Marriage & Family

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Behold! The New York Times dared to explore the spiritual 'fire' inside Denzel Washington

, , , , , , , , , , ,
Behold! The New York Times dared to explore the spiritual 'fire' inside Denzel Washington

Behold. It is time for me to praise — at great length — something published in The New York Times. It was even written by Maureen Dowd, of all people.

The headline on this length first-person feature: “Denzel Washington, Man on Fire.” No, this story isn’t about the stunningly violent, but at times quite biblical, 2004 movie entitled “Man on Fire.” It’s about the new film — “The Tragedy of Macbeth” — that combines the Oscar-level talents of Washington, director Joel Coen and producer-actress Frances McDormand, who is married to Coen. For Washington, playing the lead role represented a return to his theater roots with Shakespeare.

As you would expect, a Times piece by Dowd is going to include quotes from Hollywood A-listers such as Ethan Hawke, Liev Schreiber, Melissa Leo and Meryl Streep. Tom Hanks has this to say about Washington: ““He is our Brando. Nicholson. Olivier.”

However, the key to this feature is that the “fire” in the headline is both artistic and spiritual. It is, literally, a reference to Washington’s Pentecostal Christian upbringing and the Christian faith that he is not afraid to discuss in the context of his talent and his vocation.

It’s hard to know what to quote from this piece — since it covers so many bases. If you want insights into filmmaking and the complex minds of Coen and McDormand, you will find it. This isn’t a religion story. However, it’s a story that is willing to let Washington speak his mind.

The faith element enters with one of those “here I am talking to Denzel Washington” scenes that are far too common in arts and entertainment journalism. But, in this case, this tired device works. This passage is long, long, long, but essential. I will break it up, just a bit:

[Washington] said he had gotten very little sleep. He had just put the final touches on a film he directed, “A Journal for Jordan,” the true story of the romance between Dana Canedy, a former New York Times reporter and editor, and Sgt. Charles Monroe King, a soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, after meeting their infant son only once. It stars Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams and also opens widely on Christmas Day.

“It’s just a beautiful story of loss and love,” Mr. Washington said, “a story about real heroes and sacrificing, men and women who have given their lives so that we have the freedom to complain.”


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

About Southern Baptist wars and the Merritt family: Here's some inside baseball worth covering

, , , , , , , ,
About Southern Baptist wars and the Merritt family: Here's some inside baseball worth covering

I rarely write about Southern Baptist affairs unless one of their annual conventions is at hand, but I can’t resist commenting on a fascinating sideshow happening between the highly symbolic Merritt family and their fellow conservatives.

Jonathan Merritt is the openly gay (and I assume celibate, based on previous comments) son of the Rev. James Merritt, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. It’s been a tough ride for the past 10 years as the younger Merritt has tried to reconcile his sexuality with his faith, while working as a news- columnist. His father has been under immense pressure as well.

The latest fracas, with a hat tip to JulieRoys.com, has to do with the elder Merritt walking away from his position as a visiting professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. The whole affair has gone unnoticed by many newsrooms, even though this is a topic that is newsworthy for a variety of reasons. Here is what Roys wrote:

Former Southern Baptist Convention President James Merritt resigned last week as a visiting professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary over controversy sparked by Merritt’s decision to share a sermon online by his son who’s gay. …

The decision came after Merritt, who’s also pastor of Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, Georgia, tweeted a link to a sermon by his son, Jonathan Merritt. The younger Merritt is a graduate of Southeastern Baptist and an author, journalist, and popular speaker. In August, Jonathan Merritt announced on Instagram that he’s gay.

“I don’t agree with my loved son @JonathanMerritt on everything to be sure,” James Merritt tweeted November 22. “But I encourage you to listen to his message on Mark 13. It is both brilliant and faithful to the gospel and the coming of Jesus!”

After that, things got really interesting. Here is the chronology:

Nov. 22 — James Merritt publishes his tweet.

Nov. 23 — The Conservative Baptist Network, a group of some 6,000 members based in Memphis, issues a statement with the headline: “Promoting homosexual preachers is not loving, biblical or Baptist.” The elder Merritt responds that same day.


