Godbeat

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Campaign for thorough reform of Muslim law deserves mainstream coverage -- now

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Campaign for thorough reform of Muslim law deserves mainstream coverage -- now

The world’s largest organization of Muslims is campaigning for thorough worldwide reform of how to understand the faith’s religious law (Sharia) and applied jurisprudence (Fiqh).

Such an ambitious goal may seem unlikely and, to date, western media have given the effort minimal coverage. It’s time for that trend to change.

Far from some esoteric intellectual discourse, such a philosophical change could potentially affect the future of the world’s second-largest faith regarding democracy, blasphemy laws, human rights, education, the role of women, treatment of other religions, warfare, extremism, terrorism and crime and punishment.

The organization in question is Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, meaning Revival of Islamic Scholars) in Indonesia, the nation with the largest Muslim population. Consider these numbers from James M. Dorsey, a freelance writer and adjunct senior fellow in international studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University: NU encompasses an estimated 90 million lay followers, tens of thousands of religious scholars, 44 universities and 18,000 lower schools.

NU upholds Sunni orthodoxy, but with a more tolerant tone than is customary in the Mideast. Its legal reform program was prominent during the massive February celebration of its 100th anniversary, analyzed in Dorsey’s March 31 Substack column. His article is a good starting point for journalists, but its opinionated viewpoint warrants careful follow-up interviewing. Also note this 2021 NU backgrounder by political scientist Ahmet T. Kuru (akuru@sdsu.edu).

Moderate Muslim thinkers have long favored some sort of move away from rigid legal traditionalism. Dorsey depicts a two-sided struggle among them, pitting allies of NU’s fully democratic and tolerant outlook against religious leaders beholden to rulers in the Mideast, as in Saudi Arabia, where certain social liberation is being allowed without fundamentally rethinking Islamic law or politics.


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Welcome to $$$$$$$ Easter: Lots of candy, booze and Jesus-free fun for half of America

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Welcome to $$$$$$$ Easter: Lots of candy, booze and Jesus-free fun for half of America

Easter is, without a doubt, the most important holy day in Christianity.

Christianity remains the largest faith group in the world.

There’s no way around the fact that Easter is the celebration of the doctrinal conviction that unites traditional Christians around the world: “Christ is risen!”

What a downer. This is a problem for people who decorate shopping malls and make the obligatory A1 holiday photo assignments for newspapers. There is more to this dilemma (ask Google) than struggling to photograph religious rites that take place at midnight or sunrise.

But people love fun, food, candy, parties, greeting cards, etc. Businesses love selling lots of stuff. And, in case you have not heard, a growing number of people in the mushy, old-mainstream middle of religious life — in America and elsewhere in the Western World — are cutting their ties to organized faith (“Nones” and others) and moving into a business, political and cultural coalition with atheists and agnostics.

This is a big $$$$$$$ deal.

This leads to this totally valid — even if rather depressing, for believers — headline at Religion New Service: “Adult egg hunts and kiddie pools full of gifts: Is Easter the new Christmas?”

So I want to ask a journalism question on this Easter Monday morning (for Western Christians, since this Holy Week for Orthodox Christians and other Eastern rites): What was the Easter art featured in your local media this year? Here in East Tennessee, the major daily featured GOP racism and Earth Day.

But back to that RNS story. Why call it “totally valid”?

For a simple reason: It’s describing Easter in a growing segment of the American cultural marketplace. The question is how journalists can feature this reality — while also noting the rites and traditions of, well, the largest faith group in the world.


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Weeks before the attack, Covenant's pastor preached on death, grief and the tears of Jesus

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Weeks before the attack, Covenant's pastor preached on death, grief and the tears of Jesus

The Bible's shortest verse -- "Jesus wept" -- is also one of its most important.

That was the message delivered by the Rev. Chad Scruggs in a March 5 sermon -- "Death's Conqueror" -- as the faithful at Nashville's Covenant Presbyterian Church continued their Lenten journey toward Holy Week and Easter's promise of new life after death.

