Julia Duin

, , , ,

Mormons, in the end, fare well in Washington Post story about refugee welcome in Utah

, , , ,

Often, stories about people of faith and refugees end up casting the former in a negative light for refusing to be of help to the poor and tired, huddled masses.

But a roving reporter for the Washington Post got wind of something unusual; how a deep red state was refusing to go along with President Donald Trump’s anti-refugee policy. This happened to be Utah.

The ensuing piece makes for a very good read. My one caveat is that a major factor in refugee welcomes doesn’t get mentioned until the 30th paragraph.

Other media, such as this Vox video, got the point right away that Mormons have everything to do with Utah’s unusual refugee policy. This Wall Street Journal story made the Mormon connection in the fourth paragraph.

This fall, President Trump signed an executive order that, for the first time, gives states and cities the authority to veto refugee resettlements. The move alarms refugee advocates, who fear a wave of xenophobic demagoguery as governors and mayors seek to prove their anti-immigrant credentials by banning new arrivals.

That still may happen, adding to the strain on a once world-class resettlement program that has been crippled by cuts since Trump took office.

But in Utah — deeply conservative, deeply devout, predominantly white Utah — the response has been altogether different. The governor, a Republican who aligns with Trump on most issues, wrote the president a letter in late October.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , ,

Press doesn't get why a Catholic priest would withhold Communion from outspoken gay judge

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Debates about Catholic priests denying Holy Communion to U.S. pro-choice politicians or public officials have been around for more than a decade; indeed I covered that exact issue back in 2009. It was quite the raging issue in 2004 as well when the archbishop of St. Louis refused Communion to Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.

The issue hasn’t faded at all; in fact this Washington Post piece, published a few months ago, notes that Democratic politicians are still being denied the sacrament if they have come out in favor of abortion.

Now there’s a priest in East Grand Rapids, Mich., who is doing something similar — not about abortion, but same-sex marriage. Here is how one TV station covered it. It happens to be the local NBC affiliate.

EAST GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Judge Sara Smolenski, chief judge of the Kent County District Court, has been denied Communion at the church where she has been a parishioner for more than six decades because she is married to a woman.

It is a move that for many was the final straw in a pattern of behavior that has them calling for the removal of a priest — a priest who came to St. Stephen Catholic Church about three years ago.

Right there you can see where this article is a set-up. The second paragraph could also read that: “It is a move that several in the parish applauded because they felt it was high time St. Stephen’s took a stand on crucial Catholic doctrines.”

Instead, you hear the dissidents’ point of view for the entire first half of the story.

In 1966, under the leadership of Rev. Msgr. Edward N. Alt, St. Stephen Catholic School became the first integrated Catholic school in Metro Grand Rapids and had a student body that was nearly 40 percent non-Catholic.

This tradition of inclusion and acceptance would be the essence of the school and the church for 50 years.

But now, some here say that is changing.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

Religious Freedom Restoration Act: AP story shows why this is a law liberals could love

, , , , , , ,

Many of us may have heard of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has been in effect since 1993 during the administration of President Bill Clinton. This was an era in which a broad coalition of liberals and conservatives often worked together on religious liberty issues.

Of course, RFRA has been vilified by liberals as a sop to conservatives, chiefly because it was used successfully in the 2014 U.S. Supreme Court “Hobby Lobby” case that allowed the crafts store chain to not provide birth control coverage for its employees. RFRA is frequently connected to religious liberty debates linked to LGBTQ issues, as well.

But now, many critics of RFRA are praising it after it was employed in the defense of Scott Warren, a Unitarian who was charged with harboring illegal aliens near a border crossing in the Arizona desert in January 2018. Our own Bobby Ross wrote about this case here and here.

A new Associated Press analysis describes why RFRA suddenly became important again:

Religious liberty is often a high priority for conservatives, but last week’s acquittal of an Arizona man prosecuted for aiding migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border is spotlighting the ability of religious freedom law to shield people of faith regardless of political ideology.

