Law & Order

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Once again, why avoid religious questions in the 2017 Sutherland Springs church massacre?

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Once again, why avoid religious questions in the 2017 Sutherland Springs church massacre?

Consider, for a moment, a hypothetical case in which an angry anti-abortion activist massacres worshippers gathered at a liberal church known for its advocacy of abortion rights.

What about a radicalized Muslim attacking a synagogue? A gunman decked out in Make America Great Again clothing attacking a mosque?

Would facts about the identities of these shooters, as well as their previous statements and actions, be considered relevant in follow-up stories? We are, of course, wrestling — again — with the “Why?” component in the journalism mantra, "Who," "What," "When," "Where," "Why" and "How."

In this case, we are dealing with background materials in media coverage of a development in the 2017 massacre at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Here’s the New York Times headline: “Air Force Ordered to Pay $230 Million to Victims of 2017 Church Shooting.” The overture states:

A federal judge ordered the U.S. Air Force … to pay more than $230 million to the survivors and the families of the victims of a 2017 shooting at a Texas church because the Air Force had failed to report the gunman’s criminal history.

In his ruling, Judge Xavier Rodriguez of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas wrote that the Air Force could have blocked the gunman, Devin P. Kelley, who had served on an Air Force base in New Mexico, from buying the rifle he used to kill 26 people on Nov. 5, 2017, at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

For its failure to report Mr. Kelley’s 2012 conviction for domestic assault, the Air Force must pay damages to the victims for their “pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, impairment and loss of companionship,” the judge wrote. He added that the case was “unprecedented in kind and scope.”

After previous commentary on this massacre, some readers noted that — reacting to detailed coverage in European newspapers — it wasn’t automatically relevant that Kelley was an outspoken atheist.

That is a valid point. However, my question is whether it is worthy of discussion (perhaps one or two sentences in news reports) that he had, in arguments on social media, expressed virulently anti-Christian beliefs and made remarks that suggested he was unstable.


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Texas synagogue attack highlights press failure to consistently cover attacks against sanctuaries

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Texas synagogue attack highlights press failure to consistently cover attacks against sanctuaries

The many cases of anti-Catholic vandalism have been documented by me here at GetReligion in recent years. Also well-documented have been how many professionals in the mainstream media keep overlooking such criminal activities.

These incidents — even as 2021 came to an end and now weeks into 2022 — just keep happening, yet they continue to be given little to no mainstream news coverage. It seems, at times, as if violence against religious groups — be they Catholics or otherwise — is a subject that isn’t worthy of coverage. This trend is also a lesson on how the press uses language, what terms journalists use to describe crimes and whether the story lasts just a day or for weeks and months.

Journalists also need to start asking: What are the motivations for these kinds of attacks?

A Catholic priest, parishioners and Catholic schoolchildren were among the dozens injured on Nov. 21 when authorities said Darrell E. Brook, driving an SUV, allegedly plowed into marchers during a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisc. Six people were killed.

The incident would get additional attention for its inability to get widespread national media coverage. Accusations quickly emerged that key facts didn’t fit the dominant media narrative.

Truth is, not all hate crimes are created equal. Crimes against Catholic churches are routinely ignored by national news outlets. We can also see a troubling journalism trend at work in coverage of the recent anti-Semitic attack against a Texas house of worship.

The gun-wielding suspect in that Jan. 15 synagogue attack, British citizen Malik Faisal Akram, took Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and three other congregants hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.

The standoff with FBI agents was an act of terrorism and resulted in Akram’s death. National news coverage was intense during the standoff — but soon evaporated.


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Plug-In: Five key story angles linked to Texas synagogue where hostages were taken

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Plug-In: Five key story angles linked to Texas synagogue where hostages were taken

When I first saw news on social media of a ranting man taking hostages at a Texas synagogue Saturday, I immediately clicked the link to an Associated Press report.

To my shock, I discovered that the standoff involved Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.

