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Back to the Islamic Caitlyn Jenner and the man behind the Planned Parenthood videos

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Back to the Islamic Caitlyn Jenner and the man behind the Planned Parenthood videos

On this week's episode of "Crossroads, the GetReligion podcast, " host Todd Wilken and I discussed the Sacramento Bee's less than sparkling coverage of the man behind the Planned Parenthood videos (who grew up in their back yard, making this truly a local-angle story) and the Los Angeles Times's discovery of a Muslim woman who has become a man. Please click here to tune that in.

Not surprisingly, the key figure in the trans Muslim story lives in San Francisco, which is where I -- as I write this -- have been for the past few days attending a conference of journalism professors known as the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). 

Today I moderated a panel of scholars who were discussing how journalists used to put scare quotes about "Islamophobia" and how increasingly they are not.

This is, of course, a sign that they believe such a phobia is real and not something dreamed up by Muslim apologists. It also implies that this is not a subject worth debating. That's how "scare quotes" work, after all. 

One Muslim professor listening in said that no matter what the story, Muslims -- like Mormons -- are always treated as the "other" -- part of a group that's not quite normal.

My problem with the Los Angeles Times story (which hasn't attracted any comments as of yet) wasn't about fear of Muslims, it more had to do with handling a transgender Muslim with such kid gloves that she/he was spared the normal tough questions a reporter should be asking.

Sound familiar?


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Win for M.Z. New York Times issues late, late correction on Planned Parenthood

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Win for M.Z. New York Times issues late, late correction on Planned Parenthood

So how many of you assumed we would never, ever see a New York Times correction on the Planned Parenthood video-story error that GetReligionista emeritus M.Z. Hemingway has been protesting for several weeks? 

GetReligion has been seconding her motion over and over, too. We are talking about the original David Daleiden video of the encounter with a Planned Parenthood leader named Dr. Deborah Nucatola.

Now, the Times has a reputation for having one of the best correction desks in all of journalism (GetReligion folks used to get actual calls from real, live human beings there all the time), so this correction is, on one level, not surprising. The error was clear, after all.

As M.Z. wrote, using the Times online correction form:

Phrase in Question: "Mr. Daleiden released what he called the full recording last week after Planned Parenthood complained of selective, misleading editing."

Your Concern (please limit to 300 words): –- This is completely in error. The full recording was released 21 seconds after the edited version, according to YouTube records, many hours before Planned Parenthood tried the public relations spin accepted by some reporters. ...

So now, late, late, late -- after most readers have surely moved on -- we can see that the following text has been added at the end of the online story.


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So, is this America's most unlikely interfaith dialogue?

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So, is this America's most unlikely interfaith dialogue?

With scant media attention, leading U.S. thinkers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. Mormon) and Evangelical Protestantism have been holding regular dialogue meetings the past 15 years. This is a good moment for religion writers to examine where things stand between these two dynamic faiths.

That’s because the talks are pausing temporarily as participants issue a new anthology: “Talking Doctrine: Mormons & Evangelicals in Conversation” (InterVarsity Press). The book’s editors, who’ve led the dialogue to date, are top sources for journalists: Robert Millet, former religious education dean at the LDS Brigham Young University, and Richard Mouw, retired president of Fuller Theological Seminary.

The two sides constitute the most unlikely dialogue partners imaginable, despite their concord on moral issues in the socio-political realm. They are past antagonists and current archrivals in evangelism. Participants were sometimes branded sell-outs, especially on the Evangelical side. Defending his participation,  Dennis Okholm of Azusa Pacific University says, “I have learned more about my own orthodox faith and how to articulate it with greater accuracy and sophistication -- and love.”

Adding to the unlikeliness, the two sides insist they teach the one true Christian faith but have remarkable differences. The LDS church, in fact, insists that all authentic Christianity vanished by the 2d Century and God needed to restore the authentic faith and church authority uniquely through American founder Joseph Smith Jr.

The book is disappointing in that participants offer no shared statement to define agreements and disagreements. The anthology might be more useful if it had printed verbatim some key doctrinal papers presented in the talks with responses from the other side.


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A tale of two stories: How the Mormons come off in AP and in The Daily Beast

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Mormon origins have long been a center of public curiosity.  So an LDS press conference this week, unveiling an early edition of the book -- with photos of the "seer stone" that the church says Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Mormon -- drew a lot of coverage.

Unfortunately, with the opinion-laden text that infects mainstream media, attitude makes all the difference. Let's compare two: from the Associated Press and the Daily Beast.

