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More deaths from Boko Haram: AP and other media step up reporting

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The new round of Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria has gotten fast-reacting coverage from the Associated Press, a testament to the new attention mainstream media have been paying to Muslim extremists.

AP's story is taut and sweeping. In classic wire service style, it packs the horrific summary into the lede:

JOS, Nigeria — A day of extremist violence against both Muslims and Christians in Nigeria killed more than 60 people, including worshippers in a mosque who came to hear a cleric known for preaching about peaceful coexistence of all faiths.
Militants from Boko Haram were blamed for the bombings Sunday night at a crowded mosque and a posh Muslim restaurant in the central city of Jos; a suicide bombing earlier at an evangelical Christian church in the northeastern city of Potiskum, and attacks in several northeastern villages where dozens of churches and about 300 homes were torched.

The article also recaps the violence of the past week -- a week that saw 300-plus deaths at the hands of Boko Haram. It notes that the group has become an affiliate of the Islamic State in Syria. It even names two targeted houses of worship: Yantaya Mosque in Jos and the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Potiskum.

The well-sourced story quotes eight people, including a police official, an emergency coordinator, a community militia leader, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, and witnesses on the street. The latter have some of the most gripping detail, like a man who had just gotten takeout from a restaurant that was bombed: "The restaurant was destroyed, and we saw many people covered in blood. We can't believe that we escaped."


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'God is my gun,' says woman quoted in superficial Reuters story on church security

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This was the headline on a recent Reuters story on church security in America, post-Charleston:

In some U.S. churches, guns are the answer to a prayer

But are guns really an answer to a prayer?

Or does that title foreshadow a superficial, cliché treatment of the subject? 

You decide:

JACKSON, Mich. —The Sunday service was winding down, but before it ended, Bishop Ira Combs led the congregation of 300 at the Greater Bible Way Temple in prayer. The shootings that killed nine people in a Charleston church could not happen here, he reassured his flock.
"If they had security, the assailant would not have been able to reload," Combs declared. "All of us here are not going to turn the other cheek while you shoot us."
As he preached, Combs was flanked by a man on each side of the pulpit, each armed with handguns beneath their suit coats. Other members of the church's security team were scattered among the crowd. Congregants did not know who was armed and who was not — an undercover approach that is part of the security plan.
"We aren't looking to engage people in violence, but we are going to practice law enforcement," Combs told Reuters before the service. "And we are going to interdict if someone comes in with a weapon."


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Los Angeles Times tries to listen to African-American Christians on life after Obergefell

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First things first: The editors of The Los Angeles Times are to be commended for going where relatively few journalists have been willing to go in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 Obergefell ruling approving same-sex marriage. They published a lengthy and, at times, quite solid news feature on how doctrinally conservative African-American church leaders are reacting to the ruling.

The dramatic headline proclaimed: " 'Satan is subtle,' same-sex marriage foes warn as they prepare to fight court ruling."

The problem with this story is that it contains evidence that Times journalists failed to listen carefully to what these religious believers said or, at the very least, failed to accurately report what they said. Perhaps reporters and editors needed to think twice and then, as an act of journalistic humility, ask some follow-up questions?

At the center of many debates in this topic is an effort on the cultural left to make an iron-clad link between discrimination based on race and discrimination based on sexual orientation. This is a link that, when allowed to vote on this matter, African-Americans have consistently rejected. As you would expect, that issue came up in the Times piece, as well as discussions of how black church leaders feel about the actions of President Barack Obama.

Read the following passage carefully, since it yielded the key image in the headline. This chunk of the story was built on interviews during a Bible study at Mt. Hebron Missionary Baptist Church in Houston. One participant -- Daryl Fisher -- is said to have "clutched a Bible in one hand as he spoke." Now, was he "clutching" it, or merely "holding" it?


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Got news? A pastor, the American flag and a change of church flagpole symbolism

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During a recent social event linked to the 4th of July, I heard another Orthodox convert tell an interesting -- at times hilarious -- story about what happened the first time she took her children into a Baptist service in which there was, shall we say, an excessive amount of red-white-and-blue liturgical material in the music, decorations and even preaching.

