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Expensive Washington state senate race: A Sikh vs. a Christian and no one's covering that

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In terms of political leanings, the West Coast is a wall of blue, but there’s still a stubborn cadre of Republicans controlling the Washington state legislature, much to the disgust of Democrats.

So, right now there’s a huge fight for a single state Senate seat with two Asian-American women duking it out for the coveted position in Washington’s 45th District, which houses behemoths like Microsoft and other tech businesses that have turned Seattle’s Eastside into a mini-Silicon Valley.

I used to live in that district years ago and currently live in an adjoining district, so naturally I was interested in reading about this race. Yes, there is a interesting religion angle to this story. The issue is whether anyone wants to cover it.

High Country News’ latest edition explains what’s at stake:

Campaign donations are pouring in for a Washington state Senate seat contest because the outcome likely will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the chamber. Oil companies have written $100,000 checks for political action committees running ads against the Democratic candidate, Manka Dhingra, and in support of Republican Jinyoung Lee Englund. A pair of billionaires who want action on climate change, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, each gave $125,000 to political action committees funding ad campaigns against Englund, and supporting Dhingra.
When all is said and done, $8 million dollars likely will have been spent on this state legislative race, political consultants predict. That’s more than triple the amount ever spent on any other Washington state legislative race and more than has ever been spent on any U.S. Congressional race in the state.

Dhingra and her family are pictured above this blog post. Englund is the person with the black-and-white-checked blouse. Elsewhere I read this could be the “costliest state primary in history,” so my ears perked up.

What’s interesting are the religious professions of the two women involved. One is a Sikh American who, if elected, would be the nation’s first Sikh woman to be in a state legislature. The other once worked for an overseas charity affiliated with Pentecostal healing evangelist Heidi Baker.

Few of the publications I scanned were interested in an religion “ghosts;” that is, religion angles hidden in ordinary news articles.


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With Canada's shifting demographics, Sikh politician’s rise may be glimpse of future

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With Canada's shifting demographics, Sikh politician’s rise may be glimpse of future

How many American journalists, including the dwindling number of staff religion reporters, are capable of accurately writing about the Sikh faith without first needing to resort to a quick Goggle search? Very few, I'd bet.

I'd also wager that Canadian journalists are similarly challenged. This could change, however, now that our northern neighbor has just witnessed the first Sikh being voted head of one of Canada’s major political parties.

That would be Jagmeet Singh, the son of Indian immigrants, who is now the national leader of the liberal New Democratic Party. NDP is Canada’s third largest party, though it was number two for a spell earlier this decade. (Remember, Canada operates within a parliamentary system, unlike the United States where just two parties dominate).

Singh, a provincial parliament member from Ontario, is also the first non-white to head a major Canadian party. Click here for The New York Times story on Singh’s election. Click here for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation profile of the man.

Note that Singh wears a turban and other symbols of the Sikh religion. I'd call that a bold move for a national politician in a country with a majority white Christian population.

Imagine if Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who was born into a Sikh family that lived in Canada prior to moving to South Carolina, had not converted to Protestant Christianity and still wore traditional Sikh garb.


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Gospel of guns falls short: Something's missing in paper's exploration of faith, family and firearms

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"Faith, family, firearms drive Georgia's devotion to Second Amendment," says the headline on an Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece tied to last week's mass shooting in Las Vegas.

What we have here is a case where I really wish the story had lived up to the headline.

Unfortunately, guns — not God — are the star of this report.

To some extent, maybe that's to be expected. On the other hand, I had hoped that the Journal-Constitution would delve — really delve — into the religion angle. Alas, faith makes just a few cameo appearances in this story focused more on economics than spirituality.

Up high, the article hints at a deeper religion angle than the paper chooses to explore:

An outsize American flag flies above the factory where Daniel Defense makes some of the world’s highest-priced assault rifles.
At NASCAR races, the No. 3 car flashes the Daniel Defense logo.
And when the company’s founder talks about his values, he distills them to three potent words: faith, family, firearms.
Daniel Defense, based in Bryan County, 25 miles northwest of Savannah, is a Georgia success story, one that embodies a culture that often conflates patriotism, religion, regional pride and devotion to the Second Amendment.
But the company, and the culture, came under scrutiny last week after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Late Sunday night in Las Vegas, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on an outdoor music festival from his 32nd-story hotel suite, killing 58 people and wounding nearly 500 before taking his own life. Authorities reportedly found about 20 guns in the hotel suite – including at least four military-style rifles manufactured by Daniel Defense. The rifles appeared prominently in crime-scene photographs by the Las Vegas police.
“Our deepest thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families of the Las Vegas incident,” the company said Monday on its Facebook page, its only public statement on the shooting. Company executives did not respond to telephone messages and emails requesting an interview.

