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Rocky Top, you'll always be good for a great debate on the Bible's place in Tennessee

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They're at it again in the Volunteer State.

A year ago, we noted Tennessee lawmakers' debate over whether to make the Holy Bible the official state book.

In that 2015 post, I suggested:

If a reporter just listens to both sides and reports what they say, this is one of those stories that almost writes itself — and, in the process, makes for pretty entertaining reading.

Welp.

I'm not so sure that journalists with national media outlets such as The Associated Press and the Washington Post got that memo. Take the AP coverage, for example. Mark Hemingway — former GetReligionista, senior writer for the Weekly Standard and, most importantly, husband of Mollie — passed along the wire service's report.

The subject line on Hemingway's email:

The snark in this lede ...

Uh huh:

Having already made a .50-caliber sniper gun the official state rifle, Tennessee lawmakers on Monday gave final approval to making the Holy Bible the state's official book.


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The Los Angeles Times on abortion: Does media bias bother anyone any more?

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Just over 25 years ago, the Los Angeles Times’ media writer, David Shaw, did a four-part series on media bias covering abortion. This landmark effort, by a reporter who didn't hide his support for abortion rights, took 18 months and involved 100 interviews with journalists and activists on both sides. It concluded that there was consistent mainstream-media bias favoring the abortion-rights side.

For an elite mainstream news publication to admit that fact was unusual, to say the least.

More than two decades and numerous court rulings later, the Times has come out with another package on abortion, but this time it’s an investigation into how the Center for Medical Progress did a lot more coaching with their undercover agents on how to get Planned Parenthood officials to make inflammatory statements than was first thought.

The Times had student journalists with an investigating reporting program at University of California at Berkeley help them with the research. It begins thus:

She was subdued and sympathetic on camera. Her recollections of collecting fetal tissue and body parts from abortion clinics in northern California lent emotional force to the anti-abortion videos that provoked a furor in Congress last summer.
In footage made public last July, Holly O’Donnell said she had been traumatized by her work for a fetal-tissue brokerage. She described feeling “pain ... and death and eternity” and said she fainted the first time she touched the remains of an aborted fetus.
Unreleased footage filed in a civil court case shows that O’Donnell’s apparently spontaneous reflections were carefully rehearsed. David Daleiden, the anti-abortion activist who made the videos, is heard coaching O’Donnell through repeated takes, instructing her to repeat anecdotes, add details, speak “fluidly” and be “very natural.”


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Another journey into the hell of sexual abuse by priests: Two Altoona-Johnstown questions

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Trust me. I understand that it would be almost impossible to write a daily news report about the hellish subject of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy that would please all readers. However, someone has to do this work and do it well.

It's hard to talk about this story having "two sides," unless you get more specific about the actual topic of a given report. After decades of reading this coverage -- some of it courageous, some of it rather shoddy -- I think it's crucial for reporters to make it clear that there are multiple issues being discussed linked to these horrible crimes against God and innocent children and teens.

First, there is the issue of secrecy among high church officials. At this point, you will encounter few people anywhere in Catholicism who have the slightest interest in openly defending what cannot be defended. Maybe behind the scenes? If so, nail them.

However, this brings us to a more complex, and related, issue. How, precisely, should predators in the past be prosecuted and punished? The biggest issue is whether to lift the statute of limitations -- which imposes deadlines on when victims can bring civil suits or state prosecutors can press charges against alleged abusers. In some cases, lawmakers have attempted to target the clergy, alone, in these legal efforts, even exempting, to name one example, teachers in public schools from facing new accusations.

The second question is also linked to the prosecution of priests. Should it be assumed that accused priests are guilty until proven innocent, if that can be proven? How do reporters handle cases in which memories have faded, or the details in stories have become muddled?

With these questions in mind, let's look at today's report in The New York Times -- "As Pennsylvania Confronts Clergy Sex Abuse, Victims and Lawmakers Act." To my eyes, this is pretty solid. Still, there are two points at which I think editors should have added at least one or two sentences for the sake of clarity.


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Weekday think piece: Deseret News on why religion news is getting more important

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This is one of those cases where your GetReligionistas simply want to point readers toward an article and then get out of the way.

But first, let me note once again -- because of some reader emails -- what this whole "think piece" concept is about.

