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Gospel of Poo and New Age thought gets (as usual) uncritical New Yorker coverage

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In regards to elite magazines, I have not read anything unfavorable about New Age religious topics in recent years.

But when it comes to coverage of mainstream religion, watch out.

I was frustrated to read a recent New Yorker story — that I’ll call the Gospel of Poo — that soberly related the tale of a serial entrepreneur and corporate mysticism with the seriousness of someone trying to dissect the Talmud.

The entrepreneur at the center of the piece is given the kind of serious treatment that other groups, say, Southern Baptists, could only dream of. See Jia Tolentino’s disparaging New Yorker piece not long ago about her childhood at Houston’s Second Baptist Church. That’s a 180-degree treatment from the following article:

A few days after Suzy Batiz learned that she’d made Forbes’s 2019 list of America’s richest self-made women, she lay down on her kitchen floor and wept. Batiz, whose net worth is estimated at more than two hundred and forty million dollars, grew up poor. …

One day, she went to see a hypnotist, who told her that her life lacked purpose. He gave her the book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Viktor Frankl, which inspired Batiz to take what she calls a “spiritual sabbatical.” She studied Buddhism, Kabbalah, Hinduism, and metaphysics. “I had an insatiable desire to find something,” she said. “I was the ultimate seeker.” At a bookshop, she came across “Loving What Is,” by the motivational speaker and author Byron Katie, who teaches a method of self-inquiry called the Work.

“Two weeks later, I’m at her ten-day workshop,” Batiz said. “I went in drinking a big thing of Yellow Tail every night, and, when I came out, I was sober for eight years. After that, I was in a bliss state. I knew there was a larger meaning here.” She developed a self-help course called Inside Out: How to Create the Life You Want by Going Within. She started to meditate. She got out of her head and into her body. She listened to her gut. “Then,” she recalled, “I was at a dinner party, and my brother-in-law asked, ‘Can bathroom odor be trapped?’ And lightning went through my body.”

Finally we get to what journalists call the “nut” or main paragraph of the story.

Batiz is the creator of Poo-Pourri, a bathroom spray made from essential oils, which has sold sixty million bottles since it launched, in 2007. As its name suggests, Poo-Pourri is designed to mask the smell of excrement — or, more precisely, to trap unpleasant odors in the toilet, below the surface of the water, and to release pleasant natural fragrances, including citrus, lavender, and tropical hibiscus, in their stead.


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Gov. Edwards wins again in Louisiana, for some vague reason (And Trump? 'Bless his heart')

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There was a joyful moment the other night — as in special election night — for people who oppose both Donald Trump and the current leadership of the woke Democratic Party.

I am referring to the victory of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who survived a hard push by Trump to defeat him. Democrats rarely get elected as governors in Southern states these days.

The question, of course, is this: How did Edwards do it? What made him electable in the current political atmosphere? I would have thought it was important to answer that question in the overture of the following Washington Post report:

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards was elected to a second term … , overcoming opposition from President Trump and an increasingly polarized state electorate to hand Democrats their second major victory in a governor’s race over the past two weeks.

Edwards, 53, was running against Republican businessman Eddie Rispone, 70, in a runoff election after neither candidate won an outright majority of votes last month. …

“How sweet it is,” Edwards told a crowd of cheering supporters at a victory rally late Saturday at the Renaissance Hotel in Baton Rouge.

Edwards said he had spoken with Rispone earlier in the evening. “We both agreed that the time for campaigning is over,” he said, “and now our shared love for Louisiana is always more important than the partisan differences that sometimes divide us.”

“And as for the president, God bless his heart,” Edwards added mockingly.

A few paragraphs later, readers learn that Edwards was a “relatively conservative Democrat” who “worked to prove his party could still lead a state that has continued to drift to the right in the Trump era.”

So other than Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump and Trump, what was going on in this story? What made issues helped make Edwards a winner in a state that Trump won in a landslide?

