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Here we go again: The New York Times can't admit it needs theologically astute writers

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Early last week, the New York Times posted an ad for a national correspondent for its religion, faith and values beat. It was part of a trifecta of hires of reporters *not* based in the Big Apple. One position is for someone to cover rural communities. Another is for someone to cover suburbs in a fast-growing place like Phoenix or Las Vegas.

It’s great that they’re trying to get out of the New York-Washington echo chamber. The rural areas job is especially intriguing.

These job postings are aimed at areas where the Times’ coverage is lacking. We all know the Times doesn’t get religion. Here are the quotes from executive editor Dean Baquet saying just that.

Here’s the job posting for a national correspondent covering religion, faith and values:

We are seeking an ambitious correspondent to explore the ways that religion and faith shape American life. This reporter, who must be a team player and expressive writer, should be relentlessly curious and offer readers fresh perspectives on belief and spirituality, and the shifting nature of faith in a country where a record number of Americans count themselves as nonreligious. You should have a record of creativity, boldness and breaking stories thanks to your deep sourcing.

This correspondent won’t need to be an expert in religious doctrine but should demonstrate a willingness to understand and empathize with diverse communities in their reporting. Only applicants eager to live outside of New York and Washington and to travel extensively around the country should apply.

So, what sentence there jumps out at you? How about this phrase: “This correspondent won’t need to be an expert in religious doctrine. …”

Like, this writer need not understand the Nicene Creed, which forms the base of worldwide Christian belief? Or why Orthodox Christians have major differences with the filioque phrase at the end? (More basically, shouldn’t this writer know what the filioque is?)


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Plug-In: Religion reporting, Mozart and spirituals -- the formula that drives Adelle Banks

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Surely there’s someone out there who doesn’t like Adelle M. Banks.

I just haven’t found that person yet.

A rare soul beloved by colleagues and competitors alike, Banks is a veteran religion journalist who recently celebrated 25 years (that’s an eternity in journalism circles!) with Religion News Service.

“Adelle is one of the sharpest, most thoughtful colleagues on the religion beat,” said Sarah Pulliam Bailey, religion writer for the Washington Post and a former RNS national correspondent. “I know that when I'm reading a story by her, it's going to be smart, timely and well reported. Once upon a time, she would copy edit my stories, and I was ever grateful for her eagle eyes.”

Bob Smietana, editor-in-chief of RNS, described her this way: “You won’t find a better reporter or a better person on the religion beat than Adelle Banks. Throughout her career … she’s reported on religion, spirituality and matters of faith with a steady hand, a skeptical eye and a sense of empathy and understanding about how religion shapes our neighbor’s lives and the world around us. People trust Adelle because she gets the facts rights and always sees to the heart of a story. It’s a privilege to be on the same team as Adelle.”

Here’s something that even Banks’ most loyal readers might not realize: She loves to sing!

She has lended her voice to choirs (think Mozart, in particular) and choruses since the fifth grade. Both in her early years working for newspapers in upstate New York and in her time with RNS in Washington, D.C., she joined local singing groups.


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Concerning married Catholic priests: Do reporters know they are common in parts of the world?

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For years — unto ages of ages, amen — I have hit the same roadblock when reading mainstream news stories about the Catholic church and mandatory celibacy for priests. You know: We’re talking about statements that the Catholic church does not allow the ordination of married men to the priesthood.

It’s a classic, “Close, but no cigar” situation. The problem is that it is mostly true, but the statement simply is not accurate. Thus, news organizations should not publish or broadcast this kind of statement.

It is accurate to say that MOST Catholic priests are not married. It’s even better to say that MOST priests in Catholicism’s LATIN Rite are required to be celibate. You see, even in the Latin Rite there are some former Episcopal priests and a few Lutheran pastors who were allowed to make the transition to the Catholic priesthood — after they were married.

However, in terms of statistics, the main thing that reporters need to know is that married priests are the norm in the Eastern Rite bodies that are in communion with the Vatican. These churches exist in North America, but they are at the heart of Catholic life in the Middle East. Many readers, and apparently quite a few editors, get confused and assume that these churches are part of ancient Eastern Orthodox Christianity (where married priests are the norm, as well).

Every now and then, a news hook comes along that encourages journalists to remember that there are lots and lots married priests in the Christian East. That leads to helpful stories such as this think piece in The Washington Post: “Pope Francis won’t allow married priests in the Amazon. But in this part of the world, married priests are the norm.” Here is the rather standard-form overture:

ROME — After one-and-a-half years of feeling their bond deepen, after coffee meetups and French study sessions, Oleh Kindiy leaned in close to his girlfriend in a mostly quiet chapel and offered her a ring. She said yes. But asking for marriage was just his first question.


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Is Europe 'Christian'? That depends on how, and when, someone asks that question

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Is Europe 'Christian'? That depends on how, and when, someone asks that question

THE QUESTION:

Is Europe Christian?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The intriguing question above is the title of a brief new book (from Oxford University Press) by prominent French social analyst Olivier Roy, a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and critic of political Islam.

