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One key word missing in Detroit Free Press sermon on behalf of gay Catholic couple

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You pretty much know, when you read a headline that says "How a married gay Catholic couple lives their faith," that the story under that statement is going to be a sermon on behalf of progressive Catholics who want to modernize the teachings of their ancient church.

So the contents of this Detroit Free Press story didn't surprise me, especially since the Religion News Service picked it up, as well. So bah, humbug, to all of you pro-Catechism Catholics out there.

Actually, in this age in which Kellerism is becoming the newsroom norm in coverage of moral and social issues, it was unusual that the the story features a short passage quoting an articulate, qualified voice for church teachings. It's also unusual that (a) this person is not a public-relations officer and (b) that the Free Press team appears to have actually interviewed her -- as opposed to featuring one quote from a weblog or printed statement. More on that later.

The story also, as is now the norm, acknowledges that Pope Francis continues to defend the church's teachings on sex outside of the sacrament of marriage. However, it follows the now-established news logic that his "tone" on gay issues has changed everything and made his own words irrelevant. The story never quotes Francis defending the church's doctrines.

So what makes this story worthy of comment, if it is so predictable? Let's start with the lede and look for the key word that is missing.

DETROIT -- Because their Catholic faith is against same-sex marriage, Bryan Victor and Thomas Molina-Duarte made their wedding vows this summer before a Protestant minister in a Detroit Episcopal church.

So these men were married in an Episcopal parish, but they have not done the logical thing and joined that parish -- which affirms the doctrinal changes that they have affirmed.

The second paragraph introduces the man who may be the key player in the story. It's hard to tell, and that is the point.


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Christmas flap gets Palm Beach Post coverage, but it's wreathed in questions

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"All politics is local," goes a saying often attributed to "Tip O'Neill Jr. Much the same could be said of the so-called War on Christmas -- as in West Palm Beach, where a condo association threatened a resident for hanging a wreath on her door.

The Palm Beach Post takes a look in a story that is at once flawed and laudable. The rather preachy lede says:

Donna Sozzio’s “infraction” — placing a wreath on her condo door.
In these days when religious tolerance is such an issue, the resident of West Palm’s Lands of the President complex can’t understand why she should face a $100 a day fine for displaying a symbol of her faith. The condo rule violates her religious freedoms, she says.

The paper then spells out the condo rule at the Lands of the President Condo: no changes to "exterior surfaces" without written approval of the board. Balconies, yes, until New Year. But "hallways must be free of any decoration."

Sozzio's reaction: "I feel like I’m being bullied. It’s very intimidating."

She tossed the first notice away a couple of weeks ago because she thought it was ridiculous. When the second one came on Thursday, she pulled down the wreath, afraid they’d come after her for the money. But she replaced it with a small cross.

Controversies over Christmas displays are, of course, a staple of December coverage. Just in Florida, at least two other cities -- Plantation and Jacksonville -- are seeing their own flaps. But most such debates fall into two categories: public displays of nativity scenes and megawatt home shows that snarl traffic. The one in West Palm Beach is interesting for focusing on a homeowners' association taking down a single seasonal decoration. It's interesting also for the religious and legal angles, as we'll see.


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A major newspaper has hired a religion reporter: Why that is amazing news for everyone

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The Tennessean, Nashville's daily newspaper, gave readers an early Christmas present.

The gift: the Gannett paper's decision to restore a full-time religion writer to its reporting staff.

Why is this amazing news for everyone? Because so much of what makes headlines, from debates over Syrian refugees to battles over the content of public school plays (looking at you, Charlie Brown!), has a religion angle. And more often than not, the best coverage of such stories comes from full-time religion beat specialists.

Tennessee readers, feel free to insert celebratory whooping and hollering here (and don't forget to hit the play arrow on the Kool and the Gang video above).

The prodigal Godbeat has come home to Music City!

Just two years ago, The Tennessean boasted one of the best religion writers on the planet in Bob Smietana. But then Smietana, the immediate past president of the Religion Newswriters Association, left to become senior writer for LifeWay Research's Facts & Trends magazine. He later joined Christianity Today as senior news editor (where he continues to crank out amazing journalism).

After Smietana's departure, The Tennessean became just the latest Bible Belt newspaper to eliminate the Godbeat (The Dallas Morning News is perhaps the most prominent paper to make this boneheaded move).


