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Hong Kong media titan Jimmy Lai jailed: Do journalists realize he's an outspoken Catholic?

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If you have followed events in Hong Kong for several decades, then you know this name — Jimmy Lai.

Journalists certainly should know that name, since this free-swinging billionaire founded Apple Daily, one of the city’s most popular newspapers. Using his clout as a businessman and as a publisher, he has been one of the most outspoken defenders of human rights in the face of crackdowns by Communist authorities.

One other thing: Lai is concerned about freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. There’s a logical reason for that, since he is an outspoken Catholic and one of Hong Kong’s best known Christian leaders. See this recent Catholic News Agency story: “Catholic Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai — ‘The Lord is suffering with me’.”

Surely journalists know that Lai wears several hats during pro-democracy protests — a role that has landed him in jail, without bail. To state this in American terms, Lai is trying to promote both halves of the First Amendment, since freedom of conscience affects both the press and religious institutions. That has been obvious during all the hymn-singing (click here for Julia Duin post on this topic) in Hong Kong protests.

Don’t elite journalists know all of that?

It would appear that this is not the case, considering a faith-free story that ran recently at The New York Times with this headline: “Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong Media Tycoon, Is Denied Bail on Fraud Charge — Mr. Lai, who founded the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, was ordered jailed until April.” Here is some crucial material at the top of the story, which has a Hong Kong dateline:

The detention of Mr. Lai, 72, came a day after three leading Hong Kong activists were sentenced to prison for participating in a protest last year, the latest blow to the territory’s pro-democracy movement.

The Chinese government imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong at the end of June, and Mr. Lai became the law’s most high-profile target in August, when he was arrested along with his two sons and four executives of his media company, Next Digital.

But the new fraud charges are unrelated to the security law. Rather, they accuse Mr. Lai of violating the terms of the lease of Next Digital’s headquarters, the public broadcaster RTHK reported.

This is a classic, and rather obvious, example of what GetReligion writers have, since Day 1, called a “ghost” — as in a crucial religion-news hook that is mysteriously missing in an important story.


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Thinking about 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick: Duin and Abbott say press should keep digging

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The calendar here at GetReligion — like any cyber-workplace — starts getting complicated as we move through Advent and into the entire whirlwind of Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years Day, etc. That’s even true during a pandemic that has kept us (especially older folks like me) locked up.

Still, Julia Duin is out and about this week. However I saw an interesting “other side of the notebook” piece that I knew would interest her. It was linked to the Vatican’s long-delay report about the fall of former cardinal Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick and why that story — shrouded in rumors for decades — was so hard for many journalists to cover.

The new piece — “My minor role in exposing McCarrick” — was written by Catholic scribe Matt C. Abbott and ran at RenewAmerica.com.

I asked Julia for a quick comment on the piece and she wrote back: “Matt definitely was one of the early guys to sound the alarm but like the rest of us, he had only hearsay to go on. Not that said hearsay wasn’t convincing. A number of us had been hearing rumors for years and Matt connected the dots quicker than a lot of us [in mainstream newsrooms] who were more constrained toward having to get actual on-the-record people confirm those rumors. As an independent, he could say what he wanted at the time.”

To grasp the context for Abbott’s new comments, it helps to flash back to Julia’s earlier GetReligion posts about the challenges journalists faced dragging this sordid story out into the light of day. Those were:

* “The scandal of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and why no major media outed him.”

* “Cardinal Ted McCarrick, Part II: The New York Times takes a stab at this old story.”

* “How journalists can nail down the rest of the Cardinal McCarrick story — for good.”

The story of the reporting of this story is unbelievably complicated and there are many angles and sources that are still not out in the open.

The best way to place Abbott’s new piece in context is to read a long, long passage drawn from the first of those three Duin posts. There’s no way to edit this down — because reality was complicated. Period. She starts with the fact that several journalists knew that there had been behind-the-scenes legal/financial settlements with victims, but no one could confirm how many or pin down key details:


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The end is near! Here's a 2020 end-of-the-year feature with an online religious hook

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We cannot say goodbye to 2020 fast enough, what with a disease-ridden planet and, in the United States, a remarkably rancid political fight and aftermath.

So here is a safe prediction: Mainstream news-media professionals and their loyal readers will be more enthusiastic than usual about this-year-is-ending articles.

