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Southern-fried stereotypes? Surprise, but this faith-and-football story serves up real meat

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When I saw the headline on the Washington Post's in-depth feature on college football as a Southern religion, I braced myself for plenty of Belt Belt cliches and stereotypes.

To be sure, there's some of that in this 3,000-word sports opus.

But mainly, the writer, Kent Babb, weaves a fascinating tale full of colorful characters and compelling scenes. Along the way, he peppers the Southern-fried narrative with a diverse variety of voices, both pro and con.

Some of the meat-and-potatoes up high:

In this part of America, college football fits somewhere between pastime and obsession, and like church, it is more than a weekend activity. Nothing says more about a Southerner than the team he cheers on Saturdays and the church he attends on Sundays — “the two things we love the most,” says author Chad Gibbs, Auburn fan and Methodist. To many, the merging of cultural forces feels natural; to others, the most stark instances are uncomfortable — maybe even inappropriate.
Throughout most of the United States, church attendance is on the decline, but according to a “religion census” sponsored by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, eight states in the South, including Mississippi, saw increases between 2000 and 2010 — in some cases dramatically


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What David Brooks said! Yes, religion is part of the Islamic State wars

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From time to time, I receive private emails from readers who think this website's insistence that mainstream journalists need to cover both sides of doctrinal debates between Muslims is, to be blunt, just a clever way of bashing Islam.

Why else should journalists, for example, need to listen to and then quote what Islamic State leaders have to say about the role of women or the need for tough blasphemy laws in the modern world? We already know the radicals are wrong, so why be guilty of "false balance" and accurately quote what they are saying?

Why indeed? I would argue that journalists cannot cover the facts in these stories -- such as the gruesome executions of James Foley and Steven Sotloff -- without quoting the religious language in these religious debates. The bottom line: It is not prejudice against Islam to cover both sides of crucial debates between Muslims.

This brings me to the end of that stunning column today by David Brooks of The New York Times, the one about the powerful theological symbolism involved in beheading someone.


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Same-sex marriage decision in Louisiana: With AP, it's a pigment of the imagination

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All too often, Associated Press articles look like those paint-by-the-numbers pictures. Especially articles about same-sex marriage, like one this week.

Pro-gay viewpoint? (paint, paint) Got that colored in.

Conservative labeling? (brush, brush) Got that one.

Touch of ad hominem? Got that, too.

This time it was Louisiana's turn, with a U.S. district judge upholding the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

AP follows the template in rendering the decision as "a rare loss for gay marriage supporters who had won more than 20 consecutive rulings overturning bans in other states." Not as, say, a rare victory for supporters of the historic understanding of marriage.

The story also brings out a law professor at Loyola New Orleans, who said "she didn't see the ruling as a significant road block." Even if the ruling is upheld on appeal, it will affect "only" three states -- Texas and Mississippi as well as Louisiana.

In one case, AP even appears to contradict its own cited source. Watch this.


It's likely the Texas case will be the first to go to the 5th Circuit, and cases elsewhere likely will reach the Supreme Court before Louisiana's, said Professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia. Nevertheless, he said, Feldman's ruling is significant.
"It is important, because Feldman is a very experienced federal district judge, and no other federal judge has ruled that way at the trial level," Tobias said in a telephone interview. Feldman was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.


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Secret no more: Executed journalist Steven Sotloff's Jewish faith makes headlines

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Patience, boss. The mainstream press got to the story on day two.

GetReligion's editor, Terry Mattingly, questioned Wednesday why major media outlets seemed to be ignoring the Jewish faith of Steven Sotloff, the latest journalist executed by Islamic State militants.

While tmatt said he could understand withholding that incendiary detail while radical Islamists held Sotloff, he asked:

However, why — now — is the faith element of this tragedy not relevant to editors at CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.? Why isn't this part of the basic factual material at the foundation of this tragic story?

But it didn't take long for that basic factual material to start making its way into mainstream news accounts. Washington Post religion writer Michelle Boorstein was among those who jumped on the story.


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What is this? The Daily Beast rolls on with its 'bedroom' jihad updates

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Here is a question that your GetReligionistas have often debated among ourselves in the past: When it comes to basic questions about journalism, what is The Daily Beast? Is it an openly progressive advocacy publication, something along the lines of Rolling Stone or Salon (or The New York Times on issues of moral theology)?

Part of the problem is a matter of labeling. There are advocacy sites, on the political right as well as the left, that do plenty of valid work when it comes to reporting news. But when readers call up these sites, it's hard to know what is what. Maybe editors should color code the graphics? Something like blue graphics for advocacy and red for news at liberal sites and the other way around at conservatives sites?

