Friday Five

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Friday Five: Southern Baptists and Catholic bishops and White House Bible verses, oh my! What a week!

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Looking for religion news? It's "Everywhere" this week.

Southern Baptists in Dallas? Yep.

Roman Catholic bishops in Florida? Yep.

Bible references at the White House? Of course.

"This week has been a religion writer's dream," said Bob Smietana, veteran Godbeat pro.

"When 'Bible' is trending in one of the most secular regions of America [San Francisco], you know you need to hire more religion writers," said Kaya Oakes, who writes for a variety of publications.

Preach it!

In the meantime, let's dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: Obviously, there's no shortage of possibilities this week. But given our half-dozen posts on the Southern Baptist Convention (just since the last Friday Five), it's hard to argue with the annual meeting in Dallas as the week's top story.

To catch up here are those posts (with Terry Mattingly's podcast post still to come):


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Friday Five: GetReligionista's mea culpa, #JusticeForJack, SBC spell check and more

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I do a shameless plug every week.

But this week, here’s an extra shameless plug up high so I know you won't miss it.

Or maybe I just needed a good excuse to embed a video of Chicago's "Hard To Say I'm Sorry."

Seriously, my colleague Ira Rifkin had a must-read post this week that, based on our analytics, too many of you missed.

The title of the post:

How I lost my professional cool and succumbed to gossamer social media satisfaction

Here is part of my Rifkin said:

Bottom line. My skill set failed me because I reacted emotionally rather than mindfully. It’s a media trap that can nab any of us.

In an email thread among our team, Richard Ostling congratulated Rifkin on his reflection:

The media in an era when they're on the griddle hourly need more honest self-reflection and  all the accuracy and (yes) fairness and balance they can muster.

Amen.

Go ahead and read Rifkin's post. Read it now.

Meanwhile, let's dive into this week's Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: The #JusticeForJack case — as supporters of Colorado baker Jack Phillips dubbed it — is the easy choice this week. 


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Friday Five: Biblical bombshell (not), Joel Osteen deep dive, Onion-style real headlines and more

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I bring you an update today courtesy of The Religion Guy.

Those of you who are regular GetReligion readers know that The Guy is Richard N. Ostling, who was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and Time magazine and received the Religion News Association's lifetime achievement award in 2006. Here at GetReligion we call him the "patriarch."

Back in March, Ostling wrote about a manuscript fragment of the Gospel of Mark supposedly dating back to the 1st Century A.D. He put it this way:

A long-brewing story, largely ignored by the media, could be the biggest biblical bombshell since a lad accidentally stumbled upon the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. Or not.

Here is the update from my esteemed colleague:

In case anyone is pursuing this story idea, it now appears that  “not” is the operative word. Brill has issued the long-delayed volume 83 of its Oxyrhynchus Papyri series and turns out Oxford paleography expert Dirk Obbink dates this text far later. It's still an important early find, but not the earth-shattering claim that was made by several evangelical exegetes. The so-called Papyrus 5345 fragment covers six verses, Mark 1:7-9, 16-18.

Daniel Wallace, who first announced the forthcoming bombshell in a 2012 debate with Bart Ehrman, explains what happened and apologizes to Ehrman and everyone else in a post on his blog. Also notable is this new posting by Elijah Hixson at a technical website about textual criticism. Hixson’s May 30 overview for Christianity Today shows there’s still a story the news media might explore.

         Good lessons here for journalists as well as biblical scholars. 

Now, let's dive into the Friday Five:


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Friday Five: Paige Patterson all-nighter, pope's Europe worries, royal celebrity pastor and more

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On Tuesday, I made what I thought would be a quick trip to Fort Worth, Texas, to cover the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's board meeting for the Washington Post.

I arrived at noon for the meeting that started at 1:30 p.m. and figured the trustees' deliberations on embattled President Paige Patterson would last a few hours.

I fully expected to be back home in Oklahoma City in plenty of time to enjoy a full night's rest.

Wrong!

Suffice it to say that the "quick trip" turned into an all-nighter as the board's closed-door session stretched into the wee hours — finally ending, after more than 13 hours, just after 3 a.m. Wednesday.

For more details, be sure to read tmatt's post headlined "After midnight: Dramatic turn in Paige Patterson drama, with religion-beat pros on the scene."

Meanwhile, please forgive me if I'm still a little groggy as we dive into this week's Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: As I mentioned, I was honored to help on this piece, but Washington Post religion writers Sarah Pulliam Bailey (a former GetReligion contributor) and Michelle Boorstein did much of the heavy lifting: "Prominent Southern Baptist leader removed as seminary president following controversial remarks about abused women." 


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Friday Five: Atheists and hell, unsafe church vans, royal wedding, 'I'm Batman' and more

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There was breaking news this week in the world of religion, as noted by Religion News Service's Aysha Khan.

"We now believe in hell," American Atheists announced on Twitter.

The impetus for this major change in (lack of) theology?

It was a New York Times report that "a television show featuring Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who is suing President Trump on behalf of a pornographic film actress, and the former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was pitched to two cable networks in recent weeks." 

Yes, I believe we'll all be reassessing the state of the universe now.