This got me to thinking like a reporter. I wondered if, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent 5-4 Obergefell decision backing same-sex marriage coast to coast, the patriotic July 4th rubrics might have changed in some conservative congregations.

All newspapers had to do was send a few reporters out to megachurches and see what happened. This could have been a timely story.

In other words: Got news?

Lo and behold, this broad category of stories -- the chance that conservative Christians doubting their loyalties to American civil religion -- may have life after the 4th. Heed the top of this news report from Baptist Press, which indicates that some newsrooms are aware of this television-friendly story:

North Carolina pastor Rit Varriale wants to see churches fly the Christian flag above the American flag as a biblical statement, reversing flag etiquette that calls for the American flag to be flown in the prominent position.


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Ah, the journalistic beauty — and boredom — of Mormon leadership succession

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Ah, the journalistic beauty — and boredom — of Mormon leadership succession

On the religion beat, it doesn’t get any better than a papal election. The international media go bonkers with speculation on who’s up or down in the cardinals’ secret maneuvering to select the next occupant of Peter’s throne, accompanied by sidebars on the arcane process, and culminating in those twice-daily gatherings in Peter’s square to watch for chemically-induced white smoke.

Analysis of the papabile (“pope-able”) personalities often turns out to be amusingly off-base. (You can forgive the Religion Guy for noting that Time magazine was the only major medium to name John Paul II as a prospect in 1978, because total credit goes not to yours truly as the New York religion writer but to crackerjack correspondents back when the weekly operated a Rome Bureau.)  

By contrast, contemplate the journalistic beauty –- and boredom –- in picking a new head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. “Mormon”).  If reporters have the time this week, they can already update their prepared  articles on the man who will take charge upon the death of President Thomas S. Monson, who turns 88 on August 21.

(At the church-owned daily Deseret News, Monson was an ad executive and later general manager of its parent publishing and printing firm. The church operates without professional clergy so that, remarkably, its doctrinal authorities have secular careers minus the academic training in theology expected of the average Protestant parson or Catholic parish priest.)  

 As Godbeat veterans will be well aware, the new president is automatically the man (yes, necessarily a male) with the earliest date of admission into the LDS church’s governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It’s as though the longest-serving cardinal would always become the next pope.


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Louisville Courier-Journal offers a case study in biased media coverage of same-sex marriage

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Here at GetReligion, we advocate a traditional American model of journalism — one that relies on a fair, impartial reporting of news.

Last week, I highlighted the difficulty that some media organizations experienced applying that concept to the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in favor of same-sex marriage:

After I wrote that post, I came across a Louisville Courier-Journal story that epitomizes the biased nature of many reports on this subject.

Let's start at the top of this puffy profile of a Baptist pastor who supports same-sex marriage:

The Rev. Jason Crosby, a controversial local Baptist gay rights advocate whose church was kicked out of the Kentucky Southern Baptist Convention last year for agreeing to officiate same-sex marriages, spent the weekend celebrating.
"This has been more of an emotional journey for me than I'd ever have imagined," said the Rev. Jason Crosby, the pastor of Crescent Hill Baptist Church, one hour after the Supreme Court ruled Friday in the favor of allowing same-sex couples to legally marry across the country. "I can't even begin to imagine how elated people must be feeling today, after the grueling times they've endured."
Crosby said four couples got in touch with him — within minutes of the historic ruling Friday — to ask if they could marry in the church, 2800 Frankfort Ave. "I'm thrilled we've opened the door to more joy. We've opened the floodgates to celebrate the love that people find in different ways."
Crescent Hill is one of two Baptist churches in Louisville that were dismissed from the Southern Baptist Convention for their welcoming position on homosexuals last year. Constant in his position despite the rejection and hatred from his own churchmen, Crosby started conducting gay marriages last November.

Did you catch that last sentence?: Constant in his position despite the rejection and hatred from his own churchmen ...

Hatred? 


