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New adventures in 'scare quotes,' in which New York Post has doubts about prayer

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Every now and then, GetReligion readers see something online -- several weeks after the item actually appeared in a mainstream newsroom -- and send it to us. That time delay matters, if there is a strong time element in the piece.

That isn't a problem with this recent piece at The New York Post. This is another one of those strange updates on one of your GetReligionistas favorite topics -- "scare quotes." No this isn't another "religious liberty" case.

This is totally new territory, so hang on. First you have to know the context for this strange issue in journalism style. Here is how the story begins:

A nearly six-hour standoff in Columbus Circle ended Thursday morning when a suicidal man wearing a red helmet suspected of tossing a hoax bomb into a police vehicle was taken into custody without incident.
The man, identified by police as Hector Meneses of Queens, was taken into custody on a stretcher at around 8 a.m. after cops were forced to pepper spray him, police said. Dozens of officers, their guns drawn, had surrounded the car and SWAT team members had cleared the circle, as they brought in equipment to deal with Meneses.
“I have a bomb strapped to me, and I want to die,” he’d told cops, according to police officials.

Now the two cops inside the patrol car where Officer Peter Cybulski and Sgt. Hameed Armani.

Now, if you were in that patrol van, in the current atmosphere surrounding police in America, and some unknown person tossed a strange package into the vehicle, package making a strange noise, what would you think?

Next question: What would you do? The odds are that you would do several things at once, including a rather predictable religious behavior. Read carefully.


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No ghosts here: Faith in the 'Vindication' of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell

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There was big news in Virginia on Thursday.

The banner headline atop today's Richmond Times-Dispatch makes that evident.

This is the straight-news, inverted-pyramid version of what happened:

Federal prosecutors on Thursday moved to drop their corruption case against former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, bringing to a close a case that gripped the state capital, tarnishing the former governor’s reputation and the state’s.
In a brief motion, federal prosecutors asked the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to send the case back to a district court. There, the U.S. will file a motion to dismiss the indictment against Bob McDonnell — once touted as a potential Republican candidate for national office — and against Virginia’s former first lady.
“Today is a great day in which my family and I rejoice,” Bob McDonnell said in a statement. “More than 3½ years after learning of an investigation, the final day of vindication has arrived.”
The Justice Department said in a brief statement: “After carefully considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision” overturning Bob McDonnell’s convictions “and the principles of federal prosecution, we have made the decision not to pursue the case further.”
In September 2014, a federal jury in Richmond convicted Virginia’s 71st governor and the former first lady on corruption charges stemming from their acceptance of more than $177,000 in gifts and loans from Jonnie R. Williams Sr., then-CEO of Star Scientific, in exchange for promoting the company’s dietary supplement, Anatabloc.

So where is the religion angle in this long-running political drama? Why highlight this story here at GetReligion?

Because there's a strong faith component to the former governor's reaction to the dropped charges — and the Times Dispatch absolutely nails that focus in its coverage.


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Journalists (and clergy) fail to note that Schlafly won a political battle, but lost larger war

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Journalists (and clergy) fail to note that Schlafly won a political battle, but lost larger war

You know that feeling you get when you are trying to think of a name -- a person or an institution, perhaps -- but you just can't get it to pop into focus? The hard drive in your mind spins and spins and you can see hints at the data you're seeking, but not the real thing.

Trust me, this happens more when you pass 60 years of age.

It's even more disconcerting when this happens while you are on the air doing radio or a podcast, as I was again earlier this week chatting with "Crossroads" host Todd Wilken. (Click here to tune that in.) We were talking about the late Phyllis Schlafly and the fact that she was the rare moral and cultural conservative who won a major political -- repeat "political" -- battle in the public square. However, she lost her larger war with the most powerful principalities and powers in our land. As I wrote in my earlier post:

... She won her battle against the ERA, but lost the much larger war with Hollywood, trends in public education and the all-powerful worldview of shopping malls from coast to coast.
Of course, Schlafly's other major accomplishment in life was helping create a large space for religious and cultural conservatives inside the big tent of the modern Republican Party. In many ways, she was -- as a wealthy Catholic woman who was Phi Beta Kappa in college and later earned a law degree -- a unique rebel against the GOP Country Club establishment that found many of her causes embarrassing (and still does).
This is one place where I thought the mainstream obits missed an opportunity to probe a bit deeper. No one is surprised that the left hated this woman.

