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St. Sergius, Vladimir Putin and the mysterious Russian soul

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For those who care about the fine details of international policy, here is the latest -- care of Time magazine -- on the popularity of one Vladimir Putin among his own people.

A new poll released this week by the Levada Center reports that the Russian President currently enjoys an approval rating of 87% -- a 4-point jump since a similar survey was completed in May, according to the Moscow Times.
Meanwhile in the U.S., where the economy is bouncing back and the White House has largely retreated from militaristic interventions abroad, President Barack Obama’s approval rating sagged to 40% this week -- its lowest point to date.

The implication is that Obama is pursuing policies that, if voters were rational, would lead to better poll numbers. Meanwhile, it appears that Putin is being very Russian. Apparently, Russians like that.

This brings me to that recent story in The New York Times that inspired some recent emails to your GetReligionistas.


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What's a progressive Muslim? Don't ask, just read and nod

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Reading the Associated Press's recent article on so-called progressive American Muslims is like a game of fill-in-the-blanks. Except that the blanks are never filled.

With its usual broad strokes, AP paints a broad mural of younger American Muslims who are getting more comfortable as Americans and less so as Muslims.  It starts with the tried-and-true anecdotal lede: Omar Akersim of Los Angeles, who prayed and fasted for Ramadan and is (shock alert!) openly gay.

The story then opens the nut graphs:

Akersim, 26, is part of a small but growing number of American Muslims challenging the long-standing interpretations of Islam that defined their parents' world. They believe that one can be gay and Muslim; that the sexes can pray shoulder-to-shoulder; that females can preach and that Muslim women can marry outside the faith — and they point to Quran passages to back them up.

The shift comes as young American Muslims work to reshape the faith they grew up with so it fits better with their complex, dual identity, with one foot in the world of their parents' immigrant beliefs and one foot in the ever-shifting cultural landscape of America. The result has been a growing internal dialogue about what it means to be Muslim, as well as a scholarly effort to re-examine the Quran for new interpretations that challenge rules that had seemed set in stone.

"Islam in America is being forced to kind of change and to reevaluate its positions on things like homosexuality because of how we're moving forward culturally as a nation. It's striving to make itself seen and known in the cultural fabric and to do that, it does have to evolve," said Akersim, who leads a Los Angeles-based support group for gay Muslims. "Ten or 15 years ago, this would have been impossible."

All of that is so eloquent, it's easy to forget some difficult questions. But we'll ask anyway.


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George Conger: For some reason, Pope Francis remains a mystery

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Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?The Argentine cardinal who 500 days ago became Pope Francis? Why, from a journalistic perspective, do we know so little about someone who talks so much?

Extracts of the interview with journalist Pablo Calvo published last week in Viva, the Sunday color supplement of the Buenos Aires daily newspaper El Clarín, to mark the pope’s first 500 days in office does not provide an answer.

The July 27, 2014, article (the eleventh the pope has given to the press since assuming office – ten of these to secular newspapers) has received widespread coverage in the Spanish-language media. But save for the Catholic press, the interview has not been given much play in the Anglosphere.  

That is a shame, for there are nuggets of journalistic gold buried in the El Clarín story.


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10 years at GetReligion: Why we are still here, part II (refreshed)

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Overture: Anyone who has ever worked anywhere as a reporter has had this experience.

With deadline on the near horizon, you turn your story into your editor and then wait at your desk for the verdict. After a few moments, the boss or the assistant boss shoots you a tired glance and says, "Get over here."

The editor then adds a few words that reporters dread hearing: "There's a hole in your story."

These journalism "holes" come in all shapes and sizes, of course. Some of them take minutes to patch. Some, however, may delay the story for a day or two while you chase new information. But what the editor is saying is that you left something essential out of the story, some voice or piece of information that readers really need to have if they are going to understand what is going on in your story.

In a way, this is what GetReligion is all about -- those religion-shaped holes in way too many mainstream news reports about what is going on in the world around us.  


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These Christians have found a way around Obamacare, but is it a good deal?

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Nice lede. Interesting subject matter. Variety of sources.

I enjoyed a recent San Jose Mercury News feature on health care sharing ministries. (Hat tip to the Pew Research Center's daily religion headlines email for highlighting the story this week.)

Let's start at the top:

Go to church, be faithful to your spouse and shun tobacco, booze and drugs.

