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'The Shack' movie cometh, but mainstream reporters miss the real religion issues

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I first heard of William Young’s “The Shack” in 2008, about a year after it came out. I knew it was an indie book set in the Pacific Northwest and, as it turned out, one of the main characters was kidnapped at an eastern Oregon campground that I’d once frequented. When the father of the victim wanders about the wilderness near Hell’s Canyon trying to find his daughter –- or at least her body -– I knew exactly where he was driving.

The book got a very mixed reception due to its unorthodox theology, but when I traveled to Oregon in the summer of 2009 for vacation –- and to interview the author -– I found him a likable, unassuming man. Despite the fact that he was now worth millions, he was plainly dressed and we met in a coffeeshop near his home in Gresham, a suburb east of Portland.

So it’s no surprise that 10 years after the initial 2007 release date, this story has been turned into a major movie. A writer for the Washington Post previewed it in a piece under a headline touting God as a "curvy black woman." Here's how that starts:

In the coming film adaptation of “The Shack,” a fictional book by William P. Young about a father’s path to renewed faith and healing after his young daughter’s murder, the character of God -- as depicted in the novel -- is portrayed as a curvy, maternal black woman. ...
At issue is Young’s characterization of the Holy Trinity, seen through the eyes of the story’s main character, who on the four-year anniversary of his daughter’s brutal killing is mysteriously invited by someone named “Papa” -- his wife’s affectionate name for God -- to the abandoned shack in the Oregon woods where the girl died.
He goes, reluctant and angry, unsure if he’ll be met by his daughter’s murderer.
Instead, he finds this: a Middle Eastern, Jewish carpenter named Jesus; the Holy Spirit embodied in a wispy Asian woman who loves to garden and God (played by “The Help” star Octavia Spencer) as the very opposite of the Gandolf-like grandpa figure modern society is used to seeing.
This depiction -- God as a woman despite its gender-less designation in the Bible -- has some critics incensed.

Whoa –- wait –- God in the Bible is genderless?


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Trump's Israel ambassador pick stirs great discord among Jews, and there's a story there

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Trump's Israel ambassador pick stirs great discord among Jews, and there's a story there

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or so the city's image spinners tell us. Personally, I have no experience of this, since Las Vegas is a place I avoid.

Israel is a very different story, however, and here I do have a bit of experience.

That experience tells me that just about everything that happens in Israel becomes an international balagan, with a potential for violence -- not to mention a United Nations resolution or two slamming the Jewish state for being solely at fault for whatever transpired.

Take the ongoing flap over the public broadcasting of the Muslim call to prayer.

NIMBY disputes over traffic, noise, and property uses are a staple of the local religion beat. No one in America seems to want a megachurch, a newly enlarged religious school, an exotic Hindu temple, or -- the current ultimate concern -- a mosque, coming to their neighborhood. But unless the dispute rises to a higher court, NIMBY squabbles rarely make news beyond the local level.

Not so in Israel, where a case involving the Muslim call to prayer, known in Arabic as the adhan,  is of a different magnitude from the get-go. That's even more so the case when it involves Jerusalem, the epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Seemingly making my point, The Washington Post played its story on the front page of its print addition. The implication was that Israeli Jews just want to stifle a religious freedom Muslims take for granted.

Which leads me to the incoming Trump administration's promise to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the president-elect's designated ambassador to Israel, his personal bankruptcy attorney David Friedman.

There's much on the line here. Being the chief U.S. representative in Israel is as delicate a foreign diplomatic posting as there is. Lives -- Israeli Jewish and Muslim and Christian Palestinian -- hang in the balance.


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Keep reading long enough, and there's another side to Planned Parenthood story in Texas

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Which of these headlines — from different major Texas newspapers today — impresses you as most impartial from a journalistic standpoint?:

1. Planned Parenthood tries to close gaps

2. Provider plans fight over Medicaid

Now read the story ledes that go with those headlines and answer that same question.

First lede:

AUSTIN — Now that Planned Parenthood and its affiliates have been removed from the state’s Medicaid program, the group is trying to make sure thousands of low-income Texas women will still have access to health care.
The group also faces an ongoing investigation from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who said Wednesday his office “stands ready to defend any challenge by Planned Parenthood to their termination.”
Texas has been working to remove Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid program since October 2015 but didn’t deliver the final notice to the organization until late Tuesday. The notice from the Health and Human Services Commission said Planned Parenthood is “not qualified to provide medical services in a professionally competent, safe, legal and ethical manner” because of conversations officials at the group had about the use of fetal tissue in research.

Second lede:


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Fine Washington Post story about Dolly Parton (but try to guess what part got left out)

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Quite some time ago, the world-weary team of journalists at Entertainment Weekly produced a surprisingly serious and well thought out list of the most important women in the history of the American entertainment business.