Way, way down in the story, there was this meaty chunk of information in which the Post finally stated a crucial point — Edwards is a pro-life Democrat who is relatively progressive on economic issues and a conservative on matters of culture. In other words, he is an old-school Southern Democrat.


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As Chick-fil-A capitulates, should press characterize Salvation Army and FCA as anti-LGBTQ?

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The headlines came fast and furious after Chick-fil-A revealed Monday that it will capitulate to the gay-rights activists who have attacked it for years.

The Babylon Bee declared that the fast-food chain, known for its mouth-watering chicken sandwiches, had traded its adoring Christian fans for an outraged mob that won’t be appeased until its every demand is met. Which is confusing because I thought the Bee was a satire website, not real news.

But seriously, Chick-fil-A’s decision is sure to upset many of its conservative Christian supporters who have appreciated the company’s emphasis on faith and family values, including closing on Sunday to allow employees time for rest and worship. (As far as I know, the chain hasn’t given into any demands that it start opening on the Lord’s Day.)

But the coverage in many mainstream news stories — and this is perhaps no surprise — fail to reflect that side of the story.

Instead, most of the headlines I’ve seen present this as a case of Chick-fil-A finally doing the right thing and distancing itself from “anti-LGBTQ” groups. Those groups are, of course, the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which if I understand correctly have committed the modern-day sin of believing in a traditional biblical view of marriage.

Among the headlines are this one from the Los Angeles Times (“Chick-fil-A says it won’t donate to anti-LGBTQ groups — at least for now”) and this one from CNN (“Chick-fil-A will no longer donate to anti-LGBTQ organizations”).

The question is: Should the press — if it wants to be fair and accurate — characterize the two Christian groups that way?


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Rolling Stone skips Marianne Williamson's ideas and focuses on money, money, money

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The headline and deck of Tess Stuart’s report on Marianne Williamson — “That Marianne Mind$et: Obeying the Law of Divine Compensation” — tell you nearly everything you need to know about this one-trick pony of a profile in Rolling Stone. Stuart has latched onto one of the easiest clichés of politics (They’re all in it for the money) and turned it into a unified theory of everything, or at least of everything about Williamson.

There was a time when a Rolling Stone writer would have made the effort to understand the worldview behind a person who speaks of miracles and transformation, but that was more than 10 years ago, back when it published Janet Reitman’s “Inside Scientology.”

It’s so much easier now to compare Williamson’s New Thought response to Hurricane Dorian to a prayer offered by a chaplain during a governor’s press conference, as though they are equally ridiculous:

Yet, at other points, it does feel like Williamson is getting something of a raw deal. A week after we met, as Hurricane Dorian was crawling across the Atlantic Ocean toward Florida, Williamson wanted to help. She tweeted, in an attempt to marshal her then-2.76 million followers, “Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative use of the power of the mind. Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm.”

She was mercilessly ridiculed for the sentiment — so badly that Williamson ultimately ended up deleting the tweet.

Although it wasn’t the official end of Williamson’s campaign, it might have been the functional end: the last time she made national news. There was relatively little notice, by contrast, when Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, opened a press conference about the state’s emergency preparations for Hurricane Dorian with a prayer from an Army Corps of Engineers chaplain, who said, “God, we know that you’re able to turn a storm. You’re able to say to that storm: Peace, be still. We give you glory now, and in your name we pray. Amen.” You could say that man was asking God for a miracle, but no one made fun of him for it.


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New York Times blockbuster uses leaked files to expose new horrors in China's war on Islam

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Early in my journalism career, a veteran investigative reporter gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten: The hotter the story, the more you want a document of some kind that you can verify and then show readers. This will build trust.

You can see this principal at work in the blockbuster religion story of the weekend — that New York Times foreign desk report about ongoing and even expanding efforts to lock up and, if need be, brainwash or execute a million or more Uighur Muslims in what can only be called reeducation or concentration camps.

