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Is capitalism biblical? You don't have to be a pope to ask that question

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Is capitalism biblical? You don't have to be a pope to ask that question

JOHN’S QUESTION:

It has always been my understanding from Proverbs (condemning the “sluggard”), and Paul’s instruction that missionaries earn their keep and not be a burden, that the Bible encouraged hard work and a responsibility to give of our blessings to the poor — personal responsibility vs. government responsibility. The trend toward government socialism seems to discourage that. Is capitalism biblical?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

In America, it’s springtime for socialism. A Harvard survey of those ages 18–29 showed 33 percent support socialism compared with 42 percent for capitalism, and socialist support reached 50 percent among Democrats. A poll of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers found 43 percent considered themselves socialist vs. 38 percent capitalist. Sliding regard for big business accompanies the related success of Socialist-plus-Democrat Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Sanders is arguably the most secularized candidate ever to wage a major presidential run (can you name any competitors?). Even so, he was the only U.S. politician the Vatican invited to speak at an April economics conference (Sanders cited no Bible verses), where he briefly met Pope Francis. That was called a courtesy, not endorsement, but the pontiff appears soft on socialism, which sets conservative Catholics abuzz.

Francis joins previous popes in teaching biblical tenets of concern toward the needy and against the sins of greed and materialism. But he’s more outspoken than his predecessors in assailing free markets and urging government redistribution of wealth.


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Will Dr. Dawn Eden Goldstein touch a third rail in Catholic doctrine? Of course not ...

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First things first, to update our recent former-GetReligionista watch post, congratulations to Dr. Dawn Eden Goldstein today as she receives her doctorate in sacred theology -- magna cum laude -- from the University of St. Mary on the Lake (Mundelein Seminary).

And congratulations, as well, on that A1 Chicago Tribune story that managed to cover quite a bit of Dawn's complex and fascinating life -- from rock-beat journalist to teaching seminarians -- up to this rather historic moment in Catholic higher education.

The story, for example, mentioned that her faculty appointment -- which still has not been announced -- will be overseas. Interesting. Does Dawn speak Italian?

As you would expect, there are some interesting editorial nuances in a mainstream news report about a person as complicated as Dawn. For example, even though (a) her journey into this work began in the Pope Benedict XVI era and (b) women have been appointed to interesting leadership posts (for several decades, actually) in conservative as well as progressive dioceses, the hook for this story (it's a news-media law) must be linked somehow to the current occupant of the chair of St. Peter.

She is earning the degree, issued by the authority of Pope Francis, at the same time Francis is pushing to raise the profile of women in the Catholic Church, most recently in his 260-page apostolic exhortation "Amoris Laetitia," in which he praised some aspects of women's liberation, though he did not go so far as to say women should be priests.
Goldstein is not calling for women's ordination. She's not condemning celibacy, and she voluntarily took a vow herself. She's simply pursuing an education to shape the church's ministers of tomorrow and mentor women who feel called to serve the church.

Of course, there is a reason this pope didn't "go so far" as to support female priests. There is, after all this document from St. Pope John Paul II called "Ordinatio sacerdotalis" in which he ruled that church teachings on this subject are "definitive," and part of the church's ancient "deposit of faith."

As is customary in most news coverage of Catholicism, the story -- over and over -- discusses contemporary issues in language that hints that they are (a) personal opinion, (b) political or (c) both.


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More questions about demographics: Who bothers to remember the Sabbath, these days?

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More questions about demographics: Who bothers to remember the Sabbath, these days?

Longtime GetReligion readers know that I have always been interested in demographic questions and their impact on religious life in America and around the world. As the old saying goes, "Demographics are destiny." I have been known, from time to time, to add another "D" into that equation, producing something like, "Doctrine and demographics are destiny."

Say what? All I am saying is that you can often see connections between what people believe, in terms of doctrine, and the size and shape of their families and religious communities. Why do some parishes have more children (and priests) than others? Why is Orthodox Judaism growing in many cities while liberal forms of the faith are not?

These kinds of questions were at the heart of this week's "Crossroads" podcast (click here to tune that in), which centered on a few statistics in a new poll commissioned by the national edition of The Deseret News. While one poll is never definitive, there were numbers in this one that stood out for me, raising questions I explored this week in my "On Religion" column for the Universal syndicate.

In particular, I was interested in what might be evidence of a change in one of the most stable religion statistics in the American marketplace. That led to this overture:

In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, many news reports claimed that stunned Americans were seeking solace in sanctuary pews and in private rites of faith.
But then the Gallup Poll came out, with its familiar question asking if people had recently attended worship services. The number who had, which has hovered between 38 percent and the low 40s for a generation or two, had risen to 47 percent -- a marginal increase. By mid-November, the Gallup number returned to 42 percent.


