Health

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Podcast: Searing Free Press commentary on autism haunted by true religion ghosts

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Podcast: Searing Free Press commentary on autism haunted by true religion ghosts

If you look up the term “mash-up” in an online dictionary, you will find lots of definitions — including various mass-media riffs. For example: “a movie or video having characters or situations from other sources.” Or maybe: “a Web service or application that integrates data and functionalities from various online sources.”

This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) is a kind of GetReligion mash-up.

Let me explain. As a rule, this website focuses on critiques — positive, negative and in between — of mainstream coverage of religion news or other hard-news stories that are “haunted” by religion “ghosts” that journalists either missed, ignored or messed up.

However, we also run various kinds of “think pieces” drawn from the work of political scientist Ryan Burge and a variety of other news sources that address trends that affect news coverage. And religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling writes Memos in which he looks ahead at newsy religion events and trends.

This week’s podcast focused on a painful, blunt, first-person essay that ran at the important news and commentary website known as The Free Press. It was written by a non-journalist — National Council on Severe Autism President Jill Escher — and the double-decker headline proclaimed:

The Autism Surge: Lies, Conspiracies, and My Own Kids

Rates of autism are skyrocketing. The question isn’t just why — but what we need to do about it right now, and what’s holding us back.

This commentary wasn’t “news,” but it contained waves of information that news-consumers would want to see. This wasn’t a feature that directly addressed religious issues or themes, but I was struck by how many questions it raised that are already affecting religious believers and institutions.

The bottom line: America’s mental-health crisis will inevitably crash into religious congregations, schools, medical institutions, etc. The decisions that these religious groups make, or refuse to make, will create important news stories for religion-beat journalists.

The podcast, and this post, are a kind of tmatt Memo about the stories that are ahead. I wrote this, in part, because I have already seen the importance of this topic in the lives of many people that I know and love in religious congregations that I know well.


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Want a tough, newsy 'theodicy' question? 'If God is good, why do animals suffer?'

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Want a tough, newsy 'theodicy' question? 'If God is good, why do animals suffer?'

QUESTION:

If God is good, why do animals suffer?”

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

This question was the sub-headline for a recent cover story in Christianity Today magazine (“Why Does Creation Groan?”) by Calvin University theologian John R. Schneider. It’s a twist  on the age-old problem defined as follows by the eminent Christian intellectual C.S. Lewis in his best-selling classic “The Problem of Pain”:

“If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.”

Early in the COVID-19 scourge, The Religion Guy attempted to scan the current discussions in a field known technically as “theodicy” — as here. The issue is as ancient as the Bible’s poetic masterpiece from thousands of years ago, the Book of Job, which provides no snappy formulas to answer these mysteries.

Regarding humanity and its problems, theologians have blamed evils on humans’ free will that necessarily allows dire events to occur, and/or on Satan and demonic minions. However, the scale and depth of, for instance, the mass extermination of the Nazi Holocaust  raised the persistent but unanswerable question in both Jewish and Christian circles of why God did not miraculously intervene.

Writing just prior to that and other World War II atrocities, and his own battle wounds from World War I, Lewis advised us to be careful in thinking about God as “all-powerful” because He obviously cannot do things that by their nature are impossible to do. Along similar lines, leading contemporary philosopher Alvin Plantinga at the University of Notre Dame proposed that we cannot logically conceive of any possible universe where the Creator allows human free will to operate and at the same time our existence lacks all sin and consequently all suffering.


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American College of Pediatricians: How many times must we hear about its religious ties?

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American College of Pediatricians: How many times must we hear about its religious ties?

It started as a data breach at a faith-friendly medical group that opposes transgender therapies and same-sex parenting.

It morphed into a quasi-investigative piece co-written by three Washington Post reporters and one contributor –- none of them a religion specialist –- about “conservative doctors” who have influenced public discussion about abortion and transgender individuals.

When I first saw this, I wondered what issue was so important that it required a triple byline, especially since the story was originally broken by other outlets weeks before. The following piece — “Documents show how conservative doctors influenced abortion, trans rights” — ran last week in the Post:

A small group of conservative doctors has sought to shape the nation’s most contentious policies on abortion and transgender rights by promoting views rejected by the medical establishment as scientific fact, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post that describe the group’s internal strategies.

Actually, the entire “medical establishment” doesn’t reject these views. This is another example of erasing an important debate.

The records show that after long struggling to attract members, the American College of Pediatricians gained outsize political influence in recent years, primarily by using conservative media as a megaphone in its quest to position the group as a reputable source of information.

The organization has successfully lobbied since 2021 for laws in more than a half-dozen states that ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths, with its representatives testifying before state legislatures against the guidelines recommended by mainstream medical groups, according to its records. It gained further national prominence this year as one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit to limit access to mifepristone, a key abortion drug.

