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Will Smith's Oscars slap turned heads; Denzel Washington quietly warned about temptation

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Will Smith's Oscars slap turned heads; Denzel Washington quietly warned about temptation

Moments after the Academy Awards slap heard 'round the world, Will Smith huddled during a commercial break with Denzel Washington, another of the Best Actor nominees.

No one could hear what Smith discussed with the man who is both an A-list player and the rare Hollywood superstar who has – after years in hot press spotlights – emerged as a mentor on issues of faith and family.

But Smith appeared to have Washington on his mind during his emotional remarks after winning the Oscar for his work in "King Richard." Smith apologized to his peers for slap-punching Chris Rock after his jest about his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith's shaved head. The comic apparently didn't know she was suffering hair loss with Alopecia.

“In this moment, I am overwhelmed by what God is calling on me to do and be in this world. … I'm being called on in my life to love people and to protect people," said Smith, tears on his face. "I know that to do what we do, you gotta be able to take abuse, you gotta be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business, you gotta be able to have people disrespecting you. And you gotta smile and pretend that that's OK."

When Washington offered quiet words of encouragement from offstage, Smith thanked him and added: "Denzel said a few minutes ago: At your highest moment, be careful – that's when the devil comes for you."

This was not ordinary Oscars God-talk.

This drama triggered waves of social-media angst, with critics and millions of viewers debating who to blame for this crisis during an otherwise meandering Academy Awards show shaped by politics, pandemics, gender, race and low ratings.


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Podcast: Concerning the many religion-beat stories linked to that 'Don't Say Gay' bill

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Podcast: Concerning the many religion-beat stories linked to that 'Don't Say Gay' bill

Let’s talk news-business realities for a moment.

If you do an online search for the following terms — “Parental Rights in Education,” Florida — you will get about 43,000 hits on Google News (as of Thursday afternoon).

Then again, if you run a search for these terms — “Don’t Say Gay,” Florida — you will get 6,820,000 hits on Google News and 24,100,000 hits on Google (period).

That’s a pretty big difference. What’s going on?

On this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) I argued that the real name of this bill sounded way, way too much like a whatever it was that parents in Virginia wanted during that recent election that left the Democratic Party establishment in shock.

As it turns out, a new Public Opinion Strategies poll (.pdf here) found that registered voters — a majority of Democrats, even — liked the contents of this controversial Florida bill when shown its key, defining language:

“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in Kindergarten through third grade or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

Clearly, “Don’t Say Gay” worked much better for political activists who wanted to keep the focus on LGBTQ-era sexual education for prepubescent children. The whole idea was that way too many parents are burdened with religious, moral and cultural beliefs that were on the wrong side of history. Thus, “parental rights” and classroom transparency are not helpful concepts.

What does this have to do with the many religion-angle stories that journalists could be chasing linked to this legislation and variations on this bill that are sure to show up in other states?


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Updates in the journalism style bible: Appropriate 'cult' advice and other tweaks

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Updates in the journalism style bible: Appropriate 'cult' advice and other tweaks

If you know anything about the nuts and bolts of reporting and editing, then you know that the Associated Press Stylebook is the bible — that’s with a lower-case “b” — of journalism.

It’s also a great place to chart tensions inside the news business. Consider, for example, the decades of debate about “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” as opposed to “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion rights.” Will the next major revision of the AP manual need to include an updated definition for the suddenly controversial word “woman”?

Our GetReligion patriarch, Richard Ostling, recently sent me an interestingly list of some of the religion-beat terms in the latest revisions to this AP bible. He served as a consultant on that revision project and, thus, doesn’t want to make any comments about the results. Here is one of the updates that is sure to lead to newsroom discussions:

cult (new)

A loaded term to be used with caution.

Yes, indeed — proceed with caution. I totally agree that this is a “loaded term” that journalists should avoid whenever possible.

The problem, however, is that this is a term that religious leaders, activists and even scholars are going to use every now and then and it will be hard to avoid the term when it is used in important direct quotations. Thus, editors need to know the various ways that informed people use the word — the key is sociology vs. theology — so that these loaded quotes can be placed in context for readers. Then there are activists of various kinds who throw this term around like a verbal hand grenade.

Readers can tell, with a quick glance at the venerable Merriam-Webster dictionary, that this is a complicated subject. Here are several of the definitions:

cult

noun, often attributive …

Definition of cult

1: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious (see SPURIOUS sense 2) also : its body of adherents


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Maybe angry Christians should try chanting 'Pray for Biden' instead of 'Let's go Brandon'?

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Maybe angry Christians should try chanting 'Pray for Biden' instead of 'Let's go Brandon'?

In the beginning, there was an obscene chant at the Talladega Superspeedway that NBC producers urgently needed to ignore during a live broadcast.

Interviewing winner Brandon Brown, reporter Kelli Stavast pretended the NASCAR crowd was chanting, "Let's go Brandon!" -- not cursing President Joe Biden.

