Mark Pinsky

Thinking (again) about God and sports: Was the Lord of Hosts cheering for Duke?

Thinking (again) about God and sports: Was the Lord of Hosts cheering for Duke?

What we have here is one of those evergreen feature ideas that surfaces whenever there is a global or national sporting event that inspires religious-level fervor in fans.

Now, it’s March Madness and hoops believers — especially sort-of Methodists — will need to interpret the theological implications of Duke University (think Methodist House of Studies at the divinity school) smashing Oral Roberts University 74-51 in the first round in a tournament game that some folks though might have upset potential. Oh, the late faith healer and televangelist Oral Roberts was also (#HONEST) a United Methodist minister.

So, did God ignore the prayers of evangelical-Pentecostal hoops fanatics and favor those of the theologically hip, fluid, progressive believers at Duke? Does this score mean that God (pronouns are controversial) was pro-Duke?

With that in mind, here is a breezy pre-game think piece on this topic that ran at Religion News Service. It was written by two self-avowed Duke dudes, veteran religion-beat pro Mark Pinsky (frequently plugged here at GetReligion) and media consultant Rusty Wright. Here’s the double-decker headline:

Divine dilemma: Who gets God’s nod in March Madness?

If two Christian schools’ fans pray for victory, which one gets God’s favor?

Yes, there are passages that make this an interesting read — even after a Duke throwdown.


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Plug-In: Déjà Vu all over again, as religion plays big role in fight over Disney and sex ed

Plug-In: Déjà Vu all over again, as religion plays big role in fight over Disney and sex ed

I’ve never visited Walt Disney World, but I did make it to Disney church one Sunday.

Mickey, Minnie and friends are, as you might have noticed, key actors in the nation’s latest culture war skirmish.

Over the last week, the fight over Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill — or, as critics call it, the “Don’t Say Gay” law — has made front-page headlines in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.

Call it Disney déjà vu.

The Los Angeles Times’ Ryan Faughnder asserts:

It’s a battle that, to people who have followed Disney’s history, has a familiar ring. The current conflict is just the latest clash to reveal underlying tensions that have existed between Disney and religious conservatives for decades as the company has increasingly embraced the LGBTQ community.

It has strong echoes of the anti-Disney protests of the late 1990s, when religious leaders criticized the extension of health benefits to the partners of LGBTQ Disney employees, the coming out of Ellen DeGeneres on her sitcom on Disney-owned ABC and unofficial “Gay Day” celebrations at the theme parks.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, host of “The 700 Club,” warned the city of Orlando that it risked hurricanes by tolerating Gay Days. The Southern Baptist Convention in 1997 called for a Disney boycott after the nondenominational American Family Assn. campaigned against the Burbank entertainment giant by sending thousands of protest packets to pastors. The difference now is that, instead of brochures, there’s Fox News and Twitter.

A major development in the current brawl came Thursday, as the Wall Street Journal’s Arian Campo-Flores and Robbie Whelan report:

Florida lawmakers gave final approval to a bill that would end a special tax district that allows Walt Disney Co. DIS 0.07% ▲ to govern the land housing its theme parks, escalating a weekslong dispute with Disney over its public opposition to a Florida bill that limits classroom instruction on gender and sexuality.

The measure now goes to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has made clear he would sign it.

In a twist, Southern Baptists have been “offering discounted Disneyland tickets for families traveling to Anaheim this June for the denomination's big annual meeting,” as the Tennessean’s Liam Adams reported earlier this month.


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Progress for American Jews? Tis the season for lots and lots of Hanukkah junk

Progress for American Jews? Tis the season for lots and lots of Hanukkah junk

It's hard to do justice to ancient holy days in throw-pillow slogans.

Consider the Zazzle item offering a menorah with an un-orthodox number of candles, along with: "Imagine if your cellphone was at 10% but lasted 8 days. Now you understand Hanukkah."

Maybe not. Or how about the Bed, Bath & Beyond pillow stating: "Why is this night different from all other nights? Happy Hanukkah."

Actually, that's the most famous question from rites during a Passover Seder dinner.