The dramatic double-decker headline includes a nod to the document stash at the heart of it all:

‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims

More than 400 pages of internal Chinese documents provide an unprecedented inside look at the crackdown on ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.

As always, it’s good to tell readers as much as you can tell them about the sourcing, to hang on to as much trust as possible; Thus:

Though it is unclear how the documents were gathered and selected, the leak suggests greater discontent inside the party apparatus over the crackdown than previously known. The papers were brought to light by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed hope that their disclosure would prevent party leaders, including [President Xi Jinping], from escaping culpability for the mass detentions.

This is a stunning, must-read story and it deserves the acclaim that it is getting.

However, I would like to note one religion-shaped hole. A theme running through the report is that Chinese officials are divided over whether or not they will be able to produce a safe, compromised, easy-to-control version of Islam — similar to their own state-sanctioned Christian churches.

The bottom line: It would have required only an extra line or two in this report to note that Chinese officials have also unleashed attacks on independent, underground churches, as well as the crusade against Uighur Muslims. As a rule “conservative” reports on persecuted Christians in China mention the horrors being inflicted on Muslims. Why not take a similar approach in this Times blockbuster?

But back to the crucial documents at the heart of this report.


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Kanye West visits Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church for all-day media extravaganza

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There was some good theater in the world of religion this weekend, starting with the David Daleiden/Planned Parenthood verdict in San Francisco on Friday and ending with the Kanye West evening extravaganza at Houston’s Lakewood Church.

The Houston Chronicle set the stage, leading with West’s most inflammable quote during an appearance earlier that day at Lakewood’s main Sunday morning service.

Since his conversion, it was West’s first appearance before a crowd that wasn’t necessarily fans of his music. But there was that spiritual connection.

Kanye West may have found God. But he’s still brandishing his trademark cockiness.

“Jesus has won the victory because now the greatest artist that God has ever created is now working for Him,” West said onstage Sunday at Lakewood Church.

The rapper spoke onstage with Joel Osteen for about 20 minutes, his first of two appearances at the megachurch. …

During the brief, sometimes rambling conversation, West, 42, talked about his battle with the Devil, mental breakdown and subliminal messages in the media. He prayed with Osteen and praised the televangelist’s “anointed words.”

The Chronicle also said the two men were actually friends, which seems like an odd mix, as they run in completely separate circles. I’d like to know what moved Osteen to invite West.

Whatever happened, it turned out to be a brilliant idea, in terms of publicity.

Other than the Chronicle, the major media covering this event were the local networks and TMZ, the Hollywood news-gossip site. The spectacle of the famous rapper joining forces with the leader of America’s largest church was sheer catnip for TMZ, which broke the story of West coming to Lakewood.

(In the years I worked for the Houston Chronicle, Lakewood’s building was known as The Summit, a 16,800-seat concert venue and home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets. Then evangelistic wunderkind Rev. Joel Osteen bought the place in 2010.)

It proved to be a perfect setting for a Kanye concert.


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Should Roman Catholicism allow more married priests? Women at altars as deacons?

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Should Roman Catholicism allow more married priests? Women at altars as deacons?

THE QUESTIONS:

Reviving big Catholic issues: Should priests be married? Should women be deacons?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Those two epochal changes in Catholicism are posed to Pope Francis in the final report from an October synod for Catholic delegates representing South America’s Amazon region. Francis expects to issue his formal response in a pronouncement by the end of the year.

Catholics in that region can go for months, even years, without seeing a priest due to a severe shortage that is fostering evangelical Protestant inroads. Therefore the synod proposed that well-proven men (viri probati) be ordained as priests even if married, an experiment in bending the celibacy rule that liberals hope — and traditionalists fear — could spread elsewhere.