Our primary job here is to offer positive and negative critiques of mainstream media coverage of religion news and trends. But every now and then we see essays and op-ed page pieces that are directly linked either to work on the religion beat or they address topics that would be of interest to anyone who covers religion or cares fiercely about that craft.

That's when we send along a "think piece." No we don't have a logo for this yet.

In this case, the headline on this Deseret News article by Chandra Johnson said it all:

Why faith-focused media outlets and coverage matter now more than ever

Here is the overture:

As editor-in-chief of Religion News Service, Jerome Socolovsky understands the reasons behind the Boston Globe’s recent decision to cut its financial ties with Crux, its 18-month-old website dedicated solely to covering the Catholic Church.
Cutbacks of staff or types of coverage are common in newsrooms today, as is the lopsided nature of readership (Crux’s online audience was robust at about 1 million visitors a month) vs. revenue (not enough for the Globe to continue supporting it -- as evidenced from Globe editor Brian McGory’s staff emailannouncement).
But what Socolovsky hopes news consumers and other journalists understand is what they could lose if faith-focused coverage continues to dwindle.


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More on Mississippi religious liberty bill: Some views are more equal than others

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Can you endorse differences of opinion and reject them at the same time?

The Memphis Commercial Appeal did it in its look at Mississippi's new religious liberty bill.

The Mississippi bill, like the one Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia vetoed last week, would allow people to decline to perform certain services because of religious objections. The sponsoring legislators said it was prompted by the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

The Commercial Appeal news article, in its DeSoto County edition, doesn't leave you guessing its slant. Not when it gives the lede to someone who attacks the law:

Differences of opinion don't bother Kelly Harrison as long as they're just differences of opinion. When those differences potentially become a matter of life or death, that's another matter.
"If you don't want my money, I don't want to give you my money," Harrison, of Nesbit, wrote on her Facebook page last week. "But what if I or my family needed your service, life or death, and this could stop you from providing it without any worries? No matter how you paint this picture, it's discrimination."
Harrison was referring to Mississippi's "Freedom of Conscience" Act, a measure that would allow government employees or private business operators to cite religious objections as a basis to deny services to gay or lesbian couples. The bill, House Bill 1523, has passed in both legislative chambers and is on its way to Gov. Phil Bryant. The Republican governor said Friday he would look at the bill and decide what to do when it reaches him, but he has said he doesn't think it discriminates and has supported religious liberty bills previously.

Only toward the end of the article, BTW, does the newspaper reveal that Harrison and her mate are the first same-sex married couple in DeSoto County. She has a right to her opinion, but it's hardly an impartial one.


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What media coverage tells us about the (lack of) faith of 'Story of God' host Morgan Freeman

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A decade ago, in reporting on the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I met a couple who survived the storm by escaping to their church's balcony.

This was the lede on the in-depth narrative feature I wrote on Charles and Angela Marsalis:

NEW ORLEANS — "Girl, you better get out of town!” 
Angela Marsalis’ mother made it clear what she thought her daughter should do that weekend as Hurricane Katrina — a Category 5 storm packing 160 mile-per-hour winds — threatened a direct hit on New Orleans. 
In a perfect world, Angela — a substitute teacher who helped each day with an after-school program at church — would have done exactly as her mother urged. She, her husband, Charles, and their boys would have joined the clogged procession of vehicles fleeing the tempest predicted to make landfall Monday morning.
But Charles — who worked 12-hour days on a tugboat yet still volunteered most mornings at a Christian outreach center — had just spent $2,000 to fix the family’s blue 2000 Dodge Caravan, wiping out their bank account.
Jittery over the calamity that could befall the bowl-shaped metropolitan area, Angela begged her husband: “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” 
But her practical side knew they lacked the cash to keep their gas tank full. They simply could not afford to heed the mayor’s mandatory evacuation order. 

Over the last 10 years, I've made repeated trips to New Orleans to update the Marsalises' journey (here, here and here, for example).

Now, the Marsalises are about to be featured on actor Morgan Freeman's "The Story of God," a six-episode series that premiered Sunday night on the National Geographic Channel. 


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Yes, another God and football story: ESPN ignores Catholic faith in Harbaugh's life

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It is very easy to be cynical about a lot of the Godtalk that goes on in the world of sports.

