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Got news? Will anyone cover that historic, and now shaky, Orthodox council in Crete?

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Got news? Will anyone cover that historic, and now shaky, Orthodox council in Crete?

Every couple of centuries or so, the leaders of Christianity's ancient Orthodox churches get together to talk about issues of theology or church governance. It helps if everyone agrees that there is some kind of crisis that simply has to be addressed.

It also helps if everyone shows up. The whole point is for the church to speak as one body.

That's been rather complicated, you might say, since the Great East-West Schism of 1054. The ancient church of Rome has held its own great councils, after that ecclesiastical earthquake. The ancient churches of the East have not.

That's why it's rather important that, for 50 years, Orthodox leaders have been wrestling with the idea of a Pan-Orthodox Council. After a 1,000-year gap, there may some items of business to discuss. You think?

That council is now days away -- if it takes place. Several Orthodox churches have already pulled out or suggested that they plan to do so, for reasons that some might call "Byzantine." It's especially crucial that the ancient church of Antioch -- involved in a tussle with the symbolic, but now tiny and oppressed, church of Constantinople -- has called for a delay until painful problems can be resolved.

The meeting is supposed to happen in Crete. Why Crete? Because pretty much everyone agrees that it cannot, for myriad reasons, safely be held in Istanbul, in the allegedly secular state of Turkey.

It you were looking for a symbol of all of that, you might cite the issue of Ramadan prayers being broadcast from inside Hagia Sophia (click here for background), a once great Christian cathedral that is now a UNESCO historic site. For decades it has been considered neutral ground for Muslims and Christians, serving a massive cultural icon and museum.

Here's the question that "Crossroads" host Todd Wilken and I discussed in this week's GetReligion podcast: Have you been hearing about any of this in news coverage here in America? Click here to tune that in.

So where would one need to go to find mainstream news coverage of this international story?


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Bold M.Z. offers New York Times Magazine a lively update on Lutheran sex

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I don't know. Maybe there are elite journalists who have trouble understanding that it is actually possible to put the words "Lutheran" and "libertarian" -- with a small "l" -- in the same sentence? Maybe that is why M.Z. "GetReligionista emerita" Hemingway is a bit of a mystery in some blue zip codes.

Anyway, it was fun to read what amounts to the CliffsNotes edition of the "Talk" interview -- "Mollie Hemingway Hates How Feminists Talk About Sex" -- that Ana Marie Cox of The New York Times Magazine did recently did with the one and only M.Z.

Via email, I asked M.Z. if there was any way that the public might be able to see a full transcript of this affair. Alas, she only has her half of the 90-minute talk, so that's a "no." But what we have here is lively enough.

The interview, as you can see in the screenshot above, starts with the obligatory question about Hemingway being a conservative who doesn't think highly of one Donald Trump. What a shock. All conservatives are alike, of course, and if you've met one then you've met them all. I mean, how can anyone follow M.Z. on Twitter for, oh, an hour and not see the Grand Canyon that yawns between her cultural and moral views and those of Citizen Trump?

Anyway, GetReligion readers will want to read this interview for themselves. However, I will offer this slice as an introduction, for obvious reasons:


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Confederate flags and stained glass: Why can't journalists run more than one point of view?

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Years ago, I used to be a tour guide at the Washington Cathedral. We were called “cathedral aides” back in the mid-1970s and we wore purple gowns in the winter with cute purple berets. In the summer, we retained the berets, but wore summer garb with some purple in it. It was always a challenge to find the right color blouse I could wear with my outfit, but I loved memorizing the facts about all the gargoyles, chapels and the amazing stained glass the illuminated the place.

Some of those windows depicted scenes from U.S. history. What drew the most eyes was the blue, green, orange, red and white Space Window showing the universe with a tiny piece of moon rock embedded therein.

Meanwhile, my personal favorites were the brilliant-hewed windows by Rowan LeCompte who designed some 40 of the cathedral’s 200+ windows.

