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Podcast: The New York Times misses some key voices as Ukraine prepares for Pascha

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Podcast: The New York Times misses some key voices as Ukraine prepares for Pascha

I have said it before and I will say it again: If I could pick a major event from my life and live it over again — knowing what I know now — it would probably be the trip that I took to Moscow in 1991, arriving the week after the events that ended the Soviet Union.

There were still flowers on the sidewalks (near our hotel) where protesters were killed by Soviet tanks. There were Orthodox icons, as well. I was an evangelical Anglican, at that time, and really didn’t grasp the importance of many of the Orthodox people and places I encountered during that stay. I was there as part of the Moscow Project, an effort to help the emerging Russian Bible Society print 4 million Bibles.

One moment, in particular, was relevant to our discussion during this week’s belated “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on a New York Times report about Ukraine and tensions in global Eastern Orthodoxy heading into this weekend and the holiest day on the Christian calendar — Pascha (Easter in the West).

I was visiting with a veteran Orthodox priest who was active in the Moscow Project. We were talking about the future of Russian Orthodox Church and the realities that would shape the next few decades. This is from an “On Religion” column on the topic. He said:

It’s impossible to understand the modern Russian church … without grasping that it has four different kinds of leaders. A few Soviet-era bishops are not even Christian believers. Some are flawed believers who were lured into compromise by the KGB, but have never publicly confessed this. Some are believers who cooperated with the KGB, but have repented to groups of priests or believers. Finally, some never had to compromise.

“We have all four kinds,” this priest said. “That is our reality. We must live with it until God heals our church.”

I bring this up, of course, because of the firestorm surrounding the words and actions of Patriarch Kirill, the current leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. In KGB documents, it appears that his codename was “Mikhailov” during the years before the 1991 coup.

How would Kirill be classified, using this priest’s typology?


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Question for New York Times scribes and others: Did Vladimir Putin dream up the Kievan Rus?

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Question for New York Times scribes and others: Did Vladimir Putin dream up the Kievan Rus?

If you know anything about the New Testament, then you know that St. Paul spend a lot of time and energy in the great cities of Greece.

It would seem logical for one of the ancient patriarchates of Eastern Orthodoxy to be located in Greece, perhaps in Athens, Corinth or Thessaloniki. So who is the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church? Why are the great churches of Greece led by archbishops, instead of their own patriarch?

That’s a complicated question (click here for Orthodox Wiki timeline) and, as always, the Orthodox will argue about many historical twists and turns. But the big idea is that over the centuries Constantinople grew to become the great city of the wider Greek world and, thus, the leader of Greek Orthodoxy remains in Istanbul. That’s where the Ecumenical Patriarch’s few remaining churches have faced crushing persecution by the Turks. Consider the plight of Turkey’s only seminary, in Halki, which has been shuttered for half a century. Halki is a tragic and sad place. I’ve been there.

Thus, the archbishops in Greece are powerless and without influence? Tell that to the Greeks.

What does this have to do with a simplistic, laugh-to-keep-from-crying paragraph of unattributed information — written in classic “omniscient anonymous" voice — in another New York Times story about the religious tensions in Ukraine? Here is that paragraph:

The Russian church … has made no secret of its desire to unite the branches under a single patriarch in Moscow, which would allow it to control the holiest sites of Orthodoxy in the Slavic world and millions of believers in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, for its part, has been slowly asserting itself under its own patriarch, reviving a separate and independent branch of Eastern Orthodoxy, after the independence of Ukraine in 1991.

Where to begin?

If you know anything about Orthodox Christianity in the Slavic world, you know that the story begins in Kiev in 988 with the “Baptism of Rus“ in the waters of the Dnieper River, after Prince Vladimir embraced Orthodox Christianity as the faith of his lands. The famous Lavra of the Kievan Caves was founded in 1051, marking the birth of monasticism in what would become the Russian world.

Kiev was the key city in Slavic Orthodoxy. However, Moscow grew in importance and, eventually, became the base for the Russian Orthodox Church, much as Constantinople became the great city of the wider Greek world.


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Eastern Orthodox thinking on Ukraine? Reporters can't settle for the predictable voices

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Eastern Orthodox thinking on Ukraine? Reporters can't settle for the predictable voices

For the past week or so, I have been getting quite a few emails and messages from people wanting to understand what “the Orthodox” think about the invasion of Ukraine.

That’s a massive question. In my experience, the Orthodox are praying for a ceasefire and negotiations, seeking a Ukraine that is militarily independent of the United States-European Union and, certainly, Vladimir Putin’s Moscow regime.

At this point, no one should be surprised that Orthodox leaders aligned with USA-EU and Turkey are releasing fierce statements against Putin’s arrogant and evil invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, no one should be surprised that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has tried to call for peace, while avoiding any language that openly clashes with the autocrat next door. You end up with language such as:

As the Patriarch of All Russia and the primate of a Church whose flock is located in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries, I deeply empathize with everyone affected by this tragedy.

I call on all parties to the conflict to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. I appeal to the bishops, pastors, monastics, and laity to provide all possible assistance to all victims, including refugees and people left homeless and without means of livelihood.