I wish I could give you a URL for that article, but I have never been able to figure out that magazine's approach to digital content. 

Anyway, my memory is that Lucille Ball was No. 1, in large part because of her revolutionary role in managing her own career options. Oh, and she was a brilliant comic actress.

Dolly Parton was No. 2 for pretty much the same reason. Bluntly stated, she was and is a brilliant businesswoman who has opened all kinds of doors for other women in Nashville and the entertainment biz, period. She is also one of the most underrated songwriters, and stage performers, of all time.

I bring this up for a simple reason. Dolly is always news here in East Tennessee, where she is to our culture sort of what the Queen is to England -- only Parton has tons of business clout to go with all of her earth mama of the Smokes symbolism.

Now Dolly has gone and done something really important linked to the wildfires that ravaged our region a few weeks ago. You may have seen one or two short items about that on the national news. Maybe. For elite media, this was kind of like the Louisiana floods 2.0, as in something going on in red-state land that really didn't matter that much. Maybe if Donald Trump had paid a visit?

Parton has pledged, through her foundation, to give every family that lost a home -- 700 homes and businesses were destroyed -- $1000 a month for six months to help get them back on their feet. Her do-it-yourself TV telethon raised about $9 million to help out, too.

You can imagine the local coverage here in East Tennessee. However, Dolly's crusade also caught the eye of editors at The Washington Post, which printed nice, long, highly detailed feature on her. However, anyone want to guess what part of Parton's story the Post pretty much ignored?


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Nashville's Christian hip hop music scene is now under The Tennessean's microscope

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Hip-hop and its cousin, rap, is stuff I won’t let my kid listen to on the car radio because I never know what weird thing is going to come out of the speakers. Which is why I was interested to see the Tennessean announce that Christian hip hop has arrived.

When it comes to this kind of music, I’m beyond clueless. But I do know that Nashville is as close as you can get to not only being the go-to place for country music but is also the national capital for contemporary Christian music. There’s a reason why CCM Magazine is based there.

So I appreciate it when a secular publication tries to explain the genre to us great unwashed in the peanut gallery.  Here's what ran Tuesday:

The audacious Christian hip-hop movement, which to this point has been spearheaded mostly by independent artists and record labels, has made its way to Music Row with Word Music’s launch of a hip-hop imprint called 4 Against 5.
The new imprint is headed by Joseph Prielozny, the producer and artist development executive who helped guide the career of Christian hip-hop’s flag bearer, Lecrae.
Prielozny likens the rising popularity, word-of-mouth marketing and do-it-yourself ethos of the Christian hip-hop movement to rap music’s emergence into the mainstream in the 1990s. Obviously, the message of Christian rappers like Lecrae is different than Easy E, but the ethos is the same. Something fresh, something resonating is happening with Christian hip-hop and now Word, the genre’s oldest label, is buying in.

I kept wondering what 4 Against 5 meant, but the article never said. Thank goodness for online searches and YouTube. The story continues:


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Washington Post wrote about overlooked rural evangelicals; now it needs to talk to them

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Papa Ross was my dad's dad.

He had white hair, wore overalls and loved fishing and hunting. He worked most of his life as a farmer and carpenter. He was a faithful Christian who caused a stir in the 1970s when he and Grandma brought busloads of black children to their small white church in southeastern Missouri's Bootheel.

A veteran of World War II — where he was shot in the face — Lloyd Lee Ross always voted for Democrats until Ronald Reagan came along. He was one of those "rural Americans" who've received so much attention since the unexpected (at least to those of us who live in the Big City) election of Donald Trump as president.

Papa celebrated his 93rd birthday just a few weeks before he died in 2011. What would he have thought about the brash billionaire who'll move into the White House next month? I sure wish he were still living so I could ask him. I have no doubt he'd have a strong opinion — and wouldn't be shy about expressing it.

I thought about Papa as I read Washington Post religion writer (and former GetReligionista) Sarah Pulliam Bailey's thought-provoking piece last week on overlooked rural evangelicals:

In recent decades, white evangelical leaders made the American city their mission field. If you wanted to change hearts and minds, you had to go to cultural centers of power, such as New York City or Washington, where the population was growing. Now some evangelicals are wondering if that shift has caused them to overlook the needs and concerns of their counterparts in rural America.
Donald Trump’s victory put the spotlight on white, rural voters, many of them evangelicals, who were drawn to his “Make America Great Again” message. Even as exit polls suggested that 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump, some evangelicals in urban and suburban areas said they didn’t personally know other evangelicals who vocally supported the president-elect. Although three-quarters of evangelicals are white and lean heavily Republican, they are a huge and diverse group, accounting for a close to a quarter of all Americans, with Latinos making up the fastest-growing segment.
Trump carried nearly 93 percent of rural, mostly white evangelical counties, according to political scientist Ryan Burge. Nearly all of the rural evangelical counties that did not break for Trump were counties in Southern states where African Americans make up a majority of the population, Burge’s analysis shows. Data isn’t available showing how white evangelicals in urban and suburban areas voted.


