Academia

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Naw! Nobody in the Title IX wars is asking LGBTQ questions about religious schools

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Naw! Nobody in the Title IX wars is asking LGBTQ questions about religious schools

Every now and then, I finish reading a major-media news story and I think: Wait a minute. There’s a massive hole here (and one that’s going to produce all kinds of news headlines). Didn’t anyone notice?

In this case, we are talking about another story involving a head-on collision between the First Amendment and the evolving doctrines of the Sexual Revolution. The battleground is the hyper-tense world of higher education. The Washington Post headline, in this case: “New Title IX rules set to assert rights of transgender students.”

We will get to the overture in a moment. But can you spot the “hole” that is sort-of mentioned in this background paragraph which is buried way down in the Post report?

Title IX is a 1972 law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program or activity that receives federal money. Schools found in violation risk losing federal aid. Advocates have long held that this definition rightfully includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

OK. Does “any educational program or activity that receives federal money” include student-loan programs?

If so, maybe this story should have at least mentioned the 7,000 or so religious colleges and universities in this land? I mean, is there any chance that LGBTQ activists are going to challenge the religious liberty claims of these schools, many of which are explicitly doctrine-defined voluntary associations?

With that in mind, read the top of this feature at The Conversation: “What is the religious exemption to Title IX and what’s at stake in LGBTQ students’ legal challenge?”

While federal law shields most U.S. students from gender and sexual orientation discrimination, an estimated 100,000 LGBTQ students at religious institutions do not have the same protections.

Under a religious exemption provision, scores of colleges and universities can – and do – discriminate on the basis of someone’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

A class action lawsuit now challenges that discrimination.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Press quiet as a mouse when it comes to Catholic angles in this Disney-DeSantis fight

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Press quiet as a mouse when it comes to Catholic angles in this Disney-DeSantis fight

I was never nuts for Disney. I’ve never been to one of their a theme park, either as a child or now as a parent of two children, and never indulged in their movies much over my lifetime. I’ll freely admit that puts me in the minority, both in the United States and around the world, when it comes to Disney consumption.

I was, however, once a Disney employee. No, I didn’t work in one of their stores. Instead, I was employed at ABC News in New York, where I worked for their digital unit running the website and other internet assets such as social media. It was a great place to work — although not “The Happiest Place On Earth” as the official tagline for Disneyland states. It was, after all, a newsroom — but one of the perks was free tickets each year to their amusement parks.

I say all this in the context of the ongoing feud regarding the Florida “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which is now law after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it. This is the much-discussed bill that bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade “in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

The law continues to get media coverage for two reasons. First, because of Disney’s involvement and second due to the larger notion that DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, is — everyone chant the media mantra — “engaging in a culture war.” This remains a political story, a business story and a pop culture story.

Is this also an important religion story? It certainly is (tmatt takes on this very topic in GetReligion’s most recent podcast).

My most recent GetReligion post focused on the news media’s largely ignoring the Republican DeSantis’ Catholic faith in regard to the widespread news coverage around the bill, which opponents effectively labeled “Don’t Say Gay” even though the bill never used those words.

At the same time, the news coverage for conservative press around the legislation has centered much more on Disney’s late-in-the-game activism in opposing it. The coverage among mainstream and progressive news sites continues to center on that activist “Don’t Say Gay” mantra.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

Plug-In: Just say no to 'cult' -- That four-letter word journalists really need to avoid

, , , , , , ,
Plug-In: Just say no to 'cult' -- That four-letter word journalists really need to avoid

“Don’t Call It a Cult.” That was the title of one of the more intriguing sessions at last week’s Religion News Association annual meeting, held at a Washington, D.C.-area hotel.

