Marriage & Family

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Tim Tebow marries Miss Universe: It's tabloid heaven, but there's a deeper story there

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Let’s face it. A New York City tabloid is going to do what a New York City tabloid is going to do.

So, if you had to make a prediction, what do you think would be in the lede of a New York Daily News report about Tim Tebow marring a woman who had been named Miss Universe?

Think it through. What aspect of Tebow’s life have more than a few journalists (and activists with lower motives) probed ever since That Press Conference during his playing days at the University of Florida?

So here we go:

Tim Tebow has scored.

The former NFL quarterback and current Mets minor leaguer, who has said he planned to remain a virgin until he gets hitched, is now a married man.

Tebow wed 2017 Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters in Cape Town, South Africa, about a year after getting engaged, People reported.

Believe it or not, the Page Six team at The New York Post stayed quite tame, with: “Tim Tebow marries former Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters.” I don’t know what I expected, but that wasn’t the Post headline I thought that we would see.

So what was the story here?

On one level, of course, this was a celebrity wedding. Thus, the stories had all the details about the bride’s gown, the groom’s tux, the menu for the reception (Tebow has a special diet when he is in training for baseball), etc., etc. Readers also need to know why Tebow has been so controversial, in the first place. Thus, the Daily News tossed in this passage late in the story:

Tebow’s personal life has been a hot topic over the years, including him stating in 2009 that he planned to practice abstinence until marriage due to his Christian faith. He proposed to Nel-Peters in January 2019 at his family’s farm near Jacksonville, Fla.

In addition to his baseball career, Tebow works as a college football analyst for ESPN’s SEC Network.

USA Today offered a kind of wink-wink passage high in its report, centering on Tebow’s expectations about this event:


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Reporters digging (or failing to do so) into the complicated Catholicism of Rudy Giuliani

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President Donald Trump’s impeachment is underway in the U.S. Senate, something that has dominated news coverage in recent days and will continue to do so.

While Trump is at the center of the Senate trial, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is a key figure in all of this as well. Once called “America’s mayor” for the leadership he exhibited after the 9/11 attacks, Giuliani served as Trump’s personal lawyer and, according to evidence compiled by Democrats, is responsible for the alleged shenanigans involving Ukraine and the request for an investigation into Joe Biden and his family.

Giuliani is a complicated figure. A lot has been written about him over the past three decades — some good, but also plenty of bad — regarding the impact he had as mayor all the way to the present day. While his politics and tactics are rightly scrutinized, a lot of information linked to his private life is often glossed over. Among the largest things that has been ignored is Rudy’s faith.

The pros at The New York Times Magazine, in a cover story this past Sunday, featured a cartoon of Giuliani under the headline: “The Fog of Rudy: Did he change — or did America?” The piece tried to dig into Giuliani’s mind — with the help of responses to 65 statements the former mayor provided in writing — and why populism has taken over the current body politic.

In a way, the piece is reminiscent of another Times feature — this one on media mogul Rupert Murdoch last year — where religion (again Catholicism) seemed to be missing (tmatt took on the subject in a blog post).

This Giuliani piece by Jonathan Mahler also lacked religion — although two of Giuliani’s answers did include his Catholic faith. Mahler did include them as footnotes (as he did with all of the former mayor’s quotes), but largely ignored them in his news feature that read more like an opinion essay.

This was a lost opportunity to examine the complicated crossroads between politics and faith that has dominated Giuliani’s public life.


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Concerning a Christian-school student and her rainbow birthday cake (and online pics)

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If GetReligion readers search the nearly 17 years of material on our site for this term — “doctrinal covenant” — they will find five or six screens (depending on browser settings) worth of posts. Click here and explore that if you wish.

What we have here is story after story about disputes between private religious schools (or similar institutions) and students, parents, faculty members or staffers. The vast majority of the reports are about LGBTQ-related clashes rooted in centuries of Christian and Jewish doctrines about sexuality and marriage. There may be cases involving Muslim doctrine, but they don’t seem to make it into the news.

Private religious schools — whether on the doctrinal left or right — are voluntary associations, and the word “voluntary” is crucial. No one has to attend one of these religious schools or work for them. However, it’s important (from a legal point of view) that students, parents, etc., clearly acknowledge that they are consenting to follow — or at least not openly attack — the doctrines and traditions that define the life of a religious private institution.

Thus, most of these religious schools require students, parents, faculty, etc., to SIGN a “doctrinal covenant” that states these teachings and the school rules that are linked to them.

Readers who glance through those GetReligion posts about news coverage of these cases will notice that these media reports rarely mention the existence of these covenants (they are often referred to as mere “rules,” thus failing to note their doctrinal content) and, if they are mentioned, the stories usually fail to note that people involved in disputes with these schools voluntarily signed them. In other words, who needs to know that First Amendment issues are involved?