"How do we face death in our world," he asked, "especially untimely deaths, without the pain and confusion of death leading us to despair?"

That was three weeks before a gunman crashed through the glass doors of his church's Covenant School and killed three staff members and three 9-year-old students -- including the pastor's daughter, Hallie Scruggs. Police fatally shot the attacker, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, a former Covenant student who had taken the name "Aiden" and male pronouns online. 

Police confirmed that Covenant had been targeted. But Nashville officials and the FBI have declined to release a "manifesto" referenced in Hale's final social-media warning: "One day this will make more sense. I've left more than enough evidence behind."

The families of those killed have mourned in private, even as solemn Holy Week rites flowed toward Easter (April 9) -- surrounded by a whirlwind of familiar arguments about gun control and a mental-health crisis that has shattered so many lives.

In his sermon before the attack, Scruggs had already plunged into deeper, ancient, mysteries -- stressing that believers can trust that God understands the grief, anger and confusion caused by violence and death.

When meeting the grieving family of his friend Lazarus, Jesus responded with anger, as well as compassion. Thus, the importance of the Gospel of John's blunt words: "Jesus wept."


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God's Word? Concerning modern scholarship and those bloodthirsty Bible passages

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God's Word? Concerning modern scholarship and those bloodthirsty Bible passages

QUESTION:

How do scholars explain bloodthirsty Bible passages?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Skeptics seeking to disparage the Bible and, with it, Judaism and Christianity, cite certain passages in the Bible that depict all-out warfare as mandated by God. Consider Israel’s “conquest” of Canaan under Joshua, and a notably bloodthirsty passage like Deuteronomy 20:16-17, which says “you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them … as the LORD your God has commanded.”

Readers can see how that issue might, to say the least, be relevant to debates about some events in recent decades.

There’s been intriguing recent discussions of this complex issue. Even conservative evangelicals, who defend the Bible’s historical accuracy, are reinterpreting such passages, as we’ll see.

“Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary,” issued by Judaism’s Conservative branch, freely admits a modern reader “recoils” from a demand to wipe out a population group. It says the context is the Canaanites’ “abhorrent” deeds. Verse 18 goes on to explain combat is necessary so “they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods.”

Scholarly commentaries think ritual sacrifice of children was a major part of this. The context of such verses is said to be “the Torah’s abiding fear that these pagan nations will lead Israel astray.”

Here’s another part of the context. Risking any military advantage from surprise, Joshua informed Canaanites in advance about the invasion plan so they could flee from bloodshed, and he first offered a peace settlement before resorting to combat. (That was relatively humane for the cruel culture 3,000 years ago.) The same point is underscored by a classic source in Orthodox Judaism, the “Pentateuch & Haftorahs” compiled by Britain’s longtime chief rabbi, J.H. Hertz.

This Orthodox Jewish commentary also observes that the Israelites’ need for a homeland is part of all human history, including for most western nations.


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Attention mass-media leaders: What should Americans know about each others' faiths?

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Attention mass-media leaders: What should Americans know about each others' faiths?

America’s three biggest hamburger chains have 27,000 local outlets.

The three biggest of America’s 2,800 or so religious denominations alone have 97,000 local congregations.

Which is to simply remind readers that faiths retain powerful impact in society despite the increase of people with no religious affiliation and other secular inroads.

Relations among major faiths feel especially pertinent in 2023, since Islam’s holy month of Ramadan with concluding Eid festival overlaps Jewish Passover and the two Easter dates observed by Christians.

Zeenat Rahman, executive director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, thinks American religion is “increasingly polarizing” and yet at the same time is “essential to rebuilding a strong civil society,” which means Americans “need a basic understanding of the faith of others.”

So, in practice what do people know about other major world religions? What should they know?

Those are important questions for regional or national journalists to explore via interviewing, plus polling if your medium has the money. Or consider commissioning brief articles where religious leaders sum up the basics they think others should know about their faiths and — especially helpful — what’s often misunderstood.

