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Graham and Trump? Charlotte Observer's coverage shows a kind of fixation

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Decent story idea: Cover Franklin Graham's 50th and last God-and-country rally. Did it somehow mutate? Because than half of the Charlotte Observer's article was about Graham's purported relationship with Donald Trump.

Yes, the story dealt with other things. Prayers for victims of Hurricane Matthew. Fallout from HB2, the law in North Carolina that bans all cities from making gender-identity bathroom ordinances. Graham denouncing Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts for her tight relationship with the LGBT community. The wrap-up of Graham's 50-state Decision America tour (although, for some reason, that title doesn't appear in the article).

But the lion's share of the 1,100 words probes every possible link between the evangelist and the politician. It even insinuates that he all but endorses Trump:

Addressing the presidential race, Graham said many Christians have told him they don’t like either Republican Donald Trump, who has lately come under fire for lewd comments about women, or Democrat Hillary Clinton, who has been widely criticized for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
Graham’s recommendation: "Hold your nose and go vote" for the would-be president who will appoint justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who will protect "religious liberty" and stand against abortion.
"This election is not about (Trump’s) vulgar language. And it’s not about (Clinton’s) emails that are missing," Graham told his flock. "It’s about the Supreme Court."
Since Trump has pledged to nominate justices approved by conservatives – he even released a list of possibilities – Graham’s comments sound to many like a tacit endorsement of Trump.

Ummm, yeah. Two devices that roll our eyes here at GetReligion.


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Testaments Old and New? Bob Dylan's story is baptized in all of that, chapter and verse

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Want to watch a really interesting fight?

Put a bunch of Bob Dylan fans -- true believers -- in a room with a really good sound system. Make sure the flock includes old-guard Rolling Stone subscribers, a couple of academics with doctorates in literature, some born-again Christians and some Jews -- cultural Jews and Jews who practice the faith.

Ask this question: Is Bob Dylan (a) a Jew, (b) a Christian, (c) some other brand of believer, (d) a mystic who has faith in faith, period, or (e) all of the above.

Each person gets to play three songs to help make his or her case. Let the arguing commence. Yes, the arguments will only get louder after Dylan the poet receives his Nobel Prize.

I'll state my prejudice right up front. I have never interviewed Dylan, but I have talked to people close to him (including a family member) and here is what I think: I see no evidence has Dylan has lost faith in God. I see no evidence, in this public remarks, that he has lost faith in Jesus. I see lots of evidence that he has lost faith in Bob Dylan.

How do you write about Dylan without exploring the religious themes in his work? Beats me, but here is a New York Times super-short summary of his art, in a hard-news story about the Nobel Prize announcement:

Within a few years, Mr. Dylan was confounding the very notion of folk music, with ever more complex songs and moves toward a more rock ’n’ roll sound. In 1965, he played with an electric rock band at the Newport Folk Festival, provoking a backlash from fans who accused him of selling out.
After reports of a motorcycle accident in 1966 near his home in Woodstock, N.Y., Mr. Dylan withdrew further from public life but remained intensely fertile as a songwriter. ...
His 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” was interpreted as a supremely powerful account of the breakdown of a relationship, but just four years later the Christian themes of “Slow Train Coming” divided critics. His most recent two albums were chestnuts of traditional pop that had been associated with Frank Sinatra.

Christian themes? That's it? What about the Jewish roots of much of his art?


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Let's be clear: It's rape, not a relationship, when a youth pastor impregnates a teen

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Jimmy Hinton is sick and tired of so-called "inappropriate relationships" between youth pastors and teenagers.

In such a case, Hinton declares, it's not a "relationship," it's a "rape."

He's absolutely right. More on the latest case drawing his ire in a moment. But before we get to that, a little background.

I first shared Hinton's story, headlined "A child molester's son shines a light," in The Christian Chronicle in January 2015:

SOMERSET, Pa. — Jimmy Hinton grew up at the feet of the wolf.
For 27 years, his father, John Wayne Hinton, proclaimed the Gospel to the sheep of the Somerset Church of Christ — a century-old congregation in this southwestern Pennsylvania coal-mining community.
“I went into ministry because of him,” said Jimmy Hinton, 35, the middle child of 11 brothers and sisters.
But three years ago, the son — who became Somerset’s preacher in 2009 — learned a horrible secret: John Hinton was a longtime child molester who had sexually abused young girls and escaped discovery for decades.
Jimmy Hinton uncovered the truth after an adult molested as a child confided in him. The Holy Spirit, he believes, drove his response. 
“I believe you,” he told the victim.
He reported his father to police and prompted an investigation that resulted in the pedophile preacher, now 65, pleading guilty to sexually assaulting and taking nude photographs of four young girls, ages 4 to 7.
While his father — inmate No. KP7163 — serves a 30- to 60-year sentence in Rockview State Prison, Jimmy Hinton works to help heal his home congregation and create awareness far beyond Somerset, a town of 6,300 about 75 miles east of Pittsburgh.


