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Question when covering Latter-day Saints: Do we have a Mother in heaven as well as a Father?

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THE QUESTION:

Do we have a Mother in Heaven as well as a Father?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The answer is yes, according to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (long and universally nicknamed “Mormon” though church authorities are now asking journalists not to use that label).

Feminists continually criticize this religion for limiting all of its governing posts to men except for women’s and educational auxiliaries, yet church defenders can argue that this doctrine ennobles the female gender.

Belief in the Heavenly Mother is a wholly unique aspect of the LDS faith.

So is the related assertion in LDS Scripture that God the Father literally “has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man,” thus rejecting the spiritual-only God the Father in traditional Christianity (and similarly in Judaism and Islam). Though official LDS statements do not explore this, it seems logical that the Heavenly Mother would also be embodied.

The church believes each person lives in an unremembered heavenly existence before earthly birth, and was the procreated spirit child of the two heavenly parents. The divine Father and Mother couple fits with the LDS teaching that humans must be married in order to achieve full exaltation in the afterlife.

The Mother is not cited in the Bible nor in the added LDS Scriptures from founding Prophet Joseph Smith Jr. However, the church reports that this was part of Smith’s original teaching. One year after Smith was assassinated in 1844 his polygamous wife Eliza R. Snow affirmed the Mother tenet in a beloved hymn lyric.

“ … In the heav’ns are parents single? / No, the thought makes reason stare! / Truth is reason; truth eternal / tells me I’ve a mother there. / When I leave this frail existence, / When I lay this mortal by, / Father, Mother, may I meet you / in your royal courts on high?”


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People keep asking: Why does press say 'religious left,' as opposed to 'Religious Left'?

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People keep asking: Why does press say 'religious left,' as opposed to 'Religious Left'?

Every now and then, readers — or people I meet in daily life — ask this question: Why do journalists write so much about the Religious Right (capital letters), while devoting way less digital ink to the actions, policies and beliefs of the religious left (no capital letters).

That is a complex question and you can hear me struggling with it all the way through this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). The hook for this episode was my post that ran with this headline: “Thinking with David Briggs and Ryan Burge: Whoa, is religious left really on rise (again)?”

For starters, people tend to ask this question every four or eight years (hint, hint), when the mainstream press does another round of stories about the religious left surging into action in an attempt to counterbalance the nasty Religious Right.

The Religious Right, you see, exists all the time — because it is one of the largest camps inside the modern Republican Party. The religious left doesn’t play the same role in the Democratic Party, unless we are talking about the importance of politically (as opposed to doctrinally) liberal black-church leaders in strategic primary elections. You can ask Joe Biden about that this time around.

I guess the simple answer to the “RR” vs. “rl” question is that journalists tend to capitalize the names of groups that they see as major political or social movements — like the Civil Rights movement or the Sexual Revolution.

The religious left, you see, isn’t a “movement” that exists all the time — in my experience — for many mainstream journalists. The religious left is just ordinary, good, liberal religious people doing things that are positive and logical in the eyes of gatekeepers in newsrooms. This is “good” religion.

The Religious Right, on the other hand, is a powerful political movement consisting of strange, scary evangelicals who keep coming out of the rural backwoods to threaten normal life in American cities. This is “bad,” even dangerous, religion.

Now, there is another big irony linked to press coverage of progressive forms of faith.


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Christian in NBA suffers horrible, funny injury: Was cruel ESPN tweet a news story or not?

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I realize that few GetReligion readers seem to care much about sports. But what about a mixture of race, religion and sports?

With that in mind, let me ask a serious journalism question linked to those three topics.

Would it be a news story — a hard-news story — if an ESPN personality (or the social-media team working with his show) asked if it was funny if an athlete who backs #BlackLivesMatters suffered a horrible, painful injury soon after making a high-profile statement about how his convictions were rooted in his faith?

Wait. We know an ESPN host and/or the show’s social-media team would never do such a thing.

But what if a conservative media star — Tucker Carlson, let’s say — asked that same question?

It’s safe to say that this would explode into mainstream news coverage.

That brings us to this headline in the New York Post (a conservative paper, of course): “ESPN’s Dan Le Batard posts poll wondering if Jonathan Isaac’s torn ACL is funny.”

Dan Le Batard issued an apology for his ill-advised poll Monday afternoon.

The ESPN radio host’s show, “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz,” ran a poll on Twitter poking fun at Magic forward Jonathan Isaac, who tore his ACL Sunday night.

Isaac was the first player in the NBA bubble not to kneel during the national anthem, and also did not wear the “Black Lives Matter” warm-up donned by the rest of his teammates.

“Is it funny the guy who refused to kneel immediately blew out his knee?” the poll asked.

Oh, right. I turned that question around, didn’t I?

Isaac is a black Christian — he is ordained, in fact — who made headlines by linking his faith to his decision not to take part in the official NBA pre-game rites. He wasn’t protesting the protests, exactly. He had a larger point that he wanted to make, one rooted in his work as a minister.


