GetReligion
Sunday, April 06, 2025

Africa

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Think piece: Has anyone at an Orthodox parish near you heard of St. Moses the Black?

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Every liturgical year, hours after the great feast of Pascha, Eastern Orthodox Christians gather for a unique service called the Agape Vespers – during which passages from St. John's Gospel are read in as many languages as possible (based on the membership of the parish).

In this highly multi-ethnic Communion, it is common for churches to have readings in six or seven languages. At my family's parish in the Baltimore-D.C. area – Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Linthicum, MD. – we used to hit 16 or more on a rather regular basis.

What's the point? Theologically speaking, The Big Idea is that the church must always remember to proclaim the Gospel to as many people and cultures as possible. In the Orthodox context here in America, it's a regular reminder that the borders of Orthodoxy are not defined by the language and culture of the Old Country (think Greece or Russia), or by the language and culture of the new (think converts here in North America).

Truth is (attention reporters and editors) many, many seeker-friendly Orthodox parishes are becoming quite diverse, when it comes to ethnicity and even languages.

This brings me to an interesting, and quite straightforward, "Have Faith" feature at The Daily Beast that ran the other day. Here was the info-driven, sprawling headline:

The Brotherhood of Moses the Black
It may come as a shock to some, but one surprising religion is making serious inroads into the African-American community.

And here is the feature's overture:

When Karl Berry walked into an Orthodox Church for the first time in 1983, he saw icons of black saints.


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It's thumbsucker time, after the 'tea party' bishops crash the synod on the family

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The 2015 Synod of Bishops is over and this weekend was, as required by the traditions of journalism, dedicated to the writing of thumbsuckers.

What was the synod on the family all about? What did it mean? And most importantly, from the everything-is-politics viewpoint of most journalists, which political party won, the "reformers" who back Pope Francis and his appeals for mercy or the tea-party-like radical conservatives who want people to follow all those old church rules?

Tea party? More on that later.

Any journalist who has ever written a summary, reaction think piece after a major event like this knows that one of the crucial questions is: Who gets the first quote? Journalists may interview dozens of people, with a variety of perspectives, but a reporter has make a choice and give someone the first quote. This choice almost always points to the thesis of the piece.

For example, consider the opening of the New York Times reaction story that was built on the reactions of New York Catholics.

People streaming into Catholic churches across New York over the weekend were struggling to understand the meaning of a statement issued by an assembly of bishops in the Vatican on the place within the church of Catholics who divorce and remarry.

And the first quote:

Ann Moore, 71, of Pittsburgh, attended Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan on Sunday. She expressed disgust with the bishops, who had been summoned by Pope Francis for a three-week global assembly on family issues, for not letting divorced and remarried Catholics receive communion.
“It’s wrong,” said Ms. Moore, who was in town to celebrate her daughter’s 50th birthday. “If Jesus forgave everybody, why can’t these big shots?”

This quote, for me, raised an interesting question that had been nagging me throughout the coverage of the synod.

Whatever one thinks of the Catholic Church's teachings on divorce, and how these doctrines are fleshed out at the level of pews and altars, I was struck by the fact that journalists – at least the mainstream reporters I was reading – were not quoting a rather authoritative source in their reports. To understand the high stakes of the battles in Rome, one really needed to hear from this particular voice of authority.

That source? That would be Jesus, as in the Gospel of Matthew:


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New York Times team attends one of the first funerals in Kenya, with eyes open

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The massacre at Garissa University College in Kenya is now fading into media memory, which is not the case for those of us who continue to be haunted by photos and stories that circulate on Twitter and Facebook among human-rights activists who are growing increasingly concerned about the persecution of the church in Africa and the Middle East.

For the most part, journalists around the world spotted the religious themes in this hellish drama – with stunning exceptions like the early coverage in The Washington Post.

I was left asking one question: Would this story have received more coverage in television news if someone, early on, had accurately called this the "Holy Week massacre"? There was, after all, evidence that the al-Shabaab gunmen specifically targeted a pre-Easter worship service that had been announced on campus. The bloodbath took place on Maundy Thursday, for Catholics and Protestants in the churches of the West.

Sometimes, all reporters have to do to cover the religion angles in this kind of story is open their eyes and ears and take notes.