That put it in the media crosshairs, for sure.

Despite efforts to invoke the credibility of the medical profession, the American College of Pediatricians is viewed with skepticism by the medical establishment. For years, the group has presented statistics and talking points to state legislators, public school officials and the American public as settled science while internal documents emphasize how religion and morality influence its positions.


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Evolving journalism doctrines: Associated Press adds clarity on the 'T' in LGBTQ+

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Evolving journalism doctrines: Associated Press adds clarity on the 'T' in LGBTQ+

The 70-year-old Associated Press Stylebook is continually updated and thus provides a barometer of societal trends as it sets widely-observed standards for media usage.

On June 2, the AP editorial team issued a updated “Transgender Coverage Topical Guide” that’s very timely, and not just because June is Pride Month. The AP style bible has been evolving on LGBTQ issues in recent years and this latest update is yet another step to embrace changes linked to the Sexual Revolution.

Just last week, CNN reported that 19 state legislatures have enacted new bills with various limits on “gender-affirming” treatments for transitions that apply puberty blockers, hormone replacement or surgery to alter genital organs.

Most of these laws apply only to minors. They’re usually promoted by Republicans and opposed by Democrats. Other familiar disputes involve sports participation, as well as privacy issues in locker rooms, bathrooms or shelters for girls and women.

Also last week, the Public Religion Research Institute released a poll whose big sample of 5,046 enabled breakdowns into 11 religious categories. Majorities in nine of the 11 believed “there are only two genders,” with only minority support among Jews and the religiously unaffiliated.

Comparison with a 2021 PRRI poll shows U.S. opinion is getting more conservative on these matters.

Among all respondents, 59% said “only two” in 2021 but 65% currently. Democrats rose from 38% to 44%. Hispanic Catholics jumped from 48% to 66% and white Catholics from 62% to 69%. (In March, the U.S. bishops’ doctrine committee stated that Catholic health institutions “must not” perform surgical or chemical change of a body’s “sexual characteristics,” whatever a patient’s age.)

Subscribers to the updated online “Stylebook” have much to ponder.


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Flashback: That popular question, 'Who was the most remarkable person you've covered?'

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Flashback: That popular question, 'Who was the most remarkable person you've covered?'

Mother Teresa was having a bad press conference.

Journalists gathered for her 1989 Denver visit seemed determined to ask a litany of questions about her views on every imaginable issue in world affairs and American politics. The soft-spoken, yet often stern, nun seemed confused and kept stressing that her Missionary Sisters of Charity would always focus on the needs of the needy and the sick, including those suffering from AIDS.

One television reporter even asked if the day's main ecumenical event — a "Celebrate Life with Mother Teresa" prayer rally — would include a Mass. Once again, the tiny sister from Calcutta was confused. How could there be a Catholic Mass if the rally included Lutherans, Baptists, Episcopalians, Pentecostal believers and clergy from other churches?

"We will pray together," she said. "That is what we can do."

I raised my hand and asked another question that I knew she might not want to answer. I had heard that she had privately toured Northeast Denver, an impoverished area hit hard by gangs. Might she open a mission there?

Mother Teresa smiled, but gently deflected the question, noting that Denver had recently been added at the end of a long list of dioceses worldwide making just such a request.

What happened next was a singular moment in my journalism career, one that awkwardly blurred the lines between the personal and the professional.

Why bring this up right now?


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Thinking about C.S. Lewis and today's emerging prophets of transhumanism

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Thinking about C.S. Lewis and today's emerging prophets of transhumanism

Are there any C.S. Lewis enthusiasts in the house?

How about people who, well, detest the famous Oxford don and Christian apologist?

It is my hope that this think piece (pounded out during a two-week road trip) will appeal to both.

Right now, I am about to finish reading — for the 10th time, or something like that — the Lewis “Science fiction trilogy.” It ends with “That Hideous Strength,” a head-spinning mix of science fiction, Arthurian legend and a blistering satire of stuffy, insular, corrupt, boring elites in British higher education (in other words, the world in which Lewis lived until his death in 1963). It’s the narrative fiction take on his prophetic “The Abolition of Man.”

I do not want to give away the plot, of course. But the big idea is that elite there’s that word again) scientific materialists, in a quest for their own brand of immortality and desire to modify the human person, turn to the occult and, well, the Powers of Darkness. You may never hear the term “head,” when used to describe the leader of a school or movement, again without thinking of this book.

So what would Lewis think of this haunting feature from Suzy Weiss at The Free Press? Here’s the double-decker headline:

The Tech Messiahs Who Want to Deliver Us from Death

They see death as a software error — and they have a plan for fixing it. But should they?