The rest is history, as the wink-wink slogan soaked into political jargon and mass media. What shocked the Rev. Seth Carter -- a young Southern Baptist pastor in Kentucky -- was when church people began baptizing "Let's go Brandon!" into common speech.

"To be clear, I am no supporter of our president's actions or policies. In no way do I feel support for him welling up inside of me," he wrote, in a Baptist Press commentary.

"However, I recognize that my feelings can never be the proper guide of the attitude I am to have toward him. As a Christian and a believer in the inspired, inerrant and infallible Word of God contained in the Bible, the truth of God's Word is what ought to guide my attitude toward President Biden (or any other leader for that matter)."

Christians could try chanting, "Pray for Biden," he said. They need to see Biden the way the apostles Peter and Paul viewed "the evil emperor of their day, Nero."

Carter noted this First Peter passage: "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right." Writing to the Colossians, Paul said: "Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt."

In response, the conservative Capstone Report website published an editorial claiming that "Baptist Pravda, err, Press" had demanded "submission to regime's lies."


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Concerning Elon Musk, the Babylon Bee and the wise teachings of Jesus

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Concerning Elon Musk, the Babylon Bee and the wise teachings of Jesus

At the end of each podcast, Babylon Bee leaders ask guests the same 10 questions, including this stumper: "Calvinist or Arminian?"

That caught Elon Musk by surprise, and he needed clarification on the difference between Arminian believers and persons from Armenia. After some background on Protestant history, he said: "My mind would say 'determinism' and my heart says, 'free will.' "

Why was the mastermind behind Tesla and SpaceX -- a man worth $278 billion at the end of 2021-- talking to a Christian satire website? The answer: Musk has 69.7 million Twitter followers, and he frequently responds, even if it's a U.S. senator questioning his taxes.

"You know, he engages with our content from time to time," Bee CEO Seth Dillon told Fox News. After email exchanges about a meeting, Musk said: "Fly to me and we'll do it."

The result was 100-plus minutes of conversation in Austin, Texas, ranging from satire to science, from politics to pop culture. Topics included why entrepreneurs are fleeing California, sustainable energy, superheroes (Musk would choose to be "Irony Man"), the physics of reusable rockets, cyborgs, how "wokeness" threatens humor, CNN morality and the future of a planet near an expanding sun.

Musk discussed his journey from South Africa to America, including his days as a manual laborer while struggling to pay student loans. Then he dove into computer coding and online commerce, making millions of dollars that led to Tesla. The rest is history.

On celebrity websites, Musk is often described as an atheist or agnostic. Asked if he prays, Musk once replied: "I didn't even pray when I almost died of malaria." But after the success of the first manned Falcon rocket mission, Musk said, in his public remarks: "You know, I'm not very religious but I prayed for this one."


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Return of 'nuns' growing weed: A Rolling Stone puff piece on this emerging religious group

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Return of 'nuns' growing weed: A Rolling Stone puff piece on this emerging religious group

Those PR-friendly, pot-puffing Sisters of the Valley are back. I’m sure that this is shocking news (#NOT) to readers who know anything about the history of this group.

Here’s a GetReligion flashback. Some reporters struggled, in early happy talk features about this group, to make it clear these “sisters” were not, in fact, some progressive Catholic order. One classic piece inspired a blog post by Catholic Deacon Greg Kandra — a CBS News professional in his career before moving to the altar — with this classic headline: “Newsweek, Go Home. You’re Drunk. Those Aren’t Nuns.”

Now we have an update about the Sisters of the Valley in, logically enough, Rolling Stone. Here’s the double-decker headline on that:

Our Ladies of the Perpetual High

How a New Age order of feminist nuns is reimagining spiritual devotion and trying to heal the world — one joint at a time

Yes, some headline writers cannot resist “Our Lady” jokes, which is unfortunate. However, the second part of that headline is clear about the contents of this feature, which helps readers know what is what and who is who. This clarity is what makes this story worth reading.

Before we get to that, let me remind readers of a key point in that “thinker” that ran here at GetReligion last weekend: “Two think pieces on changes in American religious life, with a few political twists.” One of the pieces that I recommended was a Rod “Live Not By Lies” Dreher post pointing to a new blast of information from the Pew Research Center team.

Forget politics for a moment. The headline on Rod’s post — “Christianity Declines — But Not ‘Spirituality’ “ — is what connects that Pew data to this new Rolling Stone feature. Dreher wants to note a renewed surge in a tend that has been around for decades (think “Sheilaism”). Here is a key passage:

America continues to transition to its post-Christian reality. … One of the most interesting, and unexpected, developments is that in the US, relatively few of these people who are falling away from Christianity are becoming atheists. Rather, they are cobbling together a bespoke bricolage religion, one designed just for them.