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Let us not pray: Religion News Service eyes the National Day of Reason -- but not closely

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With the much-discussed Rise of the Nones has come a rise in demand for celebrations especially for them. Enter the National Day of Reason, championed since 2003 by the American Humanist Association and the Washington Area Secular Humanists.

That's today, according to the NDOR website; but the Religion News Service reports that its backers have been trying to get Congress to move it officially to May 4. Not coincidently, RNS notes, that's the National Day of Prayer, so declared by Congress and all presidents since 1952:

And that, says Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, is the problem.
"This is government recognition of prayer and that is wrong, no matter how you look at it," Speckhardt said. "Having a National Day of Reason on the same day says this is an example of a day the government can endorse that doesn’t exclude people based on their answers to a religious question."

The story cleverly connects some dots suggesting that the NDOR movement may be gaining traction. Those dots include the three sponsors of this year's congressional resolution (though it's been tied up in committee).

Also mentioned are the three states -- Iowa, Nebraska and Delaware -- that proclaimed the day on May 4 last year, and Iowa scheduled another one this year.  And groups "from San Diego to Portland, Maine" have held National Day of Reason events since 2011. RNS even notes that President Obama's National Day of Prayer proclamation last year "acknowledged Americans who 'practice no faith at all.' " Nice enterprise reporting, all of it.

Less enterprising is the article's sharp left turn into International Darwin Day, Feb. 12, and how it has grown in popularity since its founding in the 1990s. Apparently, the reason for adding it here is to say the NDOR folks hope to emulate its success. But the story appears to err in branding Darwin an atheist. Several biographies, including this one, say he called himself an agnostic instead.


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Some journalists edited out a few radical elements of the Father Daniel Berrigan story

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First, let me offer a personal confession: I am old enough to remember what it felt like to anxiously wait to learn where my birth date fell in one of the final U.S. military draft lotteries during the Vietnam War era. If you happen to be that old, then the odds are much better that you are familiar with the work of Father Daniel Berrigan.

One more confession: It will also be easier to understand this post if, at one point in your life, you were a strong supporter of abortion rights and then you started reading the works of political liberals -- in some cases socialists -- who were also defenders of the weakest of the weak, as in unborn children.

Thus, with all of that in my past, it was interesting to read the news-media obituaries and tributes to Father Berrigan this week.

Journalists, of course, put most of their focus on his anti-war activism -- which was totally appropriate. More than a few (think "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard") discussed the degree to which Berrigan and his brother Philip became public figures and even symbols in popular culture.

It would be easy to say that he was just an anti-war leader and, in the eyes of many conservatives, someone who went overboard in his criticism of America. It would have been easy to say that, and that alone. However, I also wanted to see if journalists would deal with some of the other truly countercultural implications of Father Berrigan's beliefs.

In short, I was interested in noting what journalists mentioned, as opposed to what they edited out of this radical life story. Thus, here is a short and rather easy test. Which of the following summaries of Berrigan's life and career is from Crux and which is from The New York Times? I made them extra long to show more context:


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Future story watch: Should a Muslim state gain a permanent UN Security Council seat?

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Future story watch: Should a Muslim state gain a permanent UN Security Council seat?

Let's' play with some hypotheticals, courtesy of an idea floated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But first some necessary background. A columnist for Turkey's English-language Hurriyet Daily News, wrote recently that Erdogan thinks the makeup of the United Nations Security Council's permanent members should be revamped along religious lines. His reason?

To end the Christian world's UN dominance over the globe's non-Christian nations.

Never mind, for now, as columnist Burak Bekdil, a prominent and frequent Erdogan critic, pointed out with more than a hint of sarcasm, that China, one of the Security Council's five permanent members, is hardly a Christian nation. That, is, unless you stretch the meaning of "Christian nation" to mean any nation in which Christians live, no matter how tightly controlled they are by a repressive government, such as the one in Beijing.

Still, Erdogan makes a point. The Security Council has no permanent member whose dominant religion is Islam, the world's second largest after ChrIstianity.

Journalists take note: This issue is likely to become an active debate, sooner or later. And when it does, it will not be easily resolved.


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Are polygamous Mormons part of Western narrative? The High Country News thinks so

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The High Country News (HCN), a 30,000-circ. environmental journal based in western Colorado, usually reports on investigations within the National Park Service, wind energy projects in Montana, fish die-offs in Colorado and similar regional stories, but rarely anything to do with religion. I managed to find one piece in there last fall about wild wolves and morality but that was about it.

