Julia Duin

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A 'gospel of grievances:' Christianity Today tries to unravel racial divisions at Cru

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A 'gospel of grievances:' Christianity Today tries to unravel racial divisions at Cru

It’s no huge secret that debates about race are causing many big stories on the religion beat these days.

Witness how, the Rev. Russell Moore, the just-resigned head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, named “blatant gutter-level racism” as one of his top reasons for leaving the ERLC and, eventually, the denomination itself.

The Southern Baptists aren’t alone. What’s been less reported on are the arguments among other evangelicals on whether concerns about race issues are taking over whole organizations and diluting their work.

Christianity Today just broke the most intriguing story about the knife fight going on in Cru –- the college ministry formerly known as Campus Crusade –- about the backlash against the organization’s attempts to address racism. At issue is a series of national conferences that have left its white staff feeling like they’ve been hit by a truck.

The Cru conflict is a microcosm of the stand-off between younger, more culturally liberal staff and older conservative ones. A major sticking point is critical race theory (CRT), which posits that America’s legal structure aids and abets racist practices. While many debate the meaning of this term, CRT seeks to rebalance the power structure by forcing the majority culture to experience reverse bias, reverse ethnic shaming, reverse stereotyping and so on.

Ever since the killing of George Floyd last year, some say that CRT has morphed into a way to pin all racial evils on White people or “White fragility.” (Some Whites from impoverished backgrounds have published essays saying that it was news to them that their poor childhoods were evidence of “white privilege.”) Some of this sentiment has attracted the attention of conservative media such as Fox News, according to this Atlantic magazine article.

The CT article continues:

The debate over critical race theory has landed at Cru, one of the country’s most prominent parachurch ministries, where a 179-page letter alleging an overemphasis on racial justice has exacerbated tensions that have been quietly brewing within the organization for years.


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Are religious and culturally conservative groups silenced on the Internet?

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Are religious and culturally conservative groups silenced on the Internet?

Not all religious believers are conservatives.

I get that. But many are and not a few in this group have seen their posts frozen out of Facebook and other social media simply because some moderator thinks they’re spreading hate speech (which is usually posts defending centuries of Christian doctrine).

Big Tech has gotten reamed on this by members of Congress (which they seem to ignore) on the grounds of crushing political dissent. But what about religious views?

The National Catholic Register recently posted this thoughtful story about how the silencing of religious views (and the morality that emanates from them) affects Catholics who number some 51 million U.S. citizens or one-fifth of the population. This is not a small group. Here’s how the feature begins:

Lila Rose is no stranger to the tactics social-media giants Facebook and Twitter employed in banning former President Donald Trump from their platforms.

As head of the pro-life group Live Action, Rose has seen the organization she founded permanently banned from Pinterest, barred from advertising on Twitter and its entire TikTok account temporarily removed for unnamed “community violations.”

Rose gained some fame for her sneaking into abortion clinics as a teenager, posing as a girl seeking an abortion while recording everything with a video camera in her backpack to later accuse Planned Parenthood of looking the other way on statutory rape. She’s pictured with this post.

In remaining engaged on social media, where she and Live Action have a combined total of 5 million followers, Rose said she sticks to her message and tries to follow each platform’s guidelines. When an issue arises, she attempts to determine whether it was the result of a misunderstanding or mistake before pursuing a challenge.

“If you don’t have a clear case, saying you do when you don’t is not helpful,” she said. “I would caution people that just because your post is not getting a lot of shares or likes or you lost followers doesn’t mean it’s a nefarious scheme to destroy you. It’s important to have a lot of common sense and be thoughtful and discerning about whether this is truly the case.”

Still, for Catholics and others with conservative views, examples of Big Tech’s heavy hand abound, providing plenty of reasons to be concerned about access to social media.


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Yes, there's a religion story behind those statistics about China's shrinking population

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Yes, there's a religion story behind those statistics about China's shrinking population

China made the news again last week for an odd reason — its demographics.