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RNS gives story of Kenya Catholic bishops' tetanus-vaccine standoff its best shot

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Since I wrote about mainstream media ignoring the story of the standoff between Kenya's Catholic bishops and their country's government concerning a tetanus-vaccination program, two new developments have come up.

First, the Kenyan outlet CapitalFM reports that Kenya's government is taking the initiative to resolve the standoff by having independent testing of the vaccine in hope of quelling the bishops' fears:

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 12 – Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia says plans are already underway to conduct joint tests on the tetanus vaccine with all stakeholders including the Catholic Church.

Macharia said Wednesday that the analysis will be carried out within the course of next week to identify the vaccine samples and allay fears that it is harmful to women’s reproductive health.

He explained that testing will be undertaken at the Kenya Medical Research Institute in a bid to dispel the dispute surrounding the vaccine.

“I was in Naivasha on Saturday launching the polio vaccine and I announced that we shall be having a joint exercise with not just the Catholic Church but all stakeholders to make sure that people get confidence that indeed what we are saying is true. Already, that committee has been formed and they had their first meeting on Monday,” he said.

His statement followed an order by the National Assembly Committee on Health on Tuesday for an investigation into the vaccine which the Catholic Church claimed was being used to secretly sterilise women.

Second, a few hours after my post appeared Tuesday morning complaining that the story had been overlooked by US media, news of the bishops' standoff finally made the headlines via Religion News Service.

The story by RNS Kenya correspondent Fredrick Nzwili highlights the news angle I had emphasized in my GetReligion post: What is of greatest significance from a journalism standpoint is not the supposed conspiracy, which has yet to be proven, but rather the conflict between the bishops and the government on an issue that concerns public health.


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Media ignore standoff between Kenya's Catholic bishops and its government over tetanus vaccine fears

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Media ignore standoff between Kenya's Catholic bishops and its government over tetanus vaccine fears

Pia de Solenni last week drew the attention of the Catholic blogosphere to a story out of Kenya that has escaped mainstream-media notice in the United States.

In her words, "the Bishops of Kenya issued what appeared to be a courageous statement exposing a clandestine population control program disguised as a tetanus vaccine program."

Now, read the following carefully.

The bottom line is that if the bishops' allegations are true, it's a serious issue and a major news story. And if their allegations are false, it's a serious issue and a major news story. Either way, this is a journalism issue.

So where is the news coverage?

Pia de Solenni quotes the statement, which reads in part:


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Got news? Shocker in Anglican Communion is news, other than in North America

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There is this old saying that wits have long used to describe life in the modern Anglican Communion: "The Africans pray, the Americans pay and the British write the resolutions." Readers will also see variations on that final clause such as, "the British make/set (all) the rules."

But you get the point. Of course, the archbishop of Canterbury is also supposed to be the person – as the first among equals – who gets to call the most important meetings (while setting the rules for what goes on).

But what if (a) the Americans were to face an incredible budget crunch, in an age of imploding membership demographics, and (b) the Africans were no longer willing to pray (or more importantly, share the Sacraments) with Western progressives who have an evolving view of key elements of the Creed and centuries of Christian moral theology?

At that point, there could be a big – actually, "historic" is the operative word – story in the world's third largest Christian communion.


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Attention New York Times: Boko Haram has made its goals clear

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There is much to commend in the recent New York Times report that ran under the simple, but blunt, headline, “Deadly Attacks Tied to Islamist Militants Shake Nigeria.” The violence in Nigeria is, alas, a tragically old story. It’s important that the Times team has continued to cover the bloody details. It would be so easy to try to look away at this point.

LAGOS, Nigeria – Dozens were killed, including many children watching a soccer match, in a series of deadly bomb blasts in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Saturday, officials said. The Islamist group Boko Haram was blamed for the attacks, which were the deadliest in months in the sect’s birthplace.

Gunmen from the group also struck a nearby village, Mainok, at the same time Saturday evening, a local official said, storming in on trucks, burning houses and killing at least 51. The death toll from the two attacks was more than 100 and rising, officials said.


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Turkson wouldn't be first African pope

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Yesterday morning a Lutheran friend sent me an email joking that he was “off Team Turkson” on account of Turkson campaigning for the job of pope. That would be Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson. Now, I realize just how unseemly it is for a churchman to campaign for any job but this may be an unfair reading of an interview Turkson gave in the Telegraph.


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