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Friday Five: RNS/AP partnership, Mister Rogers, Chick-fil-A, personal story, Curmudgeon humor

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You can read it at The Washington Post. And at ABC News. And at the Charlotte Observer. And at many other news sites.

Yonat Shimron’s Religion News Service story this week on Megan Lively — headlined “The cost of coming forward: 1 survivor’s life after #MeToo” — is “out in wide release, thanks to our friends at The Associated Press,” notes RNS editor-in-chief Bob Smietana.

AP distribution of RNS content is, of course, part of the big partnership between the news organizations funded by an 18-month, $4.9 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. announced earlier this year.

An AP editor’s note on Shimron’s piece points out:

This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story.

That seems like an improvement on the note appended to the first RNS story (“US Latinos are no longer majority-Catholic, here's why” by Alejandra Molina) that AP distributed recently:

EDS: This story was supplied by Religion News Service for AP customers. The Associated Press does not guarantee the content.

RNS stories always have been distributed on the wire, but only a certain number of newspapers have subscribed to that content. The partnership with AP dramatically expands RNS’ reach, which is good news for the Godbeat.

Now, let’s dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: Speaking of AP, I posted Thursday on a lovely story by veteran journalist Ted Anthony exploring how Mister Rogers’ faith echoes in his hometown of Pittsburgh.

The feature is tied, of course, to today’s opening of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” starring Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers.


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New Yorker piece on crisis pregnancy centers incites rather than informs

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For some time now, I’ve been asking if it’s possible for The New Yorker to deliver a fair assessment of any conservative Christian group or person, which is why I was interested in a recent piece on crisis pregnancy clinics.

CPCs, as they are also called, aren’t always Christian although they tend to be.

They are 100 percent founded and run by the devout, who consider it a ministry to run them. These places make no money, really, and are sued, attacked, lied about or mischaracterized (as what happened in this outrageously biased NPR story) all the time.

The New Yorker’s religion reporter, Eliza Griswold, was sent on several visits to center in Terre Haute, Indiana. CPCs get their motives questioned in ways that Planned Parenthood clinics never are, so I was interested in how Griswold would approach the topic.  

On the door of a white R.V. that serves as the Wabash Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center’s mobile unit are the stencilled words “No Cash, No Narcotics.” The center, in Terre Haute, Indiana, is one of more than twenty-five hundred such C.P.C.s in the U.S.—Christian organizations that provide services including free pregnancy testing, low-cost S.T.D. testing, parenting classes, and ultrasounds. Sharon Carey, the executive director of the Wabash Valley center, acquired the van in January, 2018, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, after finding a company that retrofits secondhand vehicles with medical equipment. That May, Carey began to dispatch the van to rural towns whose residents often cannot afford the gas needed to drive to the C.P.C. or to a hospital.

The subhed for this story: “As rural health care flounders, crisis pregnancy centers are gaining ground,” so it’s clear where this article is headed.


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In advance of Tom Hanks movie opening, AP goes to Pittsburgh and explores Mister Rogers' faith

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Terry Mattingly is our resident Mister Rogers expert here at GetReligion.

Most recently, he posted — and talked — about the spiritual implications of the late Presbyterian pastor’s “neighborhood.” All the discussion is, of course, tied to Friday’s opening of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” starring Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers.

In tmatt’s recent post, he lamented a New York Times feature that “dug deep into the personality and career of Hanks and his take on Rogers — while avoiding key facts about faith and beliefs.”

Which leads me to today’s post on a lovely Associated Press story that incorporates Rogers’ faith at various points throughout the piece — including the headline, which declares:

Across Mister Rogers’ actual neighborhoods, his faith echoes

So yes, Rogers’ religion definitely figures in this retrospective profile — even if AP’s story by veteran journalist Ted Anthony doesn’t focus entirely on that angle.

Right from the top, the writing is lively and colorful:

PITTSBURGH (AP) — His TV neighborhood, was, of course, a realm of make believe — a child’s-eye view of community summoned into being by an oddly understanding adult, cobbled together from a patchwork of stage sets, model houses and pure, unsullied love.

