Black church

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Plug-In: 7 tips for covering horrific events in houses of worship (and treating victims right)

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I love journalism. I love my fellow journalists.

But as I pointed out in last week’s column on the media barrage faced by minister Britt Farmer after a deadly shooting at his Texas church, I believe we can do better — much better — in how we treat victims.

To help in that regard, I asked four highly respected news professionals — three of them Pulitzer Prize recipients — for advice. Everyone I’m quoting has extensive experience in this area and in making our profession proud.

Based on what they told me, here are seven tips for covering horrific events at houses of worship:

1. How you approach a victim is everything.

“Many mistakes are usually made in the initial approach when journalists are trying to get that quote or sound bite,” said Joe Hight, a Pulitzer-winning editor who is the Edith Kinney Gaylord Endowed Chair of Journalism Ethics at the University of Central Oklahoma. 

“It just doesn’t work like you’re at a public news conference or interviewing a public figure,” added Hight, who hired me at The Oklahoman in 1993 and oversaw our coverage of victims after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. “You are intruding upon private individuals in their most vulnerable moments. In these tragic situations, you have to ask the victims or family members for permission. You need to say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ and mean it sincerely. You need to put yourself in the victim’s position of grief and despair after such a tragic situation.

“You need to determine whether the individual is even capable of talking to you at this point or whether you need to step away and approach later. How would you feel if you were asked that question? You don’t want to cause further harm or take advantage of someone in grief just for a quote or sound bite. How you approach will often determine what kind of interview you will get. Do it poorly, and you will possibly cause more damage.”

2. Think long and hard about your call to a victim (and if you really need to make it).

Sensitivity is so crucial.


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Big news in 2020? Thinking about the religious left, Mayor Pete and black churchgoers

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Think of it as a kind of “small-t” end of the year tradition here at GetReligion.

Toward the end of the annual podcast addressing the Top 10 religion-news events of the year — this year it’s “Oh-so familiar Top 10 religion stories list (with a few exceptions)” — host Todd Wilken always asks me the same question, one built on the assumption that journalists have some ability to see into the future. In other words, he asks something like, “What do you think will be the big religion stories of 2020?”

Like I said in the podcast post last week, news consumers can almost always count on the following:

* Some event or trend linked to politics and this often has something to with evangelicals posing a threat to American life.

* Mainline Protestants gathered somewhere to fight over attempts to modernize doctrines linked to sex and marriage.

* The pope said something headline-worthy about some issue linked to politics or sexuality.

* Someone somewhere attacked lots of someones in the name of God. …

You can’t go wrong with that list — especially with all of the ink being spilled, again, over Citizen Donald Trump and the great big monolithic “evangelical” vote.

However, there’s another political story that has, in the past three decades, become almost as predictable. It is, of course, the fill-in-the-blanks political feature about the rise (again) of the religious left (lower-case status) in the Democratic Party to do combat with the Religious Right (upper-case status).

These days, there is a bigger story that looms in the background of that old standard. Think of it as the Democrats trying to make peace with the religious middle in the age of the growing coalition of atheists, agnostics and the “Nones” (religiously unaffiliated). This coalition is now the most powerful religion-related power bloc in that party. The big question: How will this coalition, which includes the least religious congregation of Americans, get along with another crucial grassroots group — African-American churchgoers, who are among the most religious people in our culture.

That brings us to this weekend’s think piece, care of advocacy journalism team at The Daily Beast, that ran with this headline: “Mayor Pete Turns to God to Win Over Black Supporters.”


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This weekend 'think piece' is not about l'affaire Christianity Today: Please read it anyway

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Believe it or not, I had already selected a Dallas Morning News essay by Baylor University historian Thomas about evangelicals and politics as this weekend’s “think piece” before l’affaire Christianity Today rocked the chattering classes that live on Twitter.

The double-decker headline proclaims, “When political pollsters talk about ‘evangelicals,’ they aren’t talking about all of us: The evangelical leaders whom the president cites are actually a small group.”

Kidd has been everywhere in recent weeks, with due cause, because of his new Yale University Press book: “Who Is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis.”

Somebody, somewhere, really needs to buy a truckload this book and distribute copies to every journalist in America (and maybe the world) who plans to cover the 2020 White House race. And not just because of Trump! There are crucial “evangelical” plot lines unfolding linked to African-American evangelicals (ask Mayor Pete Buttigieg) and the growing number of evangelical Latinos (think suburban voters in Florida).

But, wait, is the word “evangelical” a political term? Here is a bite from a recent column I did on Kidd’s work:

Some journalists and pollsters are now operating on the assumption that white evangelicals are the only evangelicals that matter, noted Kidd. … A few have, however, started to realize that many Americans who self-identify as "evangelicals" are not walking the talk. 

That has been common knowledge since the late 1970s, when Gallup researchers began asking hard questions about religious beliefs and the practice of those beliefs in daily life. Gallup cut its estimate that "evangelicals" were 34% of America's population to 18% – a number that would shock many journalists, as well as GOP activists.