This brings us to the “rainbow cake girl” story, as covered by The Louisville Courier Journal, The Washington Post and other newsrooms. The headline in the Courier Journal shows how this story is being framed: “Louisville Christian school expelled student over a rainbow cake, family says.”


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Think about this: How many religious flocks are ready for children with 'hidden' disabilities?

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On one level, this week’s think piece is not about religion. Then again, it is a personal and transparent piece from The Seattle Times — written by GetReligion contributor Julia Duin, a veteran religion-beat professional.

It’s a piece about what it’s like to travel with one or more children with “hidden disabilities.” She is talking about PTSD, autism, anxiety disorders and other intense conditions that, to be blunt, may not immediately be obvious to people at nearby restaurant tables, in lines at theater parks or jammed into adjacent airplane seats.

OK, what about people of various ages who are settled in for peace and quiet, or even transcendence, in a nearby pew during Mass?

So read Duin’s article and picture that in your mind. Look for the situations that religious leaders of all kind need to stop and think about, in terms of their own communities, activities and facilities. Think about that as you read this:

You’ve seen them at the airport, at the beach or in a restaurant. A child is thrashing or kicking or on the ground while a desperate parent hovers nearby, trying to ignore angry glances from passersby. I know because I’ve been that anguished parent.

On display are “cognitive disabilities,” invisible handicaps related to how children’s brains work. For many kids with cognitive disabilities or developmental disorders, a car can be a prison, a plane or a new hotel room can be sheer terror.

In the past, families were stuck, barely venturing outside the county, certainly not on an overnight trip. Travel meant potential trauma minefields, and unfortunately, we live in a world where bystanders are more apt to call the police or Child Protective Services than offer help to the parents.

Can you see the potential for any of that in, oh, a loud suburban megachurch?


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Mayor Pete evolving into Pastor Pete? Prepare for latest uptick in MSM ardor for religious left

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If you have been paying any attention at all to the 2020 White House race, you were ready for the latest mini-sermon from Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

The setting, of course, was the last debate between Democratic Party hopefuls staged before the Iowa caucuses. Here is the key soundbite from Buttigieg, care of CNN, as the frequent churchgoing Episcopalian took yet another shot at Citizen Donald Trump, who — until recently — has been linked to mainline forms of Presbyterianism in great New York City.

Let us attend.

“If he keeps trying to use religion, if a guy like Donald trump keeps trying to use religion to somehow recruit Christianity into the GOP, I will be standing there not afraid to talk about a different way to answer the call of faith,” he said. “And insist that God does not belong to a political party.”

If that kind of language sounds familiar, there’s a good reason for that. Consider the top of the recent New York Times feature that ran with this double-decker headline:

Why Pete Buttigieg Has Made Religion Central to His Campaign

The former mayor is not only trying to bridge ground within the Democratic Party, he’s also making a direct appeal to disaffected conservatives who cannot stomach President Trump.

The overture, logically enough, is from a Sunday morning sermonette in which Mayor Pete proclaims:

“Look at what they do,” he said at a campaign stop about 45 minutes outside of Des Moines, calling out Republicans for “using faith as a way to tell some people they don’t belong.”


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Any darkness to report? The cathedral dean (and bishop) who led St. John the Divine to relevancy

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Obituaries are an interesting and unique form of journalism.

On one level, these news features — especially long takes on the lives of the famous — are tributes to people who shaped our culture. There are cases, of course, in which people become famous for negative, as well as positive, reasons. It would be strange to see an obit of former President Bill Clinton that avoided the flaws, and possible crimes, that led to his impeachment.

There are also people whose lives become intertwined with controversial people. It’s hard to imagine, at some point in the future, an obituary for Bob Weinstein that didn’t mention the #MeToo excesses of his brother Harvey Weinstein during their years working side by side. Consider this passage from a New York Times story last fall:

Time’s Up, a Hollywood-based advocacy group begun in the wake of the Weinstein revelations and the #MeToo effort, quickly issued a statement after learning of Bob Weinstein’s new production company.

“There could have been no Harvey Weinstein without the complicity of Bob Weinstein, who for years put profits ahead of people’s lives as Harvey terrorized women throughout the industry,” the statement read.

This brings me to the recent Times feature obit that ran with this dramatic double-decker headline:

James Parks Morton, Dean Who Brought a Cathedral to Life, Dies at 89

Leading the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for 25 years, he sought to make it central to urban life.

Morton was a liberal Protestant hero who led an Episcopal sanctuary that served as a Maypole around which activists of many kinds danced. However, his career was closely connected with an even more famous liberal Christian hero — Bishop Paul Moore — who was hiding secrets. Hold that thought.

Let’s start with the glowing Times overture.


