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Orson Bean's wild life: Why did Los Angeles Times obit skip God's role in final chapters?

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No doubt about it, actor Orson Bean lived a wild life — even by Hollywood standards.

As you would expect, the lengthy Los Angeles Times obituary for Bean — who died at age 91 when hit by two cars — was packed with colorful details. I mean, this is a man whose early life included a run-in with the Hollywood blacklist, yet he ended up as a conservative who helped inspire the career of his son-in-law Andrew Breitbart.

But here is the GetReligion question for this day: Why would the newspaper of record in La La Land avoid one of the key elements of the final chapter of this man’s life, as in his conversion to Christianity?

Surely there was room for a phrase or two about that development in lines such as these?

Bean’s onstage antics included stand-up comedy and magic tricks as he made the rounds on game shows and late-night television. He was fondly remembered by baby boomers for bringing his wit and sophistication to “What’s My Line?,” “I’ve Got a Secret” and “To Tell the Truth” and guest-starring in variety series and talk shows, including “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson” and “The Mike Douglas Show.” Later in his career, he starred in “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” “Being John Malkovich” and “Desperate Housewives” while racking up dozens of guest appearance credits, with “Two and a Half Men,” “The Closer,” “Modern Family” and “How I Met Your Mother” among them.

Bean, who wrote several memoirs and a cookbook for cats, was briefly blacklisted, became a hippie, a peddler of a self-help method and a beloved Venice resident as he bolstered the local theater scene with wife Alley Mills. All along, his true passion was the stage, though he acquiesced to television, films and even commercials just to pay his bills.

The story gets wilder and wilder, which only points to the irony of journalists (the Times was not alone in missing the faith angle here) avoiding any discussion of Bean’s faith — which he made no attempt to hide, as one can see in the videos accompanying this post.

You can see a hint of what is missing in this colorful passage:


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At the heart of the National Prayer Breakfast was an explosion of religious debate

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Wow. Last week’s combo of the National Prayer Breakfast on the heels of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and acquittal — along with the Sen. Mitt Romney rebellion — filled the news with so much religious content that one would have thought the event was a papal conclave.

But no. This was Washington, DC.

The timing could not have been better. The prayer breakfast, always the first Thursday each February, brings some 3,000 guests to town, creating the perfect audience for the political theater that is our nation’s capital these days. And the major players did their best to ramp up the drama.

The opening act was Romney voting last Wednesday to remove Trump from power; the lone Republican to do so. As the Washington Post noted, retribution was quick.

Mitt Romney no longer has to guess about what “unimaginable” consequences are in store for him after the Utah senator voted to convict President Trump of abuse of power: A Utah legislator has moved to censure him; Donald Trump Jr. has called for Romney to be expelled from the Republican Party; and the National Prayer Breakfast (and later White House speech) turned into a Romney rage-fest, as the president insulted both the senator’s ethics and his faith.

Romney grew emotional on the Senate floor on Wednesday, when he explained that whatever waited for him in terms of political retribution for his vote would pale in comparison to what he would lose by violating “an oath to God.”

The cascade of articles about Romney’s faith that followed was a religion writer’s dream — often with the focus is on commentary, as opposed to news coverage (see our own tmatt’s post on that topic).

The Deseret News ran a column by a Brigham Young University professor that set the debate in more of a Mormon context wavered on whether Romney should have voted as he did. Writing for the Atlantic, Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University said Romney’s speech will go down in history as one of the great speeches in American politics. Notice how the article segues into a faith Hall of Fame.


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Thinking along with Mark Pinsky: On talking with Trump's lawyer who was raised Jewish

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I am sorry for the delay on this think piece from The Forward, since really should have run during the impeachment proceedings. However, I never thought of this as a piece about Donald Trump or any of his pack.

No, I thought GetReligion readers would want to see this because it was written by Mark Pinsky, the veteran religion-beat pro best known for his work in the heavily evangelical world that surrounds Orlando.

Pinsky is also the author of a book that I recommend when asked one of the questions that I hear all the time. That question: What is the best book to use in a college or university level course about covering religion news?

Well, of course I am going to recommend this project from my friends and former colleagues linked to The Media Project: “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion.” It includes my essay on religion-beat strategies for editors and publishers, “Getting Religion in the Newsroom.”

But there really isn’t a religion-beat 101 book, a kind of manual for professionals who are starting the process of reading themselves up to speed on the myriad subjects, movements and vocabularies needed to cover this complex subject.

But there is a book that I recommend that does a great job of explaining WHY reporters need to take the challenges of this beat seriously and why they should strive to get inside the beliefs and worldviews of the believers they need to cover. That book is Mark Pinksy’s small volume entitled, “A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.”