I first wrote about that suburban congregation nearly two decades ago when I covered religion for AP in Dallas.

In 2004, I did a national feature on “frequent-flier rabbis” filling a need at then-fledgling Congregation Beth Israel and other small Jewish congregations across the nation. That same year, I wrote about Anna Salton Eisen, one of the congregation’s founders, and her Holocaust survivor father, George Lucius Salton.

Just this past October — 17 years later — Eisen trusted me to tell her family’s story again. I wrote a follow-up piece for AP on a surprising “reunion” between Eisen and the children of several Holocaust survivors who were in concentration camps together.

“I started this synagogue with two other families and am heartbroken and fearful,” Eisen wrote on Facebook on Saturday. “What has become of the world?”

I shared her status on my page and asked my friends to pray for a peaceful end. I was so relieved when Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and two other hostages escaped unharmed Saturday night. A fourth hostage was released earlier. The FBI hostage rescue team shot the gunman.


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Once again: Anti-Catholic hate crimes are way up, but where's the mainstream news coverage?

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Once again: Anti-Catholic hate crimes are way up, but where's the mainstream news coverage?

This is a bad time to be a house of worship in the United States, as crazed people are vandalizing and damaging these places in record numbers.

For some time now, this blog has complained about the increasing trend in Catholic churches being vandalized across Europe –- and now here in the United States -– and the secular media barely noticing it. Recently, Religion News Service picked up on the phenomenon of the wreckage happening to Catholic churches.

(RNS) — It was after a pair of Catholic churches caught ablaze last summer, one in Southern California and another in Florida, that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops decided to start documenting and tracking vandalism at Catholic sites across the country.

The two fires occurred on the same morning: July 11, 2020. One destroyed the rooftop of the historic San Gabriel Mission — the fourth of a series of missions across California that Father Junipero Serra founded during the Spanish colonization era. The other ignited in Queen of Peace Catholic Church as parishioners prepared for Mass in Ocala, Florida.

Nobody was injured, but Aaron M. Weldon — of the USCCB’s Office of Religious Liberty — said the fires were “the impetus for us to start monitoring these sorts of events.”

Since then, the USCCB has tracked more than 105 incidents of vandalism of Catholic sites in the U.S., including arson, graffiti and defaced statues. The organization has logged news reports of such incidents dating back to May 2020, but it doesn’t yet have a detailed breakdown that categorizes the different kinds of vandalism.

May 2020 was the fateful month of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officers and the start of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that saw a frenzy of property destruction around the country. (A year later, the Wall Street Journal noted last May, crime in Minneapolis is over the top.)

New FBI stats show the number of hate crimes (8,263) reported in fiscal year 2020 was the highest since 2001. Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,244 offenses, and more than half (683) were antisemitic.

While only 73 were anti-Catholic hate crimes, that represents an annual increase since 2013. There were 64 anti-Catholic hate crimes reported in 2019, and 51 in 2018, according to the FBI data.

The story pointed out that the Catholic Church have been in the news lately for reasons for reasons ranging from Joe Biden’s presidency to whether pro-choice Catholic politicians should be barred from Communion. But Catholics were in the news far more in 2002, when the clergy abuse scandal burst into open, and churches weren’t getting vandalized at such rates then.

Other than the Wall Street Journal, other major media haven’t spotlighted this trend at all.


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When the FBI infiltrates a Bible study, why does CNN say it was a fake 'Bible study'?

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When the FBI infiltrates a Bible study, why does CNN say it was a fake 'Bible study'?

Every so often, one comes across a news story that’s beyond odd.

Ever since the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, law enforcement has been trying to get to the bottom as to who and what were the planners for all this. We all know that. But this time around, the FBI infiltrated something new — a Bible study in Alexandria.

Or, as many media are saying, a “Bible study.”