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After the earthquake(s): National Cathedral seeks lots of money and some kind of new life

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Building and operating cathedrals has never been an easy or noncontroversial task. In recent years, several Episcopal Church dioceses have simply given up and closed the doors of their cathedral sanctuaries, often because of the decline of the congregations inside those buildings.

At the same time, far too many Episcopalians on the doctrinal left and the right have been lawyered up for decades, involved in lawsuits that are rooted in disputes about doctrine, but almost always end up focusing on property, buildings, trust funds and sacred assets.

It doesn't help if your cathedral is shaken by a literal earthquake, as well as the tremors of lawsuits and demographics. As most journalists know who follow trends in American religion, membership in the Episcopal Church has declined from about 3.6 million in the glory days of the '60s to about 1.8 million today.

This brings us to a recent New York Times story talking about the struggles to rebuild the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. -- both the earthquake-damaged sanctuary and the human congregation in its pews. Here are the crucial summary paragraphs that set the stage:

Almost four years after a magnitude-5.8 earthquake shook the site -- cracking finials and half a dozen flying buttresses and sending pieces of pinnacles tumbling hundreds of feet -- the National Cathedral is struggling to piece itself back together, physically and financially, even as contractors put the finishing touches on the $10 million first phase of repairs to the interior.
Before the earthquake damage, years of shortsightedness by church leaders, little known to outsiders, left the cathedral in need of millions of dollars in repairs and exposed to the worst of the 2008-09 financial crisis, when it had to cut its budget in half and lay off almost 100 out of its 170 full-time employees.


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Pope Francis travels to South America to talk climate change (and, maybe, Jesus)

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Once again, the pope is travelling. This means that, once again, readers get to observe one of the iron-clad laws that govern religion-news coverage at work.

This chunk of the mainstream journalism Grand Unified Theory states that, no matter what the pope cites as his reasons for visiting a land or region, he is actually there for political reasons. He is there in an attempt to impact the lives of real people through political ideas or actions (as opposed to through sacraments, biblical truth, etc.) Then again, he might be there because of something that is going on in church politics. Reporters are allowed to consider that option.

In this case, Pope Francis is back home in South America where, in a welcoming ceremony at Ecuador’s Quito International airport. he offered the following reasons for this trip:

Pope Francis ... spoke to a delegation which included Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, government authorities, and his fellow bishops. The Pope told the delegation that his reason for coming to Ecuador was to be “a witness of God’s mercy and of faith in Jesus Christ.”

Wait. That isn't the reason for the journey quoted in your main news source?

Oh, right. That quote is from the Catholic News Agency report, which actually used a lede that combined both the sacred and the secular language from the Pope Francis arrival rite.


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Gag-rule drama: Oregon 'Sweet Cakes' story needs fresher, in-depth treatment

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On the heels of the Supreme Court’s June 26 5-4 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states comes a ruling by Oregon’s state labor commissioner lowering the boom on a couple who refused to bake a wedding cake for two lesbians in early 2013.

This is a really interesting church-state story and numerous readers have email your GetReligionistas asking when we would deal with it. Once again, the goal is to look at the coverage of this issue, not the issue itself. Let's give that a try.

Here is how The Oregonian worded it:

The owners of a shuttered Gresham bakery must pay $135,000 in damages to a lesbian couple for refusing to make them a wedding cake, the state's top labor official said Thursday.
State Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian ordered Aaron and Melissa Klein to pay the women for emotional and mental suffering that resulted from the denial of service. The Kleins had cited their Christian beliefs against same-sex marriage in refusing to make the cake.
Avakian's ruling upheld a preliminary finding earlier this year that the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, had discriminated against the Portland couple on the basis of their sexual orientation.
The case ignited a long-running skirmish in the nation's culture wars, pitting civil rights advocates against religious freedom proponents who argued business owners should have the right to refuse services for gay and lesbian weddings.

I looked at a previous story by the same reporter on April 24 and here’s how the lead sentence ran there:

The lesbian couple turned away by a Gresham bakery that refused to make them a wedding cake for religious reasons should receive $135,000 in damages for their emotional suffering, a state hearings officer says.

Notice the crucial difference?


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