The case of Scott Warren, a college instructor and volunteer with a humanitarian group that helps migrants, gained nationwide notice as he challenged what he called the government’s “attempt to criminalize basic human kindness.”

Much of that attention focused on Warren’s acquittal on felony charges of harboring. But he was also acquitted Wednesday of a separate misdemeanor charge after his lawyers argued that his religious beliefs motivated him to leave water for migrants crossing through a desert wilderness area.

This was written by Elana Schor, the AP reporter for religion and politics who is part of AP’s new global religion reporting team, announced Sept. 5 that’s being paid for by a grant from the Lilly Endowment. (I broke the story about the grant here back in April 2018).

Warren’s acquittal this past week was a huge victory for the Religious Left.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Los Angeles Times vs. Fuller Seminary: Is fair, accurate coverage even possible these days?

, , , ,

The Los Angeles Times hasn’t had a religion reporter in years and the newspaper’s lapses in religion coverage get embarrassing after awhile.

Such was their Nov. 21 story about a lesbian student at Fuller Seminary who is suing the school because they expelled her after they learned she was married to a woman. As I read it, certain parts sounded quite familiar until I realized I’d commented on a similar story by Religion News Service last July.

Once again, I have to remind folks that doctrinal covenants, creeds and behavior codes are something students agree to, and often sign a document attesting their compliance to, when they enroll. They are choosing to join a voluntary association defined by a set of doctrines, some about moral theology.

So here we go, again.

Joanna Maxon, a 53-year-old Christian mother of two, was searching for ways to advance in her career as a supervisor and began looking into graduate schools.

She decided on Fuller Theological Seminary, a religious graduate school based in Pasadena, because it combined things she valued: her faith and her studies.

We know the middle of this story — they kicked her out.

Now, Maxon, who lives with her wife Tonya Minton in Fort Worth, is suing Fuller, alleging the college violated Title IX rules that forbid educational institutions from discriminating against students on the basis of sex.

Paul Southwick, Maxon’s attorney, alleges the school also violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act and is seeking compensation of at least $500,000 to cover attorney fees and Maxon’s federally funded student loans, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in a U.S. District Court in Central California.

Southwick said that because Fuller accepted federal aid and had not received a religious exemption, it must adhere to federal laws, including Title IX.

OK, did anyone bother to look at the sexual standards page on Fuller’s web site?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

New Yorker piece on crisis pregnancy centers incites rather than informs

, , , , ,

For some time now, I’ve been asking if it’s possible for The New Yorker to deliver a fair assessment of any conservative Christian group or person, which is why I was interested in a recent piece on crisis pregnancy clinics.

CPCs, as they are also called, aren’t always Christian although they tend to be.

They are 100 percent founded and run by the devout, who consider it a ministry to run them. These places make no money, really, and are sued, attacked, lied about or mischaracterized (as what happened in this outrageously biased NPR story) all the time.

The New Yorker’s religion reporter, Eliza Griswold, was sent on several visits to center in Terre Haute, Indiana. CPCs get their motives questioned in ways that Planned Parenthood clinics never are, so I was interested in how Griswold would approach the topic.  

On the door of a white R.V. that serves as the Wabash Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center’s mobile unit are the stencilled words “No Cash, No Narcotics.” The center, in Terre Haute, Indiana, is one of more than twenty-five hundred such C.P.C.s in the U.S.—Christian organizations that provide services including free pregnancy testing, low-cost S.T.D. testing, parenting classes, and ultrasounds. Sharon Carey, the executive director of the Wabash Valley center, acquired the van in January, 2018, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, after finding a company that retrofits secondhand vehicles with medical equipment. That May, Carey began to dispatch the van to rural towns whose residents often cannot afford the gas needed to drive to the C.P.C. or to a hospital.