This brings us to the weekend think piece, that recent Forward feature that ran with this headline: “Trump Impeachment lawyer Jay Sekulow says ‘I’ve never felt not Jewish.’ “

Why did Pinsky land this exclusive interview?

Sekulow said the interview with the Forward was the only one he planned to do ahead of the impeachment trial, and that he agreed to do it because I have been writing about him on and off for more than a quarter century — and because his great-uncle, Sonya Sekular, worked for the Forward in the 1940s, Sekulow said.


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This is not a trick question: Can students pray in U.S. public schools?

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This is not a trick question: Can students pray in U.S. public schools?

THE QUESTION:

Can students pray in U.S. public schools?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The Trump Administration’s education and justice departments, after work with government attorneys, issued policy guidance to public schools January 16 on this emotional-laden and oft-misunderstood issue. The answer is well settled in American law and agreed upon by a very wide range of religious and public education organizations.

The answer is: Yes, depending.

Yes, if a student initiates prayer and does not disrupt classes. Students also enjoy other religious rights on an equal basis with non-religious activities, as surveyed below. 

But the answer is no if public school systems, administrators or teachers authorize prayers in an official capacity. Federal court edicts say that violates the Constitution’s ban on government “establishment of religion.” (Private schools, of course, can do whatever they want about religion.)

The Trump announcement (nicely timed to boost religious enthusiasm in the 2020 campaign) merely repeats the well-settled consensus. However, the federal government might now enforce more strictly local schools’ required written certification that they keep hands off students’ voluntary religious activities, and it might investigate complaints of violations more vigorously.

Our story starts with Engel v. Vitale, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling that saw an obvious “establishment” violation in public school recitations of a bland interfaith prayer of 22 words that was authorized by the New York State Regents.


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Podcast: Do Catholic dissenters have a constitutional right to Holy Communion?

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They are among the most famous words in journalism, combining to form a phrase that — back in the old wire-service days — defined the craft of hard-news reporting and writing.

All together now: These words are “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why” and “how.”

That’s the old approach to writing a good hard-news lede (especially on deadline). This formula can be a big clunky, at times, but it does force reporters to think through their material and identify the most important elements of a story.

So, with that in mind, try to identify the various pieces of the W5H puzzle when reading the Providence Journal lede that dominated our discussions during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). The key in this case is to focus on the “why” factor.

The Rev. Richard Bucci, pastor of the West Warwick church where a lawmaker’s sister has said she was sexually molested repeatedly as a child by a now-dead priest, marked the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision by issuing a flier listing the names of every Rhode Island legislator who voted last year to enshrine the right to an abortion in state law.

So why did this Catholic pastor send out this flier? That’s pretty obvious: He did so in response to a piece of abortion-rights legislation in Rhode Island.

Now, why did the individual legislator mentioned in this train wreck of a lede believe that Father Bucci had taken this action?

It would appear that Rep. Carol McEntee thought this action also had something to do with the Catholic church — or this particular parish — hiding clergy who abuse children. Later, readers also learn that Bucci and McEntee had previously clashed over her right to give a eulogy in the middle of a Catholic funeral.

But what is the main story here? Is this a story about the new abortion law and Bucci’s list of legislators or is it a story about Rep. McEntee and this priest? Does the story offer evidence that proves that McEntee is onto something, with this claim that there are two “why” factors at play in this case? (Hold that thought.)


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Was Romney's faith taken seriously in impeachment coverage? Alas, few surprises here...

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In the end, the only drama in the impeachment vote didn’t involve the Democrats and Donald Trump.

No, it involved Sen. Mitt Romney and Trump. If you looked at this from Romney’s stated point of view, the final decision came down to Trump vs. God — as in Romney’s oath to follow his faith and his conscience, as opposed to loyalty to his political party.

The most dramatic moment in Romney’s speech on the U.S. Senate floor — that long, long, long pause as he fought to control his emotions — came as he tried to explain how his decision was linked to his faith and his family.

So how did this obvious faith factor show up in the mainstream coverage of the political story of the day? The results, for better and for worse, were totally predictable.

Take the New York Times, for example. Here is the crucial passage, pushed deep into the main Romney story.

On the Senate floor on Wednesday, Mr. Romney placed his decision in the context of his faith, his family and how history would remember it.

And that was that.

The political desk team at The Washington Post managed to get one snippet of Godtalk into its Romney story. Readers who made it to the 12th paragraph read the following:

Romney said he couldn’t let concerns over breaking with his party guide his vote, which he cast as one of conscience and rooted in his religious beliefs.

“I am aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters, I will be vehemently denounced,” Romney said on the Senate floor. “I am sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters. Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?”


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There's a whiff of a tiff when the pros try to pick the past decade's top religion stories

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What were the past decade’s top religion stories?

In the current Christian Century magazine, Baylor historian Philip Jenkins lists his top 10 in American Christianity and — journalists take note -- correctly asserts that all will “continue to play out” in coming years.  

