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'Devout Muslim' killer?: New York Times profiles gunman who assassinated two New York City police officers

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Was the New York City cop killer a "devout Muslim?"

In a long, top-of-Page 1 profile, today's New York Times uses that description in the lede:

His entire life, Ismaaiyl Brinsley tried on identities as if they were new clothes. He was a bad boy with a gun, a fashionable man in Gucci and Cartier, a T-shirt maker, a film director, a screenwriter, a devout Muslim, a rap producer.
He had a nickname for every mood — Moses, Interstate, Palace, Gazava, Scorpio King, Bleau Barracuda. Online, he seemed to be screaming at people to pay attention. “Welcome To Greatness,” proclaimed a photo album on his Facebook page.
In reality, Mr. Brinsley’s short life was a series of disappointments.

Keep reading, and the Times offers three brief glimpses of the supposed Islamic faith of the gunman who shot to death officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they sat in their patrol car.


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Looking ahead: From 'Cuomo Catholicism' to questions about Jeb Bush

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Looking ahead: From 'Cuomo Catholicism' to questions about Jeb Bush

It's time for reporters to start preparing themselves for a new “religious issue” if, as expected, Jeb Bush runs for U.S. president.

Bush, a former Episcopalian who converted to wife Columba’s church in 1995, could become the first Roman Catholic to win the Republican nomination. In fact, his party has only chosen two Catholics for vice president and neither won that office (William Miller and Paul Ryan).
By contrast, the Democrats have named three for president (Al Smith, the sole Catholic president John F. Kennedy, and John Kerry) and four for vice president (Edmund Muskie, Sargent Shriver, Geraldine Ferraro, and the only one to serve, incumbent Joseph Biden).

Conservative writer Ira Stoll is right on top of things, pondering on Dec. 29 over at the libertarian reason.com site how Bush would handle the “Catholic question." 

For example, a 2013 Bush speech quoted in The Miami Herald said his views on immigration reflect “what my church teaches me.” That puts him to the left of the GOP field on the issue, and such remarks may trouble citizens who agree with President John F. Kennedy’s wariness toward any religious influences in public policy.


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Transgender teen's suicide: New tragedy, old advocacy script for media

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"My death needs to mean something," the teen who self-identified as Leelah Alcorn wrote in a suicide note before stepping in front of a tractor-trailer in Ohio. Whatever else the death of the troubled transgender youth means, one is clear: how easily mainstream media fall into groupthink.

Most outlets reporting this story use "Leelah," his preferred name, and call him a her. Some even seem reluctant to say "Joshua," the name on his birth certificate. Most quote friends but don’t try to reach his parents or clergy. Then they quote a transgender advocate or two who predictably call for some sort of change.

It's a familiar script from years of gay and lesbian advocacy, thinly disguised as reporting.

The Boston Globe's story is a prime example:

Early Sunday, 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn died after being hit by a tractor-trailer while walking along a stretch of Interstate 71 near her Ohio hometown.
The death was eventually ruled a suicide after a pair of social media posts, which the Kings Mill woman posted on the blogging site Tumblr, garnered notice and served as a flashpoint for transgender progress in 2014.

Only about a third of the way down does the story acknowledge that Alcorn’s mother, Carla, "posted a short note to Facebook identifying Alcorn as 'Joshua' (her name at birth) and with male pronouns." That's the only place the Globe uses his actual teen name, or a male pronoun.


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End-of-2014 odds and ends: Including John L. Allen, Jr., on Pope Francis and the press

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Fire and brimstone? Wait for it.

I have a few odds and ends for you, on this strange Friday in between New Year's and the weekend that comes before, for many people, the Monday (Boo!) that marks the start of the new working year. Is there anyone out there near a computer?

As always, there have been many end of the religion-news year pieces to read. I thought two deserved a bit of attention here because they offered some interesting comments -- implied or direct -- on mainstream press coverage of this topic.

For example, the omnipresent John L. Allen, Jr., turned his usual "Vatican stories that were overlooked" theme on its head this year, for the simple reason that very few things get overlooked in the age of Pope Francis (other than his statements against, oh, abortion and in favor of religious freedom). More on that Crux list in a moment.

The simple fact of the matter, Allen noted, is that this pope's relationship to the press has become a force field that changes almost everything, including the public perception of this statements. Consider, for example, that "fake sugar coating" speech about Christmas and materialism, his annual address to the Curia and his Urbi et Orbi message on Christmas Day. Allen summarizes what happened in this manner:


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Un-hampered reporting: Al-Jazeera runs sensitive feature on laundry ministries

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"Washing your sins away" is a common phrase, but a church coalition has taken that a step further -- by doing laundry for the poor. The project, Laundry Love, is told in a sensitive, multisourced story in, of all places, Al-Jazeera.

The story is rich in quotes and atmosphere, allowing many of the principals tell their own story. It even pulls the curtain back from an area we thought we knew:

HARBOR CITY, Calif. — From the Pacific Coast Highway exit off the freeway in Harbor City, it is impossible to miss the towering exhaust stacks of the Phillips 66 petroleum refinery and the mammoth cranes of the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex. This is working-class L.A., 21 miles away and a world apart from the velvet-roped wonder of Tinseltown.
Across PCH from a payday loan shop and next door to a trailer park, King’s Laundry seems an unlikely vessel for hope in difficult times. But on a Thursday night in December, as a cheerful crowd of more than 100 men, women and children gathered in a parking lot to enjoy hot dogs, hearty soup and Christmas tunes played live by a church band, hope was exactly the thing on offer — in the form of free loads of laundry, courtesy of the volunteers who donate money, labor and laundry soap at Harbor City’s twice-monthly Laundry Love event.