So what is the role of faith that the company's founder distills?


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Sometimes chasing 'Why?' questions pushes scribes past motives, into evil and tragedy

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When it comes to the big question in Las Vegas, news consumers around the world are still waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more.

Journalists want to know what kind of label to pin on the motives of Stephen Paddock, so we can go back to wrestling with theodicy questions like, oh, why so many Democrats voted for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. Where was God on election day?

Alas, new details in Vegas (Paddock shot a security man before the massacre began?) have only complicated the timeline of this tragedy.

What are journalists supposed to do? Well, this is the rare case when I want to point readers to a think piece during the middle of the week (as opposed to our weekend slots), in part because I get to plug a Poynter.org essay while sitting in the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. I've been here for several days speaking to a circle of international journalists.

The Poynter.org essay is called "The Journalism of Why: How we struggle to answer the hardest question," and it was written by veteran journalist and educator Roy Peter Clark.

Clark starts where I started here at GetReligion, hours after the massacre: With that familiar journalism mantra Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.

Who? We got that information pretty quick (unless you're talking about Paddock having help).

What? We got that. When? The massacre timeline is evolving, but we know (or think we know) some of the basics. Where? You get the point. Then Clark notes, quoting one of the journalism scholars who most influenced my academic career:


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Indiana newspaper relies on one-sided HuffPost report on school vouchers program

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I'm just not sure where the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette newspaper comes out on moral, cultural and religious issues. That is relevant, I believe, because knowing that might explain just how an Indiana newspaper would come to work with New York City-based website HuffPost (neé The Huffington Post) to cover a major story in the Hoosier state.

While it's not unusual for news organizations to sometimes work together, the HuffPost takes a far more strident stance on many topics -- especially those linked to religion and culture -- than most dailies would. My journalistic question, first of all, is, "Why? Why buddy up like this? What do the readers gain?"

Headlined "Far-right, faith-based views rule in textbooks," the piece, bearing the byline of a HuffPost reporter, takes a decided viewpoint on issues that are probably very important to many in the state: school vouchers, faith-based education and, yes, the free exercise of religion. From the story:

Taxpayers in Indiana are footing the bill for student scholarships to schools that push ultraconservative and sometimes bigoted viewpoints.
More than 30 private schools participating in Indiana's school voucher program use textbooks from companies that teach homosexuality as immoral, environmentalism as spiritually bankrupt and evolution as an evil idea.
Of the 318 private schools participating in Indiana's Choice Scholarship Program -- a voucher program that uses public funding to help students afford private schools -- 36 use at least one textbook or piece of curriculum created by either Abeka or Bob Jones University Press. That's part of the findings of a HuffPost analysis, in conjunction with an in-depth look at vouchers with The Journal Gazette. ...


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This is why serious journalism is helpful when reporting on objections to immunizing a child

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In an an age of clickbait, I appreciate the Kansas City Star's serious, straightforward treatment of a Kansas family's objections to immunizing a child.

Yes, there's a strong religion angle to this developing story.

"Report what you know" is an old journalistic adage: The Star does a nice job of that in a news report that meticulously explains a federal lawsuit filed by the family of a 2-year-old boy.

Let's start at the top:

The 2-year-old grandson of Linus and Terri Baker has never been vaccinated.
His mother and the Bakers oppose immunization on religious and health grounds.
But now that the boy is in temporary state custody, the Kansas Department for Children and Families intends to vaccinate him despite the family’s wishes.
The Bakers, who have physical custody of the boy as his foster parents, say it’s an unconstitutional overreach and they are now fighting it in federal court.
The grandparents are particularly galled that DCF appears to be requiring people who want to exempt their children from daycare and school vaccination requirements to cite their denomination and its specific teaching opposed to immunization.
“They’ve become the religious police,” said Linus Baker, a lawyer who lives in southern Johnson County.