His list: The growth of unaffiliated “nones,” the papacy of Francis, redefinition of marriage, Charleston murders and America’s “whiteness” problem, religion and climate change, Donald Trump and the evangelicals, gender and identity, #MeToo combined with women’s leadership, seminaries in crisis and impact of religious faith (or lack thereof) on low fertility rates.

Such exercises are open to debate, and there’s mild disagreement on the decade’s top events as drawn from Religion News Service coverage by Senior Editor Paul O’Donnell. Unlike Jenkins, this list scans the interfaith and global scenes.

The RNS picks:  “Islamophobia” in America (with a nod to President Trump), the resurgent clergy sex abuse crisis, #ChurchToo scandals, those rising “nones,” mass shootings at houses of worship, gay ordination and marriage, evangelicals in power (Trump again) as “post-evangelicals” emerge, anti-Semitic attacks and religious freedom issues.

You can see that the same events can be divvied up in various ways, and that there’s considerable overlap but also intriguing differences.

Jenkins  looks for broad “developments” and focuses on the climate and transgender debates, racial tensions, shrinking seminaries and low birth rates (see the Guy Memo on that last phenomenon).

By listing religious freedom, RNS correctly highlights a major news topic that Jenkins missed. RNS includes the U.S. legal contests over the contraception mandate in Obamacare and the baker who wouldn’t design a unique wedding cake for a gay couple. Those placid debates are combined a bit awkwardly with overseas attacks against Muslims in China, India and Myanmar, and against Christians in Nigeria. OK, what about Christians elsewhere?


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Journalism train wreck: Catholic scholar pours acid on news story about abortion and politics

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In the summer of 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote a confidential letter addressing one of the most controversial doctrinal issues involving Catholic faith and public life.

We are talking, of course, about whether it is wise for Catholic clergy to deny Holy Communion to Catholic politicians who consistently and openly reject centuries of church teachings on abortion, marriage and other hot-button doctrinal issues.

On one side of this fight are Catholics who say priests should take this stance in an attempt to encourage politicians to confess their sins and receive forgiveness. The goal is to save souls.

On the other side are Catholic progressives (for the most part) who say priests almost always use this tactic to punish Democrats who clash with the church on abortion, while declining to punish Republicans (for the most part) who clash with the church on issues such as the death penalty, immigration, etc., etc.

This is the tip of a giant iceberg, of course, and the cardinal who would then become Pope Benedict XVI has made other statements on this issue. It didn’t help that, at a key moment, then Cardinal Theodore McCarrick blurred (that’s putting things mildly) some of the details of Ratzinger’s 2004 letter.

Why bring this up? All of this is crucial background material for a spectacular online clash between a famous Catholic scholar and editors at The Providence Journal about a truly bizarre story (“Priest: No Communion for R.I. lawmakers who supported abortion law”).

Where to begin? First, let’s flash back to a 2007 National Catholic Reporter story about that Ratzinger letter — “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion.”

“There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia,” Ratzinger wrote.


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Election-year coverage should focus on Catholics as being ‘politically homeless'

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We’re a month into 2020 and, as expected, it is a year where the presidential election will dominate news coverage. In dominating the news, politics is also — like it or not — the prism in which journalists look at most other issues in society. That includes news about entertainment, economics, sports and, yes, religion.

A few things happened in January that have set the mood for the Iowa caucuses that took place Monday, the official start of the primary season. One of the biggest took place about 1,000 miles east of Des Moines, in Philadelphia, when Archbishop Charles Chaput was replaced by Nelson Perez.

The decision by Pope Francis, although ultimately not a surprising one, was largely portrayed in the mainstream press as the replacement of a conservative cleric with a largely progressive one. In other words, discussions of doctrine were framed and discussed in political terms.

This is how The New York Times framed the decision:

Archbishop Chaput, who was appointed to the position by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, has long been known as a theological and political conservative, often at odds with Francis’ mission to move beyond the culture wars dominated by sexual politics.

Francis recently acknowledged that a good deal of the opposition to his pontificate emanated from the United States, telling a reporter who handed him a book exploring the well-financed and media-backed American effort to undermine his agenda that it was “an honor that the Americans attack me.”

Archbishop Chaput’s departure was expected, as he had offered his resignation to Pope Francis when he turned 75 in September. Church law requires every bishop to tender his resignation at that age, but the pope can choose not to accept it, often allowing prelates to remain in office for several more years.

In this case, the pope did not wait long before saying yes.

A theological and political conservative. Really?

Theological absolutely if you mean Chaput upheld the teachings of the church. The accuracy of this political judgement is up for debate. Is a Catholic a political “conservative” if he backs Catholic doctrines on the death penalty, abortion, marriage, immigration and other hot-button issues?


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