Only 12 million babies were born last year in China, the lowest number since 1961. You can think of 35 years of forced abortions and mandatory IUD devices for that. Oh, and going after the offspring of Uyghur Muslims, house-church Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong practitioners figure into that number, as well.

But the details of that important religion angle didn’t make it into the stories I read. In the New York Times:

Figures from a census released on Tuesday show that China faces a demographic crisis that could stunt growth in the country, the world’s second-largest economy. China has long relied on an expanding and ambitious work force to run its factories and achieve Beijing’s dreams of building a global superpower and industrial giant. An aging, slow-growing population — one that could even begin to shrink in the coming years — threatens that dynamic.

Now listen to how the next paragraph explains how this happened.

While most developed countries in the West and Asia are also getting older, China’s demographic problems are largely self-inflicted. China imposed a one-child policy in 1980 to tamp down population growth. Local officials enforced that policy with sometimes draconian measures. It may have prevented 400 million births, according to the government, but it also shrank the number of women of childbearing age.

“Sometimes draconian” measures? Forcibly aborting a woman’s second child is, by definition, draconian.

Beijing is now under greater pressure to abandon its family planning policies, which are among the world’s most intrusive; overhaul an economic model that has long relied on a huge population and a growing pool of workers; and plug yawning gaps in health care and pensions.

Well, yes, when local cadres monitor the exact timing of women’s periods to make sure they’re not pregnant, that’s pretty intrusive.


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Passing of the guard at the Associated Press; the rise of Ministry Watch and the Roys Report

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Passing of the guard at the Associated Press; the rise of Ministry Watch and the Roys Report

The death of a well-known religion reporter; a new job announcement from a beat veteran and a spotlight on two feisty independent religion news organizations is what concerns me this week.

Tmatt had previously offered an update on the health of Rachel Zoll, a former Associated Press religion specialist who came down with glioblastoma, a brain cancer that has no cure, in early 2018. That was only a few months after another religion-beat pro, Jeffrey Weiss of the Dallas Morning News, died of the exact same malady.

Last week, Zoll died at the age of 55 at her home in Massachusetts. She reported on religion for AP for 17 years.

There have been lots of tributes, so I’ll spotlight this Associated Press obit atop the list.

Zoll covered religion in all its aspects, from the spiritual to the political, and her stories reached a global audience. But her influence was far greater than that. Other publications often followed her lead, and AP staffers around the world depended on her generosity and guidance.

Zoll was at the forefront of coverage of two papal transitions, the clergy sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, and tensions within many denominations over race, same-sex marriage and the role of women.

She often broke news, as in 2014, when she was the first to report Pope Francis’ appointment of Blase Cupich to become the new archbishop of Chicago.

Fellow GetReligionista Dick Ostling, who was at AP from 1998-2006, wrote this:

My partner Rachel was simply a delight to work with and a personality enjoyed by everyone who knew her -- and who competed with her. But in broader and more historical terms she exemplified all that's needed in reporting and especially with a complex and emotion-laden field like religion. She was of course quick and accurate but those are the basics for any Associated Press writer. And then, remarkably intelligent. She knew her stuff and knew she needed to learn ever more stuff to handle this beat.


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Donald Trump enthroned with the angels: Why are media missing this story?

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Donald Trump enthroned with the angels: Why are media missing this story?

This just in: Former President Donald Trump not only has an angelic host surrounding him — he’s also seated on a throne with a golden crown and holding a golden scepter.

You’ve not heard about this edgy hook for a news story?

Then you’re not attuned to “Prophet Wars,” my name for the fistfight going on between powerful factions of the Pentecostal/charismatic movement over whether the 45th president will be restored to the White House sometime soon.

I’ve been amazed at how this large Pentecostal chunk of American Christianity — and there are roughly 65 million Americans that belong to this group — is being ignored by much of the media. Trump’s spiritual advisor, the Rev. Paula White-Cain, is part of this segment, so it’s not an obscure bunch.

Last week, I wrote a piece for ReligionUnplugged on a group of 85 leaders in this movement who were fed up with the “Trump prophecies;” predictions from dozens of people to the effect that Trump would coast his way into the White House last November. When that didn’t happen, several leaders began apologizing for their false prophecies; a phenomenon I covered for GetReligion here.