Visiting it each day, with Mister Rogers as guide, you’d learn certain lessons: Believe you’re special. Regulate your emotions. Have a sense of yourself. Be kind.

And one more. It was always there, always implied: Respect and understand the people and places around you so you can become a contributing, productive member of YOUR neighborhood.

Fred Rogers’ ministry of neighboring is global now, and the Tom Hanks movie premiering this week only amplifies his ideals. But at home, in Pittsburgh, Mister Rogers moved through real neighborhoods — the landscape of his life, the places he visited to show children what daily life meant.

Did you catch that? “Fred Rogers’ ministry of neighboring …”


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Canada's Anglicans are vanishing and RNS can't find any conservatives to debate the reasons why

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Let’s play pretend for a moment. Let’s pretend that, sometime this year, a report is released showing that membership in a conservative religious flock — say the Southern Baptist Convention — had declined sharply. We are not talking about a slow decline seen in recent years. We are talking about a downward spiral that suggests a death-dive.

If this happened, I would expect reporters to allow the group’s leaders to react to the numbers and to take a shot at explaining them. You could say “spin” them, if you wish.

But clearly there would be critics who would have very different explanations of the decline. They would see connections between the red ink and the conservative denomination’s decisions and doctrines that affect its relationship with a changing culture. Reporters would probably talk to former members of this flock and ask why they used the exit doors.

Let me stress that it would be totally valid to seek this kind of input. This is a serious topic and people on both sides of the story would deserve a chance to speak their minds.

This brings me to a Religion News Service report about a remarkable set of church-membership numbers up in Canada. Here is the stunning overture:

(RNS) — A “wake-up call.” That’s what Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, called a new report showing there may be no members left in the mainline Canadian denomination in 20 years. …

“Projections from our data indicate that there will be no members, attenders or givers in the Anglican Church of Canada by approximately 2040,” said the Rev. Neil Elliot, an Anglican priest in Trail, British Columbia, who authored the report.

Elliot based his prediction on church statistics from 1961 to 2001, subscriber data to the “Anglican Journal,” the church’s official publication, and data from his own survey of the number of people on parish rolls, average Sunday attendance and regular identifiable givers across Canada.

“For five different methodologies to give the same result is a very, very powerful statistical confirmation which we really, really have to take seriously and we can’t dismiss lightly,” he told church leaders during the synod.

As you would expect, Anglican Church leaders were given lots and lots of room to react to this report, which was stunning — even though the trend lines have been in place for decades now. The story notes that the peak membership in the Anglican Church — 1.3 million in 1961 — was down to a mere 357,123 in 2017.

So what is missing from this story?


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New 'playing God' technique to produce 'designer babies' may launch in a few months

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New 'playing God' technique to produce 'designer babies' may launch in a few months

One good reason to buy a costly ($189 a year) subscription to The Economist, Britain’s international weekly, is regular coverage of science developments like American newsweeklies used to provide.

Journalists should be alert to a significant scientific scoop in the Nov. 9 edition. Sometime in 2020, the Genomic Prediction Company of North Brunswick, New Jersey — GenomicPrediction.com — plans to fertilize donor eggs with mixed sperm from two gay fathers in California. This couple will then pick embryos to be implanted in a surrogate mother on the basis of purported lower health risks identified through SNP tests (single-nucleotide polymorphism or “snip”).

If successful, such experiments could launch a relatively smooth new path for “playing God” to create human “designer babies.” Not long ago this sort of thing was the stuff of sci-fi novels by H.G. Wells or Aldous Huxley. Now the human species itself enters the public furor over animal and vegetable GMOs and “Frankenfood.”

Writers pursuing this should start with The Economist’s three-pager (behind pay wall), which details the biological complexities of SNP that The Guy must bypass here. There’s also this accompanying editorial. Genomic Prediction’s Web site has further explanation, and you’ll want to keep in contact with the company for the news pegs (973–529-4223 or contact@genomicprediction.com).