Given that statement, it's probably not a surprise that the family's specific religious beliefs come across as relatively vague in this story. 

The Star does report:


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BBC and The New York Times: Who listened to Catholics who prayed at Poland's borders?

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If you read up on the life and times of the Polish man who would become St. Pope John Paul II, its interesting to note that he learned so many languages during his life that scholars are not really sure which ones he spoke fluently.

Most lists will look something like this -- Polish, Slovak, Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Ukrainian, English and Latin. It is my understanding that, in his childhood, he also knew so many Jewish children that he also spoke Yiddish.

What does this fact say about Poland? At the very least, it's symbolic of the fact that in the past Poland has been seized by more than its share of empires. If you live in a Polish border town, it helps to speak several languages. Again, think of St. John Paul II's life in the time of the Nazis and then Communism.

I bring this up because Poland is a land, and a predominately Catholic culture, with a strong sense of national identity. Yet it is also a land that fears -- with good reason -- being conquered once again.

So, why were legions of Polish Catholics standing on the land's borders the other day saying the rosary? Clearly, this is a religious question, yet one with political overtones. So how did the world's two most powerful newsrooms handle this? Here is the top of the New York Times report, which ran with this low-key headline: "Polish Catholics Gather at Border for Vast Rosary Prayer Event."

WARSAW, Poland -- Polish Catholics clutching rosary beads gathered at locations along the country’s 2,000-mile border on Saturday for a mass demonstration during which they prayed for salvation for Poland and the world.
Many participants described it as demonstration against what they see as the secularization of the country and the spread of Islam’s influence in Europe.


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Of all the contraceptive mandate stories out there, very few quoted religious folks

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Trying to dissect the Donald Trump Administration’s decision to religiously minded employers to cut birth control from their health plans is like tackling an elephant. But one has to start somewhere.

Just for review, we have covered this topic before here, here and here. 

As I scanned various articles on the topic, I noticed how few articles explained why some people and employers have religious objections to contraceptives. Do those in the media think we know these reasons already, so it’s no using re-explaining them? In other words, how do you understand this story without talking to people in the faith-based schools and ministries that are at the heart of the decision?

The most cogent piece was from the Atlantic:

Faced with setbacks on the legislative front, the Trump administration is going it alone on taking apart the Affordable Care Act piecemeal.
On Friday, the administration made one of its boldest moves yet, with two memos from multiple agencies that would dramatically curtail women’s access to birth control through their employers. The new regulations, effective immediately, would exempt all employers and insurers from covering or paying for coverage of contraceptives if they object “based on its sincerely held religious beliefs,” or have other “moral convictions” against covering such care.

 Mind you, this is not all employers, but it is those who have religious objections to it contraceptives being included in their employee health coverage. We’re talking about 71 companies here, according to Mother Jones.


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Why show up in person? CNN and its scoop on evangelical plea for Trump to slam alt-right

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It's time for a trip into my thick guilt file of news pieces that I wanted to get to a week ago (or more). However, most of my work this past week focused on Las Vegas, for reasons I am sure readers will understand.

Instead of Las Vegas, this post is about Southern Baptists and Phoenix. It's also about the negative side effects, in terms of news, of current trends in newsroom budgets (and I'm not just talking about editors declining to hire religion-beat professionals).

Now, please trust me when I say that I have spent lots of time studying the economic dominoes that keep falling in newsrooms during our industry's money crisis, which is primarily being caused by weak revenues from advertising, both digital and analog.

I know that there are fewer reporters, even in the healthiest of newsrooms. I know that those reporters are being stretched thinner and thinner, with some being forced -- often by editors -- to cut corners while delivering more news, in more formats, on shorter deadlines, with fewer copy editors watching their backs.

At the same time, travel budgets are thinner than ever (maybe even for crucial subjects, like sports and, gasp, politics).

So I understand why many newsrooms are not sending reporters -- in the flesh -- to cover some major news events that drew live coverage in the past. Take this summer's Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix.

However, CNN showed up -- in the person of feature correspondent Chris Moody. I will argue that, because Moody was there in person, the odds may have been tilted in his favor when it came time to land a major scoop the other day, the one with this headline: "Exclusive: Evangelicals urge more action from Trump against alt-right."

Hold that thought.


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