I followed this with a lengthy story in Politico. Ruth Graham of the New York Times wrote a similar piece here.

Then we all waited for a few months. Most of the false prophets did not retract their prophecies. Meanwhile, as detailed in the ReligionUnplugged story, a group of charismatic leaders drafted a four-page document of “prophetic standards” spelling out what biblical prophecy is — and is not — and suggesting that those who prophesy falsely, especially in a public forum, need to apologize when they get it wrong. Those who refuse to do so won’t be allowed on their social media platforms.


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Pandora's box? Wall Street Journal piece on human-animal hybrids needs more than vague ethics

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Pandora's box? Wall Street Journal piece on human-animal hybrids needs more than vague ethics

My $19/month Wall Street Journal subscription is pricey, I admit, but every so often there comes a story that makes the investment worthwhile.

Or at least causes you to do a double take.

Such was Monday’s piece titled “Creation of First Human-Monkey Embryos Causes Concern.”

Excuse me? Do read on:

Imagine pigs with human hearts or mice whose brains have a spark of human intelligence. Scientists are cultivating a flock of such experimental creations, called chimeras, by injecting potent human cells into mice, rats, pigs and cows. They hope the new combinations might one day be used to grow human organs for transplants, study human illnesses or to test new drugs.

In the latest advance, researchers in the U.S. and China announced earlier this month that they made embryos that combined human and monkey cells for the first time. So far, these human-monkey chimeras (pronounced ky-meer-uhs) are no more than bundles of budding cells in a lab dish, but the implications are far-reaching, ethics experts say. The use of primates so closely related to humans raises concerns about unintended consequences, animal welfare and the moral status of hybrid embryos, even if the scientific value of the work may be quite high.

The idea of chimeras brings up images of half-human, half-beast gargoyles.

The bottom line: This story screams for some kind of input from religious leaders and academics. After all, doesn’t the creation of these … things have something to do with the whole concept of what is human or not?


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Zero objectivity: Seattle Times report on Franklin Graham-backed police dinner hits new low

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Seattle is in trouble.

People don't feel safe taking their kids into downtown Seattle, even the public parks (they support through taxes). The place is dirty. Mentally ill people wander about. Drug use and crime and widespread. And in the middle of it all are the demoralized Seattle police, who saw one of their precinct stations closed by rioters for three weeks last summer during the infamous CHOP occupation.

So, you’d think that an event honoring these same police would get some good press.

Not so fast. According to the Seattle Times:

The invitation to a free dinner at a four-star hotel in Bellevue starts out by thanking law enforcement officers for their bravery and service and goes on to promise an uplifting message, fellowship and practical wisdom from God’s word.

That invitation showed up in the inboxes of Seattle Police Department employees on Wednesday, according to a copy of the department wide email obtained by The Seattle Times. On Friday, police Chief Adrian Diaz revoked the email invitation because the dinner, billed as a law-enforcement appreciation event, is reportedly hosted by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The invitation was signed by the association’s CEO, Franklin Graham, a conservative, second-generation Christian televangelist who has a history of opposing LGBTQ rights.

Some of you may remember that Graham got negative press treatment this time a year ago for setting up a tent in Central Park that had the temerity to treat COVID-19 patients. Largely ignored was the fact that a local health organization, Mount Sinai Health System, contracted with Graham to set up the tent. Most reports in the local media made it sound like it was as if Adolf Hitler had set up shop.

Despite his organization’s policy that only the caregivers, not the recipients of care, affirm centuries of Christian doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman, Graham was demonized as an anti-gay bigot. He couldn’t win; if he didn’t help out, he was neglecting the masses; if he did, he was imposing his beliefs on others.

I am curious if the Seattle Times reporter read this New York Times interview with Graham that said that New York City’s Commission on Human Rights found no evidence that Graham had discriminated against patients and included a link from the editor of a Jewish publication slamming local politicians for their own bigotry.