Moderated by independent audio journalist Sarah Ventre, the panel featured Anuttama Dasa, global communications director for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness; Melissa Weisz, a podcaster who grew up in a Hasidic Jewish community; and Shirlee Draper, who was born and raised within a polygamous sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

“The goal was to explore the ways in which we report on marginalized religious communities, particularly those that are often referred to as ‘cults,’” said Ventre, who hosted the award-winning 2020 podcast ”Unfinished: Short Creek,” about the fundamentalist Mormon community where Draper grew up on the Utah-Arizona border.

"I wanted to unpack the responsibilities we have both to our audience and to our sources,” the moderator added, “and examine the ways in which our reporting affects the communities we report on long after we publish.”

“Show, don’t tell” is a journalistic adage.

This session reinforced the importance of describing a specific pattern of abusive or manipulative behavior rather than resorting to more generalized terms like “cult” or “brainwashed.” This has, of course, been a topic of frequent discussion here at GetReligion for two decades. Here’s a few recent items to check out, but there are many more:

* “Define ‘cult’ -- give three examples.”

* “Updates in the journalism style bible: Appropriate 'cult' advice and other tweaks.”

* “Entering a religion-beat minefield: What is the proper definition of the word 'cult'?”

All of this is not to say sources can’t describe their own experience as having escaped from a cult. Nor do journalists have to be completely relativist: They have a responsibility, to the extent possible, to evaluate and assess people’s — and leaders’ — accounts. Often, groups do have systemic ways of enabling abusers and abusive behavior, and journalists can identify that where they can verify it.

But news organizations need to be careful.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Along the religion beat: Should 'mainstream media' pundits take sides on church disputes?

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Along the religion beat: Should 'mainstream media' pundits take sides on church disputes?

The acerbic anti-Donald Trump conservative Jonah Goldberg says that — at National Review and currently TheDispatch.com — he has spent the past 25 years complaining about "liberal media bias."

But, he wrote last week, much has changed during that time with the breakup of America's onetime "hegemony" of three broadcast networks, the newsmagazines and a few influential newspapers. Now we have devoutly conservative news-talk radio and cable TV while infinite opinions of commentary and information overwhelm the Internet.

Then there's rising distrust in the news media, which The Religion Guy believes is a serious threat to healthy democracy. A Pew Research Center survey, reported last August, found that since 2016 the percentage of Americans with at least "some" trust in the national news media has slumped from 76% down to 58%, and among Trump-era Republicans and Republican leaners from 70% down to 35%.

Another simultaneous change, Goldberg said, is "the blurring of reporting with partisan punditry, particularly on cable news and social media." The Guy would contend that this distrust expands when partisan opinion seeps into or overshadows supposed hard news. (This is the spirit of our media age, since, as tmatt often observes here at GetReligion, opinion is cheap and actual reporting is expensive).

That brings us to religion coverage in the print media and the Internet (broadcasters and cable generally slight the beat) and a rather idiosyncratic must-read complaint about The New York Times from Hillsdale College historian D.G. Hart, posted at Real Clear Religion the same day as Goldberg's article. In case you missed it, the text is here.

Hart thinks the Times "rightly" figures that explicitly religious periodicals can handle faith news, which means he does not read the paper that closely (though it can be criticized for sins of omission). The article appears to suggest the Times and other outlets should downplay or eliminate attempts to do religion-beat reporting -- which would remove the very reason GetReligion exists.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Updates in the journalism style bible: Appropriate 'cult' advice and other tweaks

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Updates in the journalism style bible: Appropriate 'cult' advice and other tweaks

If you know anything about the nuts and bolts of reporting and editing, then you know that the Associated Press Stylebook is the bible — that’s with a lower-case “b” — of journalism.

It’s also a great place to chart tensions inside the news business. Consider, for example, the decades of debate about “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” as opposed to “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion rights.” Will the next major revision of the AP manual need to include an updated definition for the suddenly controversial word “woman”?

Our GetReligion patriarch, Richard Ostling, recently sent me an interestingly list of some of the religion-beat terms in the latest revisions to this AP bible. He served as a consultant on that revision project and, thus, doesn’t want to make any comments about the results. Here is one of the updates that is sure to lead to newsroom discussions:

cult (new)

A loaded term to be used with caution.