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A generation's big global issue: Can centrists win Islam's ideological civil war?

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On July 24, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey, was converted from a museum to a mosque, giving Christians a bitter reminder that this had been the world’s grandest church for nine centuries until the 1453 conquest by Muslim forces.

Most media ignored that — two weeks beforehand — a scholarly leader of what is very likely the world’s largest organization of grass-roots Muslims posted a dramatic challenge about treatment of non-Muslims.

Excerpts from this piece by Yahya Cholil Staquf of Indonesia: “The Islamic world is in the midst of a rapidly metastasizing crisis, with no apparent sign of remission.” To “avert civilizational disaster, people of all faiths must work together to prevent the political weaponization of fundamentalist Islam.”

A summary: Believers must emulate the devout, but more culturally moderate, Muslims in what is now Indonesia who established religious freedom for all even before the young United States did so in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Yet in our own era, Christianity has all but disappeared in its historic Mideast birthplace, “the latest chapter in a long and tragic history of religious persecution in the Muslim world.” In recent decades, in Africa through the Mideast and across Asia, non-Muslim minorities have, wrote Staquf, suffered “severe discrimination and violence inflicted by those who embrace a supremacist, ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam.”

This “unchecked spread of religious extremism and terror,” in turn, leads to “a rising tide of Islamophobia among non-Muslim populations.”

An “intellectually honest” examination of the situation, he added, shows that the “extremists” can rely on “specific tenets of orthodox authoritative Islam and its historic practice” from classical times, which advocate “Islamic supremacy” and encourage “enmity toward non-Muslims.” This means that, for instance, the “remarkable savagery toward Yazidis and Christians” perpetrated by ISIS in Iraq and Syria was “not a historical aberration.”

These and other newsworthy assertions come from Staquf — who is the general secretary of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama (or NU. The name means “Revival of the Ulama,” the term for the collective body of religious scholars).


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Thinking with David Briggs and Ryan Burge: Whoa, is religious left really on rise (again)?

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If you know your religion-beat history, then you know this name — David Briggs, who is best known for his years with the Associated Press.

If you know your GetReligion history, then you know that — for 17 years — we have been saying that the “religious left” deserves more attention. This is specially true in terms of the doctrinal beliefs of people in these blue pews and how those beliefs help shape their politics.

It seems that, every four years or so — a telling interval — we see a few stories about a surge of activity on the religious left and how that will impact politicians opposed by the Religious Right. It’s like politics is the only reality, or something.

Thus, several readers noted this recent Briggs byline for the Association of Religion Data Archives: “The decline of the religious left in the age of Trump.”

Say what? Here’s the overture:

President Trump has had a powerful mobilizing effect on the liberal and secular left in U.S. politics.

But will religious liberals also play a significant role in getting out the vote for Democrat Joe Biden in November?

Almost immediately after the 2016 election, some commentators began heralding the likelihood that a revived religious left would emerge from what many liberals considered the ashes of Trump’s victory.

But such hopes may be based more on a wing and a prayer than solid evidence of any such new awakening. Rather, there are several signs indicating “a notable decline” in political activity among religious liberals.


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What's a hot take on Israel worth? Depends on one's media celebrity status (Hello Seth Rogen)

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How do you tell the difference between a Jewish pessimist and a Jewish optimist?

Easy. The pessimist says, “Things just can’t get any worse. The optimist says, “Sure they can.”

Well, they certainly have — as far as the fraught connection between Israel and liberal American Jews goes.

The latest stressor is a predictably nasty media exchange over high-profile liberal commentator Peter Beinart’s recent declaration that he no longer backs a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A single bi-national, or perhaps a confederated, state, said Beinart, is the best remaining equitable option. This, he concluded, is because of Israel’s deeply entrenched West Bank settlement project. Further undermining the two-state option, he said, is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat to annex much of the occupied West Bank that Palestinians want to include in their own independent state.

Beinart detailed his thoughts in this New York Times oped and, in much greater detail, in this Jewish Currents essay.

For liberal Jews — who have long argued that two independent states coexisting side by side, one Jewish-run and one Palestinian, is the best and only realistic option — Beinart’s abandonment of full Jewish nationhood was nothing less than Zionist heresy.

Naturally, given today’s insatiable 24/7 media universe — in which all who dare venture are but a tweet away from “woke” fame or “cancel culture” renunciation — the verbal warfare started immediately.

Beinart’s, you may be wondering, is but one voice in a cacophony of voices claiming to know what’s best for Israel-Palestine, so why the fuss? Moreover, he lives in the United States, not Israel, so to what degree does his opinion even matter?

The answer, of course, is his American media prominence. His frequent talking-head appearances, (he’s a CNN regular) and voluminous writings have won him a place in the liberal Zionist media firmament, where he’s long been a harsh critic of Netanyahu and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. That’s not Hollywood famous, but it’s a start.