Partly for the same reason, the report also asked for renewed study of ordaining women as deacons, which Francis has already agreed to authorize, though delegates did not advocate this change. The synod also recommended a new recognized ministry of “woman community leader,” and urged more participation for women in church decision-making. (Only men were voting delegates at the synod, which women attended as consultants and observers.)

Female deacons would be revolutionary, and that change seems unlikely though not impossible. The celibacy that is mandatory for (most but not all) Catholic priests is considered a matter of discipline, not doctrine, and thus subject to change. Since celibacy has provoked so much discussion, and is the more likely to occur, The Guy treats that topic first.

The New Testament records that Peter, regarded by Catholicism as the first in the line of popes, was married. Jesus taught that some would choose to live as unmarried “eunuchs” for the sake of God’s kingdom (Matthew 19:12), and a biblical letter of Paul speaks of  a “special gift” to remain unwed (1 Corinthians 7:1-9). For both, this was singleness chosen voluntarily by certain Christians, not a requirement for all those in ministry.

In early Christianity, the choice of celibacy became more widespread as clergy sought to signify total dedication to church service.


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Podcast thinking: Fred Rogers, Tom Hanks, the Good Samaritan and the ties that bind

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Anyone who wanted to know why the Rev. Fred Rogers did what he did needed to pause and think about two of the central facts in his career.

First, there was the name of the show that made him a television legend: “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Then there was the rite that opened every episode — the transition into the trademark sweater and comfy shoes — and the song that went with it. The crucial line was the thesis statement at the end: “Please, won’t you be my neighbor?”

That was a strange question to ask children. Why not ask them to be friends? Isn’t “friend” a more common word among kids than “neighbor”? In this day and age, many adults are struggling to be “neighbors,” a term with all kinds of implications linked to helping people simply because they are nearby and need help.

But Rogers had very specific reasons for doing what he did. His goal was was to deal with the kinds of big questions that sent him to seminary in the first place, before he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, serving in a public ministry expressed in television broadcasting. He wanted to handle the kinds of subjects that trouble, and even frighten, children (and honest adults). We are talking about death, divorce, war, racism and, over and over, questions about why bad things happen to good people. The theological term is, of course, “theodicy.”

During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, host Todd Wilken and I talked about the convictions that powered the work of Mister Rogers. Click here to tune that in.


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Here come The Holidays! Yes, the mall is crucial, but there may be other LA events worth noting

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Did you know that this coming Monday is the start of Nativity Lent in Eastern Christianity?

That’s a major period of fasting and penitence in ancient forms of Christian faith and it continues until Dec. 25th — the start of the 12 days of Christmas. In Western Christian churches, Nativity Lent is called Advent and it starts on Dec. 1.

I know. I know. There is more to Christmas than religion. Ditto for Hanukkah. Economics and public revelry is part of the picture. I get that.

The question, when you look at a story such as this one in The Los Angeles Times — “Things to do: 7 L.A., O.C. places to get you into the holiday groove” — if many newspaper editors have decided that the materialistic and commercial celebrations are the REAL holidays and that all of that strange “religious” stuff is now an unimportant wing that has been tacked onto The Mall.

I mean, go to the Los Angeles Times website and do a search for “Christmas.” Then sort through a few screens worth of what you find. I mean, I am scared to click on this link: “Christmas like a Kardashian and 17 other things to do this holiday season.” How about you?

But back to the holiday mood feature. Here’s the lede:

With Thanksgiving approaching, it’s time to charge into the holiday season. Fashion brands and local shopping centers want to get you in the mood as they celebrate with tree-lighting ceremonies and other festivities. 

So what goes on during these rites? Here’s a few samples:

The annual Rodeo Drive holiday lighting celebration on Thursday will kick off what Beverly Hills is calling its Bold holiday events. The night will feature a live performance from Broadway star and “Glee” alum Matthew Morrison, who will sing holiday tunes along with offering a preview of his upcoming 2020 album of classic Disney covers.

This next one even mentions “Christmas,” sort of.


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