Worship

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When covering the Lutheran left, Minneapolis daily kindly omits sobering journalistic questions

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is an amalgamation of three other Lutheran denominations, formed 29 years ago. When mainstream American journalists talk about "Lutherans," this is usually the crowd they are talking about.

The ELCA is also, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports, a church confronting changing times. In other words, this body is part of the ever-evolving world of liberal Protestantism, the "Seven Sisters" of the old mainline.

The paper's story begins with a typical journalistic scene-setter, at least the kind that is used when journalists are fond of the group that is being profiled:

Redeemer Lutheran Church is not your typical Lutheran outpost. Summer means the bike store and coffee shop are humming, kids camp and Zumba classes are in gear, and the young adults renting its apartments are mentoring children in this north Minneapolis neighborhood.
It represents a new model for the Lutheran Church, which is transforming itself to attract younger and diverse members, be more relevant to neighbors below its steeples and shake its image as a Scandinavian bastion best known for hot dish, Jell-O and Ole and Lena.

Anyone who regularly listened to Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" stemwinders about life in and around Lake Woebegone, Minnesota, will recognize the stereotype, even if Keillor was actually raised in a Plymouth Brethren congregation.

The Minneapolis paper continues explaining, however, There is a dark cloud on the horizon:

Minnesota, with the largest number of Lutherans in the nation, will be instrumental in shaping the future of the faith. Time is of the essence: 37 percent of the churches in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America -- the largest denomination in Minnesota and the U.S. -- now have fewer than 50 Sunday worshipers. ...
Membership at the ELCA plunged from 5.2 million in 1988 to about 3.7 million today. In Minnesota, numbers fell from 782,000 to about 679,000.


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This is not a joke: Ever-edgy Unitarian Universalists just elected their first woman president

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Anyone who knows me knows that I love jokes about religion. We are not talking about cruel or nasty humor. I'm talking about the kinds of jokes that offer insights into what makes certain religious groups tick, the characteristics that define them as who they are.

Like what? Catholic jokes? Too many to mention. Jewish humor? That's a truckload of books, including the vast world of Jewish mother humor.

You could do an entire book on jokes about religious believers at the gates of hell. Like this one, which I heard from an Episcopalian who briefly considered doing a book on Episcopal Church humor.

So three women arrive at the gates of hell -- a Southern Baptist, a Catholic and an Episcopalian. Satan asks each: What did you do to get sent here? The Baptist says: "I got drunk." Satan sends her into hell. The Catholic says: "I had an affair with my priests." In she goes. The Episcopalian says: "I ate all my dinner with my salad fork." Satan rings her up.

Light bulb jokes? That's another book. Let's start with my own flock. How many Orthodox Christians does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Light bulb? What is this LIGHT BULB? Alternative joke: Change? What is this CHANGE?

Then there is the unique niche for Unitarian Universalist humor. You know, like: What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Mormon? Answer: Someone who goes door to door for no particular reason. Leadership magazine once ran a cartoon (pre-WWW era, alas) with the caption, "Unitarian charismatics." It showed people with their hands in the air shouting, "Now I rrreeeeeeeallly don't know!" Garrison Keillor once quipped that early Unitarian missionaries tried to spread their faith among Native Americans by using liturgical dance.

So why, you ask, am I bringing this up?

Religion News Service ran a short story the other day that, at first glance, left your GetReligionistas shaking our heads in wonder. My first reaction was laughter, because it seemed so ironic that it might have been a joke. I couldn't believe that it was true.

The headline: "Unitarian Universalists elect first woman president."

Say what?!? In 2017? Was this satire?


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Slicing up Masterpiece Cakeshop stories (again): It may help to recall that earlier peyote case

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Here we go again, and again. From time to time, there are religion-news issues that create headlines day after day, for weeks or months at a time. This creates a problem for your GetReligionistas. Do we keep critiquing these stories, banging our heads on our keyboards as we see the same old mistakes and holes in the coverage?

One could argue that it's more important to note problems that keep showing up in the news than it is to note a mistake that happens once or twice. Surely it's significant when lighting keeps striking the same spot time after time?

Thus, here is an update to yesterday's Bobby Ross, Jr., post: "As Supreme Court bites into same-sex wedding cake dispute, how to tell good media coverage from bad." You may have noticed that Bobby's post was built on themes from previous GetReligion commentary about news coverage of various religious-liberty cases (linked to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act).

With the U.S. Supreme Court wading into the Masterpiece Cakeshop wars, I would like to flash back to a parable I wrote two years ago, in an attempt to help journalists think through several key issues linked to these stories. Here we go (again):

... There is a businessman in Indianapolis who runs a catering company. He is an openly gay Episcopalian and, at the heart of his faith (and the faith articulated by his church) is a sincere belief that homosexuality is a gift of God and a natural part of God's good creation. This business owner has long served a wide variety of clients, including a nearby Pentecostal church that is predominantly African-American.
Then, one day, the leaders of this church ask him to cater a major event -- the upcoming regional conference of the Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. He declines, saying this would violate everything he stands for as a liberal Christian. He notes that they have dozens of other catering options in their city and, while he has willingly served them in the past, it is his sincere belief that it would be wrong to do so in this specific case.