But the magazine does have a villain -- the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which occupies land on the Utah-Arizona border smack in the middle of the high desert country that HCN calls its backyard. And whenever HCN goes after them, they wade into a mix of police and religion reporting.

Thus, see their latest on how corruption among city officials in that region has stymied the FBI from catching FLDS leaders who were raping children in the name of their religion.

This is a long passage, but, in a way, it points to one of the journalistic challenges linked to these reports.

In January 2006, more than 3,000 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), a polygamist offshoot of the Mormon Church, gathered inside their huge white meetinghouse in Colorado City, Arizona, for a regular Saturday work project service. Outside, unknown to the congregants, a handful of FBI agents were quietly approaching. They wanted to question 31 people about the whereabouts of Warren Jeffs, the church’s former “president and prophet,” who was on the run for performing a wedding involving an underage girl.
Within five minutes, just as a FLDS member named Jim Allred began the first prayer, FBI agents entered the building.


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In lawsuit over transgender student using girls locker room, a surprising development

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Hey, this is interesting.

The Chicago Tribune reports on a federal lawsuit challenging a high school's decision to let a transgender student use the girls locker room.

And guess what? The coverage is fair, balanced and informative. It's mostly just the facts, ma'am.

As GetReligion readers know, that's not always the case (examples here, here and here).

So what's the Tribune's secret?

The newspaper sticks to the simple lessons learned in Journalism 101. You know, the ones about reporting the relevant details (without taking sides) and giving each side an opportunity to make its case — with a proper amount of background to put the lawsuit into a broader perspective. However, I do have one question about the story that I'll ask below.

But let's start at the top:

A group of suburban students and parents is suing the U.S. Department of Education and Illinois' largest high school district after school officials granted a transgender student access to the girls locker room.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court Wednesday, the group contends that the actions of the Department of Education and Palatine-based Township High School District 211 "trample students' privacy" rights and create an "intimidating and hostile environment" for students who share the locker rooms and restrooms with the transgender student.
"Students have an expectation of privacy in restrooms and locker rooms, and that expectation is violated when a school puts the opposite-sex student in those kinds of private and intimate facilities," said Jeremy Tedesco, attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious legal advocacy group representing the plaintiffs.
The group also asserts that the Department of Education's inclusion of gender identity under Title IX, which aims to protect against discrimination based on sex, is unlawful.
Wednesday's lawsuit is the latest development in a heated national debate on the rights of transgender people in public spaces. Chicago Public Schools this week announced that transgender students will be able to use restrooms and locker rooms of their gender identity. Last month, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of a transgender student in Virginia who is seeking access to the boys restroom. Meanwhile, North Carolina recently adopted a law that limits public bathroom access for transgender people, though the U.S. Justice Department on (sic) said Wednesday that the law violates federal civil rights protections.


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#DUH -- That 'atheist' candidate for Congress turns out to be a liberal Jewish guy

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Honestly. I thought we had handled the old non-Jewish Jew, humanist, probably agnostic, maybe atheist, cultural Judaism equation several weeks ago with Sen. Bernie Sanders.

You remember that, right? The whole affair reminded me of the infamous media brain freeze years ago when candidate Jimmy Carter started talking about being a "born again" Christian. As I wrote earlier in the primary season (which still isn't over, with everyone keeping an eye on the crucial FBI primary):

I understand that many journalists in New York City needed time to grasp the basics of evangelical Christianity. Hey, 40 years later lots of elite journalists are still wrestling with that.
However, is it really big news at The New York Times that there are million of people of Jewish heritage whose identity centers more on matters of culture than on the practice of the Jewish faith?

The main problem with the Times coverage back then was that it asked a pack of rabbis to explain who and what Sanders is, when it comes to religion, rather than asking other agnostic or atheist Jews to explain that -- statistically speaking -- they are in the heart of the Jewish community (and Democratic Party) mainstream.

Now, the Associated Press has put out a feature about the campaign by Jamie Raskin to win Maryland's 8th Congressional district. And what's the hook for this story? That would be a bad headline in a major online "news" source, building on a bad public-relations piece from the Freethought Equality Fund, a humanist political action committee. As the AP piece put it:

“If successful in the general election, Raskin will be the only open nontheist serving in the U.S. Congress,” the email said. The Huffington Post quickly published an article headlined, “Congress Likely To Get Its Only Openly Atheist Member in November.”
The only problem? Raskin is Jewish.


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