The overture:

Kai Micah Mills is going to freeze his parents. 

“They’re both going to be cryopreserved, regardless of their wishes,” Mills told me. 


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An important question pastors tend to avoid: 'Is premarital sex always sinful?'

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An important question pastors tend to avoid: 'Is premarital sex always sinful?'

QUESTION:

“Is premarital sex always sinful?”

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The question above was the headline with an April article by Talley Cross, a “gender and sexuality” blogger with patheos.com. She responded with a cautious “no.”

A “yes” answer is the contrary and familiar doctrine and tradition in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other faiths, and as we’ll see below has lately gotten a degree of backing from surprising places.

That age-old teaching is terribly counter-cultural these days and also subject to critique from within religions. The Gallup Poll says in 2001 a slim 53% majority of Americans thought sex between an unmarried man and woman was morally acceptable, but as of last year the number reached a record 76%. (Adultery got only 9% acceptance.)

In a 2019 Pew Research Center poll, 57% of those who identified as Christians “always” or “sometimes” approved of unwed sex for those in a “committed relationship” without marriage, with fully 79% approval among the non-religious respondents. As for casual sex without any “committed relationship,” 50% of the Christians accepted this “always” or “sometimes and the non-religious did so by 83%.

The influential New York Times (ditto for NPR) has developed an interest in a variant known as “polyamory,” romantic relationships with knowledge and consent among three or more participants, who sometimes take additional partners on the side.


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What's missing from that 'conservatives pounce' New York Times sermon on trans fights?

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What's missing from that 'conservatives pounce' New York Times sermon on trans fights?

At this point in journalism history, does anyone expect to read New York Times coverage of events and trends on the Religious Right and find a single sentence that presents interesting, provocative information — drawn from interviews with cultural conservatives — that supports that point of view?

OK, #TriggerWarning. This post assumes that, when dealing with hot-button issues, journalists should present information that accurately represents the views of people on both sides of those debates. Here is another way of stating that: Stories about controversial, divisive issues should contain information that make people on each sides uncomfortable.

This brings us to that recent Times piece with this headline: “How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives.” This is a classic case of the “conservatives pounce” trend in which news stories are defined in terms of conservative responses to a national trend, with next to zero discussions of the origins and nature of the trend itself.

Before we get to the Times sermon on this topic, let’s back up a bit and consider some background information. Here is a byte from a Reuters report:

In 2021, about 42,000 children and teens across the United States received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, nearly triple the number in 2017, according to data Komodo compiled for Reuters. Gender dysphoria is defined as the distress caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and the one assigned to them at birth.

Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021.

Here’s another look at the general trend, which includes a few hints at the wider debates:

The number of young people who identify as transgender has nearly doubled in recent years, according to a new report that captures a stark generational shift and emerging societal embrace of a diversity of gender identities.

The analysis, relying on government health surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020, estimated that 1.4 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds and 1.3 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were transgender, compared with about 0.5 percent of all adults. Those figures illustrated a significant rise since the researchers’ previous report in 2017, though the analyses used different methods.


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Podcast: Was the attack on a conservative Presbyterian school in Nashville a religion story?

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Podcast: Was the attack on a conservative Presbyterian school in Nashville a religion story?

Was the attack on the elementary school at Nashville’s Covenant Presbyterian Church a religion-news story?

Of course it was, for at least four reasons that we discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

(1) It was an attack on a conservative Christian school at a conservative Presbyterian church in a city that is often called the buckle fn the Bible Belt (although locals know that the Nashville establishment, especially in media, is left of center).

(2) Religious groups have played a major role in Tennessee debates about parental rights, education and LGBTQ issues. What does that have to do with the shooting? Hold that thought.

(3) Religious groups have played a major role in discussions of gun-control legislation in Tennessee and, in this case, it is important to avoid political labels such as “liberal” and “conservative” in that discussion.

(4) The young adult who attacked the Covenant School was a former student there. Audrey Hale had recently identified as Aiden Hale in social media, with male pronouns. Hale was still living in a conservative Christian home, with a mother who both was a strong advocate of gun control and on the staff of Village Chapel in Nashville.

What else do news readers know about the shooter? That depends — in this new age of partisan, advocacy media — on which news organizations a reader follows. In most mainstream coverage, even in Nashville, questions about the life and beliefs of the shooter have all but vanished.

Consider this short paragraph late, late in a Religion News Service follow-up report: “Grief, fear haunt Nashville as residents gather to mourn in wake of Covenant shooting.”

Very little is known about the shooter, a former student at Covenant who was killed by police. The shooter reportedly left a manifesto that has not been made public. 

Really? “Very” little?


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