Note, in particular that:

It's clear that the gay Christian businessman is not asking to discriminate against an entire class of Americans. He is asking that his consistently demonstrated religious convictions be honored in this case, one with obvious doctrinal implications.

OK, that's another sexuality case. Maybe it would help to think back to an earlier religious-liberty fight. Did Native Americans seek the right to use peyote (period) or did they seek the right to use peyote in a very specific situation, a rite that had existed in the traditions of their faith for centuries?


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Joe Carter takes closer look at that New York Times coverage of partisan pastors

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Every now and then, GetReligion readers send us URLs pointing to commentary pieces -- weekend "think piece" type stuff -- with a recommendation that sounds something like this: "You guys ought to run this. It reads like it was written for GetReligion."

What they mean, of course, is that it is a piece of media criticism written about something that ran in the mainstream press, a piece noting what this or that news organization did really right or really wrong while covering a religion event or trend.

It's especially nice when people sent us something addressing a news piece that we sort of intended to get around to dealing with ourselves, but ran out of time because of all the other stuff various GetReligionistas wanted to write about. This is the kind of article that gets filed in a "GetReligion guilt folder" in someone's email program.

As you probably guessed, this happened the other day with a piece that ran at the Acton Institute "Powerblog" site with this headline: "Are pastors particularly partisan?" This short piece asked some interesting questions about a recent New York Times piece that ran with this interesting headline: "Your Rabbi? Probably a Democrat. Your Baptist Pastor? Probably a Republican. Your Priest? Who Knows."

In this case, when I looked at the byline on the Acton piece, it was easy to see why this item resembled a GetReligion piece. It was written by former GetReligionista Joe Carter, who wears various hats right now in cyberspace.

So, before we get to a chunk of Carter's work, let's look at the top of the Times piece:

America’s pastors -- the men and women a majority of Americans look to for help in finding meaning and purpose in their lives -- are even more politically divided than the rest of us, according to a new data set representing the largest compilation of American religious leaders ever assembled.


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Mummies and saints: Scientists found 'dark,' 'secret' lair under church altar in Lithuania? Really?

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If you know anything about the history of sacred architecture, you know there is nothing strange about believers being buried inside church sanctuaries.

In fact, there is an ancient tradition of celebrating the Mass on altars built directly on or over the tombs of saints (see the New Advent online Catholic Encyclopedia). In Eastern Orthodoxy, altars and sanctuaries still contain relics of the saints, usually fragments of bones. Consider this 2014 column I wrote about efforts to rebuild St. Nicholas Orthodox parish at Ground Zero in New York City.

Some people find these traditions creepy. But the whole idea was to link heaven and earth, for believers in this life to worship with the saints of old.

Perhaps this is rather advanced material, in terms of church history. Still, I assumed that some journalists (maybe even at the New York Times copy desk) would know that the altar of the most famous church on Planet Earth -- St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican -- is build directly over catacombs containing the tomb of St. Peter and other popes. Don't these people read Dan Brown novels?

I bring this up because of a strange passage in a recent Times science piece that ran with this double-decker headline:

The Mummies’ Medical Secrets? They’re Perfectly Preserved
Mummified bodies in a crypt in Lithuania are teaching scientists about health and disease among people who lived long ago.

As it turns out, the crypt in question is located underneath an altar in a Catholic church in Vilnius, Lithuania.


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Ties that bind in Warriors locker room: Might those game-day Bible studies be important?

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Hello, all of you sports fanatics out there in GetReligion reader land!

Yeah, right.

I realize there may only be a dozen or so of you, based on the digital silence that has followed most GetReligion posts about sports-news topics. However, I (along with Bobby Ross, Jr., the Texas Rangers acolyte) have bravely soldiered on and written quite a few posts about the God-shaped holes found in the coverage at most mainstream sports-news outlets (hello, ESPN).

So here I go again, with a follow-up post to the recent NBA championship run by the Golden State Warriors. I want readers to answer a simple question about news coverage (one that will take us into territory linked to the never-ending saga of Steph Curry and his sneakers).

The question: Which of the following two news topics do you think will receive the most post-championship coverage?

(a) Debates about whether these Warriors from the deep-blue Bay Area will visit Donald Trump's White House.

(b) New evidence of faith ties -- a Bible study group to be precise -- that bind among some of the key players at the heart of this pro-hoops juggernaut.