The press conference was actually on the printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon, an interesting artifact in itself. But the book's photos of the stone, a solid object dating to the birth of the faith, were a natural emphasis in the stories.

The AP account, run by Huffington Post and others, plays it fairly straight. Despite its taste for breathless, 40-word sentences, the wire service writes a good lede, with outline, a couple of details and a hint of context:

The Mormon church's push toward transparency about its roots and beliefs took another step forward Tuesday with the first published pictures of a small sacred stone it believes founder Joseph Smith used to help translate a story that became the basis of the religion.
The pictures of the smooth, brown, egg-sized rock are part of a new book that also contains photos of the first printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon. Officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unveiled the photos at a news conference in Salt Lake City.
The religion's drive in recent years to open its vaults and clarify sensitive beliefs is aimed at filling a void on the Internet for accurate information as curiosity and scrutiny increased as church membership tripled over the last three decades, Mormon scholars said.

The 800-word story adds background on the fate of the stone, indeed of the manuscript -- which is the property of the Community of Christ, which split off when the main group trekked to Salt Lake City in the mid-1800s. AP notes that leaders of both bodies were at the press conference, indicating that "the two faiths have moved on" -- though I wouldn't have used the term "past squabbles," as the article did.

AP quotes a satisfying four scholars for the story. One of them, Terry Givens of the University of Richmond, offers this observation:


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Backpacker heads out into the woods and gives Trail Life USA a fair shot

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There is the Boy Scouts of America story, which is complex and getting more so every minute -- especially among decision-makers for American Catholics and leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Journalists are covering these stories, of course.

Then there is another story that could be covered, one that focuses on the people in religious flocks that are not interested in compromising on centuries of basic doctrines about marriage and family. There have been a few stories about these folks, but, so far, they have been rather thin and packed with stereotypes.

The former Boy Scout in me is interested in knowing what happens to the folks who have left. I'm interested -- as an Eastern Orthodox layman -- in some of these other options because I know that many members of Orthodox parishes are starting to look for ways out of the Boy Scouts. But do they want to join some kind of hyper-Evangelical Protestant alternative?

I'm happy to report that a freelancer linked to Backpacker Magazine -- a bible, of sorts, for people who wear out more than their share of hiking boots and rain slickers -- has turned out a serious story about Trail Life USA, one of the largest of the faith-friendly alternative camping-and-outdoors operations.

The key: This story focuses more on what boys are doing in these troops out in the woods, as opposed to what their lawyers are saying in courtrooms. There are sections of this piece that will make the palms of Unitarian Universalists or urbane Episcopalians sweat.

I also appreciated that reporter Patrick Doyle, who works out of Pittsburgh, didn't focus on a Trail Life unit in, let's say an evangelical megachurch in Bible Belt, Mississippi. He focused on a troop in a northern setting, based in a mainline Protestant flock. Here is the overture, focusing on the roots of this troop:

Boy Scout Troop 452 has been meeting at Concord United Methodist Church in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, as long as there’s been a troop, nearly 70 years.
But this isn’t the usual weekly gathering of the boys and their scoutmaster, Richard Greathouse. This meeting is just for their parents.


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Abortion in China? Bad karma, some Buddhists say

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The ongoing drama of the Planned Parenthood videos has attracted the attention of an international audience, not the least of which are pro-lifers in the world’s most abortive country. That would be China, whose 13 million abortions a year is more than 10 times the amount of similar pregnancy terminations in the United States. Foreign Policy just posted this piece on how China’s Christians and Buddhists are trying to get those numbers down.

On July 14, a U.S. anti-abortion group released an undercover video of an employee of abortion provider Planned Parenthood casually discussing, over wine and salad, the harvesting and donation of fetal tissue for medical research...The news quickly reached China, and within days the video had been posted to Chinese video streaming site iQiyi, where it received more than 170,000 views.

China has the highest number of abortions in the world, with an estimated 13 million performed annually. Many in China view abortion as a purely personal decision, a necessary if sad option for people in difficult situations. Unlike in the United States, where abortion clinics face tight restrictions in some areas, similar facilities in China are readily available and widely publicized.


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Mennonite husband and wife say they have no hatred toward gays; media say they're 'anti-gay'

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According to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Richard and Betty Odgaard are a small-town Mennonite couple whose faith is central to their lives.

That's why, Becket says, the Odgaards kept religious elements intact when they transformed a century-old Iowa church into an art gallery, bistro and flower/gift shop where they hosted weddings.