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Zero news coverage? Episcopal Church's new leader cleans house (including a possible spy)

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Let's play a journalism game for a minute, one that we have played before here at GetReligion (for an example, click here). We call it the mirror-image game.

Let's assume, for a second, that the Southern Baptist Convention elected a new president. Then, shortly thereafter, three of the convention's top leaders were purged -- perhaps the phrase would be "placed on administrative leave" -- because of accusations of misconduct while on the job.

Oh, and there were some really strange and shady things in the recent past, like reports of top Southern Baptist leaders spying on each other -- literally.

Do you think that this story would receive any mainstream coverage? Would that draw coverage in The New York Times, the Associated Press and/or regional newspapers?

What if the official Southern Baptist press agency all but ignored the story? Would that serve as a red flag for mainstream coverage, or would that be an effective signal to reporters that there is "nothing to see here, so move along"?

What if this happened at Focus on the Family? Or how about the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops?

Now let's look in the mirror image. Way back on Dec. 11, the new leader of the Episcopal Church -- Presiding Bishop Michael Curry -- released a letter, care of the denomination's official news service, that said in part:

I need to inform you that on Wednesday I placed on administrative leave Bishop Stacy Sauls, Chief Operating Officer, Samuel McDonald, Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Director of Mission, and Alex Baumgarten, Director of Public Engagement. This is a result of concerns that have been raised about possible misconduct in carrying out their duties as members of senior management of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.


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Another look at an old question: 'Can we be good without God?'

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Another look at an old question: 'Can we be good without God?'

MARY’S QUESTION:

Is a belief in God essential to morality?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Many online articles carry that above headline, so Mary’s question is a classic, one seen in this little incident: A traditional Nativity scene is being moved away from Nebraska’s state capitol for Christmas week 2015 to make way for atheists’ “Reason This Season” display. A sponsor explained the purpose: “It’s meant to communicate that atheists are not bad people; we can be good without God.”

Some might hold a simplistic view that religionists think they and only they are or could be moral, and that all non-believers fall short.

Such assertions are nonsense, of course, and no serious religious figure would claim them. An individual atheist can lead an exemplary life, and a believer can be a scoundrel. British scholar C.S. Lewis observed that the fair comparison isn’t between problematic Christian X and virtuous non-believer Y, but rather what X would be like if he didn’t believe.

The actual question here is not virtues and vices of some individual but whether morality in general prospers if believers predominate, and whether society’s well-being suffers if many spurn faith in God. Does widespread respect for religious teachings, or fear of divine judgment, help people behave? Do supernatural ideals improve society’s over-all moral texture?

And the flip side. What is life like when foes of religion control society?


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'Happy Holidays Charlie Brown'? So what happened in that Kentucky play?

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So what happened? What did Linus van Pelt say?

I am referring, of course, to the controversy that unfolded this past week in Johnson County, Ken., where school officials -- after receiving complaints from some in their community -- removed the speech by Linus at the pivotal moment in an elementary school production of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Click here for the previous GetReligion post focusing on the Lexington Herald-Leader coverage of this Christmas wars showdown.

Here was my main point in my previous post: If Linus could not recite the key lines from the Gospel of St. Luke -- in response to Charlie Brown's anguished cry of "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?" -- then what was Linus going to say? It appeared, in previous coverage, that no one asked that question.

In the comments on that previous post, several readers tipped us off to what happened. So here is an update from the Herald-Leader, to stay with the same news source used before.

Though Johnson County school officials deleted a Bible passage from a student production of A Charlie Brown Christmas despite protests, several adults in the audience at Thursday’s performance recited the lines normally spoken by the character Linus, a video shows.
The scene at W.R. Castle Elementary School followed a firestorm of controversy in Johnson County this week.

And there is more information later:

Castle Elementary principal Jeff Cochran said in an interview Thursday that as instructed by school officials, no student in the play performed the scene in which Linus recites the passage from the Bible in explaining the meaning of Christmas:
“Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in the manger. And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men.’ ”


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CBS News asks how American Muslims feel -- surprise, they're unhappy about public opinion

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By now, you'd think pretty much everyone knew how Muslims feel about other Americans' attitudes toward them. But no, CBS News trudged that worn path yet again yesterday.

Ace anchor Scott Pelley interviewed five young Muslims all American born. He asks how they feel going to work and school after an attack like the recent massacre in San Bernardino, Calif. And he seldom goes off script.