If you are not following the White House story, here is a sample of the verbiage there, care of Rolling Stone:

Fresh off winning their second NBA Championship in the last three seasons, the talk about the Golden State Warriors quickly turned to whether or not the team would visit President Donald Trump at the White House. Within hours of defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 5, CNBC's Josh Brown tweeted, "NBA champion Warriors skipping the White House visit, as a unanimous team decision per reports." Brown later said on Twitter, "I have no idea if its true, hence 'per reports.'" The tweets were later deleted, but the news spread and the team issued a statement clarifying their current position. ...
Several Warriors including Stephen Curry, David West, Shaun Livingston and coach Steve Kerr, have been outspoken regarding President Trump and his rhetoric.


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London mosque attack: Are journalists covering a 'van driver' or a 'white Christian terrorist'?

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So, what are reporters supposed to call the driver of the white van that veered into a crowd of worshippers as they left  a mosque in north London?

That's a logical and totally appropriate question for journalists and multicultural activists to be asking, as the coverage digs deeper and deeper into the facts surrounding England's latest terrorist incident.

A "terrorist" attack? Obviously. This certainly appears to have been the work of an anti-Muslim terrorist who was reacting to previous attacks on civilians by terrorists preaching, in word and deed, a radicalized brand of Islam.

The New York Times team noted that a rather prominent writer -- J. K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter fame -- has spoken out on this topic. In a tweet that was later deleted, she opined: “The [Daily] Mail has misspelled ‘terrorist’ as ‘white van driver. ... Now let’s discuss how he was radicalised.”

To which I say, "amen" on the radicalized question. Still, I advise -- as in the past -- caution and some basic research before journalists start throwing labels around.

Does anyone remember that hellish 2011 rampage in Norway by Behring Breivik? People started using the term "Christian fundamentalist" before facts emerged that pointed in a radically different direction. As I wrote at that time:

... What are journalists looking for? ... We need to know what he has said, what he has read, what sanctuaries he has chosen and the religious leaders who have guided him.
Also, follow the money, since Breivik certainly seems to have some. To what religious causes has he made donations? Is he a contributing member of a specific congregation in a specific denomination? Were the contributions accepted or rejected?

In other words, journalists (and law officials, for that matter) need to ask the same kinds of questions when a terrorist attacks Muslims that they should be asking when radicalized Muslims attack those (Christians, Jews, secularists, other Muslims) who oppose their approach to Islam.


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Hey NPR, did Democratic House members 'think' of their GOP colleagues? Or did they 'pray' for them?

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In early media coverage of today's attack on Republican lawmakers at a congressional baseball practice, a tweeted picture of Democrats praying for their GOP colleagues went viral. And rightly so.

"This is beautiful and good," one writer commented.

I have to agree.

But in an email to GetReligion, a reader quibbled with how one leading news organization — NPR — chose to characterize the heartwarming scene.

From NPR's story:

Members of the Democratic Party's team were practicing elsewhere Wednesday morning; after the attack, they tweeted a photo of themselves taking a moment to think of their colleagues.

Can you spot the word that sparked the reader's concern? Let's hear from him:

The coverage from NPR includes the tweet itself but uses an unusual description in the reporting text to describe the photo. ... Know of any other time where "think" gets substituted for "pray" in reporting? Would the substitution have been used had the roles been reversed?

Good question. It does strike me as strange wording.


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Location, location, location: Did the whole United Methodist Church ordain a non-binary deacon?

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This truth cannot be stated too many times: This whole religion-beat thing is complicated.

Take the gazillions of complicated facts and potential errors hidden in one simple word -- "polity." In addition to having countless doctrinal differences, the world's thousands of organized religions also have their own systems for laws and governance.

One flock's bishop fills a completely different role than another flock's leader with the same title. Each of these "bishops" has completely different powers and tasks, according to the laws or his or her flock. Church history matters. Scripture matters. The words in vows matter.

So what about that recent headline in The Washington Post? The one that proclaimed: "The United Methodist Church has appointed a transgender deacon."

Well, there is the United Methodist Church -- a global denomination. There are also local United Methodist churches, with a lower-case "c." To understand what happens at the various levels in between means wrestling with UMC polity.

As I said in a 2014 post: "United Methodism doctrine? Think location, location, location."

So, has the United Methodist Church -- the whole shooting match -- appointed (or even approved the appointment of) it's first trans deacon? Let's look carefully at the top of the Post story on this complicated event:

The bishop spoke the traditional words as she placed her hands on the new deacon named M with just a slight difference from the way those words have always been spoken before.
“Pour out your Holy Spirit upon M,” the bishop said. “Send them now to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, to announce the reign of God and to equip the church for ministry.”
Not “send him now” or “send her now.” “Send them now.” 
That’s what M Barclay has been working for 12 years to finally hear.
Barclay, a transgender person who identifies as neither male nor female and thus uses the pronoun “they,” was commissioned on Sunday as the first non-binary member of the clergy in the United Methodist Church.


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