Of course, environment and behavior also affect health outcomes. Proposed disease prevention would provide what seems to be a benign start for the Snip Era, but we can likely expect eventual efforts to pick embryos for implantation on the basis of, say, height or intelligence, as humanity veers toward the breeding of a super-race. Applications will inevitably be tilted toward affluent parents, posing a moral quandary.

Also, The Economist reports, eventual efforts to maximize scores that enhance brainpower and such could “increase the risk of genetic disorders” through spillover into a DNA malady known as pleiotropy. SNP has already been tried for animal husbandry with other species of mammals. Since 2008, it has proven to boost milk yields in dairy cows. But, The Economist says, these experimental cows “have become less fertile and have weaker immune systems. … Genetic tinkering may sometimes improve things. But by no means always.” Humanity beware!


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Let's make an honest attempt to help Reuters with its biased, one-sided story on abortion and conscience

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Just for the fun of it, let’s pretend that Reuters is a student in a Journalism 101 course and not an international wire service that touts its dedication to upholding “freedom from bias in the gathering and dissemination of information and news.”

Let’s pretend that this beginning student turned in a story on a study concerning abortion and conscience laws.

Let’s pretend that the story — reporting only one side of a controversial issue — came from the student and not Reuters.

What might we tell the student?

Well, first let’s check out the lede:

(Reuters Health) - The vast majority of U.S. states have passed laws blocking civil lawsuits that might result from a doctor refusing to perform an abortion or certain other medical procedures because of religious beliefs, a new study shows.

The national survey found that 46 states had laws protecting medical professionals and institutions from being sued for harm to patients related to a refusal to provide services out of conscience, researchers report in JAMA.

Not bad.

Not bad at all.

But then the story quotes a source who will interpret the news above:

“The biggest takeaway from this research is that while people are aware that conscience laws may impact a woman’s right to access reproductive services, they may not know that these laws also may impact access to the legal system when they are injured as a result of conscientious refusal,” said the study’s author, Nadia Sawicki, Georgia Reithal Professor of Law at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

“The majority of patients have no idea whether their local hospital is religiously affiliated,” Sawicki said. “So they don’t know if there are providers who can’t provide services. I hope this research brings to light the very real impact that conscience laws have not just on access to care but also on the right to legal recovery in cases where the patient is injured.”


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LA and New York scribes ask: How does Dolly avoid politics while embracing gays and church folks?

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I live in the heart of East Tennessee, which means I have heard more stories and rumors about the queen of our region — Dolly Parton, of course — than outsiders can even imagine.

This is one complex woman we’re talking about. What the locals want the big shots in America’s coastal media elites to get about Dolly is that she is smart as a whip when it comes to business, a phenomenally consistent singer, one of the great songwriters of her era (focus on the lyrics in “Little Sparrow”) and totally sincere in her love of East Tennessee’s mountains and the people who live there.

All the themes in the WNYC podcast series “Dolly Parton’s America” are too complex to handle in one post. Still I urge readers to subscribe to this and dig in — if only to hear the awe in the voices of some New York pros when they discover that Dolly’s mountains are as beautiful and even magical as she says they are. Pay attention to the material about the “Dolly trance” that settles over them from time to time.

One way to wade into the current Dolly surge is to read this recent Los Angeles Times feature: “Dolly Parton refuses to get political. She’d prefer to heal the divide.”

Yes, note the nod to our hellish political times.

How good, how complete, is this article? How you answer that question will probably pivot on which of the following questions matter the most to you: (1) How does Parton appeal to Democrats and Republicans at the same time? Or (2) how has Dolly, for a decade or two, managed to be a superstar with both LGBTQ and evangelical audiences?

If your answer is No. 2, then you’re going to be like me — disappointed that the LA Times scribe seemed to grasp that Christian faith is a huge part of the 73-year-old Dolly’s life, story and appeal, yet decided to avoid digging into the details of her life and beliefs.

I mean, Trump is more important and more interesting than Jesus. Right?

Early on, there are some wink-wink references to religion, like this:

Home to the Dollywood amusement park, a tourist destination that draws more visitors than Graceland, Pigeon Forge has become a pilgrimage site for those who worship at the Church of Dolly.


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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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