You know what I'm talking about. There are a few players and coaches, not many, who really do think God is on their side and wants them to win games. Personally, I have noticed that the more devout players are -- meaning that they are actually active in faith groups week after week -- the more likely they are to say that their prayers focus on the well-being of other athletes and requests that they all play -- safely -- to the best of their abilities.

Take, for example, those prayer circles that form on the field after National Football League games (the ones the networks never show on television). They involve players from both teams -- together. What do you think they are praying about? Are the winners praying, "Dear God, thank you for giving us the power to kick these other losers' butts." Probably not.

Now, I bring all this up because of an interesting comment a reader made the other day on my post about Stephen Curry and his decision to leap from the Kingdom of Nike to the Under Armour brand. His new company, you may remember (click here to catch up on that), let him put some faith-centered material on his Curry-branded shoes. We're talking about the 4:13 and "I can do all things" references that point to Philippians 4:13, which states, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (KJV)." Thus, "BlueOntario" asked:

I wonder if you are on to something. What is driving the several stories documented here of ESPN avoiding "the religion angle?" Is there actually a top-down driven policy, probably never in writing, that states what the lines are regarding religion that ESPN stories can never cross?
Pattern or coincidence?

This brings me to a story that I have been thinking about for awhile, a piece -- yes, at ESPN -- focusing on Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh and his unique approach to working in today's bottom-line-driven NFL culture.


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A stunning (and haunted) work of public art in honor of Cairo's famous garbage collectors

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Now, here is a very beautiful and unusual story set in Egypt, one describing an astonishingly ambitious work of public art in a highly unusual place.

When I saw the headline -- "Sprawling Mural Pays Homage to Cairo’s Garbage Collectors" -- I immediately wondered if foreign desk at The New York Times was going to nail down the obvious religion hook in this story. Yes, this story contains a powerful religion ghost.

The headline raises two questions right off, one very obvious and one not so obvious: Who are the garbage collectors of Cairo? The second question: The implication of this tribute is that there is some organized or even natural mass of people who collect garbage in one of the most important cities in the Muslim world. Why is this?

Sure enough, there is a strong hint at the religion content at the very top:

CAIRO -- The intricate mural took shape over the past few weeks, little noticed at first, spreading across a harried quarter of Cairo where Egypt’s garbage collectors live, amid overflowing bundles of this overcrowded city’s trash.
By the time the painting was finished two weeks ago, it stretched across more than 50 buildings, making it the largest public work of art here anyone can recall. The mural, a circle of orange, white and blue in Arabic calligraphy, quotes a third-century Coptic Christian bishop who said, “If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes.”
When the first photographs of the mural circulated, reactions ranged from astonished delight to disbelief. Some people, struck by its seemingly impossible scale, seemed convinced that the images had been digitally altered, according to the man behind the project, a Tunisian-French artist known as eL Seed.


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And now for something completely different: The birth of a Transhumanist Party

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And now for something completely different: The birth of a Transhumanist Party

Were you perplexed by those 17 Republican candidates for president way back when?

The Religion Guy has no way to check this but attorney Ron Gunzburger’s www.politics1.com names hundreds of 2016 hopefuls who are running in some sense and catalogues 33 “third parties.” The oldest is the 147-year-old Prohibition Party, which captured 519 of the 128,556,837 presidential votes cast in 2012.

This listing includes the newly minted Transhumanist Party of Mill Valley, Calif,, and nominee Zoltan Istvan, businessman and Huffington Post columnist. Reporters may be hearing more about this movement, which has been tiny and on the cultural fringe in the U.S. but is now emerging enough to furrow some Christian brows.

Few religious folks would argue in general against applying modern science, technology and medicine for human betterment. But ethical disputes are frequent on specific issues, for instance genetic manipulation of the human species or of vegetables, or experiments that destroy human embryos or risk harm to chimpanzees.    

Istvan defines transhumanism as “beyond human” and explains that the movement is a union of “life extensionists, techno-optimists, Singularitarians, biohackers, roboticists, A.I. proponents, and futurists who embrace radical science and technology to improve the human condition.”

For many enthusiasts the chief goal  is to totally eliminate human death, hopefully by 2045. The more optimistic Istvan thinks with a trillion dollars spent on life extension research “we will conquer human mortality within 10 years.” But, he complains, “religious extremists” have so far prevented the dream.

Immortality, anyone?


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