Now, I was trying to think of a young, popular, post-feminist figure in American pop culture who stands for the whole concept that being "hot," "edgy" and even "nasty" is a sign of empowerment, if not enlightenment, for girls.

In other words, I was trying to think of Taylor Swift. Since I am old, what came out -- as you'll hear in the podcast -- was a reference to Madonna. Talk about embarrassing.


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Charlotte Observer on gay rights: With this United Methodist story, there's a different result

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Honest, we're not picking on the Charlotte Observer. Just because this is the third GetReligion piece on that paper's coverage in less than a week and a half, and the other two were blunt criticisms, doesn't mean … 

No, this post is mostly praise for the Observer's  follow-up on United Methodist clergy who performed a gay wedding in violation of church rules. It's a thorough report, but I do have a few qualifications.

The long-stewing controversy began in April, when the Rev. Val Rosenquist, along with a retired United Methodist Church bishop, married two men at First United Methodist in Charlotte. That brought several formal complaints that she had gone against the Book of Discipline, the denomination's main lawbook.

That's a serious charge in the last mainline denomination that rules out homosexual acts as "incompatible with Christian teaching." As tmatt has noted, the crucial issue is whether these clergy are acting in violation of their ordination vows to accept the denomination's "order, liturgy, doctrine, and discipline, defending it against all doctrines contrary to God's Holy Word. ..."

As the story notes: "Clergy who violate it can lose their jobs, face a church trial, even lose their clergy credentials."

This week, the Observer announced the resolution. Actually, no, it didn’t -- because the Western North Carolina Conference didn’t tell anyone:


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Ye old news subject of Anglican decline gets royal treatment from The Economist

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Ye old news subject of Anglican decline gets royal treatment from The Economist

The British-based weekly The Economist has achieved must-read status for its foreign affairs and financial reportage, and includes a solid if somewhat spotty U.S. package for stateside readers.

On religion, it doesn’t do all that much, but when it does the pieces are usually well worth reading. For one example, there’s a recent examination of the Church of England’s long-running decline and fall. It’s a particularly good example for news scribes of how to enrich a somewhat familiar theme with ample fact-gathering combined with analysis and compressed into one page with the usual newsmagazine wizardry.

Though generally aware of the situation, GetReligion folks who keep up with church events will learn new stuff about this established royal institution, nominally headed by England’s monarch and led by an archbishop picked by the prime minister’s advisors. (The Church of England is separate from the other Anglican branches in Britain, the Church of Ireland, Church in Wales and Scottish Episcopal Church.)  And for readers who don’t follow church affairs, this article will be a revelation.

First, some of those facts. In January, average attendance slipped below 1 million for the first time. Another milestone, in 2009, showed Britons without religion slightly outnumbered those saying they’re Christians (now increased to 49 percent vs. 43 percent). And since 2004 baptisms are down 12%, church marriages down 19%, and funerals down 29%. Nowadays a quarter of Sunday services are attended by 16 or fewer worshipers.

A Gallup survey last year found only six of 65 countries are less religious than the United Kingdom. And so forth and so on. World without end. Amen.


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Donald Trump and the telltale tallit: Jewish media storm offers lots of heat but little light

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Picture it: Even though your grasp of the basics of Christianity isn’t the greatest, you’re visiting a church. A black church, at that.

Then the pastor throws a tallit over your shoulders.

Now, what’s a Jewish prayer shawl doing at a black church? And what’s the candidate to do? The only thing he could do: Graciously accept it. What happened next? Go to Twitter and put “Donald Trump tallit” in the search field. You’ll find lots to read.

One is the hot-button phrase “cultural appropriation.” But what was Trump supposed to do? Reject the gift and give it back? Here’s how Jewish Telegraph Agency wrote it up: 

(JTA) --  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was gifted a traditional Jewish prayer shawl by a pastor during a visit to a black church in Detroit.
Bishop Wayne Jackson of the Great Faith Ministries in Detroit draped the tallit around Trump’s shoulders after the candidate finished addressing the congregation.
“Let me just put this on you,” Jackson said as the congregation burst into applause.
The pastor said he fasted and prayed over the prayer shawl.
“This is a prayer shawl straight from Israel. Whenever you’re flying from coast to coast -- I know you just came back from Mexico and you’ll be flying from city to city -- there is an anointing. And anointing is the power of God,” Jackson said. “It’s going to be sometimes in your life that you’re going to feel forsaken, you’re going to feel down, but the anointing is going to lift you up. I prayed over this personally and I fasted over it, and I wanted to just put this on you.”