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BBC accurately translates some Russian words, but fails to 'get' the Orthodox meanings

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Every now and then, I lose a URL to a story that I really intended to address here at GetReligion.

This happens in my daily tsunami of email. I am sure this also happens to lots of journalists and news consumers. In this case, we are talking about a BBC story from earlier this summer that ran with this headline: “Coronavirus: Covid-denying priest Father Sergiy Romanov seizes Russian monastery.”

Let’s face it. The degree-of-difficulty rating on covering this particular story is sky high.

For starters, controversies in Eastern Orthodoxy can be really complex and the participants often use images and terms that can be read on several layers. In this case, those terms were also spoken in Russian.

But let’s assume that the BBC correspondents in Russia all speak fluent Russian or work with skilled translators who help them navigate the verbal minefields. I’ll state right up front that I don’t speak Russian (although I go to church with several folks who do). However, GetReligion has a faithful reader who is an editor in Moscow and I will share his comments on this piece.

Let’s start with the overture:

An ultraconservative Russian priest who denies coronavirus exists has taken over a women's monastery by force.

Father Sergiy Romanov entered the Sredneuralsk convent outside the city of Yekaterinburg. … The mother superior and several nuns have left and armed guards are patrolling the site.

Fr Sergiy has stated church authorities "will have to storm the monastery" if they want him to leave.

Police visited the site on Wednesday but made no arrests.

The controversial cleric was barred from preaching in April and then stripped of the right to wear a cross in May after he encouraged the faithful to disobey public health orders. Fr Sergiy helped found the Sredneuralsk Convent in the early 2000s, and hundreds of supporters have flocked there over the years to hear his sermons.

What, pray tell, does “stripped of the right to wear a cross” mean?


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Religion is the hidden theme in this coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine controversy

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A group of doctors in white coats was the big news last week and for those of you living under a rock, I am referring to some press conferences in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. They featured a racially mixed group of about 10 people dressed in white lab coats.

All of them — who were doctors of one sort or another — gave their names and that of their workplaces, making it easy for anyone to check them out. Their plaint? The anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is a proven tool in treatment of COVID-19 and there’s something rotten in Denmark when you can’t even post a video on social media about it.

But did you see much reporting examining their arguments?

No, you heard about “demon sperm” and “alien DNA.”

It didn’t take long before Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were treating the event as akin to anti-vaxxer screed. Censors at all three platforms were working overtime to get this presser erased. Certain media managed to get a look-see at these medics, and what did they concentrate on in their reports?

Their religious views, of course.

Especially the religion of the one black woman in the crowd. We’ll get back to that shortly. First, some background from the New York Times, which was in quite a swivet about the whole thing.

In a video posted Monday online, a group of people calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” and wearing white medical coats spoke against the backdrop of the Supreme Court in Washington, sharing misleading claims about the virus, including that hydroxychloroquine was an effective coronavirus treatment and that masks did not slow the spread of the virus.

The video did not appear to be anything special. But within six hours, President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had tweeted versions of it, and the right-wing news site Breitbart had shared it. It went viral, shared largely through Facebook groups dedicated to anti-vaccination movements and conspiracy theories such as QAnon, racking up tens of millions of views. Multiple versions of the video were uploaded to YouTube, and links were shared through Twitter.

Well, surely the public can’t be allowed to see that, right?


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New York Times offers update on India's gay prince: Yes, there are big religion ghosts

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Anyone who makes a list of nations in which religion plays a major role in public life would have to include India, land of a stunningly complex tapestry of faiths.

Visitors to India who seek answers to questions about the role of religion in modern India will find their heads spinning as they try to follow all the plots and subplots in the answers.

Hinduism is everywhere, of course, both in terms of religion and secular culture that remains haunted by Hindu traditions.

Right now, the “conservative” Bharatiya Janata Party offers a confusing mix of religion and politics that attempts to make Hinduism the crucial element of what it means to be a citizen in India. Then again, Islam is a powerful force that cannot be ignored and Pakistan looms in the background. In terms of history, it’s also impossible to forget the Church of England and generations of missionary work.

So, would you assume that religion would play some kind of role when the New York Times international desk covers a story with this double-decker headline?

In India, a Gay Prince’s Coming Out Earns Accolades, and Enemies

Prince Manvendra’s journey from an excruciatingly lonely child to a global L.G.B.T.Q. advocate included death threats and disinheritance

So let’s search this story for a few key words. How about “Hindu”? Nothing. Well, then Islam? No. So religion played no role in this man’s story or in the passions of those who wanted to kill him?

As it turns out, religion did play an important role at a crucial moment in his life. The Times team just isn’t interested in the details. That’s strange, when dealing with international coverage — where GetReligion often praise the Times. But, apparently, LGBTQ content trumps all other concerns.


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