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I confess: I brought a basket of stereotypes with me to the religion beat. And you?

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I confess: I brought a basket of stereotypes with me to the religion beat. And you?

I knew very little about the world of religion when I became the full-time religion-beat reporter at the Los Angeles Daily News back in 1985. I knew next to nothing about how religious organizations functioned and not much more about the myriad ways that religious beliefs play out in people's lives.

That included Judaism, the faith into which I was born but to which I was barely culturally connected at the time. I also possessed what I soon realized was a superficial understanding of the Eastern meditative traditions to which I had become attracted.

But Pope John Paul II was scheduled to visit LA in 1987 and I'd had enough of seeing bad movies at odd hours in small screening rooms and talking to self-important studio public relations hacks on the Hollywood film and TV beat. My way forward came when I realized that the paper would need someone to lead what would surely be saturation papal visit coverage, and that that someone (meaning me) would need a long lead time to get prepared.

My one great advantage was that my editors knew even less than I did about covering religion. That, and I volunteered for the beat before anyone else. And so began my on-the-job training.

I made many rookie mistakes, including mistaking titles for actual names (don't ask). Despite that, I quickly realized that I needed to rid myself of my stereotypical thinking about religion and religious believers.

An early lesson came at the 1985 Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas. It was there that I came to understand that not all Southern Baptists -- and by extension, not all evangelicals -- were alike in their theology and practice.

It was also in Dallas that I realized just how politically brutal religious organizations can behave.


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Foreign Policy's story on ISIS' brutality of women tantalizes but disappoints

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It drew my eyes immediately: a story about how ISIS brutalizes Yazidi women in the name of Islam. It’s not the first time the topic has been covered but I’m always interested in stories with Iraqi datelines; in this case the oil-rich Kurdish city of Kirkuk.

Northern Iraq has gotten a lot more interesting ever since ISIS arrived there and began kidnapping non-Muslim women who were unfortunate enough to be in their way. An article in Foreign Policy Review got in touch with some of these women but the result was heavy on promise but short on delivery. It begins with the author interviewing a captured ISIS fighter:

The prisoner is in his mid- to late 30s, relatively fair-skinned for an Iraqi, with curly auburn hair and light brown eyes. According to the Peshmerga, the fighting force of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), he was the leader of an Islamic State intelligence unit. His jailers explain that the prisoner was responsible for interrogating people in Islamic State-held territory, trying to gather information and root out any internal dissent.
I purposefully twirl a piece of my hair around my index finger. I am aware that the prisoner, as a member of an organization that insists on the complete submission of women, is likely fighting back fury at the sight of an unveiled woman looking at him without fear.
“Tell me about your wife,” I begin. “How did you treat her?”
“My wife completely covered her body and face and never left the house without me,” he replies sullenly. I don’t know how much encouragement he received from his captors before speaking with me, but he seems healthy and uninjured. “She is forbidden from going anywhere without me.”

This is, of course, interesting and I'm hoping at this point we can learn why this man treats his wife as indoor chattel.


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RNS looks at 'new' Jewish Institute for women priests -- but not closely enough

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I get it -- we've all been there, all of us newspaper religion writers. Holidays come up, and our editor demands something besides the "same old same old." So we reach for the new and bizarre.

So it's understandable when the Religion News Service used Yom Kippur, which Jews observed on Wednesday, for a look at the Hebrew Priestess Institute, even though the institute is a decade old.

Still, why simply hand the mike to its boosters?

The institute is about as non-traditional as they come, as the article quickly establishes: dancing, beating a drum, sitting in a circle, placing women's pictures on the altar, praying to the "divine feminine." And, of course, ordaining women as priests -- something that would arch many Jewish eyebrows. But RNS offers only the slightest hint that not everyone buys into this approach.

That approach gets a loud, clear hearing in the article. Rabbi Jill Hammer, co-founder of the institute, wants to "re-imagine the role of a holy woman, an intermediary between the human and the divine who is part prophet, liturgist, shaman":

For inspiration, this Jewish priestess movement looks to biblical women such as Miriam, Moses’ sister, who drums and sings, and Deborah, the judge who held court beneath a palm tree.
It also embraces those ancient Israelite women who worshipped fertility goddesses condemned by the prophets, as well as modern teachings from various Earth-based religions with their healers and ritualists.
This Yom Kippur, as Jews crowd synagogues for the Day of Atonement, some women will gather in a circle for a mix of prayers, chants, songs and meditations — all of which incorporate references to the divine feminine – sometimes known in the Jewish mystical tradition as the Shekhinah.