Look at this part of a CNN piece. The key is to try to find some information on a specific religious institution or movement linked to this activity:

The FBI has infiltrated a "Bible study" group in Virginia that after the January 6 riot had members discussing surveilling the US Capitol and their wish for secession from the US, and investigators closely followed one member's plans to build and test Molotov cocktails, according to recently unsealed court records.

The newly disclosed criminal case against Virginia man Fi Duong -- who also goes by "Monkey King" and "Jim," according to the court record -- arose after Duong interacted with undercover law enforcement officers several times on January 6 and into recent months, when the FBI ultimately gained access to his group in Virginia then accompanied him to an old jail as Duong allegedly pursued bomb-building.

Looks like an FBI agent befriended Duong and began hanging out with him and his friends.

Duong told the FBI agent that his group tried to be "cloak and dagger" and wanted to "build resistances," according to court records. The agent then attended what the group members called a "Bible study" meeting at an Alexandria, Virginia, house in February, where the group members discussed the Bible and secession, weaponry and combat training, and using methods to make their communications private, according to court records.

One person in the group commented at the meeting about creating "a semi-autonomous region" for Virginia. "I like the Constitution; I don't like the Democratic sh*t this region keeps voting for," the person said, according to the FBI.

I’m curious why the scare quotes are put around this Bible study group when it’s obvious there really was discussion about the Bible at this gathering. I listened to CNN’s video alongside the article and the reporter called the gathering “a so-called Bible study meeting.”


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New podcast: Should religious leaders and the cultural right applaud lousy Oscar ratings?

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New podcast: Should religious leaders and the cultural right applaud lousy Oscar ratings?

Pick a headline, just about any Oscar headline.

The ratings for the 2021 Academy Awards were bad. How bad? Here’s the take from the world-weary folks at Entertainment Weekly: “Oscars hit another historic low in ratings.”

The New York Post has been known to produce blunt headlines. Thus: “Oscar ratings drop to an all-time low with unwatchable show.”

But what matters, of course, is what runs in prestige settings such as The New York Times. The big business-desk headline there provided some extra, rather acidic, context:

Oscars Ratings Plummet, With Fewer Than 10 Million Tuning In

Sunday night’s pandemic-restricted telecast drew 58 percent fewer viewers than last year’s record low.

Wait, there’s more bad news:

Among adults 18 to 49, the demographic that many advertisers pay a premium to reach, the Oscars suffered an even steeper 64 percent decline, according to preliminary data from Nielsen. …

[The] Oscars have been on a slide since 1998, when 57.2 million people tuned in to see “Titanic” sweep to best-picture victory.

What’s the religion-news hook in this story, other than the semi-religious role that the Oscar rites play in the cult of Hollywood? That was the subject of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Click here to tune that in or head over to Apple Podcasts to sign up for a weekly feed.

Let’s walk through this.


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Plug-In: Murder convictions in death of George Floyd -- why faith angles were important

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Plug-In: Murder convictions in death of George Floyd -- why faith angles were important

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

This week’s big news — former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s conviction on all counts in George Floyd’s murder — is a story about police brutality. And racial justice. And yes, the power of faith.

USA Today captures this powerful scene:

George Floyd's brother Philonise Floyd was sitting with his head bowed and his hands folded in front of his face in prayer before the verdict was read. As each verdict was read, his hands increasingly shook and his head nodded up and down.

"I was just praying they would find him guilty. As an African American, we usually never get justice," Floyd said.

The exceptional coverage by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Chao Xiong and Paul Walsh contains this important highlight:

As news spread of the verdicts — guilty on all counts — social media sites reposted the Minneapolis Police Department's initial report that Floyd died of a medical event at the scene, an assertion that might never have been contradicted so forcefully were it not for a teenage girl, Darnella Frazier, walking by and recording Floyd's death last May 25 on her cellphone and posting it for the world to see.