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

Just how big is the Mississippi abortion case at U.S. Supreme Court? Well, THIS BIG

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Just how big is the Mississippi abortion case at U.S. Supreme Court? Well, THIS BIG

“The most important abortion case in decades” is how the New York Times’ Adam Liptak describes it.

“The most significant abortion case in a generation,” agree the Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin and Brent Kendall.

“The biggest challenge to abortion rights in decades,” echo The Associated Press’ Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko.

It’s not hyperbole: Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, faces its biggest test yet. The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes explains:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday signaled it is on the verge of a major curtailment of abortion rights in the United States, and appeared likely to uphold a Mississippi law that violates one of the essential holdings of Roe v. Wade established nearly 50 years ago.

Whether the court would eventually overrule Roe and its finding that women have a fundamental right to end their pregnancies was unclear.

But none of the six conservatives who make up the court’s majority expressed support for maintaining its rule that states may not prohibit abortion before the point of fetal viability, which is generally estimated to be between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy.

At Christianity Today, Kate Shellnutt reports that “pro-life evangelicals who had rallied for the cause for decades were encouraged that the conservative-leaning court appeared willing to uphold a contentious Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks.”

Other helpful religion coverage:

• How faith groups feel about this major abortion case (by Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News)

• Before there was Roe: Religious debate before high court’s historic ruling on abortion (by Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service)

• Religion abortion rights supporters fight for access (by Holly Meyer, The Associated Press)


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

Podcast: It's time to pay attention to debates about girls, Instagram and mental-health woes

, , , , , , , , , , ,
Podcast: It's time to pay attention to debates about girls, Instagram and mental-health woes

If you have followed GetReligion for a decade or so, you know that our religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling writes a “Memo” post every week in which he focuses on religion trends and future events to which journalists should be paying attention.

This week’s Memo focused on why religious and secular debates about Death with Dignity laws will not be fading away anytime soon. As always, Ostling’s Memo posts are packed with links to relevant interest groups, experts and online resources to aid reporters.

This brings me to this week’s “Crossroads,” which — for a change — does not focus on a religion-news story in the mainstream press (click here to listen to the podcast). Instead, you can think of this feature as a kind of Mattingly Memo, in which host Todd Wilken and I discussed the news (and religious) implications of a new Atlantic Monthly essay by Jonathan Haidt that ran with this dramatic double-decker headline:

The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls

The preponderance of the evidence suggests that social media is causing real damage to adolescents

On its face, this essay was not a “religion news” piece at all. From my point of view, that was kind of the point.

One of the themes Haidt stressed was that teen-aged girls are pretty much alone, when it comes to wrestling with the moral, emotional and even medical side effects of addiction to social media — the invasive visual-image wonderland of Instagram, in particular. The article includes a depressing file of research slides on this mental-health issue from the Wall Street Journal (click here for that .pdf). Note, in particular, that teens believe their parents have next to zero understanding of what is going on.

If parents are tuned out, where does that put clergy? Should religious leaders be playing some kind of role in public-square (and personal) discussions of this issue?

These questions made me think of an “On Religion” column that I wrote in 2017 about the efforts of some Colorado teens — reacting to several suicides linked to cyber-bullying — to help their friends examine the impact of social-media programs on their lives.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Coverage of the Arlene's Flowers story may be over, but many more cases are on the way

, , , , , ,
Coverage of the Arlene's Flowers story may be over, but many more cases are on the way

Last week, a famous set of court cases: Arlene’s Flowers v. State of Washington and Ingersoll and Freed v. Arlene’s Flowers, Inc., was settled, allowing both sides to retreat with some feeling of vindication.

The case concerned Barronelle Stutzman, owner of a flower shop in eastern Washington state who was friends with a local gay male couple — but who refused to provide flowers for their same-sex wedding because of her traditional Christian beliefs about marriage.

The gay couple sued her and then the state attorney general, Bob Ferguson, also sued her, saying she couldn’t discriminate on basis of religion. It wasn’t about discrimination, she said. After all, she’d served gay customers before and had employed gay florists in her shop. But her religious beliefs gave her no choice but to refuse to create floral arrangements for the wedding rite.

The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court, which had just ruled on a similar Colorado case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, remanded it back to Washington state for further consideration in light of their favorable decision on behalf of the owner of the cake shop. But, true to form for those of us living in this ultra-blue state, the Washington Supreme Court ruled again against Stutzman.