I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately because of the ongoing Beast coverage of the issue of Islamic State leaders openly recruiting women from the West to join in what some have called "bedroom radicalism" or even "bedroom jihad." The latest report along these lines is pretty straightforward, when it comes to describing the case of 20-year-old Aqsa Mahmood of suburban Glasgow:


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Crux be a lady: Globe's Catholic site aims at middle-aged female audience

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"Covering all things Catholic" is the slogan for the Boston Globe's new online venture, Crux. Judging by the look of it -- especially at the moment it went live yesterday -- "all things Catholic" translates largely to "all things we think a middle-aged Catholic woman would like to read." The site is heavy on opinion. Even the front-page headlines are opinionated in the way that the editors seem to imagine is "edgy" for a 50-something female audience, i.e. "Muller: Nuns are still being bad" -- though the headline on the actual article is more newsy ("Vatican's doctrinal chief renews criticism of US nuns").

The initial Crux page included Lisa Miller's agony-aunt column "OMG" oddly placed at top right, next to John L. Allen Jr.'s feature "Hard questions we're not asking Pope Francis." In the middle of the page was an ad seeking entrants for a liberal women's religious order, featuring a cheery-looking sister in her 60s wearing outdoorsy plainclothes. Buried toward the bottom of the page, almost as an afterthought, was a sports article, as though some editor felt a bone should be thrown to male visitors.

As I write, the page's layout has shifted somewhat: Miller's column is now buried, but the overall feel of the page is still directed to Catholic women of a certain age (i.e. my age). In the top-right spot now is Margery Eagan's "On Spirituality" column, the title of which suggests a desire to reach the Oprah-style "spiritual but not religious" crowd.

Eagan, incidentally, is the same writer who penned the notorious Boston Herald op-ed in response to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, "Court's Catholic justices attack women's rights" -- which makes this middle-aged Catholic female reader wonder whether Eagan is herself "spiritual but not religious."


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Define 'New Age' religion: Give three examples

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Define 'New Age' religion: Give three examples

LISA ASKS:

What exactly is the definition of “new age” thinking?

THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS:

This loosely diffuse movement, largely located in America,  is so indeterminate that it’s tempting to simply say “new age” covers any recently formed “spiritual” or “psychic” or “mindful” or “self-discovery” groups that don’t fit snugly into other religious categories. As part of this, new agers don’t fall within the formal organizational life of Buddhism or Hinduism but often appropriate various ideas and practices from Eastern religions, alongside other influences.

A good place to start is “Melton’s Encyclopedia of American Religions” (Gale), issued in eight updated editions, most recently in 2009. This standard reference work should be in any well-stocked library. Author J. Gordon Melton is a Baylor University professor whose decades of research make him the acknowledged expert on the taxonomy of U.S. faiths, especially thousands of young, small, marginal and obscure groups most people have never heard of. Note that the new age phenomenon extends well beyond formal organizations listed in such an encyclopedia to include free-floating ideas, fashions, books,  gurus and other influences.


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Howdy, partner: In Lone Star State, gospel with a front-page twang

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"Gospel with a little twang" was how The Dallas Morning News billed its front-page Sunday story on cowboy churches.

The writer, Charlie Scudder, had a whole lot of fun with that little bit of twang.

The result: a nice trend feature (accompanied by video interviews and an excellent photo gallery) that took readers inside two western-themed congregations in Fort Worth:

FORT WORTH — At high noon in the Stockyards Station, just after the
longhorn cattle drive down Exchange Avenue and just before the
gunfight show, a congregation comes to worship.

Pastor George Westby has been leading services here at the Cowboy
Church at the Fort Worth Stockyards for 23 years. His services attract
visitors from all over the country as well as a handful of regulars.

But just off Exchange Avenue, down in the old horse-and-mule barn
where there’s real manure and fewer vacationing families, a second
cowboy church is here for the same reason.

The Cowtown Cowboy Church, led by pastor Sonny Miller, started meeting
in spring 2013 on a dirt patch under the vaulted ceilings of the old
stables.

The newer church is part of the Western Heritage Ministry of the Texas
Baptists, a group of more than 200 churches statewide that embrace the
Gospel with a little twang.

Next, the Morning News provides a nut graf designed to put the Fort Worth churches into a larger context.


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It's time to say the obvious: Yes, the late Steven Joel Sotloff was Jewish

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Now that journalist Steven Joel Sotloff is gone, it's time to talk about one of the issues that loomed over this tragedy (which was the subject of an earlier post by Dawn).

I thought that CNN was going to finally state the obvious, when its piece on the Sotloff execution by the Islamic State included this subhead: "Who was Sotloff?"

Good question. And the answer is? 

Sotloff disappeared while reporting from Syria in August 2013, but his family kept the news secret, fearing harm to him if they went public. Out of public view, the family and government agencies had been trying to gain his release for the past year.
Last week, Sotloff's mother, Shirley Sotloff, released a video pleading with ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi not to kill her son.
"Steven is a journalist who traveled to the Middle East to cover the suffering of Muslims at the hands of tyrants. Steven is a loyal and generous son, brother and grandson," she said. "He is an honorable man and has always tried to help the weak."

That, of course, is not all that she said, as Dawn noted the other day. The family had every reason to fear the worst and for multiple reasons.


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