"I just cried so hard. This last hour my heart was beating so fast, I was so anxious, anxiety [busting] through the roof," Frazier, who was 17 at the time, posted on Facebook after the verdict. "But to know GUILTY ON ALL 3 CHARGES !!! THANK YOU GOD THANK YOU … George Floyd we did it!! Justice has been served."

The Los Angeles Times’ Kurtis Lee recounts this scene:


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A police officer's calling and sacrifice: What about that sanctuary across from King Soopers?

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A police officer's calling and sacrifice: What about that sanctuary across from King Soopers?

If you have lived in the Denver area, you know that King Soopers grocery stores are a familiar part of the urban and suburban landscape.

As the details emerged from the hellish shootings in Boulder that claimed 10 lives, it was clear that the fallen first responder — 51-year-old Officer Eric Talley — was an unusual man whose career in law enforcement had unusual roots. He came to the job, people said over and over, with a sense of “calling.” That is, of course, a word with strong faith overtones.

There were many pieces of information to assemble, in portraits of Talley. He was the father of seven children — ages 7 to 20 — who were being homeschooled by his wife. He bought a 15-passenger van to make family travel easier. Another officer told the Denver Post that Talley was a “devout Catholic.” This is a case where that all-too-common adjective fits the evidence.

Some news-media reports mentioned Talley’s faith, others did not. It was hard to miss this quotation, picked up by Washington Post:

His father, Homer Talley, told Denver TV station KMGH in a statement that his son was working to become a drone operator, a job he thought would be safer.

“He loved his kids and his family more than anything,” his father wrote. “ …He didn’t want to put his family through something like this and he believed in Jesus Christ.”

However, I was struck by another detail in a statement from Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of the Archdiocese of Denver. As it turns out, there was a reason that Talley was familiar with this particular King Soopers location.

We do know that Officer Eric Talley was Catholic, and has been described as a man of character and strong faith, a loving father to seven children, a husband who cared deeply for his family, and a soldier for Christ. …

We also know that Officer Talley regularly stopped by St. Martin de Porres in Boulder and participated in its events, even though he wasn’t a parishioner there. For those unfamiliar with the area where the shooting occurred, St. Martin de Porres is just across the street from King Soopers.


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Panning purity culture: What the press doesn't get about basic Christian doctrines on sex

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Panning purity culture: What the press doesn't get about basic Christian doctrines on sex

Here we go again.

Evangelical “purity culture” is getting royally trashed these days for being responsible for a multiple murder last week in Atlanta. If only, these stories suggest, this man hadn’t been so messed up by primitive Christian morals, he might not have gunned down eight people.

Members of the GetReligion team have written before (in this 2019 piece by the Religion Guy) about how reporters consistently don’t get the doctrinal issues that are linked to purity culture. Here we are again with a string of murders by a Southern Baptist man who had a sex obsession. Suddenly, the national conversation is about the Christian teachings that might have driven him to it.

A number of media took a whack at the topic. I’ll start with Business Insider, which, in a piece headlined “The Atlanta shooting and the dangers of American evangelicalism’s trademark purity culture,” commits tons of journalistic sins starting with its fourth paragraph:

"It's not a jump to say white conservative Christianity played a role here," said Joshua Grubbs, an assistant professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University. "The facts need to come to light, but all the facts that are in the light right now suggest it's at play." …

Huh? All white conservative Christians are now complicit in the shootings? This whole marrying of what various writers hate about Christianity to “white evangelical culture” shows a massive ignorance of evangelicals.

First, a lot of evangelicals, especially younger ones, aren’t white. Show up at a college InterVarsity meeting sometime (that is, those that are still are allowed to use university facilities, which many aren’t these days because of their views on gay marriage) and take a look at the variety of folks there.

Back to the Business Insider piece:

Two key concepts here are "temptation" and "sex addiction." Both feature heavily in evangelical "purity culture," a set of rituals and beliefs around gender roles, designed to encourage believers, especially young men and women, to abstain from sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

The article marshals a list of scholars to trash white supremacy, the boogeyman in all this.


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