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Hot question facing Catholic schools (and scribes covering them): Who defends the faith?

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It's rare for the U.S. Supreme Court to produce a ruling backed with a 9-0 vote, especially on a church-state issue these days. However, that's what happened in 2012 with the case called Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School vs. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, et al (.pdf here).

The key was that the court said it was "extreme" and "remarkable" that the government thought it was wrong for religious groups to take doctrine and beliefs into account when hiring and firing their leaders. Thus, the court affirmed a "ministerial exception" that protects religious organizations from employment discrimination lawsuits.

Ah, but what is a "minister"? This is a crucial question that is affecting some emerging conflicts linked to gay rights and religious education, especially in Catholic schools.

The Hosanna-Tabor case focused on a teacher in a Lutheran school -- a school that blended church teachings into everything that it did. Thus, this teacher was also teaching doctrine, in word and deed. The school viewed all of its teachers this way.

That brings us to this Associated Press update on a related -- kind of -- case in Boston. The headline at Crux was, "Gay man settles with Catholic school that pulled job offer." The key is that we are looking for a Hosanna-Tabor-shaped hole in this story. Here's the overture:

BOSTON -- A Boston man who had a job offer from an all-girls Catholic high school rescinded after administrators learned that he was in a same-sex marriage has settled a lawsuit with the school.


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Crux think piece: Just try to pin a political label on the agony loyal Catholics are feeling

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Please consider this post a quick follow-up on this morning's blog item about a Washington Post story on the pain and confusion that is setting in for many doctrinally conservative Evangelical Protestants facing the choice of voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton or Citizen Donald Trump.

This is a religion story, of course. The more seriously one takes centuries of church teachings on moral theology and life issues -- the whole spectrum of issues from abortion to the dignity of every human person (including immigrants) -- the more painful this White House race gets.

So how do you think conservative members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are feeling right about now? How long can they remain all but silent?

With that in mind, let me point readers toward a think piece that ran over at Crux, under this headline: "Trump v. Clinton matchup has Catholic leaders scrambling." The key to this story is that it shows, once again, how hard it is (#DUH) to pin conventional political labels on the teachings of the Catholic Church (and my own Orthodox Church, for that matter).

Readers get to hear people from rather different political perspectives say some remarkably compatible things, in terms of doctrine. That's a compliment.

So, let's try pin-the-label on the quote, shall we? Which quote is from the Catholic left, which is from the Catholic right and which one is actually from a Protestant who is frequently involved in dialogues with Catholic leaders?


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After 'scheduled maintenance,' Energizer Baptist Al Mohler back in the news

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The Babylon Bee — the fake religion news website — keeps making me laugh.

My favorite satire of the last week was the Bee's report that the Southern Baptist Convention's Energizer bunny — Al Mohler — would go offline for "scheduled maintenance."

Regular GetReligion readers — not to mention anyone who pays attention to religion news — are familiar with Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Mohler, who hosts “The Briefing,” a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview, is a favorite go-to source for reporters — and I'm no exception. I interviewed him recently on politics and churches for Christianity Today's ChurchLawandTax.com.

Today, Mohler is a key voice in an in-depth NPR report on some evangelicals digging in — and others adapting — on culture war issues.

The NPR piece qualifies as mildly interesting. For me, it doesn't cover a whole lot of new ground. Of course, I follow these issues on a daily basis. The report might hold more appeal for a general audience.

From a journalistic perspective, it provides a fair measure of balance, quoting both traditionalists and progressives. Mohler, in particular, figures heavily on the side intent on standing firm:


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New York Times: Death threats shadow anti-ISIS imams who denounce terrorism

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Why don’t Muslim leaders ever condemn terrorists? Actually, they do, over and over. They just don’t get the daily coverage that the killers do.

The New York Times helps offset that with a sweeping, detailed newsfeature on the many leaders who are, in fact, denouncing ISIS on religious terms -- and drawing death threats from the terrorist group in return.

"As the military and political battle against the Islamic State escalates, Muslim imams and scholars in the West are fighting on another front -- through theology," the Times says. The article has two or three rough spots, which we'll get to. Overall, though, the 1,300-word story is alert and perceptive when it details the variety of imams, sheikhs and others who have attracted ISIS' hate.

