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AP story on trangender man doesn't ask obvious questions about Catholic doctrine

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One thing that’s been lost in this new journalism era is the ability for critical thinking that leads to logical questions.

Now, don't get me wrong, there’s lots of critical thinking going on in coverage of the incoming GOP administration but there’s not so much regarding people who are at the opposite political pole, over on the political and cultural left.

When I read this Associated Press piece, I wondered why the reporter said relatively little about the man at the center of the article, instead of using his lawsuit as a wrap-up for other news on transgender issues. Was there no one editing this piece who couldn't send the writer back for more details? It would also help to actually talk to people who could explain details in church doctrines.

The story begins thus:

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- A transgender man sued a Roman Catholic hospital on Thursday, saying it cited religion in refusing to allow his surgeon to perform a hysterectomy as part of his sex transition.
Jionni Conforti's sex and gender discrimination lawsuit comes as new regulations hailed as groundbreaking anti-discrimination protections for transgender people are under legal attack from religious groups.
Conforti had scheduled the surgery at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson in 2015. He says a hospital administrator told him the procedure to remove his uterus couldn't be done because it was a "Catholic hospital."
"I felt completely disrespected," said Conforti, whose transition began in 2004. "That's not how any hospital should treat any person regardless of who they are."

Let’s start at the third paragraph with the scare quotes around the word “Catholic hospital.” Is there any possibility that it might not be a Catholic hospital? No? Then why the quotes?

The article goes on to list similar lawsuits in other states, including North Dakota, and includes a quote from the Catholic bishop of Fargo. Which is all well and good, but the hospital at the center of this story is located in the Diocese of Paterson, NJ.

Further on down:


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Heresy in headlines: Raising questions about our social-media addiction and online buzz

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Heresy in headlines: Raising questions about our social-media addiction and online buzz

They say most American Christians have little interest in doctrine. Perhaps the upcoming 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation will briefly change that. Yet theological debates can produce lively news stories, and lately heresy has been in the headlines.

Emily McFarlan Miller, a Protestant-beat specialist with Religion News Service, proposed the “Top 5 ‘heresies’ of 2016” in an interesting December 29 piece. Then a January 3 Washington Post article by theologian Michael Horton of Westminster Seminary-California associated the H-word with President-elect Donald Trump because he favors Paula White and other “prosperity evangelists who cheerfully attack basic Christian doctrines.”

Miller’s list has two items that got considerable mainstream media ink:( 1) The ruckus over ousted Wheaton College Professor Larycia Hawkins and whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. (2) Contentions that an ambiguous 2016 decree from Pope Francis means Catholics who remarry without annulments can receive Communion.

The other three debates were mostly limited to evangelical Protestant circles. Philadelphia Pastor Liam Goligher accused theologian Wayne Grudem and other “complementarians” who see wives as subordinate to husbands of heresy in also subordinating Jesus the divine Son to God the Father. The two other disputes involve Georgia Southern Baptist Andy Stanley, said to undercut the Bible’s unique authority and the centrality of Jesus’ Virgin Birth.

Horton spurns the “word of faith” or “prosperity gospel” movement as a merger between the “new thought” typified by Christian Science and Norman Vincent Peale’s “positive thinking.” In addition to White, Horton targets Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes, Joyce Meyer, and Joel Osteen. (White, who will pray at Trump’s inauguration -- see this recent Julia Duin post here at GetReligion -- rejects the “prosperity” label for herself.)

This theological news causes the Religion Guy to contemplate our omnipresent social media.


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Final 2016 yearenders: The Atlantic on religion and politics; RNS mourns sad, sad, tragic year

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Did you know that, when it comes to religion and public life, there were both winners and losers in the year 2016?

Honest. There were.

Even with the wailing and gnashing of teeth in elite newsrooms, it is pretty clear that some people in pulpits and pews ended the year in either a good mood or, to be honest, in a divided state of mind. Many felt they had dodged what they saw as the worst-case scenario.

Once again, I am referring to the key fact at the heart of coverage of white evangelical voters in the 2016 campaign -- the fact that the evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump were divided between those who supported Trump and those who felt they had to risk voting for him because of their fears of Hillary Rodham Clinton's clearly stated views on issues linked to religious liberty. There were also millions of Catholics and Mormons in that same predicament.

One more time! Let me point readers toward this Christianity Today analysis of research by the Pew Research Center. That prophetic mid-summer headline: 

Pew: Most Evangelicals Will Vote Trump, But Not For Trump
With half of voters dissatisfied with both presidential candidates, white evangelicals primarily plan to oppose Clinton.

