Churches

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Texas church massacre: What to do with atheism arguments on that Facebook page?

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In the social-media age, journalists have learned -- the hard way -- to be very careful about materials that they find online at Facebook and similar sites.

This leads us directly to Devin Patrick Kelley and the latest question for an answer to the "Why?" component in the old journalism formula, "Who," "What," "When," "Where," "Why" and "How."

Let's ignore, for a moment, the fringe websites that have what appear to be doctored online materials claiming that Kelley is an Antifa supporter who hates ordinary America.

The crucial question for reporters, today, is this: When will they discuss the contents of what appears to have been the gunman's Facebook page? The key word in this controversy is this: "Atheist." If you are reading British papers, you have been told that Kelley was a militant atheist who hated Christians. In American news outlets? Hold that thought.

As of this morning, BuzzFeed is openly stating that there was a fake Facebook page for Kelley. That annotated-list story notes:

A fake Facebook page was being spread on social media hours after the news broke, but it's not real. It was a page, not a profile, and it kept posting after the news of the shooting broke.

I'm not exactly sure what that means. Did someone build a fake page in a matter of minutes with the same photo that police are using as real? Did someone fake the friends of Kelley, connections made before the shooting and those people immediately started leaving new comments about their connections to Kelley?

At the same time, The Los Angeles Times has published coverage that seems to accept that the Facebook page is real -- but doesn't want to discuss the contents. The story states:

A Facebook profile under the gunman's name featured a photo of an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. In recent months, Kelley was adding strangers as friends on Facebook from "within 20 minutes" of the Sutherland Springs area and starting Facebook fights with them, according to area resident Johnathan Castillo.
Castillo accepted Kelley's friend request a couple of months ago, thinking that maybe he or his friends had met Kelley but hadn't remembered him. But Kelley soon proved to be troublesome.
“A lot of people were deleting him” for “starting drama” on Facebook, including sending insulting Facebook messages, Castillo said.


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Giles Fraser turns up the heat under the familiar debates about BBC and religious faith

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This weekend's think piece comes to you with an official endorsement from the 105th occupant of the throne of St. Augustine in Canterbury.

That isn't something that happens every day.

This is the latest chapter in the ongoing debates about (a) the role of religious programming at BBC, England's state-backed utility for news and information and, on a deeper level, (b) the attitude that many elite British journalists often show toward religious faith and the lives of ordinary Brits. Sounds kind of familiar, right?

The headline in The Telegraph proclaimed: " 'Excellent comment': Archbishop of Canterbury praises article accusing BBC of sneering attitude to religion." And here is the overture:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has suggested that the BBC is “sneering” at people with faith after leading presenters criticised Thought for the Day.
Justin Welby said a column calling on the BBC to “stop sneering and keep the faith” was “excellent”.
It comes after John Humphrys, the Radio 4 presenter, claimed that the daily slot on the Today programme was “deeply, deeply boring”. He added that, in an increasingly secular society, it was “inappropriate” for the show to broadcast “nearly three minutes of uninterrupted religion”.
The Most Rev Justin Welby responded last night by endorsing the critical newspaper column  on his Twitter account.

In this case, we can point weekend think-piece readers to the actual essay by Father Giles Fraser in The Guardian that is at the heart of this debate, since it isn't hidden behind a paywall somewhere (which happens a lot when you're dealing with British media). The headline: "Here’s my Thought for the Day: stop sneering and keep the faith, BBC."

It's clear that this fight is not about Thought for the Day, which offers short reflections by well-known Brits and/or people who are in the news


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Journalism tip: How to tell when the Washington Post Style goddesses approve of someone

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Journalism tip: How to tell when the Washington Post Style goddesses approve of someone

Trust me on this: If you did an afternoon talk-radio show in red zip-code land about religion news, during each and every show someone would call in and ask the same question.

Here it is, in its most blunt and simplistic form: Why do so many journalists hate religious people?

I hear it all the time, because many GetReligion readers seem convinced that your GetReligionistas think that journalists hate religion and/or religious people. That's just wrong, friends and neighbors. At the very least, it's simplistic to the point of being utter nonsense.

But since I have been answering that question for a long time, let's talk about that subject -- since that was the issue looming in the background during this week's "Crossroads" podcast (click here to tune that in).

First of all, many journalists are way too apathetic about all things religious to work up a hot batch of hate. You know the old saying, the opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy.

Also, in the newsrooms in which I worked, there were lots of believers of various kinds. I'm including the spiritual-but-not-religious folks, the Christmas-and-Easter people and people who grew up in one tradition (think Catholicism) and then veered over into another (think liberal Protestantism, especially the Episcopal Church). Then you had people who were ex-this or formerly-that, but now they were just "Go to church/temple with the parents when at home" cultural believers. Do some of them "hate" religion? Maybe. But that's rare.

Now, here is what is common. There are journalists who think that there are GOOD religious people and BAD religious people. The question is whether you can tell who is who when you are reading coverage produced by some of these reporters and editors.

Like what? Let's take a brief look at that Rod "The Benedict Option" Dreher profile that the Style section of The Washington Post ran the other day. Click here for my post on that.