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Talking to Jesus? This is big New York Times news when a Hollywood spiritualist is involved

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Talking to Jesus? This is big New York Times news when a Hollywood spiritualist is involved

Let’s see. If you were going to write a New York Times article in which someone claimed to be channeling the Buddha, would you, at some point, talk to Buddhists? Maybe even a scholar whose work is rooted in Buddhist thought?

What about Judaism? If someone was claiming to channel Moses, would you talk to a rabbi or two about that? Maybe a scholar who has studied Jewish mysticism?

How about Islam? How would a reporter approach the claims of someone who says she is channeling Mohammad? And what would Islamic believers think of this process?

With these questions in mind, let’s look at that chatty first-person piece that ran more than a month ago at the Times with this headline: “In Good Spirits — Carissa Schumacher channels the dead for her A-list celebrity clients. But most days, she’s in the forest.”

The headline omits the big reveal: Schumacher claims to channel the spirits of the dead, including her most famous connection — Jesus. This is tricky territory, as demonstrated in the wild correction at the end of this long feature:

Correction: Nov. 29, 2021

An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the biblical name Yeshua. The name refers to multiple people, including Joshua; it does not refer solely to Jesus Christ. The article also referred incorrectly to the Old Testament; while the name Yeshua appears in it, Jesus Christ does not.

Ready for the overture?


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Why the press loves Santa Claus and the case for more news about St. Nicholas of Myra

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Why the press loves Santa Claus and the case for more news about St. Nicholas of Myra

We are currently in “the most wonderful time of the year,” as the popular Christmas song by Andy Williams goes. For many Christians, however, the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day are marked by Advent, a time of prayer in preparation for the birth of Jesus. In Eastern churches, this season is called Nativity Lent.

Advent is one of those religious customs largely ignored by the mainstream press. Many newspapers and TV networks are more preoccupied with the economics around the season — Black Friday marks the beginning of the shopping-mall season for them — and things like trendy Advent calendars (which these days are largely devoid of any religiosity) and Santa Claus, the hero previously known as St. Nicholas.

In fact, the things the mainstream media value this time of year are starkly different from the message worshippers in ancient Christian traditions get in church during Sunday liturgies in the weeks preceding December 25th.

This is not something that’s entirely new. Even as a child, I could sense a disconnect between the materialism around me growing up in New York and the Christmas I celebrated at home featuring a Nativity crèche and Advent wreath. The Peanuts Christmas special had Charlie Brown bemoaning commercialization of the season — and that aired in 1965 (and network executives worried that it was too religious, even back then).

Where are we in 2021? Amid talk of supply-chain issues, inflation, the ongoing pandemic and political bickering in Washington (with politicians posing with guns on their Christmas cards), it looks pretty bleak out there.

This time of year is yet another reminder of what mainstream media values and the divide over what most Americans think and believe. This is where the Catholic press is of great value to help frame not just what’s important, but also what is more connected to the traditions and reality of this time of year.

In particular, it’s interesting to look for coverage of the backstory of Santa Claus. Hold that thought.

Let’s start here. Scanning various news sites the last two weeks led me to notice a larger trend.


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Lessons learned from black-and-white visions of Christmas past -- movies from 1940s

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Lessons learned from black-and-white visions of Christmas past -- movies from 1940s

It's a black-and-white movie Christmas, with snow falling as joyful families mingle on city sidewalks while window-shopping -- buying food, presents, decorations and fresh-cut trees for festivities that are only two days away.

For Americans, this scene represents the ghost of Christmas past, long before suburban malls, big-box scrums and Amazon.com. And as "The Bishop's Wife" opens, an angel -- a graceful Cary Grant -- enters this 1947 tableau, smiling at carolers and children and helping the needy and lost.

"Christmas is always in danger in Christmas movies -- we'd have no reason to make such movies otherwise," wrote critic Titus Techera, executive director of the American Cinema Foundation. In this classic movie, "we have a remarkable concentration of problems in one household: A man's faith, his family, community and church … are all tied together."

It isn't unusual to find miracles, tight-knit communities, glowing churches and parables about human choices, temptation, sin and redemption in old Christmas films, said Techera, contacted by Zoom while visiting Bucharest.

That's why Techera -- a native of Romania, before his work brought him to America -- has written four online essays about the lessons learned from watching '40s movies that were remade in the '90s. The other films in this Acton Institute series are "The Shop Around the Corner," "Miracle on 34th Street" and "Christmas in Connecticut."

There's a reason many modern Americans keep watching these movies, he said. Some yearn for a time before most Americans became so isolated, separated by jobs far from extended families, sprawling suburban neighborhoods and all the paradoxes built into digital networks that were supposed to keep people connected.

"What we see in these movies is a time when Christmas was a far less commercial celebration and there was quite a bit of continuity with traditions from the past. … For many, the church was part of that," he said. "Christmas was a family thing. It was a community thing. … Commerce was more subservient to ordinary life. Commerce had not taken over all of life, including Christmas."


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