Consider BibleGateway.com, which claims to be "the world's most-visited Christian Website," and articles it posted here and here about the themes, words and sentences that dominated 2020 scriptural searches. This site provides searchable full texts of dozens of English translations of the Bible as well as in many other languages.

The Gateway data have been noticed by editors at a handful of religious sites but not, so far as The Guy could find, outlets for general audiences that would also be interested.

The story could be enriched beyond the initial press releases by asking Gateway content manager Jonathan Petersen (616-656-7159 and jonathan.petersen@biblegateway.com) for more details on the number of people who searched for each item and how trends have varied over recent years.

A few specifics to get you thinking about this. Four subject areas generated 10 times more searches in 2020 than 2019.

First, societal-related terms such as justice, equality, oppression and racism. The results directed searchers to such verses as "when justice is done it brings joy to the righteous, but terror to evildoers" (Proverbs 21:15) and "learn to do right; seek justice; defend the oppressed" (Isaiah 1:17).

Second, "pandemic" and disease-related terms hit a high point during the spring lockdown, with searches pointing to "I will take away sickness from among you" (Exodus 22:25) and "I will bring health and healing" (Jeremiah 33:6).

Theme three was politics and government. Bible references included the urging of prayers "for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness" (1 Timothy 2:1-2) and the perpetually debated "let everyone be subject to the governing authorities" (Romans 13:1f).

Fourth, there was the inevitable increase of interest in Bible prophecy, Jesus Christ's Second Coming and the end times.


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Old questions about megachurch authority: New York Times dips into Hillsong sins

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What brand of Christianity is offered at Hillsong Church? Does that matter?

Basically, it’s a slightly tamed version of evangelical Christianity, blended with Gen X pop-rock music, delivered by talented preachers with tattoos and ripped jeans. And then there are the celebrities who show up from time to time — which really helps create viral social-media stuff.

That’s the formula readers encounter in a must-read New York Times feature that ran the other day, when what was already an important story about evangelicals in the Big Apple gained the kind of editorial punch provided by sex, scandal and ties to Justin Bieber. Here’s the double-decker headline on this latest story by religion-beat pro Ruth Graham:

The Rise and Fall of Carl Lentz, the Celebrity Pastor of Hillsong Church

A charismatic pastor helped build a megachurch favored by star athletes and entertainers — until some temptations became too much to resist.

All of the glamour and celebrity details are important and valid. However, there is another angle of this story that is totally missing. The words “Assemblies of God” do not appear anywhere in this lengthy Times feature.

Truth is, Hillsong grew out of the Assemblies of God, an important Pentecostal and charismatic Christian flock with about 70 million members around the world. And why did Hillsong cut its ties to the Assemblies, other than a yearning for independence from denominational authorities and perhaps to erase a some bad memories?

Hold that thought, because we will come back to it. Here is a crucial chunk of summary material containing the important themes that provide the structure for this Times piece:

Even in the contemporary era of megachurches, Hillsong stands apart. Founded in Australia under a different name in the 1980s, its great innovation was to offer urban Christians a religious environment that did not clash with the rest of their lives.

At a time when many Americans have abandoned regular churchgoing, Hillsong attracts thousands of young churchgoers through soaring music and upbeat preaching. If anything, it is cooler than everyday life, with celebrities like the actor and singer Selena Gomez and the N.B.A. star Kevin Durant showing up at Sunday services.

By now, Hillsong is not just a church, but a brand.


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India's 'love jihad' interfaith marriage story may be political spin -- but its effects are real

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I don’t recall ever watching it but I do remember the brouhaha that erupted within the Jewish community when the short-lived TV sitcom “Bridget Loves Bernie” debuted in 1972.

Despite the show’s audience popularity it was cancelled after just one season because of the high-profile flak it drew from establishment American Jewish community leaders who objected to the show’s premise — an interfaith romance between Bridget, a Catholic, and Bernie, a Jew. (Neither of its stars, Meredith Baxter and David Birney, were Jews.)

Given the entertainment media’s level of religious, racial, and gender mixing and matching today, “Bridget and Bernie” probably strikes you as pretty tame. However, the show’s timing couldn’t have been worse; the American Jewish community was just starting to publicly debate, with alarm, its growing intermarriage rate.

Leading Orthodox, Conservative and even theologically liberal Reform rabbis lambasted the show as an insult to one of Judaism’s most sacrosanct values, marrying within the tribe, which was particularly strong in the decades after the Holocaust. Boycotts were organized and meetings were held with the TV execs who backed the show. The radical, and sometimes violent, Jewish Defense League issued threats.

