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Disturbing news trends in Turkey: What if Hagia Sophia returns to being a mosque?

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In recent years, Orthodox Christians around the world have watched as headlines kept appearing on obscure websites that mainstream journalists rarely visit.

Rumors grew that the famous Hagia Sophia sanctuary in Istanbul — a 6th Century wonder of Byzantine Christianity — would once again be claimed as a mosque, after decades of protection as a neutral-ground museum. Gradually, the rumors turned into symbolic actions by the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggesting that this strategic move might become a reality.

Recently there was this headline at OrthoChristian.com (all caps in the original headline, along with alternative spelling “Agia”):

‘TURKISH LEADER CALLS TO PAINT OVER SERAPHIM IN DOME OF AGIA SOPHIA, CONVERSION TO MOSQUE REPORTEDLY ALREADY UNDERWAY

The question, of course is this: Is this a news story? Other questions flow out of that: Is this a “religious” media story? Is it a “conservative” media story? One more: Is it a story for hard-news media in Europe, but not America?

Meanwhile, it would be hard — from the Orthodox point of view (I have twice visited Hagia Sophia) — to offer a more distressing overture than the top of that latest OrthoChristian.com report::

As Turkish officials await the court hearing on the possibility of converting the world-famous Agia Sophia Museum back into a mosque, preparations for the change are reportedly already underway.

In this vein, the leader of the Saadet Partisi Islamist political party, Abdullah Sevim, called for Turkey to immediately take action and paint over the faces of the seraphim in the dome of the 6th-century Orthodox cathedral-turned-mosque-turned-museum, reports the Orthodoxia News Agency.

“There’s no need to wait for the decision of the State Council. We’ve already purchased the lime,” Sevim wrote on his Twitter page, calling everyone to join in a Muslim prayer to be held at Agia Sophia by President Erdogan.


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Plug-in: Trump vs. Biden -- four months before Election Day and religion angles abound

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President Donald Trump came to my home state of Oklahoma last weekend, and I kept my social distance (read: stayed in my living room).

I followed developments via social media, including tweets by my son Keaton Ross, a reporter for Oklahoma Watch. The president even gave Keaton — and all of the news media — a shoutout.

As you may have heard, the symbolic relaunch of Trump’s re-election campaign drew an underwhelming crowd of about 6,200 to a Tulsa arena.

Already, some are pointing to polls that show Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by a wide margin. Honk if that sounds familiar. With Election Day four-plus months away, religion angles — no surprise! — abound.

Among the most interesting pieces of the last week:

• Gabby Orr, White House reporter for Politico, writes that Trump allies “see a mounting threat: Biden’s rising evangelical support.”

• Isaac Chotiner, staff writer for The New Yorker, interviews Albert Mohler about “How the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary came around to Trump.”

• Jeff Sharlet, in a piece for Vanity Fair, goes inside what the magazine characterizes as “the cult of Trump,” where “his rallies are church and he is the Gospel.”

• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writers Bill Glauber, Molly Beck and Annysa Johnson report on Vice President Mike Pence’s focus on religious faith in a campaign stop in battleground Wisconsin.

• Nicholas Casey, a national politics reporter for the New York Times, travels to Alabama to highlight a Baptist church touched by differing opinions over the Trump era. (Be sure to read, too, Terry Mattingly’s GetReligion analysis of this story, making the case that the Times ignores doctrine to focus on politics.)


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MIT chaplain sacked for his thoughts, as a Catholic priest, on mercy, justice and George Floyd

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MIT chaplain sacked for his thoughts, as a Catholic priest, on mercy, justice and George Floyd

Earlier this year, a Catholic priest published a book entitled "Mercy: What Every Catholic Should Know," focusing on doctrine and discipleship issues that, ordinarily, would not cause controversy.

But these are not ordinary times. Acting as a Catholic chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Father Daniel Moloney tried to apply his words about mercy and justice to the firestorm of protests and violence unleashed by the killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.

In the end, the priest resigned at the request of the Archdiocese of Boston, in response to MIT administration claims that Moloney, in a June 7 email, violated a campus policy prohibiting "actions or statements that diminish the value of individuals or groups of people."

Moloney wrote, in a meditation that defied simplistic soundbites: "George Floyd was killed by a police officer, and shouldn't have been. He had not lived a virtuous life. He was convicted of several crimes, including armed robbery. … And he was high on drugs at the time of his arrest.

"But we do not kill such people. He committed sins, but we root for sinners to change their lives and convert to the Gospel. Catholics want all life protected from conception until natural death."

Criminals have human dignity and deserve justice and mercy, the priest said. This is why Catholics are "asked to work to abolish the death penalty in this country."

On the other side of this painful equation, wrote Moloney, police officers struggle with issues of sin, anger and prejudice. Their work "often hardens them" in ways that cause "a cost to their souls." Real dangers can fuel attitudes that are "unjust and sinful," including racism.

In a passage stressed by critics, the priest wrote that the officer who knelt on Floyd's neck "until he died acted wrongly. … The charges filed against him allege dangerous negligence, but say nothing about his state of mind. … But he showed disregard for his life, and we cannot accept that in our law enforcement officers. It is right that he has been arrested and will be prosecuted.