Now we’re moving the media-bias battle to Seattle. Back to the Times:

The email to SPD employees was sent by the department’s Wellness Unit after being approved by the unit’s lieutenant, according to the original email.

Diaz sent his own department-wide email just after 4:30 p.m. Friday and a message was posted on the department’s online blotter, stating that based on “Graham’s history and affiliations,” concerns had been raised that SPD does not fully support the community’s LGBTQ members.

The article then runs through the usual PR comments by various police officials, a withering quote by Seattle City Council President M. Lorena González (thanks to the council’s defund-the-police actions, a record number of 144 officers have left in the past year), an angry police officer (no doubt the source for the email being forwarded to the Times), an openly gay police officer and so on.

As someone who lives in the Seattle suburbs, the hypocrisy of it all stuns me. Here’s a city that’s overrun with homeless, whose tents are smack in the middle of major tourist attractions (like the city’s gorgeous waterfront), plus crime is surging and even Amazon is decamping for neighboring Bellevue and the media-friendly culture warriors are upset about this?

The police officers are telling local TV stations they are refusing to work for “this socialist city council” and when an outside organization tries to hold an appreciation dinner for the stoic officers who remain, the best the Seattle Times can do is a one-sided report?

Contrasted to the five sources that trashed Graham and his organization, the Times ran no balancing quotes from any local leaders who would offer an opposing point of view.

A sentence saying that Graham’s group didn’t answer an email sent the day before doesn’t cut it. The sponsoring Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is based in Charlotte, N.C., which is three time zones ahead of Seattle. The chances are good that the email arrived too late for anyone in charge to take a look.

Plus, when the reporter can’t find a quote from a prime source, she’s supposed to look for one from a secondary source. Evangelical organizations and churches do exist in Seattle and I can’t believe she couldn’t find a pastor in one of them who could have offered some kind of defense for Graham. Sadly, the Times did away with its religion beat years ago, so apparently the newsroom has no one with the local religious contacts.

Hint: There are plenty of evangelical organizations in town: (World Relief, Union Gospel Mission, Seattle Pacific University, Northwest University for starters) who’ve got talking heads. Start cultivating them.

To get right to the point: The Fellowship of Christian Peace Officers has a Seattle affiliate. I found a contact name and phone number in less than 30 seconds.

Plus, Graham himself recorded a video several months ago explaining why he wants to do these police appreciation dinners in places like Seattle, Portland and Kenosha, Wisc. Surely, a quote could have been lifted from that.

But no. Here we see “Kellerism,” a term created by a GetReligion reader after former New York Times editor Bill Keller implied in a speech there’s no need for balance or fairness when the reporting is about morality, culture, religion, etc. You can read the Keller quotes for yourself right here.

To find the other side of the story, I didn’t need to look much harder than this column by KTTH Radio show host Jason Rantz, who said that Gonzalez’ anti-cop views were at the base of it all. He said in part:

Gonzalez frames her concern over LGBTQ issues, calling out Graham’s religious views as anti-gay. But her concerns are contrived. This is about getting in the way of supporting police officers. In the process, she wins some plaudits from anti-police activists upset she hasn’t done enough to abolish the police.

The event is free for law enforcement officers. It offers appreciation for the work law enforcement does in a city where the Council and a loud activist community turn cop-hating into a sport. It’s also religious in nature, as the invite promises an “uplifting message, encouraging and practical wisdom from God’s Word, live music, and fellowship with other law enforcement officers.”

But because of its religious nature, and Graham’s religious objection to gay marriage, Gonzalez feigned outrage.

Now what the Times and the above column did add is that the event was sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, not by Franklin Graham’s organization Samaritan’s Purse. Yes, the younger Graham signed the invite, but that was his only involvement. But folks out here in western Washington are going to punish him if that’s the last thing they do. The dinner will occur in mid-May and The Stranger, a local lefty site, is encouraging folks to bring their cameras and take photos of whichever police officers decide to attend.

But hey, doxxing is OK when the group is related to Franklin Graham.

I get that journalists can’t help the craziness that reigns in the Emerald City at present. But when it comes to reporting on something like this, at least try — try to include an opposing point of view. Show some respect for people on both sides of public debates. It’s called “journalism.”

