Christianity

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No Trump metaphors here! Putting evangelical faith on cutting-room floor of reality TV

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And now for something completely different, after what seems to have been a hurricane of news about the alleged love affair between "evangelical voters" and Citizen Donald Trump. Let's look at what happens when faith shows up in news coverage of reality TV.

Oh, wait. What is the difference between "reality TV" and the White House race? Might Trump be winning the hearts of many Americans, including a 30-something percent slice of evangelical Protestantism, because he is a superstar level performer in the world of reality TV?

Oh man, now I'm really depressed.

Anyway, USA Today ran a long, long "news" story the other day about a major development in the history of extreme-romance television, which had this headline: "Ben tells TWO women he loves them on 'The Bachelor,' one is his fiancée." (We have the inevitable ABC News coverage as well, at the top of this post.)

So what we have here is a controversial use of the word "love" by one Ben Higgins. The complicating "love" factor is that Higgins is a strong Christian. So how does this affect life in the "fantasy suite," when bachelor stars can choose to spend the night with the women who are, well, pursuing them? USA Today handles this issue by ignoring it.

Instead, the feverish, wink-wink entertainment-news page prose included passages such as:

But before Ben could ask one woman to spend the rest of her life with him, he had to whittle three women down to just two.
Ben also shockingly dropped two L-bombs on Monday night's episode! In 20 seasons, many women have told a Bachelor that they loved him, but rarely have they heard the guy say it back. Again, Ben proved he is no ordinary Bachelor.


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Franklin Graham: Another Trump? Yes and no, RNS profile says

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The Religion News Service takes a skeptical but fair-minded look at Franklin Graham -- his beliefs, his politics, his differences from his famed father, Billy Graham -- in a satisfyingly long profile rolled out for Super Tuesday week.

And no, that’s not a chance coincidence, as Godbeat veteran Cathy Lynn Grossman crafts the story:

While Donald Trump campaigns to "Make America great again," Franklin Graham, facing a nation where conservative believers are losing cultural clout, wants to make it Christian again. Week after week, he stands on winter-wind-swept statehouse steps and exhorts crowds like a biblical Nehemiah, warning people to repent to rebuild Jerusalem — with a gospel twist. He urges them to pray first and then vote for Bible-believing evangelical candidates.
But you can’t vote for him.
"No, no!" he is "absolutely not" running for office, said Graham, who tends to rat-a-tat-tat his points.
Instead, he exhorts his listeners to run themselves, starting with local city and county offices. Imagine, he says at every tour stop, the impact on society if "the majority of the school boards were controlled by evangelical Christians."

This sweeping, 2,200-word article is impressive, though not without a couple of issues. It tells of Franklin's rise in building the Samaritan's Purse charity, from a small medical mission into one of the largest disaster relief and development agencies in the U.S. And it adroitly parallels the presidential primary campaigns with Franklin's $10 million "Decision America" barnstorming tour, which often "takes him into town just ahead of a primary or caucus."


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Knoxville News Sentinel studies evangelicals in Tennessee: Where are the Trump fans?

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Greetings from East Tennessee.

If you know anything about the real East Tennessee, other than movie stereotypes about Hill people without shoes, then you probably know that this is a very distinct land that should have been its own state (as in the lost state of Franklin). This is also a region loaded with liberal arts colleges. Did you know that?

Now, at this moment in American politics, there are two other things you need to know about my part of the world.

First of all, this is one of the most intensely Republican regions that there is, anywhere. If you walk out your front door and throw a rock, you'll probably hit a Republican, a Republican's car or a Republican's house.

Second, religion is a very big deal in our neck of the woods and this fact shows up in research all of the time. This is the kind of place where, when your moving truck is still in the driveway of your new house, lots of people are going to show up and ask where you're planning on going to church.

This brings me, of course, to the battle for "evangelical" voters in the current race for the White House. The other day, The Knoxville News-Sentinel ran a piece on this issue with this headline: "Cruz and Rubio battle for evangelical vote in Tennessee."

Now, did you notice a word, a name actually, missing from that headline?