"Evangelicals are covered, they are important, when they are a factor in politics — period," said Kidd.


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A Pew Research Center study on the varying lengths of sermons in Christian churches? That'll preach

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When’s the last time you read a news story on sermon lengths?

Before this week, I mean?

If you follow religion news, you know that the Pew Research Center released a study Monday dubbed “The Digital Pulpit” and analyzing sermons in various Christian contexts.

It’s a fascinating topic, actually.

It’s also one that I don’t recall ever making headlines before. Of course, journalists get in trouble by making statements like that. So please feel free to educate me on past coverage if I missed it. That’s what the comment box is for.

From the Pew report, here is a rundown of the approach:

This process produced a database containing the transcribed texts of 49,719 sermons shared online by 6,431 churches and delivered between April 7 and June 1, 2019, a period that included Easter.2 These churches are not representative of all houses of worship or even of all Christian churches in the U.S.; they make up just a small percentage of the estimated 350,000-plus religious congregations nationwide. Compared with U.S. congregations as a whole, the churches with sermons included in the dataset are more likely to be in urban areas and tend to have larger-than-average congregations (see the Methodology for full details).

The median sermon scraped from congregational websites is 37 minutes long. But there are striking differences in the typical length of a sermon in each of the four major Christian traditions analyzed in this report: Catholic, evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant and historically black Protestant.3

Catholic sermons are the shortest, at a median of just 14 minutes, compared with 25 minutes for sermons in mainline Protestant congregations and 39 minutes in evangelical Protestant congregations. Historically black Protestant churches have the longest sermons by far: a median of 54 minutes, more than triple the length of the median Catholic homily posted online during the Easter study period.

Both the Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey and The Associated Press’ David Crary produced interesting news stories on the study. The New York Times’ Elizabeth Dias did a quick item on the study, asking for reader input for a possible future story.


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The Washington Post's long quest to explain Buttigieg's race problem while ignoring religion

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The Washington Post had a front-page story this week on Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s “long quest to bridge racial gap,” as the print headline put it.

The online title: “Inside Pete Buttigieg’s years-long, and often clumsy, quest to understand the black experience.”

You get the idea.

According to the Post article, the surprise 2020 contender’s struggle to connect with African Americans goes back to his college days.

Even though the piece tops 3,000 words — a novel in the world of newspapers — one crucial factor is hardly mentioned. Given that this is GetReligion, it probably won’t take you long to guess what.

If you’ll forgive me for sounding like a broken record, I’ll refer back to a post I wrote earlier this month asking, “Serious question: Is Buttigieg being gay a reason for his low support among black voters in the South?”

In that post, I noted:

The stories get into poverty and other crucial issues, but I’m going to focus on a specific point raised in all three articles: the connection, if any, between Buttigieg’s sexual orientation and his low support among black voters in the Bible Belt.

I keep waiting for a major newspaper reporter (perhaps a Godbeat pro is available?) to explore that question. So far, it hasn’t happened. Or if it has, I missed it (in which case I’d welcome a link).

As for the Post story, it offers some interesting anecdotes on Buttigieg’s life experiences with African Americans, opening with his time as an intern for a black reporter in Chicago:


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NBC News toasts Pete Buttigieg in a hit piece aimed (#Surprise) at the Salvation Army

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Here we go again. No doubt about it, one of the key stories of the day offers a fiery mix of politics, money, sexuality, social justice and, yes, religion.

I’m talking about this NBCNews.com headline: “Pete Buttigieg criticized for volunteering with Salvation Army.”

Stay tuned for upcoming debates featuring Democrats seeking the White House. Will this issue have legs in the news? Maybe. Maybe not. I think it depends on whether candidates on the woke side of the party decide that it is good or bad for their prospects for an openly gay candidate to even hint at a willingness for dialogue and tolerance on religious-liberty issues.

Meanwhile, there is this journalism question: Does anyone at NBC News realize that the Salvation Army is a CHURCH as well as a major provider of help to the poor? Hold that thought. First, here is the overture:

Pete Buttigieg is drawing criticism after pictures of him volunteering for the Salvation Army, which has historically opposed gay rights, recently resurfaced on social media.

In the photos, Buttigieg is seen standing outside Peggs restaurant in South Bend, Indiana, where he is the mayor, for the Red Kettle Ring Off, an annual charity initiative during which public officials compete to raise money for the Salvation Army. While the photos were from 2017, Buttigieg, who has surged to the top of many polls of Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa, has been participating in the event since at least 2015, according to local news reports. He also held an event at the Salvation Army in South Bend last year. 

“I know the photos are two years old, but still, I can't help but wonder if Mayor Pete just looks at what LGBTQ activists have been working on for years and then chooses to spite it,” tweeted Zach Ford, press secretary of the Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy organization.


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Thinking along with Stephen L. Carter: What's at stake in Salvation Army culture wars?