Wait, there's more. Clearly there is a theme going on here, in the mind of this pastor.


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'End-times cat cult': Why Bob Smietana's 'Apocalypse Meow' story really is the cat's meow

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Wow. Wow. Wow.

This Nashville Scene cover story by Bob Smietana really is the cat's meow. I mean, it's an in-depth exposé titled "Apocalypse Meow." What's not to like? 

I must echo the sentiment expressed by Scene editor Steve Cavendish in this tweet.

Don't let the focus on feline factoids leave a faulty impression. This is no fluff piece. It's a furry ball of fantastic journalism, even if it involves — as Smietana's investigative report so eloquently describes it — "a complicated mash-up of spiritual experimentation, charismatic leadership and cute cat videos."

(By the way, this video contains 10 of "the cutest and funniest cat videos of all time." However, as far as I know, it has no connection to the cult covered by Smietana.)

Smietana opens the story as if talking casually with a friend. But then the conversation with readers takes a jaw-dropping turn:


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Wait a minute, NPR: Catholics are the only Christians who seek the help of the saints?

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The other day I received a note from a GetReligion reader who clearly knows some theology.

The email concerned a passage in a National Public Radio story about St. Teresa of Kolkata that our reader knew, since I am an Eastern Orthodox layman, would punch my buttons. The reader was right. There is a good chance that NPR producers know little or nothing about Orthodox Christianity. Hold that thought.

The key to this case study is a very, very fine point of theology that is going to be hard to explain. It's possible that the story may have just barely missed the mark. However, it's more likely that it contains a spew-your-caffeinated beverage error that needs to be corrected.

Let's carefully tip-toe into this minefield. The passage in question focuses on the miracles, documented by church officials, that led to the canonization of the famous Albanian nun known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

A key quote comes from Bishop Robert Barron, the auxiliary bishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Read carefully and, well, pay attention to details about theology and church history:

Humanitarian work alone, however, is not sufficient for canonization in the Catholic Church. Normally, a candidate must be associated with at least two miracles. The idea is that a person worthy of sainthood must demonstrably be in heaven, actually interceding with God on behalf of those in need of healing.

Let me pause and note the presence of the word "interceding."


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Coptic lives matter: New York Times examines dangers to Egyptian Christians

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I've met Coptic Christians. I've heard stories of their suffering before fleeing their native Egypt. Like a man with a scar down the left side of his face, including his eyelid -- which he said was split open by in an attack by young men shouting "Allahu Akbar!" 

So the New York Times' account of Copts in Egypt at a "breaking point" is all too believable, and a vital account to keep in the public eye. This is why its few reporting flaws need attention.

The fair-minded article starts with Imam Mahmoud Gomaa's appointment to keep the peace between Copts and Muslims in the upper Nile region. The newspaper also reports the support from Copts for Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who seized the governmental reins in 2013.

Then it reports the widespread persecution of the Copts:

Yet the limits of that support have became evident in Minya, where Christians continue to suffer violence and humiliation. Houses have been burned, Copts attacked on the streets and hate graffiti written on the walls of some churches. In all, Coptic officials have counted 37 attacks in the past three years, not including some 300 others right after Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were ousted from power in 2013.
The turning point for local Copts came in May when an older Christian woman was stripped naked by a mob, which had been incited by reports that the woman’s son was having an affair with a Muslim.
“After that woman was stripped, we couldn’t be quiet, not after that,” Bishop Makarios said. What especially angered Copts, he added, “is that officials came out denying the incident.”

The Times places itself well with a dateline out of the Minya district, in the upper Nile Valley. That's where some of the worst attacks have happened, according to the Copts I know in South Florida. The further one gets from the major urban areas, where there are international media and other observers, the more trouble there is for religious minorities, such as the Copts.


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