Institute students are introduced to 13 women’s "archetypes" of leaders, including prophetess, witch and fool. Some participants refer not to God but the Goddess.  And Jill Hammer and cofounder Taya Shere use artifacts like stones and divination cards in worship.


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Believe it or not: The New York Times has quietly returned to its 'Jesus is dead' theme

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Let's start with a flashback.

Perhaps you remember a 2014 piece at The Federalist by one M.Z. "GetReligion emerita" Hemingway that ran with the headline, "Will Someone Explain Christianity To The New York Times?"

It focused on a travel piece that, once corrected, included the following material about tourism in the tense city of Jerusalem. The crucial passage stated:

On a recent afternoon in the Old City of Jerusalem, while fighting raged in Gaza, Bilal Abu Khalaf hosted a group of Israeli tourists at his textile store in the Christian Quarter -- one of Jerusalem’s tourist gems.
Dressed in a striped galabiyya and tasseled red tarbouche, Mr. Abu Khalaf showed his visitors exotic hand-loomed silks and golden-threaded garments from Syria, Morocco and Kashmir that adorn Israel’s most luxurious hotels and ambassadors’ homes. ...
Nearby, the vast Church of the Holy Sepulcher marking the site where many Christians believe that Jesus was buried, usually packed with pilgrims, was echoing and empty.

Yes, that was what the Times piece said after it was corrected. What did it say before that? Believe it or not, it said, "Nearby, the vast Church of the Holy Sepulcher marking the site where many Christians believe that Jesus is buried, usually packed with pilgrims, was echoing and empty."

In this case, it's easy to discern what the meaning of the word "is" is.

Hold that thought.


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Fending off Trump: Where did Nancy O'Dell get the moral spunk?

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When we were all watching the infamous Donald Trump video last week, the first question to pop into many of our minds –- well at least mine –- was: Who was this mystery woman who fended him off? 

Now we know her name is Nancy O’Dell, 50, host of Entertainment Tonight. I began thinking that many women out there might not have said no to Donald Trump and the fact that O’Dell did refuse him might, just might speak to some moral underpinning. 

But do we see this in a ton of pieces out that simply rehash the tape and her part in it? Nope. For example, here's a CNN.com piece that included some bio. 

(CNN) -- Nancy O'Dell is the married woman who rejected Donald Trump's advances, as described in lewd comments he made in a 2005 conversation that surfaced Friday.
"Access Hollywood," the NBC show O'Dell co-anchored in 2005, identified her Friday as the woman Trump vulgarly discussed with Billy Bush, O'Dell's co-host at the time.
Today O'Dell is the co-anchor of CBS's "Entertainment Tonight."

After repeating her public statements about the matter,

O'Dell is an accomplished entertainment journalist and author with a career that includes awards and honors for her work and her beauty.


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Re: transgender restrooms, a lawsuit over where churches' religious freedom begins, ends

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If a church hosts a spaghetti supper and invites the public to attend, does that church give up its religious freedom?

Let's say, for example, the church believes people should use a restroom corresponding to their God-assigned gender at birth. If that church invites non-members to eat pasta in its building, must the church allow transgender individuals to use whichever restroom they prefer?

Such questions are not just theoretical. They are at the heart of a lawsuit filed Tuesday by a handful of Massachusetts churches.

Readers must wade through a bunch of political talk, but the Boston Globe hits the high points in its coverage:

Four Massachusetts churches contend in a federal lawsuit that a new state law could force them to allow transgender people to use the church bathrooms, changing rooms, and shower facilities of their choice, violating the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to freely practice their religion.
The litigation opens a new front in a broader effort to undermine the law, which bars discrimination against transgender people in restaurants, malls, and other public accommodations.
Also Tuesday, the secretary of state confirmed that opponents had gathered enough signatures to place a repeal of the law on the ballot in 2018.
“This is bigger than bathrooms,” said Andrew Beckwith, president of the conservative Massachusetts Family Institute and a central player in the lawsuit and the repeal effort. “This law is eliminating rights that have existed for as long as this country has been in existence — fundamental rights to privacy, to modesty and safety, now constitutional rights to religious freedom.”

So where does the spaghetti supper question fit in?


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