But the couple got in trouble when they refused to participate in a same-sex wedding.

Becket says:

Through the years, the Odgaards have gladly hired gay employees and served gay customers at the Gallery’s shops and bistro but they cannot personally participate in a wedding ceremony that violates their own religious beliefs.
Although there were numerous nearby venues that actively advertise to host same-sex weddings, when the Odgaards declined to host the wedding, the couple immediately filed a complaint with the State, triggering an intense media campaign against the Odgaards. They were subjected to hate mail, boycotts, personal attacks, and even death threats. Officials in the Civil Rights Commission showed open disdain for the Odgaards’ religious rights, and even denied them access to state court to defend their religious liberty claims. Shockingly, the State refused to dismiss its case against the Odgaards even after the two men — contrary to their prior sworn statements — admitted they had been married months before asking the Odgaards to host their ceremony.
Facing growing pressure from the State and potentially years of legal proceedings, with the risk of being forced to pay the couple’s legal fees, the Odgaards chose to remain true to their faith. They settled the charges brought against them, paying thousands of dollars to the couple, and agreed to stop hosting all weddings. Without this vital income, the Odgaards were forced to close the Gallery.

Fast-forward to this week: The Odgaards are making headlines for launching a billboard campaign promoting marriage as a God-ordained union between one man and one woman.

Or, to borrow the terminology used by news organizations such as the Des Moines Register,  Religion News Service and the New York Daily News, they are erecting "anti-gay marriage" billboards:


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Yo, New York Times: Does everyone agree as to why all those Catholic parishes are closing?

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Faithful GetReligion readers know that, in the past, we have praised the New York Times Metro desk team for its coverage of the painful wave of Catholic church closings and parish mergers that has hit the Archdiocese of New York.

However, there has been a rather ironic subplot running through some of the coverage.

You know how your GetReligionistas are always complaining that mainstream reporters always find a way to find each and every possible political thread in religion-news stories, even if there are doctrinal themes that are much more central to the event? Think coverage of papal tours, for examples.

Now, the irony is that the Times team -- when covering these parish mergers and closings -- seems almost completely tone-deaf to some pretty obvious elements of Catholic politics (and real-estate business) linked to this story, elements that are pretty easy to tune in online.

I know that the Times folks know these elements are there, because they have seen them in the past and I praised them for it:

So implied issues of ethnicity, history, economic justice, liturgical style and theology. I've heard of churches exploding in fits of bitterness over the changing of hymnals and stained-glass windows. Imagine closing 50 churches in a city as complex as New York -- with all of the economic questions raised by locations of these facilities.
Air rights? How about prime land in a city with a real-estate and building boom that is almost out of control. For Cardinal Timothy Dolan, there are no easy financial and spiritual decisions here.

But the latest story is totally centered on people and emotions -- which are crucial elements of the story, of course. But there are other layers worth pursuing, especially linked to liturgy and tensions in the church. Oh yes, and demographics loom in the background, once again. 


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Craig James takes on bias against religious conservatives at — uh — Fox Sports

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Craig James takes on bias against religious conservatives at — uh — Fox Sports

One of the most interesting discussions that I have with journalism students every semester is the moment when I ask them to identify the specific cultural and political philosophy that drives the editorial policies of Fox News and other giants associated with the world of Rupert Murdoch. 

They always say, "Conservative" or "right wing."

Then I ask them this question: "What kind of conservatism?"

At that point there is silence. The same thing happens when I ask them to tell me the difference between, let's say, Rush Limbaugh and the Rev. Mike Huckabee. Once again, most students simply blink and keep saying "conservative."

The answer, of course, is that Murdoch, like Limbaugh, is best described as a Libertarian conservative and, in particular, is not known for consistent, thoughtful (cough, cough) defense of conservative stands on moral and cultural issues. 

This brings me to a very interesting "Got news?" story, once again from Baptist Press, that should be interesting to watch -- if and when it receives major coverage in the mainstream press. Here is the top of the BP report:

DALLAS (BP) -- College football analyst Craig James has filed a religious discrimination lawsuit against Fox Sports alleging he was fired from a broadcasting position because of his Christian belief that homosexuality is sinful.
"This case is much bigger than me," James said according to a press release from Liberty Institute, the Christian legal organization representing him. "It affects every person who holds religious beliefs. I will not let Fox Sports trample my religious liberty. Today, many people have lost their jobs because of their faith. Sadly, countless are afraid to let their bosses know they even have a faith. This is America and I intend to make sure Fox Sports knows they aren't above the law."


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