Yes, indeed — proceed with caution. I totally agree that this is a “loaded term” that journalists should avoid whenever possible.

The problem, however, is that this is a term that religious leaders, activists and even scholars are going to use every now and then and it will be hard to avoid the term when it is used in important direct quotations. Thus, editors need to know the various ways that informed people use the word — the key is sociology vs. theology — so that these loaded quotes can be placed in context for readers. Then there are activists of various kinds who throw this term around like a verbal hand grenade.

Readers can tell, with a quick glance at the venerable Merriam-Webster dictionary, that this is a complicated subject. Here are several of the definitions:

cult

noun, often attributive …

Definition of cult

1: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious (see SPURIOUS sense 2) also : its body of adherents


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is still a question that scholars debate: Why did early Christianity rise so rapidly?

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
This is still a question that scholars debate: Why did early Christianity rise so rapidly?

THE QUESTION:

Why did early Christianity rise so rapidly?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

New religions appear all the time, nowhere more than in the United States, but very few ever achieve prominence and permanence. Christianity is a rare and dramatic case of a faith that triumphed. The tale is told in Rodney Stark's classic "The Rise of Christianity" with this descriptive subtitle in the 1997 paperback edition (still on sale): "How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries."

Sociologist Stark is now retired as co-director of Baylor University's esteemed Institute for Studies of Religion. The book treats its subject as a puzzle to be explained by objective social science scholarship and does not consider whether Christian teachings are true.

Though we lack reliable census data, Stark's best estimate was that only 7,530 Christians existed at the close of the apostolic era in A.D. 100 [which conflicts with Acts 2:41]. He said the total exceeded 1 million by 250 when systemic persecution by the Roman empire was reaching its peak. The Edict of Milan in 313 allowed the faith to exist without harassment, and as of 350 there were 33.9 million Christians. Stark figured that was a 56.5% majority of the population. Inevitably, by 380 this became the empire's official creed.

What happened? Stark's scenario drew upon more than 300 works plus his own original research, and made heavy use of economic market theory. Let's skim some of what he concluded.

Stark thought Christianity's key advantages included the spread of Greek-speaking Jews across the Greco-Roman world who provided a base to build upon, the failures of rival paganism, attractive charitable efforts (especially during ruinous epidemics), innovative respect for women, high birth rates, good organization, close fellowship, demanding and respected moral standards, the inspiring example of martyrs willing to die rather than renounce their faith and positive doctrines that were attractive to new city dwellers coping with chaos and squalor.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

Podcast: What parents (and journalists) can learn from LGBTQ debates at Calvin

, , , , , , ,
Podcast: What parents (and journalists) can learn from LGBTQ debates at Calvin

Any list of the two or three most influential evangelical Protestant colleges and universities in America has to include Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Hang around at Council of Christian Colleges and Universities gatherings (I was a senior fellow and journalism professor for 20 years) and you’ll hear chatter about the “Calvin mafia” that has long provided intellectual clout shaping trends and programs nationwide. In other words, what happens at Calvin doesn’t stay at Calvin.

You could say that was the Big Idea in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on a Religion News Service story with this headline: “Fallout over LGBTQ spouses at Calvin University captures broader evangelical divide.” The second line: “A same-sex wedding led the university to split with its longtime research center over Christian teaching on sexuality.” Before we look at the overture, let’s jump down to a crucial passage in this story:

Provost Noah Toly did confirm that all faculty and staff, including those at the center, are required to follow the school’s employment policies, which bar sex outside of a marriage between a man and a woman. He also said that hiring managers and supervisors are required to enforce the policy.

“Employment policies” is a rather secular way of stating that Calvin has a doctrinal statement linked to its ties to the Christian Reformed Church. It’s safe to assume that, at some point, faculty and staff sign a copy of that statement or a “lifestyle covenant” that states the doctrines in practical terms. At some schools, faculty and staff reaffirm that doctrinal statement/covenant every year.