In the meantime, let's dive right into this week's Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: The Louisville Courier-Journal's investigative report headlined "Is your church van a death trap?" is the must-read religion story of the week. 


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Friday Five: Paige Patterson furor, Jehovah's Witnesses abuse, Austin bomber's life, NRA prayer and more

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This is going to be a briefer-than-normal intro to Friday Five.

That's because I've been on vacation most of the week (read: hanging out at the ballpark watching my beloved Texas Rangers take two out of three from the Detroit Tigers).

Suffice it to say that I haven't kept up with religion headlines as much as I usually do. My thanks to boss man Terry Mattingly for some help with this week's five.

Let's dive right in:

1. Religion story of the week: Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey's trip to Texas to report on Paige Patterson's controversial comments concerning domestic violence and divorce is the obvious pick this week.

I'll link to the former GetReligion contributor's front-page report, but for more details and other vital coverage, check out Bailey's Twitter feed.

2. Most popular GetReligion post: This time around, Julia Duin has the No. 1 post. That was a commentary entitled "Jehovah's Witnesses and sexual abuse: The Philadelphia Inquirer lays it out."

A close second: Another tmatt post, this time on "How to cover Jordan Peterson, while avoiding truth-shaped holes in his 'secular' gospel."


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Friday Five: End Times for GetReligion, WSJ tackles God on front pages, 'modesty ponchos' and more

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We've reached the End Times.

OK, let me rephrase that: What I mean is that GetReligion has a cool new Twitter feature called the End Times.

What is the End Times? It's a daily thread put together by social media guru Peter Freeby that highlights both GetReligion posts and top religion stories from Twitter curated by Nuzzel.

Why is it called the End Times? Because it's "The end of the day's religion news." If you follow us on Twitter, be sure to check it out. If you don't follow us on Twitter, by all means, correct that now.

Now, let's dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: The San Antonio Express-News dispatched reporter Silvia Foster-Frau to Washington, D.C. to cover Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting survivors at the National Day of Prayer.

Once again, the front-page coverage Foster-Frau produced is a must-read winner — mixing relevant facts and context with authentic emotion.


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Friday Five: RNS turmoil, Chick-fil-A (again), where would Jesus park and a prayer for OKC Thunder

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I'm fresh back in the United States after a reporting trip to Haiti.

I'm out of the loop on the drama that has engulfed Religion News Service in recent days. However, I'm incredibly sad to learn of respected colleagues such as Jerome Socolovsky, Lauren Markoe and Kimberly Winston Ligocki losing their jobs.

Since March 2017, I've written a number of freelance pieces for RNS. I've always found both Socolovsky, who was editor in chief, and Markoe, the managing editor, to be extremely cordial, professional and helpful in making my stories better. While I don't know enough to assess the complicated inner turmoil at RNS, I can vouch for my positive personal experience with those two talented and experienced journalists/Godbeat pros.

I haven't worked with G. Jeffrey MacDonald, the newly appointed interim editor-in-chief, but I've admired and respected his religion reporting and writing for years. I wish him and the remaining RNS staff all the best. At the same time, I can't help but wonder what the ground will look like after this earthquake in the religion news world finishes shaking.

Let's dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: Obviously, it's the RNS happenings. While GetReligion generally does analysis, not reporting, my colleague Julia Duin delved skillfully into the RNS situation in a must-read piece featuring interviews with key sources on "How America's one religion wire service melted down over a long weekend." That's Part 1 of a two-part package by Duin. Look for Part 2 as soon as later today.


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Bonus podcast: tmatt and Eric Metaxas sift through 30 years of 'On Religion' work

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Every Friday, our own Bobby Ross Jr., adds a dose of what he calls "shameless promotion" to his Friday Five wrap up of GetReligion stuff.

Let me add a bit of that of my own, a bit early. My apologies in advance.

Readers may have noticed that the "On Religion" column I filed on April 11 marked the 30th anniversary for my weekly analysis piece, which began with Scripps Howard News Service then moved to the Universal syndicate. Our friends at Lutheran Public Radio also did an extra-long "Crossroads" podcast that week, focusing on what I saw as the five "Big Ideas" in that period.

I finished that anniversary column soon after I arrived in New York City for two weeks of teaching and, literally while doing the edits, I took an hour-plus off to head up Broadway a couple of blocks to appear on The Eric Metaxas Show.

Now, Eric and I have been friends for two decades and I have been on the show several times, either by telephone from here in Oak Ridge or live in the New York studio when I'm in town. There are now video cameras in there, which I find disturbing since I have a face for radio (see proof in this video from a lecture at the University of Mississippi in Oxford).

Metaxas and I agree on a lot of things (love of C.S. Lewis, for example) and disagree on others (artistic quality of bubblegum pop in '70s-'80s). He was raised Greek Orthodox and is now an Evangelical. I was raised as a Southern Baptist "moderate" and am now Orthodox. And then there is the Donald Trump thing. I was #NeverTrump #NeverHillary and Eric's views are best expressed as #NeverHillary, period.

Anyway, during this hour of his program, we went all over the place -- but the heart of the discussion focused -- as you would expect -- on events and trends in religion news.

Consider this a bonus podcast, with an occasionally sarcastic (in a nice kind of way) host.

Click here to tune that in.


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