Al-Jazeera neatly explains the genesis of Laundry Love: an appeal from a homeless man for clean clothes. “If I had clean clothes I think people would treat me like a human being," he said. It says the scheme works by partnering local churches with local Laundromats for the periodic wash-ups.


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Maryland drama: An Episcopal bishop, her DUI record, a dead cyclist and the 'above reproach' debates

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Let's call it the "shoe on the other political foot" argument.

How many times have you heard media critics argue that a particular media outlet -- The New York Times is the villain of choice for the right and Fox News for the left -- might have covered a story or have covered said story more intensely if the sin or crime in question had been committed by a leader on the opposing side?

It's a popular argument, quite frankly, because it is often a valid argument. Why did so many newsroom feminists cut President Bill Clinton so much slack? Why do some conservatives still think Rush Limbaugh belongs in the choir of cultural conservatives?

The same thing happens with ecclesiastical shoes on the feet of powerful sinners. But this syndrome is not taking place, at the moment, in mainstream coverage of the tragic auto accident in which Episcopal Bishop Heather Elizabeth Cook of Maryland hit and killed 41-year-old cyclist Thomas Palermo, a father of two. Driven by powerful early coverage in The Baltimore Sun and follow-up work at The Washington Post, this story is now being pushed past the ugly details and into larger questions, both legal and theological.

The key questions: Was this a hit-and-run accident? What caused the bishop to hit a bike in such an open piece of road, with excellent sight lines? Should an earlier DUI -- involving alcohol and marijuana -- have prevented her selection as a bishop? Here is the gripping top section of the major Sun report:


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Ignatius, what happened? The Atlantic looks at 'rebranding' of Jesuit colleges

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A new article in The Atlantic looks at how many Jesuit colleges are rebranding themselves to project an image of fidelity to so-called "Catholic values" without proclaiming fidelity to actual Catholic teachings.

There is a lot to chew on in Autumn Jones' "The New Brand of Catholic Universities," and more than a few religion ghosts -- that is, hints of valuable religion angles that are left unexplored. Key words? Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

Two points especially call out for clarification. The first is that of what happened to the Jesuits. Jones writes:

A fourth of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities currently have lay presidents, and the number of Jesuit priests who are active in everyday operations at the schools isn’t nearly as high as it once was.

That is putting it mildly. Here's how the Washington Post reported the decline in local Jesuit vocations in 2011, which reflects a global trend:


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Turn, turn, turn: What is Buddhism's appeal for contemporary Americans?

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Turn, turn, turn: What is Buddhism's appeal for contemporary Americans?

DANIEL ASKS:

What aspects attract the many religious Americans that convert to Buddhism?

THE RELIGION GUY RESPONDS:

Before discussing what “attracts” let’s consider how “many” Americans have adopted this venerable faith. The over-all U.S. context is a deep divide between native-born converts (presumably Daniel’s interest) and Asian immigrants, also American Buddhists but not new “converts.” Richard Hughes Seager of Hamilton College calls this split “the most prominent feature of American Buddhism” during recent decades.

Due to the 1965 liberalization of U.S. immigration law, Asian-Americans dominate U.S. Buddhism.

As with Islam, it’s hard to pin down the numbers. The religion has no U.S. umbrella organization to represent its myriad branches and issue headcounts. The American Religious Identity Survey in 2001 sampled 50,000 Americans and projected there were 1.1 million adult Buddhists, and later added children for an estimated 1.5 million. The “World Christian Encyclopedia” (second edition, 2001) listed 2.45 million U.S. Buddhists including children but didn’t count “new religions” like Japan’s Soka Gakkai that others consider Buddhist. Experts have said Asian-American immigrants are something like three-fourths of U.S. Buddhists, and by outdated guesses there may be as few as 100,000 non-immigrant converts or as many as 800,000.

What aspects attract?

Meditation is certainly the key.


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Kansas City Star story on woman who wants to be Catholic priest needs less advocacy, more reporting

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The Kansas City Star recently profiled a woman who — according to the newspaper's headline — "intends to be Kansas City's first female Catholic priest."

Only one small problem: The Roman Catholic Church doesn't ordain female priests.

The top of the Star's story:

In a few days Georgia Walker, at age 67, intends to become a priest,
at which point she will be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic
Church.

That doesn’t faze her.

“I don’t accept the legitimacy of that excommunication,” said Walker, who will be the first woman in Kansas City to defy the church and be ordained a priest.

The church in turn will not accept the legitimacy of her ordination because, under canon law, only men can be priests.

“That’s their problem,” Walker said of the church.

That steadfastness is a trait of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, a growing movement of people who see the church as too authoritarian and unwilling to be inclusive. But instead of leaving the church, they hope to change it from within.

As faithful readers know, GetReligion advocates the traditional American model of the press.

That model relies on journalists presenting facts — attributed to named sources — in a fair, unbiased manner. That's opposed, of course, to the one-sided, advocacy, European-styled approach to reporting the news.


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