The first time that I glanced at this piece I thought that it was crazy that Citizen Donald Trump's name was not in that headline.


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Actor Terry Crews repents, again, on porn -- leading to God-haunted news coverage

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So let's walk through the basics on this story, shall we?

What we have here is a video in which a former National Football League player, now a mid-level star in network television (and advertising), talks very openly about his struggles with pornography. He puts the video on Facebook and it goes totally viral.

A key element in this story is the fact that his wife of 25 years -- Rebecca King-Crews -- has stayed by his side during this fight with addiction. She is a former beauty queen and a famous gospel singer, in her own right. The two also made news when they decided, to help build communication and intimacy in their marriage, to take a 90-day "fast" from sex.

In the viral video, Crews talks about the fact that his wife stood with him because he was "repentant" and now, several years after the crisis, he wants to make it his "mission" to help men break this addiction, to take steps to get help rather than just "asking for forgiveness."

The video, targeting his "Facebook family," does not talk about his faith in explicit terms -- but even the most simple Internet search makes it clear that Crews and his wife are active Christians.

So now, with that information in mind, watch the ABC News clip at the top of this post.

What is missing? Do you sense a God-shaped hole in this report?


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Yo, New York Times sports team: Bubba Watson isn't afraid to discuss the 'ghost' in his life

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Anyone who follows professional golf knows that Bubba Watson's face is an open book when it comes to joy, sorrow, stress, elation, the whole works. His tear ducts work just fine.

There are reasons for this, of course, and Watson doesn't mind talking about them. At the top of the list is his family and his faith.

Thus, I kind of expected the "On Golf" feature that ran the other day at The New York Times -- "Bubba Watson, a Candid and Sensitive Champion, Shows His Vulnerable Side" -- to deal with these spiritual issues. I mean, after all, the article was very clear that the goal was to get inside this unique personality and find out why he is the man he is. For example, early on, readers are told:

Watson is good company and better copy. Anyone inclined to give him a wide berth must have a pretty narrow view of what makes for interesting conversation. Unfailingly honest and unshakably human, Watson, 37, held a news conference after his victory at the Northern Trust Open that unfurled like an Erhard Seminars Training session.
It was more than 30 minutes of public therapy, during which Watson talked about how he dreads the day when he’ll tell his two small children they’re adopted, the tightrope he walks being a performer with social anxiety -- and, oh, yeah, how the long par putt he drained on 10 at Riviera Country Club on Sunday was the key to his ninth P.G.A. Tour victory since 2010.

At one point, Watson just came right out and admitted that he tends to win, whenever "my head’s in the right spot.”

Right, and then he struggles when his head is not in the right spot. What's the larger point here?


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Alabama Muslims: Feature on converts doesn't ask many (or any) follow-up questions

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Confession time: I used to write stories almost as wide-eyed as yesterday's feature on Muslim converts in Alabama.

I wrote up Muslim criticisms of Christianity. I retold their feelings about baleful attitudes from other Americans. I did, however, try to look critically at their claims of up to seven million believers in the U.S.

But see, it's two decades later, and mainstream media should have moved on. And I suggest that the Alabama Media Group, with seven regional editions, carries a heavy responsibility for perceptive reporting, not just writing up notes.

This particular article starts as a sensitive, detail-rich feature of the Alabaman Muslims: how they live, how they view presidential candidates, how they think other Americans view them. Al.com even finds a counter-intuitive lede:

Allie Larbi sounds like a Donald Trump supporter.
The Mobile resident supports building a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and scrapping birthright citizenship. Syrian refugees, in her own words, should either be blocked from entering the United States or let in only to be housed in isolated refugee camps.
"I have what I like to turn around and call American views," said Larbi. "This is a great country and it needs to stay that way."

Larbi naturally takes offense at some of Trump's other statements, like "mandatory registration for Muslims, a ban on Muslim travel to the United States, or shooting Muslims with bullets dipped in pig's blood."  We'll get back to her in a moment.


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Dear New York Times editors: Did Harper Lee's faith have anything to do with her art?