Highlighted are four men in the United States and Canada, plus eight others -- including and three in the U.S. government. And in their remarks, they can get caustic

* Imam Suhaib Webb in Washington, holds live monthly video chats -- called "ISIS and ice cream" to belittle the terrorists.

* Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, of Berkeley asks calls ISIS "these fools amongst us" and asks Muslims to turn away from the "stupid young boys."

* Mubin Shaikh, a Canadian and a former extremist himself, says that "This is what hurts ISIS the most."

* Sheikh Yasir Qadhi of Tennessee, who has said that "None of our senior scholars of any school -- any school -- has justified these deeds [of ISIS]."

They and other leaders have used mosques, conferences and social media, yet they’ve seldom gotten into secular media.


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Evangelicals and Trump, chapter 666: In which The Washington Post misses one crucial detail

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Let's talk about evangelical Protestants and Donald Trump, shall we? After all, that has been one of the two or three dominant storylines of the entire Republican race for the White House. Your GetReligionistas have poured out an ocean of digital ink on press coverage of this topic.

But now the reality is beginning to sink in, out there in some pews and pulpits, that this race is really going to come down to Trump vs. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Viewed as a political choice, that is agonizing. Viewed as a theological choice, things are even worse for Christians who embrace centuries of church teachings on moral theology.

If you peel off the layers of political language, the Washington Post has offered a piece -- "‘There’s nobody left’: Evangelicals feel abandoned by GOP after Trump’s ascent" -- that features a few key voices describing this agonizing puzzle in their own words.

In terms of journalism, this is business as usual. In terms of coverage of doctrinally conservative believers, this is called progress. Still, this story is sadly simplistic. Hold that thought.

The key voice early on is the Rev. Gary Fuller of the Gentle Shepherd Baptist Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, who was a supporter of Sen. Ted Cruz. By the way, in this piece it would have helped to have known that Fuller is not a Southern Baptist (it took two clicks to find that out), since other key voices in this piece are from the SBC or an institution on the left edge of Southern Baptist life. Why does this matter? It only matters if you think this is a religious story, as well as a political story.

Here is a key passage near the top:

... Fuller has a hard time stomaching Trump as the Republican nominee and plans to vote for Cruz on Tuesday, even though the senator has dropped out of the race.
“In a sense, we feel abandoned by our party,” Fuller said. “There’s nobody left.”


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London elects its first Muslim mayor and the journalism world rightly notes its importance

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London elects its first Muslim mayor and the journalism world rightly notes its importance

If you keep up with international news at all, you should know by now that London has a uniquely newsworthy new mayor, a Sunni Muslim of Pakistani heritage.

Its a first. But on the chance you don't, let me introduce you to Sadiq Khan, a second-generation Brit.

His connections to Islam are strong but clearly on the social liberal side. He supports same-sex marriage and has questioned the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women in public situations.

The mainstream international media has welcomed his election as proof positive that Muslims can, just as members of any non-Western religious or ethnic immigrant group, embrace Western-style democratic politics.

Khan's victory last week makes him the West's highest-profile Muslim politician, which means he'll be under a media microscope for the foreseeable future. Here's a selection of international media reports on Khan's election pulled together by Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Further spiking interest in Khan's election is the strong effort he made to reach out to London's Jewish voters. That's all the more noteworthy because he is a member of the UK's leftwing Labour Party, which has been wracked of late by the purging from its ranks of some 50 leading members -- including Khan's predecessor as London mayor -- for making anti-Israel comments understood by their own party to be anti-Semitic.

Khan's first official action as London mayor was to attend a city Holocaust commemoration event. 


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When Gordon College disciplines a dissident prof, RNS leaves out some crucial details

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Just when we thought the narrative of Christian college professors getting fired for unorthodox statements had finally died down, up pops another case.

Like the hijab-wearing Larycia Hawkins, who got the boot at Wheaton College because of her comments likening Christian theology to Islam (and possibly some controversial stances on sexuality), here's a new case involves a professor who accused her employer of an "ugly practice" in a letter to the editor of a local paper.