A hijab-clad student talks about being tripped by a man who then starts screaming "Go back to where you came from." Another woman complains about the mother of her "absolute best childhood friend" putting a "super-hateful post" about Muslims on Facebook.

"When I saw it, I just broke down in tears," she says, choking up a bit. She says she wrote the woman a long letter saying, "We're the Muslim family you know, and you know we're not like that."

What did the Facebook post say? And did the mother reply? Pelley doesn't ask.

The young Muslim does volunteer that the family are "white Christians." Why does that make a difference? Why didn't Pelley ask?

He asks about a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, saying that 56 percent of Americans believe "The values of Islam are at odds with American values." The five interviewees naturally disagree. And interestingly, three of them deny that the faith is inherently violent or counsels killing the innocent -- interestingly, because Pelley's question didn’t bring that up.

He's clearly done some homework, but verses in the Quran and Hadith about violence didn't seem to be part of it (although the HuffPost wrote on it five years ago).  One of the young Muslims repeats a standard liberal line that you can use Bible verses to support violence, too.

Pelley does ask their reaction to the claims by ISIS that it's acting "in the name of all Muslims." Again, they unshockingly reject ISIS as Islamic at all. One says the word "Islam" means peace. (Actually, "Islam" means "submission"; the Arabic word for peace is salaam.) Another says that anti-Muslim voices, like that of Donald Trump, are "playing into the hands of ISIS."

Among the few surprises in the interview was from a young man: "I don’t like to identify myself as a Muslim-American. I'm an American who is Muslim." Other interesting comments come a uniformed Army lieutenant. He says that when he decided to join the Army, everyone -- Muslim and non-Muslim alike -- asked "Are you going to kill your own people?" This revelation of prejudice on the Muslim side doesn't draw any interest from Pelley.


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Bah, humbug! The annual quest to find a valid Christmas news story

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Bah, humbug! The annual quest to find a valid Christmas news story

Brace yourself, religion-news consumers, because we are entering the days appointed for "Christmas stories," care of journalists at major magazines, newspapers and television networks.

"Christmas stories" are very similar to "Easter stories." The only requirements, in most cases, is that they have something to do with religion, provide colorful art (festive or tear-jerking) and, if at all possible, allow the use of the name of the season in the headline.

In newsrooms without religion-beat specialists, general-assignment reporters probably hide under their desks about two or three weeks before Dec. 25, trying not to catch the eye of the assignment editor who has been given the thankless task of finding this year's alleged "Christmas story" for A1.

The quest for a valid "Christmas" news story was the topic that "Crossroads" host Todd Wilken and I tackled in this week's podcast. Click here to tune that in.

You can end up with some really strange, usually shallow, stories this time of year. Our own Julia Duin recently took a look at one of these quickie stories, from The Denver Post.

Long ago, in a city that will not be named, I saw a classic example. One of the big weekly newsmags had a cover story on the whole "does prayer work" question. A week or so later, the daily newspaper had an A1 story -- literally with praying hands and a rosary, if I recall -- about trends in prayer.

You could tell, looking at the sources quoted, that an editor had seen the magazine cover and had walked into the newsroom, found a reporter who was looking the other way, tapped them on the shoulder and said, "We need a (insert holiday name here) story. It looks like prayer is in the news. Go write me a story about prayer."


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Inside Higher Education takes lazy road on covering sex and theology at Biola University

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A short article in Inside Higher Education drew our attention this week, as it talks about Biola University going against the grain in contemporary American culture by strengthening its public opposition to sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

Once again, the key here is the school's statement of Christian doctrine -- as opposed to a set of legal "rules" -- that define it as a voluntary association of believers.

Biola is a private liberal arts Christian college in La Mirada, a suburb of Los Angeles that was described thusly by Inside Higher Education:

A few Christian colleges have moved in 2015 to change their rules to permit the hiring in some circumstances of gay and lesbian faculty members. Those colleges are in the distinct minority among evangelical colleges, most of which require faculty members, employees and students to abide by conduct codes that bar any sex except in heterosexual marriage.
At least one Christian institution in California, Biola University, has responded to shifts in public attitudes about sexuality and gender identity by twice in recent years making its rules more strict. While the university characterizes the changes as clarifications, some gay and lesbian employees have complained that the additions make it more difficult for them to sign a required statement that indicates their adherence to the college's rules.

 


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