To Roy, the correct answer is that it all depends on what you mean by “Christian.”

The Religion Guy agrees. If the answer is no, that’s an epochal change. The continent has served as the faith’s heartland through much of history, symbolized by Catholicism’s headquarters in Rome and the World Council of Churches offices in Geneva, though thriving churches in the Global South are now taking the numerical lead.

Across the continent, the Christian heritage involves some cultural and moral influences, nostalgia, folkways, and a residuum of respect. But actual belief, practice, and church participation are weakening steadily. Is Shrove Tuesday February 25 merely about pancake recipes, or Christmas a season of street markets and consumer excess? Pope Benedict XVI and allies could not even win acknowledgment of the continent’s past Christian roots in the European Union’s constitution of 2004.

The Pew Research Center tells us Europe is the only sector of the world where the population labeled Christian in whatever way is shrinking by demography as deaths steadily outnumber births, resulting in a net loss of 5.6 million in just the years 2010 to 2015.

Before turning to Roy’s argument, let’s scan relevant data from Pew’s 2018 report on telephone interviews with 24,599 randomly selected adults conducted in 12 languages in 15 nations of Western Europe (post-Soviet Eastern Europe was not surveyed).

It’s striking that only 27 percent of West Europeans “believe in God as described in the Bible” any longer.


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Podcast: Klobuchar making an Obama-esque play to win Democrats in pews?

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The following New York Times headline perfect states the political chattering-class hot take of the week: “How Amy Klobuchar Pulled Off the Big Surprise of the New Hampshire Primary.”

Since this is GetReligion, let’s do a big of searching in this article (as well as reading it, of course).

First, let’s search for the word “religion.” Bzzz. Nothing there.

Let’s search for “church.” Bzzz. Zero.

Let’s search for “worship.” Bzzz. Zip.

In light of recent headlines, let’s search for the word “abortion.” Bzzz. Nada.

So what was the big idea in this article from America’s most influential newsroom? This appears to be the thesis:

Ms. Klobuchar’s distinct and deliberate appeal to the centrist spirit caught fire with some late-breaking activists.

Now, what precisely was the CONTENT of this “centrist spirit” that helped create the surprising surge for Klobuchar? That was the topic of discussion during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. You can click here to tune that in or, as always, head over to iTunes.

The Washington Post noticed something interesting in the exit poll numbers and mentioned it, way down in the body of its report. As you would expect, Sen. Bernie Sanders did very well with secular voters. He was +27 with “very liberal” voters and +8 with those who “never attend religious services.”

Klobuchar, on the other hand:

Senior citizens boosted Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), with about a third backing her. The Minnesota senator also received strong support among weekly worship attenders and moderates. She received less support from strong liberals, lower-income voters and those under age 30.

This caught the attention of Michael Wear, who once served as one of President Barack Obama’s “ambassadors to the faith community.”


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From Ryan Burge and Co. -- Has that rising 'religiously unaffiliated' tide started to slow?

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Here is a headline that I was not expecting from Ryan Burge and his colleagues at the Religion in Public weblog: “The Decline of Religion May Be Slowing.”

Argue with this crew all that you want. But what we have here is another snapshot of poll numbers that demonstrates why Religion in Public is a website that religion-beat professionals and their editors really need to have bookmarked. When in doubt, just follow GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge on Twitter.

In this case, Yonat Shimron of Religion News Service spotted this story pronto. We will come back to that report in a minute. But first, here is the top of the crucial Religion in Public post, written by Paul A. Djupe and Burge:

In a companion piece published … on Religion in Public, Melissa Deckman of Washington College finds that the probability of being a religious none in Gen Z (born after 1995) is the same as for Millenials (born between 1981-1994). This bombshell finding sent us running for other datasets. Like all good scientists, we trust, but verify. …

It is conventional wisdom at this point that the incidence of religious nones is on a steady rise after 1994. Driven by a mix of politics, scandal, and weak parental religious socialization, non-affiliates have risen from about 5 percent to 30 percent. That trend appears to be accelerating by generation, so the rate of being a religious none is much greater among Millennials than it is among Greatest, Silent, and Baby Boomer generations as the figure below shows using the General Social Survey time series. Those older generations are still experiencing some secularization (the rates are rising across time), but not nearly as rapidly as the young. From this evidence, we expected that the rate of being a none among Gen Z might be even higher, leading to a bump above Millennials. The initial, small sample estimate from the General Social Survey, however, suggests that Gen Z is not outpacing Millenials and may have even fallen behind.

The assumption for some media-beat pros, including me, has been that the percentage of actively involved religious believers would remain fairly steady — somewhere around the 20-22% numbers that appear in Gallup Organization work for several decades.

