalism excels on such topics

Fellow journalist Robin Wright, not to be confused with the “House of Cards” actress of the same name, is as credentialed as it gets. Deservedly, she has received the National Magazine Award, United Nations Correspondents Association Gold Medal, National Press Club Award, Overseas Press Club Award, and more (see www.robinwright.net).

The veteran foreign correspondent (a fellow U-Michigan alum) has a piece in the Dec. 12 issue of The New Yorker with perspective worth careful attention from any journalist interested in foreign affairs, especially those who monitor religion.

Wright also demonstrates that long-form magazine journalism by a beat specialist is as good as it gets in our business, and that analysis enriched by shoe-leather reporting is superior to mere arm-chair musings by professionals in the chattering classes.

The article’s tour d’horizon of the Mideast mess has a tantalizing headline: “After the Islamic State.”

Wright’s lede proposes that this “deviant strain of Sunni fanatics” has been “a disaster for all Sunnis across the region” and may now be “crumbling.” That’s hinted in this May quote from the No. 2 commander of Islamic State (hereafter ISIS): “It is the same, whether Allah blesses us with consolidation or we move into the bare, open desert, displaced and pursued.”

Wright figures the U.S. claim of 45,000 I.S. fighters driven off the battlefield may be high, but personnel losses “have been staggering” and the influx of new young foreign recruits is waning.


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