Promising to adhere to that "biblical lifestyle," more than 300,000 Americans are taking advantage of a little-known provision in the nation's health care law that allows them to avoid the new penalties for not having health insurance.

Long before Christian groups and Obamacare opponents cheered last month's Supreme Court ruling that allows many private businesses to stop offering certain types of birth control they find immoral, the 4-year-old law gave its blessing to Americans to opt out of the insurance mandate if they object on religious grounds.

So many instead are enrolling in "health care sharing ministries" that spread medical care costs among people of similar beliefs. Participants make monthly contributions to help cover each other's major health care costs, but forgo coverage for most routine care.


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Painfully familiar 'ghost' in the shooting of the U.S. general

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What we have here is -- alas -- an example of a religion-new "ghost" that your GetReligionistas could write about day after day after day, world without end, amen.

For newcomers, a "ghost" (in the lingo of this weblog) is a religious issue or subject that journalists really should have included in a news report, that is if the goal was for readers to understand what is happening. For more information on this term read the very first post published at GetReligion.org, back on the original Day 1.

A classic example of a "ghost"? How long did it take for the mainstream press to explain the doctrinal elements at the heart of the bloody conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq? Way too long, quite frankly, and some newsrooms are still in the dark on that.

This brings me to the fatal shooting of that U.S. general in Afghanistan. Anyone who reads the main report in The New York Times learns, over and over, that he died because of "political" tensions. Period.


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Does a Bowery building portend 'new focus' for Catholic Church? New York Times thinks so

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Readers of the print edition of Sunday's New York Times were met with the headline, "On Bowery, Church’s New Focus Leaves a Void for the Needy." Online readers got a similar message: "On the Bowery, Questions About the Catholic Church’s Shifting Mission."

So, how is the Church changing its mission, according to the Times? Is it altering its outreach to the poor?

Well...maybe. The Archdiocese of New York has closed down a single social-services center for homeless men, replacing it with an arts center. This, according to Times "Side Street" photo-essayist David Gonzalez, appears to be a sign that the Archdiocese is forgoing its mission to the poor in favor of the yuppification of the Lower East Side...or something. While he does not editorialize in the manner of the Times' headline writers, the message comes through via the people he chooses to narrate the story:


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On planned Noah's Ark theme park, NPR doesn't tell the hull story

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NPR raises an eyebrow but mostly keeps an even keel in a report on a tax break for a planned creationist theme park in Kentucky. But the shallow draft of the story is less a voyage than a day cruise.

Answers in Genesis, which opened its dino-friendly Creation Museum in 2007 in Petersburg, Ky., now wants to build a fullsize replica of Noah's Ark and the Tower of Babel. For this so-called Ark Encounter, the state tourism board approved $18 million in tax breaks, though the state legislature still must ratify it.

The primeval story of a world cataclysm, and one man's effort to obey God through it all, has long captured people's imagination -- the epic film Noah,  released in March, has earned $359 million worldwide thus far. But NPR's focus is on the government's role in what it calls a "controversial" project.

Yet this article, part of NPR's  breaking news section called "The Two-Way," is a very brief 417 words and offers little background. Ken Ham, head of Answers in Genesis, is mentioned high in the story, yet he's never quoted directly. He's cited mainly for having debated Bill Nye, the so-called Science Guy, on creation versus evolution.

And that recap, in shipping terms, lists a little:

The debate, which was streamed live online, pitted Ham's biblical literalism, which among other things includes the belief in a 6,000-year-old Earth and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed, against Nye, who argued for Darwinian evolution.

Apparently, NPR thought biblical literalism needed spelling out, but Darwinian evolution was self-evident. Nor does the article quote Ham or anyone else connected with the project.


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Was Marx right that religion equals 'opium'?

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Was Marx right that religion equals 'opium'?

ROD ASKS:

Was Marx right? Is religion the opiate of the masses?

THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS:

This blog’s third item about atheism and atheists in seven weeks!  Rod cites the famous quote about religion from a 26-year-old Karl Marx in 1844, four years before he co-authored the momentous “Communist Manifesto.” Here’s the full context in his typically prolix prose, from the introduction to “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”:

“The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness…” (Oxford University Press translation, 1970).

Before seeing how some analysts unpack those words let’s scan a bit of biography. 


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