This narrative is about hiring non-celibate homosexual teachers and a tenured professor who feels her employer is deeply wrong. The employer likewise disagrees with her and has demoted her.

The professor recently sued. Religion News Service picks up there:

BOSTON (RNS) -- A Gordon College philosophy professor is suing her employer for allegedly breaching her free speech rights and retaliating after she publicly criticized the Christian school for its policy of not hiring sexually active gays and lesbians.
Lauren Barthold’s suit, filed April 28 in Essex Superior Court, claims she lost a leadership role and was denied an opportunity to seek a promotion after she spoke with news media and published a letter to the editor of The Salem News, a local newspaper.
“As a direct result of Professor Barthold having publicly voiced her opposition to the discriminatory practices of Gordon, Gordon retaliated against her,” the suit alleges, “first by threatening to terminate her, and later disciplining her by demoting her from her position as Director of the Gender Studies Minor.”
In her July 2014 letter to the editor, Barthold, who has academic tenure, called Gordon’s hiring policy “discriminatory” and urged sympathizers to help change it by bringing economic pressure to bear on the school. According to the suit, Gordon College President Michael Lindsay and the Board of Trustees confronted her and disciplinary measures followed.

These next two paragraphs are also important:


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This one will make you chuckle: You'll never guess what kind of Christians pray before meals

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Full disclosure right up top: I'd never heard of Chloe and Halle before a few minutes ago.

But according to New York Magazine, the teenage sisters are "the first Superstars of the Beyonce Generation."

At the very beginning, the magazine hints at a potential religion angle:

You were not expecting this, but here you stand, transfixed, in the doorway of a Hollywood rehearsal studio, your throat clamping up and your chest tightening, watching 16- and 17-year-old sisters Halle and Chloe Bailey sing a single word, “Hallelujah,” in gorgeous, repeating crescendos, like a church choir sending a dying loved one off into the light. Those harmonized “Hallelujahs” aren’t even a song, just their way of saying grace. You are not religious. But you will start to cry.

Alas, as my wife described it, the religion content in this piece doesn't turn out to be too deep. It's — as my wife described it — "vending machine God for happy giggly girls." So this will not be a long post.

But it will be a happy one — if you're looking for a nice chuckle to start the week. As the person who tipped GetReligion to this story put it, "This is a tidy profile, but the media really doesn't get religion."


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The New York Times tries to explain Texas to America: Oh my God they just don't get it

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For years now, my online GetReligion mini-biography has identified me as a "prodigal Texan." That has been my way of saying that I will always, to some degree, be a Texan, but that my view of the Lone Star state is not quite the same as the natives who cannot conceive of living anywhere else.

But I get Texas. Please trust me on that, by which I mean that I understand the forces that make Texas tick. I keep a can of Wolf brand chili in my kitchen pantry just in case any visiting Texans ask me That Question.

This leads me, of course, to that first-person piece called "What Makes Texas Texas" written by Manny Fernandez of the New York Times office in Houston.

First things first: You mean he isn't based in Austin? I can't believe that someone from the Times would consent to work in Texas and not be based in the people's republic of Austin. Seriously. Well, I guess there are a few Austin-friendly neighborhoods in hip Houston.

This isn't a hard-news piece, but it contains some crucial information that news consumers on planet earth need to read in order to understand the elite cultural forces that shape our news. Let's start with this church of personal material by Fernandez right up top:

I was born and raised in Central California, and I moved to Houston from Brooklyn in June 2011 to cover Texas for The New York Times. I live here with my wife, my 7-year-old son and my 3-year-old daughter, who keeps a pair of pink cowboy boots outside on the porch or inside by the front door. I have covered stories in the South, the Midwest and other parts of the country. People in those places identified with their political party, their job, their cause, their sexual orientation, their city, their race. Almost no one identified with their state the way Texans do.
Who are these people, these Texans?

Well, for starters, hit pause. Look at that list of life-shaping forces: That would be "political party," "job," "cause," "sexual orientation," "city," "race" and "state." OK, Texans, can I get a witness? What is missing from that list?


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