The case returned to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas agreed to take the case. However, that was one justice short of what was needed. (An essay at First Things asked questions about why certain other conservative justices bailed on taking this case).

Now 77 and more than ready to retire, Stutzman settled this month, paying Robert Ingersoll, one of the two men, $5,000 and freeing herself of additional legal costs. You may remember that she raised some $174,000 through GoFundMe before the managers of the website rejected her beliefs and shut her down.

Here's how the Tri City Herald, the local paper, covered the Stutzman’s finale:


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

Think piece that's tissue worthy: The Pillar goes inside one family's clergy sex-abuse hell

, , , , , , , ,
Think piece that's tissue worthy: The Pillar goes inside one family's clergy sex-abuse hell

This week’s think piece is more than think piece. It’s more like a shudder, shake your head and even weep piece. Then you can think about it.

I am referring to a long, first-person piece that ran the other day at The Pillar and it’s causing lots of buzz in Catholic online life, for good reason. The headline doesn’t really tell you what is coming: “Cleveland priest gets life. Victims’ mother: ‘God is with us'.”

The first-person voice is essential and steers this away from hard-news territory — even though there are facts and news hooks buried inside the narrative. That’s the “thinking about it later” or thinking about it on the re-read side of this piece.

It’s really long, but you have to start at the beginning, with this editorial note:

Cleveland priest Fr. Robert McWilliams was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday, after the priest pled guilty to federal child trafficking, child abuse, and child exploitation charges.

McWilliams, 41, was ordained a priest in 2017. He was arrested in 2019, and pled guilty to federal charges in July of this year.

At his Nov. 9 sentencing hearing, the mother of four boys preyed upon by McWilliams urged a life sentence. That mother and her family told The Pillar their story.

The Pillar team also made the editorial team to change the name of the family and the victims, in order to protect their privacy.

In terms of the story itself, here are three moments — starting at the beginning:

“Ok. I love my Church, I love my family. I want my Church to be healed. Ok.”

When Rachel Christopher … begins to tell her family’s story, she usually starts with a few phrases — a litany, really — that remind her who she is, and what really matters.

This time, I think, she’s using them to remember why she is sitting down with a stranger — sitting down with me — to share the kind of painful memories that no parent wants even to imagine.

Rachel is telling the story of the priest who hurt her children.


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

Journalism tips on: (1) Evangelical crack-ups, (2) campus faith fights, (3) COVID exemptions

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Journalism tips on: (1) Evangelical crack-ups, (2) campus faith fights, (3) COVID exemptions

A potential U.S. evangelical crack-up continues as a lively story topic since Guy Memos here since these two Memos here at GetReligion, “Are we finally witnessing the long-anticipated (by journalists) evangelical crack-up?” and also “Concerning evangelical elites, Donald Trump and the press: The great crack-up continues.” In USA Today, Daniel Darling, for one, sought hope despite his recent victimhood in these tensions.

Media professionals considering work on this theme should note a lament at book length coming next week: "Struggling with Evangelicalism: Why I Want to Leave and What It Takes to Stay" by Dan Stringer. The author is a lifelong evangelical, Wheaton College (Illinois) and Fuller Theological Seminary alum, leader of InterVarsity's graduate student and faculty ministries in Hawaii and Evangelical Covenant Church minister. This book comes from InterVarsity Press.

The Guy has yet to read this book, but it looks to be a must-read for reporters covering American evangelicals in the Bible-Belt and elsewhere. Stringer ponders how evangelicalism can move beyond too-familiar sexual scandals, racial and gender conflicts, and Trump Era political rancor -- what a blurb by retired Fuller President Richard Mouw calls "blind spots, toxic brokenness and complicity with injustice."

Regarding the Donald Trump factor, the evangelical elite was largely silent, with one faction openly opposed, while certain outspoken evangelicals backed the problematic populist.

As The Guy has observed, recent politics exposed the already existing gap between institutional officials and the Trumpified evangelical rank and file. Problem is, to thrive any religious or cultural movement needs intelligent leaders united with a substantial grass-roots constituency to build long-term strategy.