Now, in one of the last 2016 Yearenders that I saw, Atlantic Monthly captured a bit of this some won, some bitterly lost and many just felt relieved atmosphere in post-election America. It also -- even from it's left-of-center editorial view -- noted the role that religious-liberty debates played in all of this. So consider these two chunks of that roundup:


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The Washington Post team is surprised, it seems, that 'free agency' matters to Mormons

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They say politics makes strange, er, bedfellows.

Well, here’s proof: The Radio City Music Hall Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will each -- and very much separately -- perform in Washington on Inauguration Day, January 20. And just as some Rockettes opted out of performing for President-elect Donald Trump’s celebrations, so, too, did one member of the “MoTab,” as the choir is informally known, decline.

Except the choir member, soprano Jan Chamberlin, did more than drop out of the Washington gig. She resigned from the choir itself, after five years in a much-sought-after position among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  who have exceptional musical abilities.

Chamberlin compared performing for the real estate mogul-turned-politician with someone “throwing roses [before] Hitler.” The choir’s acceptance of the invite filled her with conflicting emotions. Let’s drop in on how the Washington Post picked up the story:

Ever since “the announcement” -- as Chamberlin called it -- she has “spent several sleepless nights and days in turmoil and agony,” she wrote in a Facebook post that was no longer public by Friday evening. “I have reflected carefully on both sides of the issue, prayed a lot, talked with family and friends, and searched my soul. I’ve tried to tell myself that by not going to the inauguration, that I would be able to stay in Choir for all the other good reasons.”
Ultimately, though, Chamberlin decided that she could not stay in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The Salt Lake City Tribune [sic] reported that Chamberlin, a singer in the famed group, is resigning after learning that the choir would appear at President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
“I simply cannot continue with the recent turn of events,” she wrote on Facebook. “I could never look myself in the mirror again with self respect.”
Chamberlin wrote that by “singing for this man” the choir would appear to be “endorsing” tyranny and fascism, and its image would be “severely damaged.” Moreover, she wrote, it would leave many feeling betrayed, as she already did.

But everybody knows that each and every member of the LDS Church is a rock-ribbed, right-leaning Republican. Right?


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Year-beginner for 2017: Sarah Pulliam Bailey, and moi, see more battles over religious liberty

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Year-beginner for 2017: Sarah Pulliam Bailey, and moi, see more battles over religious liberty

Ever since the 1980s, I have been telling editors and journalists that conflicts about religious liberty were going cause some of the biggest news stories on the American horizon.

Anyone who has been reading GetReligion since 2004 knows that I've been saying that, over and over. Amen If you listen to this week's "Crossroads" podcast, looking ahead into 2017, you're going to hear more about that. No apologies.

The roots of this concern run back to my graduate-school work in Baylor University's church-state studies program, where -- in 1977-78 -- we could hear the early rumblings of what would become Bob Jones University vs. United States case.

Why is that important? Do you remember this crucial moment in the U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell debates about same-sex marriage?

JUSTICE ALITO: Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to tax­ exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same­-sex marriage?
GENERAL VERRILLI: You know, I, I don't think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it's certainly going to be an issue. I, I don't deny that. I don't deny that, Justice Alito. It is, it is going to be an issue.

That's why religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling, in his recent pair of memos looking ahead to 2017, stressed that religious-liberty cases -- linked to LGBTQ issues, again -- would remain on the front burner for major American newsrooms. Click here and then here for those two Ostling posts.

You can see the same themes again, over and over, in the recent "Acts of Faith" year-beginner piece at The Washington Post by religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey (yes, a former member of the GetReligion team). The headline: "Here’s what we think will be the major religion stories of 2017." Here is the overture:

The new year could be turbulent for religion in America.


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Taking down Kim Burrell: Sermon on homosexuality gets quick, one-sided media react

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When I read about pastor and entertainer Kim Burrell’s sermon where she called homosexuality “perverted,” I knew she was going to be made to pay for that and pay big.

Not only is her name mud in the entertainment world, but her recently launched radio show on a local Texas station just got cancelled.

Believe me, that will just be the beginning. What makes this so timely is that the movie, “Hidden Figures,” in which Burrell sings for the soundtrack is opening this week.

Here’s how the Los Angeles Times explained things:

Gospel singer Kim Burrell labeled homosexuality “perverted” in a sermon she gave in her other life as a Pentecostal preacher, quickly eliciting responses from both Pharrell Williams, with whom she sings on the “Hidden Figures” soundtrack, and two stars from that film, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe.
Burrell and Williams were originally scheduled to perform the soundtrack song “I See a Victory,” on which he is also a producer, on “The Ellen Show” on Thursday, with Monáe also slated to appear as a guest. But on Tuesday morning, show host Ellen DeGeneres announced on Twitter that Burrell would not join Monáe and Williams on Thursday’s show.