However, let it be noted that LeCompte did not design two windows that were in the news yesterday. I’ll begin with an account by the Washington Post:

Washington National Cathedral, one of the country’s most visible houses of worship, announced Wednesday that it would remove Confederate battle flags that are part of two large stained-glass windows honoring Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Cathedral leaders said they would leave up the rest of the windows — for now — and use them as a centerpiece for a national conversation about racism in the white church.
The announcement comes a year after the cathedral’s then-dean, the Rev. Gary Hall, said the 8-by-4-foot windows have no place in the soaring church as the country faces intense racial tensions and violence, even though they were intended as a healing gesture when they were installed…

Next comes a quote about the windows being installed in 1953. Then there is this very significant information, if one is looking at this story from a journalistic point of view. Please read carefully:


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A family of 10, a 25,000-mile road trip and a ghost the size of the Grand Canyon

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Why?

It's such a crucial question, particularly for journalists.

One of the first lessons young reporters learn is the importance of the five W's and H. The five W's are, of course, who, what, when, where and, yes, why. The H stands for how. Answer those six questions in a news story, and you've got a good start, as every student who has ever taken Journalism 101 knows.

Which leads us to a front-page feature in today's Dallas Morning News on a family of 10 who crammed into a 30-foot camper during a yearlong road trip to advocate for foster care:

The Kendrick family traded their 3,000-square-foot Melissa home for a 30-foot camper for a year, and visited every state in the continental U.S., parts of Canada and Mexico. They outran hurricanes, survived frigid temperatures — and potty-trained the youngest of their nine children.
They also ran out of gas — about 1,000 feet away from a filling station on the last day of their trip.
“We had been good about keeping it filled during the trip, but on that last day, it came back to bite us,” Bruce Kendrick said.
So why did Bruce, 35, and his wife Denise, 36, drive 25,000 miles with eight of their nine children?
Eight years ago, the Kendricks founded Embrace, a nonprofit that provides aid and resources to at-risk, fostered and adopted children and their families, as well as faith-based children’s homes.
“We got so many requests for workshops that we said, ‘OK, let’s knock it all out in a year,’” Denise Kendrick said.

Way up high, the Morning News asks the why question.

But here's my sincere question: Does the Dallas newspaper ever really provide the answer? Do readers ever find out — at a most basic level — why providing loving homes for children is such a passion for Bruce and Denise Kendrick? 


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Swimmin' Orthodox women: A complex synagogue-and-state gender wars story

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This isn't your basic separation of synagogue-and-state debate that we have here, care of The Atlantic. At least, I don't think so.

Instead, we have a story that -- with the tsunami of gender-identity news about showers, locker rooms and bathrooms -- raises lots of questions linked to public funds, female privacy, religious liberty and, yes, another dose of GetReligion mirror-image news analysis, as well.

As you would imagine, the lawyers in New York City are pretty used to dealing with complicated questions linked to Orthodox Judaism and public life. Now we have this newsy double-decker headline:

Who Should Public Swimming Pools Serve?
Women-only hours at a location in Brooklyn have ignited a debate about religious accommodation and the separation of church and state.

Now, the story by Adam Chandler does make it clear that the issue of "women only" hours at a public pool is not a new one. This isn't the only case involving religious doctrine and the privacy rights of women. But here is the overture, just to get us started.

Oh, I should issue a trigger alert for readers troubled by the word "theocratic," care of, logically enough, an editorial in The New York Times.

This week, a public pool in Brooklyn became the diving-off point for a new clash over religious law and religious coercion in New York City. For decades, the Metropolitan Recreation Center in Williamsburg has offered gender-separated swimming hours in an accommodation to the heavily Hasidic Jewish community that it serves.


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Christian lives matter: The Guardian reports Catholic murder in Bangladesh -- NY Times shrugs

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Bangladesh, with its new wave of atrocities over the last half-week, has gotten fresh attention -- but not necessarily balanced attention.

"Christian murdered in latest Bangladesh attack," says The Guardian of the Catholic grocer who was hacked to death outside his store.

And the New York Times reports the throat-slashing murder of a Hindu priest in Bangladesh on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, the two stories are not equally good. The Guardian ran the better one, for its sweep and for connecting religious and political facets.  

The narrative of the death of Sunil Gomes as brutally efficiently as the crime itself:

A Christian was knifed to death after Sunday prayers near a church in northwest Bangladesh in an attack claimed by Islamic State.
Police said unidentified attackers murdered the 65-year-old in the village of Bonpara, home to one of the oldest Christian communities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. "Sunil Gomes was hacked to death at his grocery store just near a church at Bonpara village," said Shafiqul Islam, deputy police chief of Natore district.