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Perfectly valid (even if rather bizarre) Christmas wars stories in Texas and South Florida

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Not all Christmas wars stories are created equal.

The most important ones have something to do with religious believers of all kinds attempting to carve out some space in what is usually called the "public square." We're talking about government or business controlled environments ranging from public schools to shopping malls, from county court house lawns to public parks.

In other words, we're talking about battles over what the Peanuts character Linus can or cannot say in a public-school holiday musical or in a poster about such an event. Here is a case in point, care of The Washington Post, complete with the perfectly normal term religious liberty being wrapped in scare quotes. You know the drill. Let's start with Charlie Brown asking, "Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

Linus, his thumb-sucking and blanket-toting best friend, speaks up.
“Sure, Charlie Brown,” he says. “I can tell you what Christmas is all about.”
Then the character recites a lengthy Bible passage, from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, when angels descend upon the flock-tending shepherds to announce the birth of baby Jesus.
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord,” Linus says. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
It is that quote, extracted from the special’s most overtly Christian scene, that has thrust a Texas middle school nurse’s aide, the school district she works for and the state attorney general into a very public -- and unseasonably bitter -- debate over what “religious liberty” means inside the walls of the state’s public schools.

You can almost write the rest of this story yourself, can't you? 

The key, this time, is that the story actually includes large chunks of material about some of the laws that frame this debate, such as the Merry Christmas Law in Texas that was passed to clarify some U.S. Supreme Court material on such matters.


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Washington Post seems to rather like a pagan's tale of goat horns and driver's licenses

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The dear old Washington Post likes people who take bold stands in defense of the free exercise of their religious beliefs -- so long as those freely exercising their beliefs, it seems, aren't -- you know -- committed Christians in a tizzy over a certain kind of wedding ceremony or elderly nuns trying to defend their church's teachings on sexuality.

Consider, for example, a certain Phelan MoonSong (or Moonsong, both are out there in an online search) of Millinocket, Maine. He doesn't drive but needs a government-issued I.D. to get on an airplane, as do we all these days.

So he trundled off to the motor vehicle bureau, wearing the goat horns that are now part of his normal religious attire. The Post picks it up from there:

“As a practicing Pagan minister and a priest of Pan, I’ve come to feel very attached to the horns, and they’ve become a part of me and part of my spirituality,” Moonsong said, noting that he periodically soaks the horns in patchouli and cedar oil to keep them fresh and leathery. “The horns are part of my religious attire.”
Moonsong feels so attached to his horns that he refuses to take them off for anyone — including the state of Maine. In August, Moonsong said, officials at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in Bangor told him that he would need to remove the horns to receive a state-issued ID.
When he tried to explain to bureau employees that he is a “Priest of Pan” — one who considers the horns his “spiritual antenna” — they were not moved. They told that the horns would have to be approved by Maine’s secretary of state.

You can imagine what happened next: MoonSong's complaint sort-of stagnated until he dropped the ACLU card:

... Moonsong said he managed to avoid hiring a lawyer and filing a lawsuit.


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An old-fashioned Baptist political squabble: Hey WSJ, that's what we call a scoop!

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Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal hired a new religion reporter.

In that role, Ian Lovett has produced some interesting pieces, such as a story last week on Donald Trump's election reinvigorating the religious right.

But I don't know that Lovett has made a bigger splash than he did Monday: He scored what appears to be a major scoop on Southern Baptist discord over Russell Moore, influential president of the denomination's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

As one of my fellow GetReligionistas pointed out, this story is one that we'd typically expect from the likes of the Washington Post's Sarah Pulliam Bailey (who wrote a 2015 Christianity Today cover story on Moore) or the New York Times' Laurie Goodstein.

So kudos to Lovett for a clutch home run in the Godbeat big leagues! (If somehow I missed the story elsewhere before reading it in the WSJ, feel free to charge me with an error.)

Lovett's lede sets the scene:

During the presidential race, Russell Moore, the public face of the Southern Baptist denomination, emerged as one of the most persistent and high-profile conservative critics of Donald Trump. He denounced the Republican candidate’s stance on immigration and his moral character, and sharply questioned many of the evangelical Christians who supported him.
That message has prompted indignation from prominent figures within the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., with more than 15 million members. And it has put Mr. Moore in a precarious position, as Baptists argue over the political direction of an organization with a global reach and a powerful impact on American life.
Some Baptist pastors are considering cutting funds that flow from their congregations to the Southern Baptist Convention—or to its policy agency, which Mr. Moore heads—in a potentially dramatic rebuke.


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