"There's no quality control with any of this stuff. No one's being careful with decisions about what's good and what's bad," said journalist Mira Fox of the Forward, a progressive Jewish website. "The point is to sell stuff. It doesn't need to be good stuff. It's just stuff.

"Basically, it's a lot of people saying, 'We can find a way to sell stuff to Jews during the holidays, along with selling lots of stuff to everybody else.' "

Hanukkah began rather early this year, starting at sundown this past Sunday (November 28) and extending for eight days. This placed the "Festival of Lights" closer to Thanksgiving -- near the start of the merchandizing frenzy known as The Holidays.

The story at the heart of this home-centered season dates to 165 B.C., when Jews, led by the Maccabee family, defeated Greek and Syrian oppressors. When the victors reentered their temple, only one container of ritually pure oil could be found for its eternal flame. Tradition says this one-day supply burned for eight days. Thus, Jews light menorah candles during Hanukkah, one on the first night, increasing to eight.

"It's not a biblical holiday. Hanukkah is not in the Hebrew Bible. … God is not a huge part of this story," said Fox. "Honestly, I don't think a lot of people understand what this holiday is about."

That's certainly true in the American marketplace.


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New podcast: Did the mainstream press ever figure out why Pat Robertson was important?

New podcast: Did the mainstream press ever figure out why Pat Robertson was important?

If you look at the headline and the art for this post, it’s obvious that this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on media coverage of the Rev. Pat Robertson’s retirement as host of the “700 Club.”

Try to forget that. Work with me here, for a moment.

What if I told you that the man at the heart of this story grew up in Washington, D.C., as the son of a U.S. Senator. Then he did his undergraduate work at a quality school known for its academic rigor, graduating magna cum laude while studying history at Washington and Lee University.

Later, he earned a Yale Law School degree. After that — think low New York bar exam scores and a big religious conversion — he earned an MDiv degree from New York Theological Seminary.

Somewhere in that mix, he served in the U.S. Marines. Later, he founded a multi-million-dollar broadcasting empire and started a graduate-school university and a law school.

Does it sound like someone with a pretty good shot at having an impact on American life and culture?

Well, that’s Pat Robertson — sort of. It's clear that, for most journalists, this resume doesn’t have much to do with the man’s life and work. This is, after all, the religious broadcaster (as opposed to televangelist) who, for decades, served up “spew your coffee” soundbites that launched waves of embarrassing headlines and late-night TV jokes. He was important because this was the kind of wild man who helped lead the Religious Right further into the heart of Republican Party politics.

The minute anything crazy or scary happened in the world — from politics and pop culture to hurricanes and earthquakes — the press turned to Robertson for what was billed as semi-official “evangelical” reactions, even as his words frequently left mainstream evangelical leaders sad, puzzled or furious.

Robertson was one of the official alpha-male media voices of evangelicalism, even after he women and men had emerged who had more clout and connections in the movement.

I was never a Robertson fan. However, it was always clear to me — thinking in terms of church history — that he wasn’t really an “evangelical,” strictly defined, even though he was an ordained Southern Baptist minister. The key is that he was a leader in the rising tide of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity in America and the world at large (see this Pew Research Center resource page).

Does that matter? Well, Pentecostal Christianity very diverse, in terms of race and class, and is the fastest growing for of religious faith on the planet.


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Thinking with Mark Pinsky: Did Florida museum link Holocaust and George Floyd? (Updated)

Facts are such awkward things. This is especially true when dealing with complicated, emotional topics linked to religion.

Thus, there is a book by veteran reporter Mark Pinsky of Orlando, Fla., that religion-news specialists — or journalism students who are interested in the beat — needs to have on the shelf near their desks.

No, not “The Gospel According to the Simpsons” — although that’s a winner that I frequently recommend to seminarians interesting in decoding popular culture. In this case, I am referring to “A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.” The key to the book is it’s discussion of how people in one faith tradition, or no faith tradition at all, can learn to visit the minds, hearts and souls of other believers. The old-school journalism goal (#DUH) is to do coverage that is accurate, balanced and fair-minded.