I know it’s a stretch. But it can be done. Trust me.


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Covering a life-and-death issue: Muslims driving changes in India's rapacious dowry custom

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Covering a life-and-death issue: Muslims driving changes in India's rapacious dowry custom

In 2006, I was assigned a four-part series on the horrific gender discrimination against women in India and how the massive aborting of girls has resulted in skewed gender ratios (as low as 814 girls for every 1,000 boys resulting in a gap of 43 million when I was there). It ran in the Washington Times several months later.

Sabu George, an Indian activist who was passionately against the aborting of females, showed me where to go in India to report on this phenomenon. The first place he sent me was to a Sikh wedding (pictured above) several hours north of New Delhi.

There, I saw the stash of presents (a refrigerator, TV, clothes for the groom, DVD player and washing machine) for which the bride’s family had no doubt gone into debt to provide as a dowry for their daughter. More than one wedding can ruin a family financially and I began to see why Indians choose to abort a second daughter when they have the chance.

Medical clinics were very open about the practice, saying in their ads, “Better 500 rupees now (for an abortion) rather than 50,000 rupees later (for a dowry).”

Although dowry began as a Hindu custom, it’s evolved into something all religions take part in across India. And what happens if one family decides that the bride’s dowry wasn’t “good enough”? This has been known to turn into a life-and-death subject.

Which is why I was interested in Al Jazeera’s recent story about how Muslim Indians are finally saying “no.”

Here’s what ran April 2:

A prominent Muslim organisation in India has released new guidelines, asking the community to shun dowries and extravagant marriages after a woman recently died by suicide due to “dowry harassment”.


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Season 2 of 'The Chosen' arrives on TV screens on Easter. Where was the news coverage?

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Season 2 of 'The Chosen' arrives on TV screens on Easter. Where was the news coverage?

Back in the day when I was covering religion fulltime, I always knew I could score a front page story if I prepared a large feature for Easter Sunday. That was always the day that my editors were looking for “something religious” to please the church-attending readers. Other reporters did this as well, as it was one of the few days in the year that our work could shine.

Lots has changed, obviously, judging from the front pages of some of the newspapers I perused this past Easter Sunday. My former employer, the Houston Chronicle, had nothing local. Ditto for the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Oregonian and even the Salt Lake Tribune –- usually reliable to at least run something Latter-day Saint related — came up short.

One bright light: Up river from the Oregonian, the Vancouver Columbian ran a huge spread Easter Day on St. Luke Productions, a Catholic theater company (that I’ve written about here and here) that’s based in southwest Washington and travels the country doing amazing portrayals of Catholic saints. See, it can be done.

A few outlets ran a pope-observes-Easter wire story from the Associated Press, but that was it. I looked at the Washington Post, which had a bit more, including a story about a local church opening up for the first time since COVID-19 started plus a piece on how pandemic-ravaged Italy is observing Easter.

The New York Times ran a mishmash of opinion pieces, including one from an English prof who wasn’t sure if Jesus had resurrected or not and one from a prof from Wheaton College urging readers to remember Easter is more than a spring celebration. There was a jewel of a piece on Jesus’ wounds and — in the Times wedding section — a beautifully photographed story about a Nigerian-American couple whose first kiss was on their wedding day. The story was snark free; a true Easter miracle.

I know it’s a challenge to come up with original Easter (and Passover) story ideas year after year, but it can be done and many of us did it.

Most of the religion content I saw yesterday was relegated to the opinion pages and kept away from news content, which is a troubling shift from religion-as-news to religion-in-the-realm-of-feelings. There’s plenty of the former available, but where’s the will to dig out those stories, especially the biggest one that happened yesterday that no one reported on?

That was the premiere of Season 2 of filmmaker Dallas Jenkins’ very successful “The Chosen” TV series. It’s the first multi-season TV series about the life of Christ, and 74,346 people raised $10 million for Season 1, which came out last year. That amount made “The Chosen” the largest crowdfunded media project –- ever.


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