The subhed for this story: “As rural health care flounders, crisis pregnancy centers are gaining ground,” so it’s clear where this article is headed.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

Gospel of Poo and New Age thought gets (as usual) uncritical New Yorker coverage

, , , , ,

In regards to elite magazines, I have not read anything unfavorable about New Age religious topics in recent years.

But when it comes to coverage of mainstream religion, watch out.

I was frustrated to read a recent New Yorker story — that I’ll call the Gospel of Poo — that soberly related the tale of a serial entrepreneur and corporate mysticism with the seriousness of someone trying to dissect the Talmud.

The entrepreneur at the center of the piece is given the kind of serious treatment that other groups, say, Southern Baptists, could only dream of. See Jia Tolentino’s disparaging New Yorker piece not long ago about her childhood at Houston’s Second Baptist Church. That’s a 180-degree treatment from the following article:

A few days after Suzy Batiz learned that she’d made Forbes’s 2019 list of America’s richest self-made women, she lay down on her kitchen floor and wept. Batiz, whose net worth is estimated at more than two hundred and forty million dollars, grew up poor. …

One day, she went to see a hypnotist, who told her that her life lacked purpose. He gave her the book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Viktor Frankl, which inspired Batiz to take what she calls a “spiritual sabbatical.” She studied Buddhism, Kabbalah, Hinduism, and metaphysics. “I had an insatiable desire to find something,” she said. “I was the ultimate seeker.” At a bookshop, she came across “Loving What Is,” by the motivational speaker and author Byron Katie, who teaches a method of self-inquiry called the Work.

“Two weeks later, I’m at her ten-day workshop,” Batiz said. “I went in drinking a big thing of Yellow Tail every night, and, when I came out, I was sober for eight years. After that, I was in a bliss state. I knew there was a larger meaning here.” She developed a self-help course called Inside Out: How to Create the Life You Want by Going Within. She started to meditate. She got out of her head and into her body. She listened to her gut. “Then,” she recalled, “I was at a dinner party, and my brother-in-law asked, ‘Can bathroom odor be trapped?’ And lightning went through my body.”

Finally we get to what journalists call the “nut” or main paragraph of the story.

Batiz is the creator of Poo-Pourri, a bathroom spray made from essential oils, which has sold sixty million bottles since it launched, in 2007. As its name suggests, Poo-Pourri is designed to mask the smell of excrement — or, more precisely, to trap unpleasant odors in the toilet, below the surface of the water, and to release pleasant natural fragrances, including citrus, lavender, and tropical hibiscus, in their stead.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Kanye West visits Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church for all-day media extravaganza

, , , , , , , ,

There was some good theater in the world of religion this weekend, starting with the David Daleiden/Planned Parenthood verdict in San Francisco on Friday and ending with the Kanye West evening extravaganza at Houston’s Lakewood Church.

The Houston Chronicle set the stage, leading with West’s most inflammable quote during an appearance earlier that day at Lakewood’s main Sunday morning service.

Since his conversion, it was West’s first appearance before a crowd that wasn’t necessarily fans of his music. But there was that spiritual connection.

Kanye West may have found God. But he’s still brandishing his trademark cockiness.

“Jesus has won the victory because now the greatest artist that God has ever created is now working for Him,” West said onstage Sunday at Lakewood Church.

The rapper spoke onstage with Joel Osteen for about 20 minutes, his first of two appearances at the megachurch. …

During the brief, sometimes rambling conversation, West, 42, talked about his battle with the Devil, mental breakdown and subliminal messages in the media. He prayed with Osteen and praised the televangelist’s “anointed words.”

The Chronicle also said the two men were actually friends, which seems like an odd mix, as they run in completely separate circles. I’d like to know what moved Osteen to invite West.

Whatever happened, it turned out to be a brilliant idea, in terms of publicity.

Other than the Chronicle, the major media covering this event were the local networks and TMZ, the Hollywood news-gossip site. The spectacle of the famous rapper joining forces with the leader of America’s largest church was sheer catnip for TMZ, which broke the story of West coming to Lakewood.