Now, start with the headline: "Rod Dreher is the combative, oversharing blogger who speaks for today’s beleaguered Christians."

Now, as I noted in the podcast, you could talk about that headline for an hour.


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Will diverse membership save Maryland's Lutherans? Baltimore Sun thinks so, with little backup

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It's one of those old truisms that apparently remains true, a declaration by the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:  “We must face the sad fact that at the 11 o’ clock hour on Sunday morning when we stand to sing, we stand in the most segregated hour in America.”

Although many congregations retain a majority from one ethnic group or another, there have been plenty of movements to bridge the gap over the past 50 years or so. And while much, if not most, of the "mainline" Protestant denominations remain dominated by what one wag called "persons of pallor," The Baltimore Sun informs us that local congregations in two branches of American Lutheranism have been revitalized by the influx of non-white members.

Of course, the Sun was not content to position this as just a church news story -- it had to be tied into the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, triggered by one Martin Luther, after whom King was named.

Creating this tenuous link, of which more in a moment, is but one of the journalism problems afoot here. But start with the headline, "500 years after Luther, Lutherans embrace growing diversity" and this lead-in to the story:

When the Rev. Martin Schultheis gazed out over the pews at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Catonsville on a Sunday 10 years ago, he saw about 200 faces. More than 95 percent, he estimates, were white.
Attendance has dropped since then -- these days, about 150 people attend Sunday services. But those who do go have a different look.
About one-fourth of the worshippers in the congregation are people of color -- a development that stands out in a branch of Christianity that has historically been slow to change.

We then are asked to see this as linked to five centuries of Lutheranism:


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Hey reporters: Seeking poignant Astros follow-up stories? Hang around for Sunday in Houston

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Game seven of the World Series was played in Los Angeles.

But the real story was in Houston.

After a flood of biblical proportions, people in Houston finally got to celebrate -- as in big time, Texas-sized. This emotional explosion was, of course, linked to suffering and pain as much as it was to joy about a historic win.

Thus, I would like to make a suggestion to reporters who are looking for follow-up story angles with these Houston Astros.

The national media will cover the giant civic celebration and parade on Friday, in downtown. I expect spectacular images contrasting what the parade route looked like during the Hurricane Harvey flood with the same streets during the celebration. Look for the Astros to organize some kind of charity effort that takes the celebration into Houston's worst-hit neighborhoods. Cover all of that, please.

But then it would be wise to hang around for Sunday in the city that Christianity Today has called the "megachurch capital of America." Trust me, stuff will be happening.

Yes, few of these church celebrations will feature splashes of beer and champagne, but there will be lots of hooks linked to efforts by real Houstonians trying to get on with their lives.

In particular, according to a Christianity Today feature, reporters might want to seek out the Rev. Juan Jesus Alaniz, the Astros chaplain who works with the team's many Spanish-speaking players. He is the pastor of Houston’s First Baptist Church’s Spanish campus.

CT noted that his ministry, with the team, includes "Venezuelans José Altuve and Marwin González; Puerto Ricans Carlos Correa, Carlos Beltrán, and Juan Centeno; Cuban Yuli Gurriel; and Dominican Francisco Liriano." Also note that Alaniz’s wife, Josie Ban-Alaniz, leads a ministry focusing on the players’ wives and girlfriends. The team's English-speaking chaplain is Kevin Edelbrock, of the parachurch group called Young Life. I'll add this question: Is there no local priest whose job includes ministry to Catholics on the team?

Will the players show up for church festivities? Who knows, but some of the most outspoken BELIEVERS on the team are also LEADERS on the team. Like who?


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Buzzfeed takes the time to dig into Bethel Church and gets this complex story right

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One of the most intriguing churches in the country is Bethel Church in northern California. If there is a Jesus movement among today’s millennials, Bethel is its epicenter.

Despite the thousands of visitors this place receives from around the world, its influence has gone almost unnoticed by the media, which tends to be clueless about current trends among Pentecostals and charismatics.

Fortunately, reporters are beginning to discover Bethel via a book by two scholars affiliated with the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. The authors of "The Rise of Network Christianity" have been planting guest editorials in several places warning readers of the evils of this movement, plus why people need to educate themselves about it -- and read their book, of course.

There’s also been articles about the movement associated with Bethel, such Bob Smietana’s recent piece in Christianity Today and a piece yours truly wrote for Religion News Service last year. 

But there hasn’t been a whole lot else. It’s a tough movement to pin down, much less write about. The latest effort at explaining Bethel -- in the form of a first-person feature story -- comes from Buzzfeed. It begins:

It’s the first day of Prophecy Week at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Or, as students here like to call the place, Christian Hogwarts.
The auditorium of the civic center in Redding, California, where first-year students have class, is so full of eager, neatly dressed young people that it’s initially impossible to find a seat. The roomful of some 1,200 students hums with expectant energy…

The piece goes on to describe Bethel Church and Kris Vallotton, one of its main preachers.

The Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry is at the forefront of a burgeoning -- and decidedly youthful -- evangelical Christian revival. Some have called its movement the fastest-growing religious group in America -- a loose network of churches, led by so-called apostles, who see supernatural gifts like prophecy and faith healing as the key to global conversion. While other religious movements struggle to retain members and draw in young people, Bethel attracts millennials in droves.


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Cutting shrinking pies: The Baltimore Sun bravely looks into liberal pews seeking signs of life

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How long have journalists been writing stories about the decline of America's liberal mainline churches, both in terms of people in the pews and cultural clout?

I've been studying religion-news coverage since the late 1970s and I cannot remember a time when this was not "a story." For many experts, the key moment was the 1972 release of the book "Why Conservative Churches Are Growing" by Dean M. Kelley of the National Council of Churches.

You could argue, as I have many times on this blog, that the decline of the oldline left is a story that deserved even more press coverage than it has received. Why? Because the decline of the old mainline world helped create a hole in American public life that made room for the rise of the Religious Right.

Now we have reached the point, as "Crossroads" host Todd Wilken and I discussed in last week's podcast, where the story has become much more complex. While the demographic death dive has continued for liberal religious institutions (as opposed to spiritual-but-not-religious life online and elsewhere), we are now seeking slow decline in parts of conservative religious groups, as well.

What's going on? To be blunt, religious groups are growing or holding their own when they inspire believers to (a) have multiple children, (b) make converts and (c) live out demanding forms of faith that last into future generations. Yes, doctrine matters. So does basic math.

With this in mind, consider the brave attempt that The Baltimore Sun made the other day to describe what is happening in churches in that true-blue progressive city. Here is the overture and, as you read it, get ready for an interesting and, apparently, unintentional twist in the plot:

For a decade and more, Govans Presbyterian Church and Brown Memorial Woodbrook Presbyterian Church have labored in the manner of many mainline Protestant congregations: Working ever harder to provide spiritual resources for dwindling number of congregants.


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Set the WABAC machine for when? Time for another trip into United Methodist polity!

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As veteran journalists know, sometimes there are stories that seem really, really big when you read the press releases, but they turn out to be business as usual when you dig into the details.

That appears to be what happened with the Cincinnati Enquirer story (part of the USA Today network) offering on update on one of the many legal battles unfolding in the United Methodist Church about the status of LGBTQ ministers. The headline: "Gay Methodist minister David Meredith, church claim victory."

It's a very familiar story, part of a familiar ecclesiastical puzzle that has been in place since (wait for it) 1980. How many years ago was that? Let's put it this way: I wasn't even working full-time on the religion beat at that point.

We will return to the WABAC machine angle of this story in a moment. First, let's look at the story that the Enquirer thought it had, as opposed to what appears to have happened. The key question: Is this a local story, a regional story or a national/global story? Here is the public-relations release overture:

Claiming victory for LGBTQ members of the United Methodist Church nationwide, officials told The Enquirer on Wednesday that two of three charges against a Clifton congregation's openly gay pastor, David Meredith, were not certified
The Rev. Meredith appeared Sunday before the Methodist Committee on Investigation in Columbus, Ohio. Several complaints were filed against Meredith after his May 2016 marriage to his significant other of 29 years. Meredith and Jim Schlachter were married in a Methodist church by a Methodist minister.
Meredith was not charged with being a self-avowed practicing homosexual or with immorality.
Clifton United Methodist Church, whose membership overwhelmingly supports its pastor, said the case may be the first time in denominational history that a charge relating to homosexuality reached the investigative body and was dismissed. A charge of disobedience was certified. 

OK, readers, here is my question. Based on what you just read, at what level of United Methodist polity was this decision made?


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Loved the headline, not a fan of the story: Associated Press reports on churches-turned-breweries

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The Associated Press has a 675-word trend story on closed churches finding second lives as breweries.

I loved the headline, which includes a punny reference to "Holy spirits."

And the story itself starts out as if it's going to be interesting and informative. To some extent, I guess the piece turns out that way.

But here's what's frustrating to me: The AP report hopscotches all over the place, fails to reflect the voice of a highly relevant source and generally tries to do way too much in too little space. There's no way to know if this is a reporting problem or one created at the editing stage. We do know a memo was issued a few years ago limiting most AP stories to 300 to 500 words.

The lede:

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) — Ira Gerhart finally found a place last year to fulfill his yearslong dream of opening a brewery: a 1923 Presbyterian church. It was cheap, charming and just blocks from downtown Youngstown.
But soon after Gerhart announced his plans, residents and a minister at a Baptist church a block away complained about alcohol being served in the former house of worship.
“I get it, you know, just the idea of putting a bar in God’s house,” Gerhart said. “If we didn’t choose to do this, most likely, it’d fall down or get torn down. I told them we’re not going to be a rowdy college bar.”

Based on those first three paragraphs, is there any source from whom we might expect to hear as the story keeps going? The Baptist minister perhaps?

That was my thinking, but he or she never appears.

Instead, we get this later on:

Gerhart’s is scheduled to open this month after winning over skeptics like the Baptist minister and obtaining a liquor license.

OK, I suppose we have no choose but to take your word for it.


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