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Trigger warning! New Crossroads podcast contains dis-United Methodist time travel

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I don’t need to write a new GetReligion post about this week’s “Crossroads,” do I?

After all, this podcast conversation with host Todd Wilken (click here to listen) focuses on why United Methodists on the doctrinal left and right, as well as establishment players in the middle, are now bracing for divorce. In one form or another, I’ve been writing this post since the early 1980s.

What we need is a time machine (I’m a fan of Doctor Who No. 4) so that I could let readers bounce around in United Methodist history and see why all those new headlines about a proposed plan to break-up this complicated church need to be linked to trends and events in the past.

So here we go. Stop No. 1 in this time-travel adventure is Denver, in the year 1980 (care of a GetReligion post with this headline: “United Methodism doctrine? Think location, location, location”).

… It was in 1980 — note that this was one-third of a century ago — that Bishop Melvin Wheatley, Jr., of the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church announced … he was openly rejecting his church's teaching that homosexual acts were "incompatible with Christian teaching."

Two years later, this United Methodist bishop appointed an openly gay pastor to an urban church in Denver. When challenged, Wheatley declared: "Homosexuality is a mysterious gift of God's grace. I clearly do not believe homosexuality is a sin."

This date is crucial, because it underlines the fact that the United Methodist Church’s doctrine that homosexual acts are “incompatible with Christian teaching” has been on the books for decades.

That’s why the following passage — from the New York Times a few days ago — is so misleading. The wording here gives the average reader the impression that this doctrine is something that conservatives pulled out of their hats in 2019. This Times report stated that a global split has been:


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About that semi-apology by Chick-fil-A czar: Is this a mainstream news story or not?

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As we approached New Year’s Day, and this new era in GetReligion.org work, religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling started floating some trial balloons in our team’s behind-the-scenes email chatter.

For example, he suggested that we needed to run short, punchy commentary items every now and then when there was an interesting religion-beat story breaking or there was a potential story lurking somewhere in the digital weeds.

Long ago, GetReligion even had a “Got News?” logo for that kind of thing, atop posts that pointed to interesting, potentially newsworthy items in denominational wire services or other alternative sources of religion-beat information.

So what would this look like? Maybe something like this. Have you seen any mainstream news coverage of the leader of Chick-fil-A writing a letter admitting that his company messed up the whole ties-that-bind situation with Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

This story is all over the place in conservative Christian media, but, so far, I’m not seeing anything in the mainstream press. Here is the headline at DISRN: “Chick-fil-A CEO laments “inadvertently discrediting outstanding organizations" in giving strategy switch.”

So is this a story or not? It’s obvious that the original funding shift was a story, because it caused a firestorm in elite media (must-read Bobby Ross post here). Now there is this, care of DISRN:

In an open letter to the American Family Association (AFA), Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy expressed that the company "inadvertently discredited several outstanding organizations" when the fast food giant announced it would be restructuring its philanthropic strategy by halting donations to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes last year.

AFA President Tim Wildmon had written Cathy asking if Chick-fil-A would publicly state that both ministries are not hate groups because of their beliefs concerning sexuality, marriage, and family.

Cathy responded:


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After decades of fighting, United Methodists avoid a visit from ghost of the Episcopal future?

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It’s the Methodist question I have heard the most from GetReligion readers (and even locals here in East Tennessee) over the weekend.

I will paraphrase: If the conservatives have been winning the big votes at United Methodist conferences for the past couple of decades, then why are news reports saying that the traditionalists have agreed to “leave the United Methodist Church”?

This is the response that popped into my head a few hours ago after round of news reports, Twitter and online buzz: Basically, I think conservative Methodists have been visited by the Ghost of the Episcopal Future.

Methodist traditionalists are not interested in 50 years of hand-to-hand legal conflict with the entrenched United Methodist principalities and powers. Hold that thought. Meanwhile, I will admit that it’s hard to see the logic of this statement in any one news report. Let’s start with some math from the Associated Press:

Members of the 13-million-person denomination have been at odds for years over the issue, with members in the United States leading the call for full inclusion for LGBTQ people. 

The rift widened last year when delegates meeting in St. Louis voted 438-384 for a proposal called the Traditional Plan, which affirmed bans on LGBTQ-inclusive practices. A majority of U.S.-based delegates opposed that plan but were outvoted by U.S. conservatives teamed with delegates from Methodist strongholds in Africa and the Philippines.

By the way: The numbers in that first paragraph are accurate, as opposed to the following circulated by Reuters: “The United Methodist Church lists more than 13 million members in the United States and 80 million worldwide.” That’s way off, but quite a few online and broadcast outlets picked up that error and ran with it.

Accurate math really is important here. So are the doctrines that are at stake, which are much broader than battles over marriage and sexuality (see my two “On Religion” columns about these trends here, and then here).

The key is two realities that are in constant tension.


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