It helps, of course, to talk to gatekeepers and shareholders in the group one is attempting to cover.

That leads me to a piece that Pinsky wrote the other day for The Forward that ran with this headline: “After an online ‘onslaught’ over exhibit on racial justice, a Florida Holocaust museum vows not to back down.

This is one of those sad cases in which quick-strike, advocacy journalism trends seen so often in this digital age — on the left and the right — produced articles that were, at best, incomplete and slanted. In this case, the journalists were on the cultural right. It’s easy to find articles on the cultural left, of course. It’s tragically easy to find examples of this trend in the mainstream press.

Here is the overture of Pinsky’s piece:

In late November, the Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida sparked outrage when it opened its current exhibition, “Uprooting Prejudice: Faces of Change.”

The bilingual exhibit, which runs through Jan. 31, consists of 45 large-format, black-and-white photo portraits. Chicago photographer John Noltner, a native of Minnesota, was inspired to take the shots in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing at and around the site where he died in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

Noltner offered the temporary exhibit to the Center, which had a hole in its schedule. The exhibit, said the Center’s assistant director Lisa Bachman, was “right in line with our mission.”


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Listen to Yogi Berra! Flashback to previous New York Times religion-beat puzzle

It’s one of the major challenges of writing for GetReligion.

What are we supposed to do when major news organizations make the same error over and over or professionals leave the same religion-shaped holes in major stories? Are we supposed to write the same posts over and over?

Actually, what we usually do is write new posts about the new errors and link back to the old posts, thus, noting that what we are hearing are echoes of the old errors.

Yesterday, Julia Duin wrote that kind of post — but with a major difference. She noted that a new job notice for a New York Times religion-beat reporter (hurrah for the creation of that national beat slot) contains some strange language that we have heard before (as in a 2017 Times job notice for a similar religion-news job).

In other words, it’s time to quote Yogi Berra — again. In this case I would like to do something that I have never done before, which is re-up my entire post from two years ago about that earlier Times job search. By doing this — especially one day after the new Duin post — I am trying to stress how important it is that Times editors use this hire to address their national religion-news concerns in a way that reflects the symbolic role their newsroom plays in American journalism.

So here we go. Back to 2017.

Readers: Feel free to use our comments pages to offer your views on this journalism puzzle.


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

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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New York Times seeks another Godbeat scribe: How would Yogi Berra parse the job listing?

I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that one of the buzz topics in religion-news circles this week was that job posting at The New York Times, the one with this headline: "Change Is Coming to the New York Times National Desk."

It appears the Times is thinking about doing something new on the religion beat, 12-plus years after the 2005 report on its newsroom culture and weaknesses, "Preserving Our Readers Trust." That was the amazing document that urged editors, when hiring staff, to seek more intellectual and cultural diversity -- to help the Gray Lady do a better job covering religion, non-New York America and other common subjects. Yes, I've written about that report a whole lot on this site.

Oh, and Times editor Dean Baquet's recent journalism confession on NPR -- that the "New York-based and Washington-based ... media powerhouses don't quite get religion" -- may have had something to do with this, as well.

The bad news? There is one chunk of language in this job posting that, for veteran Godbeat observers, could cause a kind of bad acid flashback to another religion-beat job notice in another newsroom, at another time. Hold that thought. 

So here is the Times job notice for a "Faith and values correspondent."

We’re seeking a skilled reporter and writer to tap into the beliefs and moral questions that guide Americans and affect how they live their lives, whom they vote for and how they reflect on the state of the country. You won’t need to be an expert in religious doctrine. The position is based outside of New York, and you will work alongside Laurie Goodstein and a team of other journalists who are digging deep into the nation.

Did you see the key sentence? Rod "friend of this blog" Dreher sure did:

Two cheers for them! I’m glad they’re adding this position, and I’m really glad they’re not basing this reporter in New York (I hope they don’t base him or her in any coastal city, or in Chicago, but rather someplace like Dallas or Atlanta). Why not three cheers? That line about how “you won’t need to be an expert in religious doctrine” bothers me. ... 


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