"In the wake of George Floyd's death, most people in the country have framed this as an act of racism. I don't think we know that."


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Strange Nashville media storm: What to do when a 'prophet' advertises in your newspaper

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Residents of Nashville, Tennessee — the ones who still read a printed Sunday newspaper — received quite a shock when opening the June 21 edition of The Tennessean, a Gannett Co. newspaper not generally known for tabloid-style contents.

A full-page advertisement from a little-known outfit, “Future For America,” was clearly designed to stun readers.

“Dear Citizen of Nashville,” the ad’s text read. “We are under conviction to not only tell you but provide evidence that on July 18, 2020, Islam is going to detonate a nuclear device in Nashville, Tennessee.” The text went on to make a range of bizarre predictions, including an assertion that Donald Trump would be the “last” President of the United States.

Surprisingly — to this observer at least — the ensuing media coverage was, by and large, accurate, explanatory and helpful to readers. Journalists quickly put the fringe group in its context, and even though the advertisement mentioned the Seventh-day Adventist Church (a denomination of 21.4 million worldwide, whose membership includes this writer), the church was not associated with either the group or Jeff Pippenger, its “speaker.”

That’s largely because Pippenger had been disfellowshipped — expelled from Adventist membership — in 2015. The North American Division of the church disavowed the group, though not naming the individual in their statement.

“[T]here is no connection between the Seventh-day Adventist Church and this group and their teachings,” the statement read.

Also, the ad referred to “the backslidden Seventh-day Adventist Church,” which signals — to say the least — a kind of distancing from that larger faith community.

There was what had to be a mad scramble at The Tennessean to do damage control. Media reports indicated the switchboard lit up with subscription cancellations, and online comments on Facebook and Twitter were not positive.

The paper’s initial story spelled out the details:


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Podcast: Yes, religion plays a major role in battles over the Mississippi flag

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Editors at the Associated Press were on to something big with that recent story that ran with this headline: “Baptists and Walmart criticize rebel-themed Mississippi flag.”

That’s a story. If you were listing major forces in Sunbelt life, you’d have to include the Southern Baptist Convention and Walmart.

But the AP team did downplay a key angle to that Mississippi flag fight, one that many locals would — with a chuckle — say was a “religion thing.” I’m talking about this recent story, seen here in a New York Times headline: “SEC Warns Mississippi Over Confederate Emblem on State Flag.”

Religion? You bet.

If SEC football isn’t functionally a “religion” down here then I don’t know what is. Some kind of ban on SEC events taking place in Mississippi? That would be like the end of the world. The AP folks put a passing reference to the SEC action way down in the story.

Think about the clout of this trinity of social forces in a Bible Belt state — SEC sports, Walmart and the Southern Baptist Convention. Add Chick-fil-A and NASCAR (speaking of racial tensions) and life would come to s stop.

All of those topics were in the mix as host Todd Wilken and I recorded this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). We decided that it was pretty clear that folks behind the AP story really didn’t understand some of the forces affecting the battles over the Mississippi flag.

But let’s start with a chunk of the AP story that was spot-on accurate:

Mississippi has the last state flag that includes the Confederate battle emblem: a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. …

The conservative-leaning and majority-white Mississippi Baptist Convention has more than 500,000 members at more than 2,100 churches. Mississippi’s population is about 3 million, and 38% of residents are African American.


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Bitter split in Baptist flock in Alabama: Was this about Donald Trump or ancient doctrines?

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As part of its ongoing visits to flyover country in Middle America, the New York Times recently ran a long feature with this epic headline: “The Walls of the Church Couldn’t Keep the Trump Era Out — The young pastor wasn’t sure his congregation would like what he had to say and had no idea where it would lead all of them. He found himself at a crossroads of God, Alabama and Donald Trump.”

Now, that headline is — to be blunt — quite dishonest.

While I acknowledge that the Trump era plays a role in this Baptist drama — rooted in tensions surrounding the ministry of a progressive, the Rev. Chris Thomas — the Times article contains a thesis statement near the end that is much more honest. Here is that summary paragraph:

Racism had driven Mr. Thomas from his first church in Alabama; at Williams it had been gay rights that had caused the division.

In Times-speak, of course, debates about racism and gay rights are one and the same — ideological clashes about politics. The reality is more complex than that, pivoting on two ancient doctrinal questions: Is racism a sin? The orthodox (or Orthodox) answer is, “Yes.” The second question: Is sex outside of traditional marriage a sin? The orthodox answer there, for 2,000 years, has been, “Yes.”

There are other doctrines lurking in the background that may, or may not, have affected the crisis inside this particular Alabama congregation, which the Times piece describes as: “First Baptist Church of Williams, a relatively liberal church with a mostly white congregation.”

That’s a pretty good description of the world of “moderate” Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a network of like-minded churches that emerged after the Southern Baptist Convention civil war that began in the late 1970s.