And the paper doesn't just stop with the police-blotter facts. It interviews Father Bikash Hubert Rebeiro of the Bonpara Catholic church. He says Gomes attended Sunday prayers, used to work as a gardener at the church and was "known for his humility."

"I can’t imagine how anyone can kill such an innocent man," the priest says.

We also learn of other recent victims in Bangladesh. One was Mahmuda Begum,  stabbed and shot in the head in front of her young son -- apparently because her husband is a police commissioner who has helped track down terrorists. The others are a Hindu trader and a Buddhist monk, both killed last week. 


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Mirror-image news, again: Concerning those Ramadan prayers inside Hagia Sophia

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It's time, once again, to take a mirror-image look at a story (click here for some earlier examples) that is in the news right now.

Well, it's sort of in the news. That's the whole point of this post.

Let's imagine that during a symbolic moment on the calendar -- perhaps a papal visit to Turkey, or the days leading up to a historic Pan-Orthodox Council -- a Christian leader entered the great Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and took out a prayer book and began chanting the ancient prayers of Great Vespers in Greek or even Arabic.

Turkish officials would be infuriated. Muslim leaders would be outraged. After all, this would violate agreements surrounding the status of this massive building -- once the greatest cathedral in Christendom, then a mosque after the fall of Constantinople -- as neutral territory, as a secular museum and a UNESCO world heritage site.

This would, in short, be a major news story and a threat to shatter Muslim-majority Turkey's status -- in the eyes of Europe, especially -- as a secular state that is dedicated to some protection for religious minorities.

Would this draw mainstream media coverage?

Now the mirror-image story, care of The Turkish Sun:

An angry war of words has broken out between Turkey and Greece after Athens protested a decision to allow a daily Quranic reading in İstanbul’s famous Hagia Sophia during Ramadan. The museum was for almost 1,000 years the biggest Greek Orthodox Christian church in the world.
The sahur, or pre-dawn meal, is to be broadcast each morning from the Hagia Sophia by Turkish national broadcaster TRT Diyanet along with daily readings from the Quran during the Islamic holy month, which began on Monday (June 6).
In one of the toughest diplomatic rebukes from Athens to Ankara in recent years, the Greek foreign ministry called the decision to allow the religious readings at the world heritage site, which is officially designated as a museum, “regressive”, “verging on bigotry” and “not compatible with modern, democratic and secular societies”.


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Surprise! An abortion story from a major newspaper that doesn't favor pro-choice side

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Last week, we highlighted — once again — the slanted nature of so much mainstream media reporting on abortion.

We suggested that not much has changed since the classic 1990 Los Angeles Times series -- written by the late David Shaw -- that exposed rampant news media bias against abortion opponents.

We pointed out that among Shaw's findings a quarter-century ago were these:

* The news media consistently use language and images that frame the entire abortion debate in terms that implicitly favor abortion-rights advocates.
* Abortion-rights advocates are often quoted more frequently and characterized more favorably than are abortion opponents.

Why do I bring up that recent post again now?

Because I wanted to share a positive example of how journalists who want to provide impartial coverage can do so. This story, from the front page of Tuesday's Oklahoman newspaper in Oklahoma City, concerns a prayer vigil conducted by Catholic opponents of a planned abortion clinic.

 


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News in the 2015 Southern Baptist statistics: Baptisms, babies and crucial ethnic churches

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As you would expect, reading the Religious News Service story about the continuing decline in Southern Baptist Convention membership statistics is rather different than reading the Baptist Press feature on the same trends.

This is exactly as it should be, since one is a secular wire service and the other is a denominational press office. However, it's interesting to note that neither of these stories buried the bad-news lede and both included interesting secondary issues that could point toward important news angles in the future.

Truth is, the slow decline of the SBC is several news stories rolled up into one.

Let's look at the very short RNS story first, starting with the hard-news lede:

(RNS) The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the country, but it continues to lose members and baptize fewer people each year.
The latest statistics, compiled by LifeWay Christian Resources from church reports, show membership has dropped by more than 204,000, down 1.3 percent to 15.3 million members in 2015. It’s the ninth year in a row there has been a membership decline. Baptisms, which have declined eight of the last 10 years, totaled 295,212, a 3.3 percent drop, researchers said Tuesday (June 7).

So what is happening here? For starters the RNS report notes that another doctrinally conservative denomination -- the charismatic Assemblies of God -- experienced some growth in 2015.

This raises questions about the "Why?" element in this news story.


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