Yet in the end, “Bridget Loves Bernie” turned out to be a Jewish-American harbinger. Today, an estimated 50 percent-plus of American Jews marry non-Jews, though it’s still relatively rare within traditionalist Orthodox circles..

But as scandalous as “Bridget Loves Bernie” was in its day, it pales in comparison to the controversy now engulfing the contemporary Indian TV drama “A Suitable Boy.”

That’s because the show — which became available to American audiences via the streaming service AcornTV today (Monday, Dec. 7) — features a love story between a Muslim man and a Hindu woman. For India’s fervent Hindu nationalist politicians, that constitutes “love jihad” — a calculated attack by Muslims on the nation’s Hindu heritage.

In India, “A Suitable Boy,” a BBC production, was broadcast by Netflix. And even though the platform has a relatively small subscription base there it was enough to create quite a stir.

Here’s the top of the New York Times piece that alerted me to this story just before Thanksgiving.


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SCOTUS flips script on COVID-19 worship bans, but Francis Collins of NIH urges closures

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First New York.

Now California.

With the addition of a fifth, solidly conservative member — new Justice Amy Coney Barrett — the U.S. Supreme Court has flipped the script on months of legal battles over pandemic-era worship gatherings.

“It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote last week as the 5-4 court blocked New York from imposing strict attendance limits on religious services.

Then on Thursday, the court “sided with a California church protesting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pandemic-related restrictions on indoor worship services,” noted the Washington Post’s Robert Barnes. The brief, unsigned order returned the issue to lower court judges and “suggests the state’s ban on indoor services is likely to fall,” reported the Los Angeles Times’ David G. Savage.

In San Francisco, Catholic Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has complained that the city’s “treatment of churches is discriminatory and violates the right to worship,” as explained by the Catholic News Agency. For more details on the California battle, see Sacramento Bee writer Dale Kasler’s story this week on churches defying Newsom’s order.

In related news, the Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas highlighted a clash over in-person classes in religious schools in Kentucky. And Boston.com’s Nik DeCosta-Klipa covered Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s concerns over “COVID-19 clusters stemming from religious gatherings.”

Here in my home state of Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt has refused to issue a statewide mask mandate that might help slow the spread of COVID-19. But he declared Thursday a day of prayer and fasting over the coronavirus, as reported by The Associated Press’ Ken Miller.

Amid a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths nationally, a top public health official Thursday “called on religious leaders to keep their worship spaces closed, despite rising protests from some church leaders,” according to NPR’s Tom Gjelten:


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Chants from the Gulag: Wisdom from suffering saints rings true at Thanksgiving 2020

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Chants from the Gulag: Wisdom from suffering saints rings true at Thanksgiving 2020

There was no way Thanksgiving could be "normal" this year.

This was certainly true wherever Orthodox Christians gathered for what is becoming a Thanksgiving tradition in America, sharing a litany of poetic Russian prayers created during hellish persecution by the Bolsheviks.

Under coronavirus protocols, many sang the "Glory to God in All Things" prayers in outdoor services or in candle-lit sanctuaries containing fewer worshippers than usual. There was no way to ignore the pain of 2020.

Early in the service, a priest chants from the English translation: "Thou hast brought me into life as into an enchanted paradise. We have seen the sky like a chalice of deepest blue, wherein the azure heights the birds are singing. We have listened to the soothing murmur of the forest and the melodious music of the streams. We have tasted fruit of fine flavor and the sweet-scented honey. We can live very well on Thine earth. It is a pleasure to be Thy guest."

Worshippers respond: "Glory to Thee for the new life each day brings."

Imagine chanting those words in Soviet Gulag cells.

Only 25 people could attend at St. Anne Orthodox Church in Corvallis, Ore., but others watched online, said Laura Fear Archer. This was on Thanksgiving morning, before whatever feasts participants could have this year.

"I love this service, particularly for its depth of thanksgiving in the midst of extreme suffering," she said, in an Orthodox Facebook group. "In the midst of our far lesser but still painful suffering this pandemic year, it is a good reminder to give thanks always."

In Russia, some believers connect these prayers with birthdays. But in America the Orthodox know this service as "The Akathist of Thanksgiving," since its themes mesh with this uniquely American holiday. An "akathist" is a service honoring a saint, a holy season or the Holy Trinity.