Then followed the withering tweet by DeGeneres and then:

“I came to tell you about sin,” Burrell said in the recent sermon at the Houston church she founded and where she is pastor, Love and Liberty Fellowship Church International. “That perverted homosexual spirit, and the spirit of delusion and confusion, it has deceived many men and women.”
A firestorm of criticism was touched off when video of the sermon began to circulate and Burrell took to Facebook Live to add, “There are a lot of people that I’m aware of that struggle or deal [with] or have that spirit. Have I discriminated against them? Have I ever outright told them that I don’t love you and you going to hell? … I don’t give that call.”

That and USA Today’s account were two of the less hysterical stories on the issue.


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Repeat, repeat, repeat: Israeli settlements are news even when there's no news to report

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Repeat, repeat, repeat: Israeli settlements are news even when there's no news to report

The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and, of course, The New York Times, lead the pack when it comes to ongoing coverage of Israel and the Middle East by elite American newspapers. Some of their reporting is excellent, some of it is done poorly, and some of it is just repetitive.

That's about what one should expect, because journalists succeed and fail, I'd say in the absence of any hard evidence, roughly as much as any other human subset. 

Let's dissect the repetitive. And, yes, I'm well aware that given how often I post on Israel issues for GetReligion, I'm in danger of being repetitive myself. But, here goes anyway.

This week, the Post ran a news feature that it's editors (or at least those who produced Tuesday's edition) saw fit to give four-column, above-the-fold, page-one display in the paper's print edition. That, despite the story providing no new information.

The question is why?

Headlined, "A new wave in the West Bank?", the news feature struck me as a rehash of events that the Post and everyone else has widely covered -- which is what Donald Trump's election victory means for Israel's West Bank settlement project.

The bottom line is that Trump, and his designated appointee as U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, appear set to give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a free-hand to continue settlement construction. That's the opposite of what President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry want.

If you support the settlements, Trump and Friedman are a welcome good-news story. If you oppose the continued building, as I do, they're utterly bad news.


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In real-life Mayberry, what makes Trump supporters tick: Religion? Race? Economics?

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This is more like it.

In a GetReligion post last month, I offered praise for a thought-provoking Washington Post story on overlooked rural evangelicals.

But I voiced concern over the piece's lack of actual voices from rural America.

My recommendation in that original post:

Piggybacking off Godbeat veteran Bob Smietana's suggestion that "this is the big religion story for 2017," here's what I'd like to see going forward. Both from the Post and other major media, it seems to me that there's a big need to send a reporter — I nominate Sarah Pulliam Bailey — to some actual rural churches to interview real evangelicals who voted for Trump.

"Ask and it will be given to you ..."

Today, the lead story on the Washington Post website is a news-feature by — guess who? — Sarah Pulliam Bailey out of Mount Airy, N.C. (Don't resort to facts and try to tell me this piece was in the works before my earlier post. I'm intent on taking credit.)

Yes, the headline is clickbait at its best (or worst, if you will):


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Washington Post Catholics vs. trans rights story summons up whopping sense of, yep, Deja Vu

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One of the benefits of having been among the first wave of Monty Python fans when the BBC comedy first hit these shores is that some of their skits, such as the one about Déjà Vu, hang around in the dim recesses of one's memory.

Then, a modern-day news article pops up to bring this to the forefront.

My thanks, then to the Washington Post for reminding me of a funny bit of comedic brilliance. Sad to say, brilliance is not the word that comes to mind when reading their recent report on a group of Roman Catholic business owners suing to block an Obama administration rule it claims would force Catholic doctors and hospitals to perform "gender reassignment" surgery in contravention of church teachings.

From the article:

Gay and transgender rights groups said the health rule offers critical protections for transgender people because they often struggle to receive appropriate care from physicians and hospitals.
“What the rule says is if you provide a particular service to anybody, you can’t refuse to provide it to anyone,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign. That means a transgender person who shows up at an emergency room with something as basic as a twisted ankle cannot be denied care, as sometimes happens, Warbelow said. That also means if a doctor provides breast reconstruction surgery or hormone therapy, those services cannot be denied to transgender patients seeking them for gender dysphoria, she said.

To its credit, the Post doesn't introduce the pro-directive side until the fifth paragraph, but the HRC attorney gets to share their viewpoint before the Catholic side gets its spokesman heard.

Couple that with a photo of trans-rights protestors leading the online version, and it's not difficult to imagine a soupçon of "Kellerism" (click here for more on this GetReligion term) had jumped on the Amtrak Acela express train from the Manhattan quarters of The New York Times to drop in on the Post's offices.


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