However, it seemed like the “nones” were going to keep growing by feeding on the vast, mushy, sort-of-religious middle of the American marketplace.


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LDS church leaders enact a major breakthrough on secrecy next Wednesday

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Mitt Romney’s explanation that he voted to expel President Donald Trump as a duty to God, followed by the president’s religious scorn, renews interest in the senator’s well-known devotion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Journalists also need to know that the nation’s fourth-largest religious body will also be in the news on February 19 for a very different reason. For the first time it will grant members (and thus the media and the public) full access to its governing rulebook.

This is a major breakthrough. The General Handbook prescribes the exercise of powers, procedures, and policies that define the church. The quasi-official Encyclopedia of Mormonism says it is “pre-eminent among Church publications” as “an authoritative guide.” But the contents were long kept secret except for those appointed to church offices.

Religion News Service’s “Flunking Sainthood” columnist Jana Riess, author of the 2019 book The Next Mormons (Oxford), noted that since only males hold office, as a woman she’s been denied access to policies “that potentially affect my life” and open access “helps to empower the general membership” of both genders.

We’re dealing here with the most secretive of America’s major religions.

Its strictly-held financial information is the stuff of legend. The texts of the sacred rituals in temples are kept confidential, and non-members and church members who lack their bishop’s approval cannot attend. (There’s special angst when non-LDS family members cannot witness temple weddings.)

Likewise, the Handbook was carefully distributed with numbered copies that were to be destroyed when no longer in use.


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That question I keep hearing: Why isn't slaughter of Nigerian Christians a news story?

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GetReligion readers: It’s time for a poll about a subject that I keep hearing about over and over in emails and in social media. Raise your cyber hands if you have:

* Seen headlines such as this one — “Days Before Attack, Nigerian Bishop Warned of Poor Protection for Christians” — in religious-market publications.

* Seen the same kind of headlines in mainstream news publications that you read, either at the local or national levels.

* Wondered why these headlines rarely, if ever, appear in the news sources that drive most mainstream coverage.

* Sent GetReligion an email on this topic in the past year or two.

Here’s the basic question that I keep hearing from readers: Why would it take to get mainstream coverage of the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria? The assumption, of course, is that journalists are biased on this topic for some reason. Hold that thought.

Meanwhile, here are a few examples of the kinds of stories we are talking about, starting with that Catholic News Agency headline mentioned earlier. Here’s the overture there:

JOS, Nigeria — Just days before a suspected Islamist militant attack killed 30 people in Nigeria, a prominent bishop in the country lamented what he saw as a lack of adequate protection from the Nigerian government for the country’s nearly 100 million Christians.

Suspected Islamist militants set sleeping travelers on fire in Borno state, Nigeria, on Feb. 11, burning 18 vehicles filled with food supplies and killing at least 30, including a pregnant woman and her baby.

In a Feb. 7 interview with Aid to the Church in Need, Archbishop Augustine Obiora Akubeze of Benin City, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, warned that “The current situation in Nigeria reflects an unnecessary, unwarranted and self-inflicted tension. A politically polarized nation.”


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Pope Francis attempts to mend some doctrinal divisions by rejecting Amazonian Rite

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How progressive is Pope Francis? Not as much as many may think.

In a surprise move, Francis rejected a proposal that had called for married men in remote areas of the Amazon to marry, a decision widely seen as a victory for conservative Catholics who feared such an exception would eventually lift the celibacy requirement of priests around the world.

The pope, the first ever from Latin America, also rejected a proposal that would have allowed women to serve as deacons, an even more momentous change within the church’s traditionally male hierarchy. Press reports consistently failed to note that female deacons in altar ministry would have had a bigger impact on Catholic doctrine than ordaining married men.

The pope’s rejection of an Amazonian rite came three months after bishops at the controversial Pan-Amazonian Synod had made several recommendations to the pontiff. The big change would have included allowing community elders to perform Mass and other duties of ordained celibate Catholic clergy in order to deal with the shortage of Roman Catholic priests in South America.

In Francis, progressives have (or thought they had) their man — someone who says he’s unafraid to tinker with church tradition. This passage, high in the New York Times coverage, sums up their disappointment in this decision:

The pope’s supporters had hoped for revolutionary change. The decision, coming seven years into his papacy, raised the question of whether Francis’ promotion of discussing once-taboo issues is resulting in a pontificate that is largely talk. His closest advisers have already acknowledged that the pope’s impact has waned on the global stage, especially on core issues like immigration and the environment. …

The pope’s refusal to allow married priests was likely to delight conservatives, many of whom have come to see Francis and his emphasis on a more pastoral and inclusive church as a grave threat to the rules, orthodoxy and traditions of the faith.

The papacy of Francis has frequently drawn the ire of conservative Catholics, many of them living in the United States and parts of Europe — so they were anxiously awaiting this statement from Rome. After all, the Pan-Amazonian synod, a three-week meeting at the Vatican, was fraught with controversy.


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