(In the years I worked for the Houston Chronicle, Lakewood’s building was known as The Summit, a 16,800-seat concert venue and home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets. Then evangelistic wunderkind Rev. Joel Osteen bought the place in 2010.)

It proved to be a perfect setting for a Kanye concert.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Elle magazine tries to explain a Mormon mommy blogger, but ignores the faith part

, , , , , , , , ,

When I heard that Elle magazine had done a piece that touched on religion, specifically a woman in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I rushed to read it.

Mainstream women’s magazines just aren’t known for doing good God beat pieces although for a few years, the late More magazine was running some pieces (by me) on would-be female Catholic priests along with a profile on Lutheran minister/superstar Nadia Bolz-Weber.

But that was then. This latest Elle creation is about a married female blogger whose marriage went sour; a woman who’s “a stylish momfluencer who is sponsored by Pantene and regrammed by Martha Stewart, who has a cute husband and a cute son and, soon, another cute country house.”

Now I think Natalie Lovin’s upbringing as a Mormon might have brought some context to the story of her split with her husband, but Elle didn’t have much to say about that subject. Some samples:

Two days earlier, on April Fool’s Day, she’d moved to the new house by herself, in the rain, with a hastily rented U-Haul. She had just been dumped — her words — by her husband of more than a dozen years, the second man she’d ever kissed. They would later have vastly different ideas about how much alimony she needed, Natalie recalls. She had a college degree and experience working with household name brands. Couldn’t she just get a job?

She couldn’t. For the past ten years, Natalie’s job was being a lovably quirky wife and mother who documented her idyllic life online.

Back in 2011, Natalie was 29 and lived:

… on New York City’s Upper West Side in a tiny but well appointed apartment with her breadwinner husband, known as “the Holbs,” and her pudgy baby, Huck. Her blog, Nat the Fat Rat, allowed her to make money off of housewifely bliss — a Phyllis Schlafly-esque hypocrisy that might have seemed unbearably retrograde, were it not for her love of Hillary Clinton’s pro-choice politics and Rachel Comey’s chic clogs.

That’s a cheap shot. Schlafly may not have liked the Equal Rights Amendment, but she was not a hypocrite who said every woman must stay at home. After all, Schlafly, who died in 2016, worked as a ballistics gunner and technician during World War II. In later years, she became a working lawyer and political activist.

Then:

The family was proudly Mormon, though she didn’t often blog about it.

What does “proudly” mean?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

Surprise! National Geographic's definitive issue on women gives religion short shrift

, , , , , , , , , ,

This month’s issue of National Geographic is a special issue on women that appears to be the start of a yearlong project. All the contributing writers, photographers and artists were female.

So here is a rather obvious fact to note right up front. Being that women lead the way in religious observance around the planet, I thought there would be at least some representation of women in religion.

So I read through the entire issue. Answer: There is and there isn’t.

Since the text of the issue isn’t online yet, I can’t cut and paste much. So what did they include?

There’s a picturesque double-page spread of five nuns from Kerala, India in their brown habits. The text says:

Their superiors keep pressuring them to keep quiet and stop making trouble, but they refuse. When a nun in Kerala told church leaders multiple times that a bishop had raped her repeatedly, nothing happened, so she turned to the police.

Months later, in September 2018, these fellow nuns joined a two-week protest outside the Kerala High Court. The bishop, who maintains his innocence, eventually was arrested…Instead of supporting the nuns, the church cut off the protesting nuns’ monthly allowance.

That was the only mention I could find of any Christian women in the entire issue.

Much better represented were Muslim women, such as France’s first black Muslim woman mayor Marième Tamata-Varin (p. 58); the anti-hijab movement in Iran (p. 59) and Meherzia Labidi, the Tunisian politician who likes being veiled (p. 72).


Please respect our Commenting Policy