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We live in an age, alas, of predictable reporting and predictable opinions coming from the keyboards of predictable writers.

However, Yale University law professor Stephen L. Carter has, for a couple of decades, been one of the pundits who — in his essays, columns and books — very, very rarely fit into the predictable molds seen in the chattering classes.

This weekend’s think piece is a perfect example of Carter doing that thing that he does, in a Bloomberg column that ran under this double-decker headline: “The Salvation Army's Actions Speak Louder Than Its Theology — Judge volunteers on their actions, not their religious beliefs.”

The hook for the piece is, logically enough, the Thanksgiving weekend and the appearance — from coast to coast — of the familiar Salvation Army red kettles and the bell ringers asking shoppers to make donations to help the poor and needy.

This image of American life and community has, of course, become controversial in recent years for a simple reason — the Salvation Army is a church that clings (hello President Barack Obama) to traditional Christian teachings on the Bible, marriage and sex. Toss in the decision by Chick fil-A leaders to add some waffling to their chicken and you have a mess in the public square.

So what does Carter have to add to this discussion?

… (In) keeping with the season of giving thanks, I want to focus on a different problem: the effects on the volunteer sector of any boycott based on the teachings of a religion. 

Religious groups, regardless of their theology, provide assistance to millions who are unable to help themselves. Without religiously motivated volunteers, we would have scarcely any volunteer sector at all.


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After haunted obit, AP produces solid piece on black church's role in Rep. Elijah Cummings' life

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I wrote last week that The Associated Press’ obituary on Congressman Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland was haunted by religion ghosts.

I pointed to the strong role of faith in Cummings’ life and noted that publications such as the Washington Post and Cummings’ hometown Baltimore Sun reflected it.

I voiced hope that AP would recognize that angle in its later coverage.

As the Rolling Stones put it, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

But hey, sometimes you can.

AP produced a solid piece out of Detroit this week on how the “Black Baptist church shaped Cummings’ commitment”:

DETROIT (AP) — To many black clergy, Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings was more than a formidable orator, civil rights champion and passionate public servant, he was also one of them — in practice, if not profession.

His upbringing, as “a preacher’s kid” gave him a comfort level with ministers and clergy to the point they “almost regarded him as a preacher,” said the Rev. Charles Williams II, senior pastor of Detroit’s Historic King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church.

Cummings, the son of a sharecropper and pastors who died last Thursday at 68, was among a generation of lawmakers, civil rights leaders and social justice advocates who grew up under the influence of the African American church. From Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church to Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, the black church is intertwined in African American history and the struggle for equality. It was the primary institution for organizing demonstrations, providing training and selecting leaders. Part of the role was instilling in those leaders a commitment to speaking for those who could not speak for themselves, giving one’s life in service to the community and standing against injustice.

Black pastors and historians alike remember Cummings, who will be buried in Baltimore Friday, as a man who absorbed the lessons of the church and exemplified its teachings in serving his constituents.


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Post-Beto podcast: Yes, it's time for reporters to ask about 'freedom of worship' (again)

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First, an apology for a long delay (I have been on the road) getting to this important news topic — as in the hand grenade that Beto O’Rourke tossed, whether his fellow Democrats want to talk about it or not, into the 2020 White House race.

I am referring, of course, to his LGBT-forum statement that the U.S. government should strip the tax-exempt status of churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious groups that defend — even inside their own doors — ancient teachings on marriage and sex that do not mesh with modernized doctrines.

If you want to start a firestorm, that was the spark you would need in a nation bitterly divided on the role of religious faith and practice in the real world. Here’s the key quote:

“There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for any institution or organization in America that denies the full human rights and full civil rights of every single one of us,” he said. …

Will journalists keep asking about this or will that job be left to members of Donald Trump’s campaign advertising team? That was the topic we discussed during this week’s Crossroads podcast (click here to tune that in).

To its credit, the team at Religion News Service did a basic follow-up report: “Buttigieg, Warren reject O’Rourke plan to link church tax status, LGBT policy.” Here’s a crucial chunk of that:

“I’m not sure (O’Rourke) understood the implications of what he was saying,” said Buttigieg, an Episcopalian who is married to a man. “That (policy) means going to war not only with churches, but I would think, with mosques and a lot of organizations that may not have the same view of various religious principles that I do.

“So if we want to talk about anti-discrimination law for a school or an organization, absolutely they should not be able to discriminate. But going after the tax exemption of churches, Islamic centers, or other religious facilities in this country, I think that’s just going to deepen the divisions that we’re already experiencing.” …

In a statement to Religion News Service on Sunday, Elizabeth Warren’s campaign also pushed back on O’Rourke’s remark.

So, for journalists who are paying close attention, it would appear that O’Rourke’s bold stance represents the left side of the Democratic Party, while Mayor Pete and Warren are trying to find a centrist stance.

Reporters: What is the content of that center stance?


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