How about books? Stephen Wylen accepted this sort of challenge with his self-published “You Should Know This: A Rabbi Explains Christianity to Jews.” For years now, Terry Mattingly has also been recommending this classic by religion-beat veteran Mark Pinsky: “A Jew among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.”

Some standard book publisher should put together a non-sectarian and up-to-date anthology in which experts would depict their own religions for outsiders, including the main internal branches and variants.

Political scientist (and GetReligion contributor) Ryan Burge recently took up these matters, in a Religion News Service analysis, by re-examining 2019 interfaith data from the ubiquitous Pew Research Center.


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Tremors in a 'fundamentalist' empire: What kind of news story is unfolding at Bob Jones U?

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Tremors in a 'fundamentalist' empire: What kind of news story is unfolding at Bob Jones U?

Attention religion-beat journalists: What we have here is a chance to use the hot-button word “fundamentalist” in way that is consistent with years of guidance from the Associated Press Stylebook.

Honest. Give it a try.

I am referring to news coverage of a rather mysterious power struggle at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. At this point, there has been next to zero national coverage of this inside-baseball conflict, perhaps because it’s a fight between conservative Christians that does not appear to involve the words “Donald Trump.”

But there has been quite a bit of coverage at the regional level and in “Christian market” news, because this is a powerful and symbolic institution in the Bible Belt. You can see some major-league buzz words in the overture of the main story at The State: “SC Christian university president resigns, cites problems with governing board.” This is long, but essential:

The president of Bob Jones University has resigned amid long-simmering disagreements with the chairman of the board and grandson of the university’s founder over the discretion of the fundamentalist Christian school in Greenville.

Steve Pettit was named president in 2014, the first non-Jones family member to hold the job since the school was founded by Bob Jones Sr. in 1927. He was succeeded by Bob Jones Jr., Bob Jones III and then his great-grandson, Stephen Jones. Bob Jones IV elected not to work at the school.

In a four-page letter to the board, Pettit said board chair John Lewis had created disunity on the board, held a meeting without telling staff and was not taking seriously a comment made by a board member that “female students’ clothing and female student athlete uniforms accentuate their ‘boobs and butts.’”

Pettit said he had heard the board member took photos of women without their permission. He said he did not know if the information was true, but by law should have been turned over to the Title IX coordinator for investigation.

Ah, a Title IX fight. For those who have followed Bob Jones trends, that would lead straight into the crucial issue of whether this school will play ball with government agencies or outside educational authorities of any kind.

A big word here is “separatism,” along with “ultra-separatism” (click here for background). The key is the degree to which true “fundamentalist” would work with mere evangelicals who have associated, in any way, with liberal and modern trends in Christian faith.


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Plug-In: The Covenant School shootings -- media coverage focused on guns and victims

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Plug-In: The Covenant School shootings -- media coverage focused on guns and victims

Good morning, Weekend Plug-in readers. I wrote Plug-in a day early because headed to Arlington, Texas, for Opening Day, and I’ll be tied up with that important national holiday.

My beloved Texas Rangers open the 2023 season against the Philadelphia Phillies this afternoon. Surely this will be my team’s best season ever!

But first, we focus on the week’s big, tragic and violent news from Covenant Presbyterian Church and its school in Nashville, Tennessee, a city close to my heart.

What To Know: The Big Story

Three children, three adults slain: Once again, a mass shooting at a school shocked all of us and surprised none of us.

At a Wednesday night vigil in Nashville, “Each speaker echoed the names of those who did not return home earlier this week.”

The children who died were Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, all 9 years old. The adults who died were Mike Hill, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Cynthia Peak, 61.

The victims were people of strong faith with the children characterized as “feisty” and a “shining light,” according to an Associated Press team, including Nashville-based religion news editor Holly Meyer.

Peaceful day shattered: Monday started with a normal chapel assembly at The Covenant School, a Presbyterian elementary, Christianity Today’s Daniel Silliman and Kate Shellnutt report.