Many trace this akathist to the scholarly Metropolitan Tryphon, a well-known spiritual father at the height of the persecution. The version of the service used today was found in the personal effects of Father Gregory Petrov, who died in 1940 in a concentration camp.


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How should Biden-era Americans understand 'religious freedom' and First Amendment?

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THE QUESTION:

What does American “religious freedom” now mean?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Protection of Americans’ “free exercise” of religion has been guaranteed by the Bill of Rights for 229 years and counting.

Until recently, people generally agreed on what this means. The debates involved whether this constitutional right should be exercised or restricted in specific, unusual situations. For example, the Supreme Court has permitted the Santeria faith to conduct ritual slaughter of animals, and exempted Amish teens from mandatory high school attendance laws.

Now this principle is swept up into culture wars that divide the population and the two political parties. In October, the Brookings Institution, a moderately liberal think tank, issued a lengthy white paper titled “A Time to Heal, A Time to Build” with recommendations on religion policy for the U.S. president. It states that the older consensus “began breaking down as new issues emerged, particularly around the struggle for LGBTQ equality.” Brookings consulted 127 experts on church and state for this document, though few were from the so-called “religious right.”

Consider some history: Back in 1993, Democrats were central in passage of the federal “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” Then-Congressman Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, introduced the bill in the House, where it won 170 co-sponsors and easily passed by voice vote. In the Senate, Ted Kennedy, a Catholic, was the Senate co-sponsor with Republican Orrin Hatch, a Latter-day Saint, and the act was approved 97–3. President Bill Clinton, a Protestant, enthusiastically signed it into law.

The act states that government cannot “substantially burden” the “exercise of religion,” even when the burden applies to people generally, unless limiting of the freedom is “the least restrictive means” to further a “compelling governmental interest.” Those whose freedom is wrongly suppressed have the right to “obtain appropriate relief” in court. (This restored prior U.S. Supreme Court doctrine that the court had shelved in its 1990 Smith ruling.)

That was then.


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Podcast: NYTimes op-ed offers sharp media criticism on SCOTUS and religious liberty

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In light of trends in the past year or so, the op-ed page of The New York Times was the last place I expected to find sharp media criticism focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court, the First Amendment and, to be specific, religious liberty concerns during the coronavirus pandemic. Miracles happen, I guess.

Here’s the context. There was, of course, a tsunami of press coverage of the 5-4 SCOTUS decision overturning New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s aggressive rules controlling in-person religious services in New York. Frankly, the coverage was all over the place (and let’s not get started discussing the Twitter madness) and I had no idea how to write about it.

Thus, I was both stunned and pleased to read the recent Times op-ed that ran with this headline: “The Supreme Court Was Right to Block Cuomo’s Religious Restrictions.” That essay provided the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

This op-ed was written by a former federal judge named Michael W. McConnell, who directs the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and Max Raskin, an adjunct law professor at New York University. While their essay includes lots of interesting information about the logic of the recent ruling, GetReligion readers will be interested in its commentary on how the decision was viewed in public discourse — including media coverage.

Here is a crucial block of material at the top that includes some specific facts that would have been appropriate in news stories:

Unfortunately, the substance of the decision has been drowned out by a single-minded focus on judicial politics — the first evidence that President Trump’s appointments to the court are making a difference. Maybe that is so. In the first two pandemic-related worship-closure cases to get to the court this year, it declined to intervene by 5-to-4 votes, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the Democrat-appointed justices in deferring to state regulators. Last week’s decision went in favor of the Catholic and Orthodox Jewish plaintiffs, with the chief justice in dissent.

But politics is a distorted lens for understanding the case. Looking to the substance, six justices agreed that the Free Exercise Clause was probably violated by the governor’s order. The restrictions, which are far more draconian than those approved by the court in the earlier cases, are both extraordinarily tight and essentially unexplained. In red zones, where infection rates are the highest, worship is limited to 10 persons, no matter how large the facility — whether St. Patrick’s Cathedral (seating capacity: 2,500) or a tiny shul in Brooklyn. Because Orthodox Jewish services require a quorum (“minyan”) of 10 adult men, this is an effective prohibition on the ability of Orthodox women to attend services.

In other words, many journalists and public intellectuals — I am shocked, shocked by this — decided that Trump-era political divisions were more important than information about the legal and religious realities at pew level.


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