When we are talking about defining the boundaries of a voluntary association of this kind — an explicitly Christian liberal-arts university — “doctrines” are more important than “policies.” Keep that quote from the provost in mind as you read the top of this RNS story. This is long, but crucial:

For years, Calvin University, a leading evangelical school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has tried to walk a fine line of being welcoming to LGBTQ students while still enforcing traditional Christian Reformed Church views on sexuality.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Americans think highly of Jesus: But modern Christians get rather harsh reviews

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Americans think highly of Jesus: But modern Christians get rather harsh reviews

When it comes to exploring what Americans think about Jesus, a new study offers Christian leaders both good news and bad news.

The good news is that 76% of Americans affirm the "historical existence" of "Jesus of Nazareth," although it's also interesting to note that if 89% of self-identified Christians embraced that statement, the implication is that 11% are not sure.

Meanwhile, 84% of participants in a new "Jesus in America" study -- conducted by the global Ipsos research company for the Episcopal Church -- agreed that "Jesus was an important spiritual figure."

The bad news? While 50% of "not religious" Americans accepted this "important spiritual figure" language, they were much less impressed with the believers who represent Jesus.

When asked, "What characteristics do you associate with Christians in general?", the nonreligious selected these words from the poll's options -- "hypocritical" (55%), "judgmental" (54%) and "self-righteous" (50%). Next up: "arrogant," "unforgiving" and "disrespectful."

It appears that one of the goals of this poll -- with questions about racism, social justice and last year's attack on the U.S. Capitol -- was to see if nonbelievers have different attitudes about liberal and conservative Christians, said political scientist Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University, author of the new book "20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America." He is co-founder of the Religion in Public website and a contributor at GetReligion.org, which I have led since 2004.

"This is the million-dollar question," said Burge, who is also a pastor in the progressive American Baptist Church. "If non-religious people are turned off by what they see as the stricter faith of many Christians, evangelicals in particular, then wouldn't it make sense for them to seek more flexible alternatives?

"If there's all kinds of room in mainline Protestant churches these days, and that's putting it mildly, then why aren't these kinds of people filling up some of those pews?"


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Why would journalists want to edit St. Patrick's voice out of stories about his feast?

, , , , , , , , , ,
Podcast: Why would journalists want to edit St. Patrick's voice out of stories about his feast?

When you think of St. Patrick’s Day, what leaps to mind?

Maybe I should ask the question like this: When you think about mainstream-press news coverage of St. Patrick’s Day, what leaps to mind?

Green beer? Corned beef and cabbage (during Lent)?

Great masses of people — primarily in big cities in the Acela Zone and the Rustbelt — going more than a little crazy? Politicians trying to march next to the Catholic archbishop of New York, when they disagree with him on most hot-button issues? Lawsuits about LGBTQ groups demanding to march in a parade that, once upon a time, had something to do with Christian hero?

Questions like these were at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which got rather personal — since my family embraced the Celtic saints when we converted to Orthodox Christianity. My patron saint is St. Brendan and my daughter’s is St. Brigid (more on this later).

The Big Idea of this podcast was quite simple: It is totally valid for journalists to focus on civic celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day and other modern variations on the veneration (not worship) of the great Celtic saints. The problem is when they leave readers in the dark about the details in the lives of these saints (along with debates about those details), along with the prayers and rites linked to them.

For example, when you think about St. Patrick do these words come to mind?

My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburniae. ... His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner. I was about sixteen at the time. At that time, I did not know the true God. I was taken into captivity in Ireland, along with thousands of others.

That’s the first few lines of the Confession of St. Patrick, a document that historians take quite seriously — in part because it focuses on the faith and history of this great missionary bishop, while ignoring all kinds mythological details that came later.


Please respect our Commenting Policy