The Russian and Ukrainian peoples have a common centuries-old history dating back to the Baptism of Rus’ by Prince St. Vladimir the Equal-to-the-Apostles. I believe that this God-given affinity will help overcome the divisions and disagreements that have arisen that have led to the current conflict.

Note this meek language — “I call on all parties to the conflict to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties” — that still manages to condemn the current actions of Russia’s leaders.

Anyone seeking the “Orthodox mind” on this matter needs to remember that Eastern Orthodoxy, no matter what Western media think, has no pope and that its (I should candidly say “our”) conciliar approach to settling disputes moves very slowly, with good cause.


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Visiting the monks at Christ in the Desert monastery, during a pandemic that closed its gates

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Visiting the monks at Christ in the Desert monastery, during a pandemic that closed its gates

Religion-beat work is complicated, in part because of the many different ways that believers use the same words when describing their lives. The word “charismatic” has a rather different meaning in a Pentecostal flock than when Baptists — or maybe most Baptists — use it to describe preachers.

Here at GetReligion, we frequently note the challenges faced when journalists from other beats cover complex stories that are baptized in religious language and imagery.

That brings me to a feature that ran the other day at The Washington Post with this headline: “Monks in New Mexico desert dedicated to hospitality reflect on two years without guests.”

There is much to praise in this piece, along with a few word choices that would be challenged by insiders in specific religious traditions. Also, I should note that the author of this piece is Chris Moody, a CNN veteran who is a former student of mine at both Palm Beach Atlantic University and the Washington Journalism Center.

It’s rather hard to critique and praise the work of a talented former student! However, I know that many GetReligion readers will want to see this feature. Plus, I love New Mexico and, early in my religion-beat work, I wrote similar pieces about monasteries in North Carolina and later Colorado.

Let’s start with the overture, which is long, but shows the larger context of this COVID-tide story:

CHAMA RIVER CANYON, N.M. — Hidden in this canyon of crimson sandstone cliffs encompassed by miles of federally protected wilderness, the Monastery of Christ in the Desert seems like an ideal place to ride out a pandemic.

For more than 50 years, a small community of Benedictine monks has quietly lived, worked and worshiped here in a cluster of off-grid adobe buildings along the banks of northern New Mexico’s Chama River. Considered the most remote Catholic monastery in the hemisphere, it can be reached only by a 13-mile single-lane earthen road that winds through the canyon. Abiquiú, the closest village — population 151 — is 25 miles away. Groves of cottonwood and willows line the river where bald eagles hunt for rainbow trout. Black bears, coyotes and cougars prowl the pinyon- and sage-scented Santa Fe National Forest, which surrounds the monastery.

Despite the difficult journey, outsiders have flocked to this serene abbey for decades in search of spiritual renewal.


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When is the Midnight Mass? All humor aside, there's history (and news) linked to this rite

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When is the Midnight Mass? All humor aside, there's history (and news) linked to this rite

Once upon a time, before the creation of the Internet, there were these very, very powerful and all-knowing professionals known as “church secretaries.” Yes, I know that they have evolved into office managers and web czarinas.

But, long ago, if anyone needed to know something about church life, or really needed to reach the pastor (this is before smartphones, too), they called the “church secretary,” who basically served as an air-traffic-controller for everything happing in the church family.

Back in the 1980s, I wrote a news piece for The Rocky Mountain News (#RIP) about the question that church secretaries in Catholic parishes used to dread hearing over and over during the three or four days ahead of Christmas Eve. That question, of course, was: “When is the Midnight Mass?”

Honest. People would ask that and, truth be told, the Midnight Mass, in some parishes, doesn’t start at midnight. Hold that thought, because we will come back to it.

But this post, in the week before Christmas (for most Christians in America), is about the importance of the Midnight Mass and other Christmas Eve and Christmas services. You see, there are potential news stories here. Let’s discuss several of them, briefly.

First, there is an interesting fact that I learned long ago from the late Lyle Schaller, a Mainline Protestant maven who was an often-quoted expert on church growth and, as the Mainline world imploded, church survival. The easiest way to sum up the Christmas news angle that I learned from him is to share the top of a 2015 tribute column that I wrote about his work (“Lyle Schaller, the church fix-it man in rapidly changing times”):

All pastors know that there are legions of "Easter Christians" who make it their tradition to dress up once a year and touch base with God.

What can pastors do? Not much, said the late, great church-management guru Lyle Schaller, while discussing these red-letter days on the calendar. Rather than worrying about that Easter crowd, he urged church leaders to look for new faces at Christmas.


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Thinking about a newsy mystery: Why are Gideon Bibles vanishing from hotel nightstands?

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Thinking about a newsy mystery: Why are Gideon Bibles vanishing from hotel nightstands?

Thanksgiving is once again upon us and with it the official start of the busy holiday travel season that extends through Christmas.

As Americans continue to cope with the ongoing pandemic, travel has seen a steady increase once again. That means packed airports and bumper-to-bumper traffic on most major highways starting Wednesday. It also means more people will be staying in hotels.