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If you know anything about the South, then you know that there are, literally, United Methodist churches everywhere you go in the Bible Belt.

You also know that United Methodist churches down South are usually not as "conservative" as, say, their Southern Baptist counterparts, but they tend to be more conservative -- "evangelical" in some cases -- than UMC flocks in other parts of the country.

Thus, it is certainly interesting that the celebrated, and ultra-private, author Harper Lee was an active member in her local United Methodist congregation down in Alabama. That detail made it into the New York Times story about her funeral, since it's hard to cover a funeral without saying where it was held. However, the story managed to avoid any of the details of that rite of worship or of the implications of her faith for her life's work.

It's interesting to note that the very first pages of "To Kill a Mockingbird," published in 1960, include references both to Methodism and to its founder, the Rev. John Wesley. Hold that thought.

The Times funeral story does include this information about the setting:

MONROEVILLE, Ala. -- Friends and family from around the corner and across the country gathered here on Saturday to pay final respects to Harper Lee, the author whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about racial inequality in the South during the Jim Crow era inspired generations of readers.
A dense fog that had shrouded this small town lifted as mourners filed into the First United Methodist Church, which Ms. Lee attended for many years, for a simple, private service that lasted about an hour.


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Redeeming Gadsden County: New York Times offers a powerful look at an anti-crime program

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You know all those quotes about the need to be "in the present"? Well, they're also true for news media. Many stories these days have a thin, flinty feel because they're drawn from documents, websites and other articles.

Not so with the New York Times in its feature "Gadsden Finds God." The 500 words and 13 photos give us a vivid, sensitive look at how a rural Florida county united to help its worst-off people.

Gadsden County, in the Florida panhandle, is portrayed as troubled with overlapping problems of unemployment, under-education and juvenile crime. This despite the fact that Gadsden is just northwest of Tallahassee, the state capital and home of two leading universities -- Florida State and Florida A&M.

The Times found an unusual alliance combating the threefold plague: a judge, a sheriff and the school superintendent. The judge made sure to hear all county juvenile cases herself, emphasizing her local upbringing as a "daughter of the soil." The superintendent founded an alternative school for low-scoring students, with smaller classes and more support.  And the sheriff, Morris A. Young, hired a fulltime chaplain, Jimmy Salters, for the county jail.

Their combined efforts have contributed to some good numbers since Young became sheriff in 2004, says the newspaper: arrest rates falling by 75 percent and graduation rates rising from 40 to 65 percent. And the Times writer captures some of the intense emotions involved.

You don’t get passages like this while sitting at a computer in New York City:


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Covering the funeral of Antonin Scalia, while ignoring what the Mass was really about

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In the end, here was the question that loomed over the funeral Mass of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: Was this a political event? The answer is easy to find, simply by glancing at the coverage offered by several elite newsrooms.

That answer: Of course this was a political event. What would the alternative be? Actually covering the words and symbols of the event itself, which in this case would have led to news reports containing the doctrines at the heart of the Christian faith?

That would never do. That wouldn't be "real," since Scalia was clearly a powerful player in the world of law and politics -- the "real" world.

You know that this inside-the-Beltway prejudice against religious faith being "real" was on the mind of Father Paul Scalia, the preacher and celebrant. As one of the justice's sons, you know that he was more than aware of his father's convictions about the content of funeral rites and the sermons preached in them (and thus mentioned this subject in his funeral sermon). Click here for Antonin Scalia's thoughts on that.

Readers had a chance to know what the family was thinking because of the opening lines of Father Scalia's sermon, which directly challenged the Beltway mindset. If anyone saw these words reported in a mainstream news story, please let me know. I know that this is long. That's the point:

We are gathered here because of one man. A man known personally to many of us, known only by reputation to even more, a man loved by many, scorned by others, a man known for great controversy, and for great compassion. That man, of course, is Jesus of Nazareth. It is He whom we proclaim. Jesus Christ, son of the Father, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, buried, risen, seated at the right hand of the Father. It is because of Him, because of His life, death and resurrection that we do not mourn as those who have no hope, but in confidence we commend Antonin Scalia to the mercy of God.


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