Evangelicalism has always combined basic unity in belief with a wide variety of differences. Think denominational vs. independent, Arminian vs. Calvinist, gender "complementarian" vs. "egalitarian," Pentecostal-Charismatic vs. others and a racial divide so wide that many Black evangelicals shun the e-word alltogether.

In an October 21 Patheos article, historian Daniel K. Williams at the University of West Georgia added North vs. South to those internal divisions. He recounts that the Southern Baptist Convention remained mostly apart when northerners began to supplant "fundamentalism" with "evangelicalism" in the World War II era. Eventually, he says, this movement formed a North-South alliance but it's now eroding.


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

Dang it! Your GetReligionistas pounced a bit too early on the 'parental rights' wars

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Dang it! Your GetReligionistas pounced a bit too early on the 'parental rights' wars

Dang it (said the Texas Baptist preacher’s kid), I really hate it when GetReligion gets to a serious media topic Just. A. Bit. Too. Early.

What am I talking about?

Well, take a look at the New York Times headline featured in the tweet at the top of this post, a tweet authored by a symbolic figure in the wider world of Democratic Party life. Michael Wear is a political consultant, but he is best known as the faith-outreach director for Barack Obama's 2012 campaign and then as part of Obama's White House staff. Here’s that headline:

Republicans Seize on Schools as a Wedge Issue to Unite the Party

Rallying around what it calls “parental rights,” the party is pushing to build on its victories this week by stoking white resentment and tapping into broader anger at the education system.

First of all, I think the verb “seize” is a stand-in for the world “pounce,” which has become a bit of a cliche in recent years. Here is the Urban Dictionary take on the “Republicans pounce!” phenomenon or click here for a National Review essay on the subject. The whole point is that the issue at hand isn’t really all that important, but conservatives have “pounced” on it and are using this alleged issue to hurt liberals in social media, conservative news sources, etc.

Major media on the coasts, of course, avoid covering the topic — unless it leads to an embarrassing defeats for Democrats in a symbolic state like Virginia.

Anyway, the Times headline may ring a bell or two for those who read this October 22 podcast-post here at GetReligion: “Are 'parental rights' references (inside scare quotes) the new 'religious liberty.” Here is the opening of that post:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

How do modern Latter-day Saints view their faith's complex history of polygamy?

, , , ,
How do modern Latter-day Saints view their faith's complex history of polygamy?

THE QUESTION:

How do Latter-day Saints view the polygamy in their faith's past?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which seeks to abolish its former "Mormon" nickname) was founded in 1830 by the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., who later began practicing and advocating polygamy (the faith prefers the term "plural marriage" and in past times spoke of "the Principle.") Smith wanted this kept secret but dissenters inside his flock revealed the controversial teaching, which played a role in his 1844 assassination.

After Smith's successor as prophet, Brigham Young, led LDS adherents to Utah, the church in 1852 openly proclaimed its practice. This scandalized the nation. Young himself was to take 55 wives. But when federal laws attacked the faith's very organizational existence, President Wilford Woodruff halted the practice in the 1890 "Manifesto." Today, polygamy is grounds for excommunication, even in nations where it is legal.

That is basic, well-established history. But there's far more to be said.

In recent times, the Utah-based faith has issued relatively candid explanations (click here), as well as on the subject of "plural marriage” (click here). Now the church's Deseret Book company has published "Let's Talk About Polygamy," a more thorough and fascinating accounting by Brittany Chapman Nash, a 10-year veteran of the church's official history department who emphasizes the experience of LDS women. Much of the following relies upon her research.

Twenty-first Century Americans might wonder why LDS followers ever wanted multiple spouses. At one level, the answer is quite simple. As Nash says, "they believed God commanded it." Members then and now believe in Smith as God's unique prophet and that all his revelations established the "latter-day" restoration of true Christianity that had been lost for nearly 19 centuries.

Smith's own marital history began with his 1827 wedding to the former Emma Hale. His early scriptural revelations in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants advocated traditional Christian monogamy. But in the mid-1830s Smith privately wed 16-year-old Fanny Alger, who worked in the Smiths' home. She soon moved away and married another man. History does not record what Emma knew or thought about this.


Please respect our Commenting Policy