Within a few hours, though, the school, which is all about “celebrating” children, became a killing scene, as Reuters’ Sharon Bernstein describes it.

Traumatized survivors were taken to a nearby Baptist church that served as a reunification site for children and parents, as The Tennessean’s Molly Davis explains.

For ongoing coverage, follow religion reporter, Liam Adams.

Making sense of it: In the face of tragedy, petitioning God is an act of faith, New York Times columnist David French writes.


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New question in the worship wars: Why have many worshippers stopped singing in church?

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New question in the worship wars: Why have many worshippers stopped singing in church?

Anyone who has visited a shopping mall understands the Big Idea behind a food court.

"If you want Mexican food, you go here. … If you want pizza, you go over there," said Kenny Lamm, the worship ministry strategist for the Southern Baptist state convention in North Carolina. "Then we sit together and eat whatever we want. …

“The question is whether a food-court approach works if you are seeking unity while leading worship in a church."

In the latest wrinkle in what researchers have long called the "worship wars," some church leaders are asking a blunt question about the decision to trade traditional hymnals for contemporary Christian music. That question: Has the typical Sunday service become a semi-professional concert instead of a communal worship experience for all believers?

As part of his work, Lamm hears from many pastors, musicians and church members. One recent letter -- which he posted while keeping the writer anonymous -- combined many hot-button issues in this debate.

After four weeks of visiting a church, the writer noted that he was constantly distracted during worship by "haze machines," "programmable lights that blind the audience," concert-level darkness in the auditorium, as well as musicians wearing "ball caps," skinny jeans, "Chuck Taylor" tennis shoes and other "stage" apparel.

Many of the new songs seemed to confuse the congregation.

"The melody is unmemorable. Very few in the audience seem to know the songs either; indeed as we looked around during one of the songs, we did not see one person singing -- not one," noted this visitor. "Some of the songs are so high I cannot sing them. I wish the leaders would consider the average singer! … Why does just about every praise and worship song go up an octave and double in volume halfway through, then die back down at the end?"


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Thinking about AI and faith: Can a computer 'get' what it means to be truly human?

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Thinking about AI and faith: Can a computer 'get' what it means to be truly human?

Every now and then, I get an email from Ira Rifkin, who for many years wrote “Global Wire” posts for GetReligion about journalism issues in international events and trends. He signed off about half a year ago with an edgy post called, “Ciao, GetReligion: Thanks, all, for my tenure. Critic that I am, though, here are some final thoughts.”

With his unique mix of Jewish and Buddhist disciplines, Rifkin was also a keen observer of new ideas and concepts linked to what mass media tends to call “spirituality,” as opposed to more conventional forms of religious faith.

Several weeks ago, he send me a URL for a Los Angeles Times feature that ran with this headline: “Can religion save us from artificial intelligence?”

I immediately put it into my “think piece” file, but held on to it for a while to put some cushion between it and my podcast/post with this title: “When is preaching a 'news' story? Ah, the temptation of ChatGPT sermons.” Here is a byte of that:

Right now, one of the hot topics in the public square is the rise of artificial intelligence and, to be specific, the ChatGPT website. Thus, this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on several “newsy” angles of the recent Associated Press story that ran with the headline, “Pastors’ view: Sermons written by ChatGPT will have no soul.” …

During the podcast, I riffed on the whole issue that different kinds of technology can shape the content of communications in different ways. If ChatGPT sermons have a sense of “soul,” it would be a “soul” that is defined by the creator of the software and the tech platform.

The Los Angeles Times story that Rifkin sent me opens with an AI sermon hook — but the issue at the heart of the story is much, much bigger than that.

Nevertheless, it helps to start this “think piece” recommendation with that feature’s overture:

Sometimes Rabbi Joshua Franklin knows exactly what he wants to talk about in his weekly Shabbat sermons — other times, not so much. It was on one of those not-so-much days on a cold afternoon in late December that the spiritual leader of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons decided to turn to artificial intelligence.


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