There is no way for me to write about this story without saying, candidly, that this subject is directly linked to my life and that of my family, at all levels. My wife and I were married in a “moderate” church next to Baylor University, using a rite from a modernized version of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. The last Baptist congregation we attended — in Charlotte, N.C. — was to the theological left of FBC Williams.

A key moment, for me, was a conversation I had with one of the church deacons, a philosophy professor at a Baptist college near Charlotte. This church leader asked what, for me, was the most important doctrine in Christian faith.


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How is African-American press handling news about protests, COVID-19 and churches?

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Amanda Foreman, The Wall Street Journal’s history columnist, had a timely piece last weekend about “Pioneers of America’s Black Press” (behind pay wall).

The Religion Guy is under the impression that the Mainstream Media have given little attention to how African-American newspapers are treating the coronavirus crisis, with its disproportionate impact on their communities, alongside the nationwide racial reckoning on police conduct and demonstrations blighted by rioters who have harmed black neighborhoods and livelihoods.

For GetReligion purposes, it’s of particular interest whether, how, and how much they cover the news of church bodies on these and other matters. Though black Americans on average are more devout than whites, the African-American press is presumably even more strapped on staffing and advertising than the general press is in these days. Nevertheless, here’s one COVID-19 church roundup from The Crisis, official magazine of the NAACP.

The white-majority MSM often ignore the news of black religion. Here are examples from the two largest denominations (actually the largest African-American organizations of any type).

How many reported that the year before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide, the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., expressed respect for individual conscience but cited the Bible (specifically Genesis 2:18-25) in stating that the denomination’s endorsed military chaplains “are not to participate in any activity that implies or condones same sex marriage or same sex union”?

Or this: The Church of God in Christ is allied with a national chain of crisis pregnancy centers in a Family Life Campaign aimed at “making abortion unthinkable and unavailable in America.” Presiding Bishop Charles Blake said the practice is as much a form of violence the church must fight as “terrorism, racial tension in America, and escalating crime.”

Foreman’s article noted that “the longest-running African-American periodical” is not a general-interest newspaper but The Christian Recorder, the Nashville-based official voice of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, dating from 1848. That’s appropriate status since the A.M.E. itself is the oldest black denomination, with roots in a Philadelphia congregation founded by Richard Allen in 1794.


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Yo, @NYTimes editors: How about printing an op-ed essay by the great Frederick Douglass?

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This is not a normal GetReligion post. Then again, these are not normal times in American life.

Ponder this journalism question. Let’s say that alt-right leaders made a public announcement that they were — in two days — going to gather to attack, desecrate and topple a memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. How much news coverage would that story receive? How about a right-wing attack on a statue of President Abraham Lincoln?

That brings us to the status of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.

What is missing from the following material in a Washington Post story about a number of events unfolding in the nation’s capital?

Other protesters gathered on Capitol Hill’s Lincoln Park, home to another controversial statue. Protesters decried the Emancipation Memorial, which depicts a freed slave kneeling at the feet of President Abraham Lincoln.

Earlier in the day, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) introduced a bill to have the statue removed, saying it did not reflect the efforts African Americans made to free themselves from slavery.

Now, click here and watch the video at the top of this post, which contains a specific threat made against this memorial.

Is that threat worthy of coverage?

Of course, it also helps to know something about the history of this particular memorial — which was created with funds donated by freed slaves.

While critics claim that the statue depicts a white man towering over a subservient black man, that is not what it mean to the former slaves who created it. They knew the story behind the image.


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Journalists should focus more coverage on Catholic police chaplains and less on 'cancel culture'

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I have covered my share of police funerals over the years. With some regularity over the course of two decades working in journalism, police officers have been shot and killed in the line of duty.

What follows — in print and on television — is a funeral, a mourning widow, crying family members and hundreds of officers gathered at a church. Even hardened reporters can tell you that covering these events can be heartbreaking.

There was no greater pain to hit New York City, and indeed the country, than the loses suffered with the 9/11 attacks. Of the 2,977 people killed in the attack that destroyed the World Trade Center, 412 were emergency workers who responded that day. They included:

* 343 firefighters (including a chaplain and two paramedics) of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY)

* 37 police officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department (PAPD)

* 23 police officers of the New York City Police Department (NYPD)

* 8 emergency medical technicians and paramedics from private emergency medical services

* 1 patrolman from the New York Fire Patrol

That list keeps growing as more die each year from cancer and other health-related issues associated with the attacks.

While the death of these brave men and women is something Americans will never forget, one has to wonder about that legacy now that there is a movement to defund the police in the wake of George Floyd’s murder while in police custody in Minneapolis.

I was there on 9/11. As a reporter for the New York Post at the time, I was only blocks away when the second tower collapsed. I spent the next few months covering the tragedy and the many lives it impacted. One of the deaths I remember most was that of Father Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar who served as an FDNY chaplain. I had spoken with Judge just a few weeks prior to his death after he officiated the funeral Mass of Michael Gorumba, a rookie firefighter who died in August 2001. Gorumba suffered a heart attack shortly after battling a giant fire.

On 9/11, Judge was the first certified fatality.


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