This brings us to an interesting and highly symbolic news story, one that deserves coverage.

I have done my share of travel — both in the United States and internationally — over my two decades working as a journalist. The few things you could always count on for much of that time was a newspaper at the front desk, usually USA Today, and a Bible in your nightstand.

Not anymore. Print is slowly dying, and newspaper readers have migrated to the internet in recent years.

What about those Bibles?

They, too, seem to be slowly disappearing. I noticed this past summer, while on a trip to Washington, D.C., that there was no Bible in my hotel room.

The phasing out of Bibles in hotel rooms is actually part of a steady trend across the country over the past few years. In 2016, Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, typically supplied both a Bible and Book of Mormon in its rooms. But the company decided that forgoing religious materials was the way to go at two of its hipper hotel brands such as Moxy and Edition. Note that both of these chains target younger guests.


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tmatt is far, far from his office desk: But the other GetReligionistas will carry on this week

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tmatt is far, far from his office desk: But the other GetReligionistas will carry on this week

Let’s see.

How do I do this?

I need to channel the online style of Bobby Ross, Jr., the master of the short, punchy post in which a few short sentences quickly lead into tweets, photographs and bullet points.

So, the point of this little post is that I am gone for a week, or as gone as the Internet allows me to me. I am not even going to write an “On Religion” column for the Universal syndicate.

But GetReligion will stay open and you will see familiar bylines here all week. I may post a think piece at some point.

But let me offer some visual clues as to my location.

So I have departed my home in these lovely mountains:


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Religious leaders facing complicated choices during complex 2020 COVID-tide

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Religious leaders facing complicated choices during complex 2020 COVID-tide

Rather than preparing for a joyous Christmastide, believers are making tough decisions about how to celebrate during a season some call COVID-tide.

What about that beloved Christmas cantata or children's pageant? Government regulations about singing vary nationwide.

All those parties and dinners on the December calendar? Church officials may shut them down or, perhaps, look the other way.

The most emotional question: What about Christmas Eve, with glowing sanctuaries full of families gathered from near and afar dressed in festive holiday attire? In most churches some members will be allowed inside, while others stay home -- as during 2020's Holy Week and Easter -- holding candles while facing computer screens.

No one knows what will happen, especially in Protestant flocks where holiday traditions are more flexible and evolve from year to year.

Nevertheless, about 50% of American adults who typically go to church at Christmas hope to do so, according to a study by LifeWay Research in Nashville. In fact, another 15% of participants in the online survey said they were more likely to attend a service this year. However, 35% of typical churchgoers said they're more likely to stay home.

"About 50% of America are saying, 'We're going to do what we're going to do,' " said Tim McConnell, LifeWay's executive director. Since this survey was done before the recent coronavirus spike, "that makes things even more unpredictable" than they were already.

The survey results seem deceptively ordinary, but tensions emerge in key details. The survey focused on believers, and the unchurched, but included an oversample of self-identified evangelical Protestants.

"It's easy to look at these numbers and see that half the people say they will be having Christmas as usual. Then there's another group of people who say they plan to do even more," he said. "Then you look at the bigger picture and there's that other third that's missing. That's probably the large group of Americans who are older and at higher risk. …

“That's some important people in our families and churches -- like grandparents. That's some important people who are not going to be having a normal Christmas, whatever 'normal' means right now."


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New York Times considers free speech wars in Hong Kong, while ignoring religious issues

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The locals had few illusions, back in 1997, when I spent a week in Hong Kong during the days just before the handover ceremonies that put one of Asia’s most important cities under the control of Chinese authorities.

The purpose of my trip was to attend a conference about religion and the news (click here for the text of my presentation during that event), so it was understandable that participants talked to quite a few leaders in Hong Kong’s diverse and prominent religious community.

But that really didn’t matter. Secular human-rights people I met were saying the same things as the church leaders. They were all digging into the fine details of the new Special Administrative Region's Basic Law and seeing ominous loopholes.

Article 23, for example, was causing concern, with its language stating that Hong Kong's new leaders "shall enact laws ... to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition (or) subversion against the Central People's Government, ... to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies".”

Did that include the Vatican? Would Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans and others be allowed to maintain ties to their global fellowships or communions?

Global issues were sure to surface, activists told me. But that would not be the first place where the hammer would fall. Activists warned that free-speech issues would be the first war zone — free speech about politics, of course, but also about religion, an area of life that troubled government leaders.

This brings me to a recent New York Times feature — a mix of text and graphics — that ran under this headline: “What You Can No Longer Say in Hong Kong.” Surely this story about the impact of new laws in Hong Kong would address religious speech issues as well as politics? Here is a crucial summary:

The police have since arrested more than 20 people under the new law, which lays out political crimes punishable by life imprisonment in serious cases, and allows Beijing to intervene directly if it wants.

Hong Kong was once a bastion of free speech. It served as a base for the international news media and for rights groups, and as a haven for political refugees, including the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. Books on sensitive political topics that are banned in mainland China found a home in the city’s bookstores.


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