GetReligion
Sunday, April 06, 2025

CBN

, , , ,

Covering Robert Jeffress and Kim Jong Un: Some media shone, while others flailed

, , , ,

It certainly made for a lot of waves on the internet: The Rev. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, describing how America's chief executive has authority from God to kill off North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

I’m still waiting for Pope Francis to come up with a statement to refute that one. But first things first: On Tuesday, Jeffress’ remarks were released to the Christian Broadcasting Network, an odd alliance if there ever was one. CBN is very oriented toward the Pentecostal-charismatic side of things and Jeffress most definitely is not, as an old-guard leader on the Southern Baptist right.

But politics always makes for strange bedfellows and with its superior contacts within the Trump administration, CBN has found itself in the unusual role of breaking national stories lately. David Brody’s three-paragraph story was part news, part editorial:

Sometimes you've got to stop evil. It's biblical. In North Korea, it's pretty clear that their dictator is downright evil. So tonight, Pastor Robert Jeffress, a longtime evangelical backer of Donald Trump, just released a statement saying the president has the moral authority to take out Kim Jong Un. This comes after Trump said today that if North Korea continues to threaten the U.S. then they will “be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."
“When it comes to how we should deal with evil doers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary – including war – to stop evil. In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong-Un. I’m heartened to see that our president -- contrary to what we’ve seen with past administrations who have taken, at best, a sheepish stance toward dictators and oppressors -- will not tolerate any threat against the American people. When President Trump draws a red line, he will not erase it, move it, or back away from it. Thank God for a President who is serious about protecting our country.”
Folks, get ready. I've warned for a long time that North Korea was the biggest problem all along. Memo to North Korea: with Trump as president, you really don't want to mess with America. This could get real ugly real soon. Trump won't tolerate this for too much longer.

Later, CBN did follow up with something more nuanced from other evangelicals.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

Guilt by association: Pastor to Cabinet officials gets trashed by The Los Angeles Times

, , , , ,

There’s been chatter this past week about Bible studies at the White House, thanks to a Christian Broadcasting Network story calling President Donald Trump’s advisors “the most evangelical Cabinet in history.”

Looking for a local angle, the Los Angeles Times found one in the person of the Rev. Ralph Drollinger.

Now, Drollinger had been mentioned in a very similar CBN story back in April. This time around, however, a Washington correspondent for the Times realized that one of the people in CBN’s story sounded awfully familiar. He wrote the following:

News from the Christian Broadcasting Network that members of President Trump’s Cabinet are attending Bible study sessions together didn’t come as such a shock in Washington.
The shock was who is teaching them.
That teacher, Pastor Ralph Drollinger, is well known to some members in the California congressional delegation – and not just because he is a 7-foot-1 former UCLA basketball star. He is the evangelical spiritual leader who once counseled a group of Sacramento lawmakers that female politicians with young children have no business serving in the Legislature. In fact, he called them sinners.

Before we go, may we remind the Times that the Associated Press-approved way to refer to clergy on the first reference is as “the Rev.,” not “Pastor.” Maybe the reporter wouldn’t know such niceties but someone on the copy desk should have.


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

Taiwan and gay marriage: Can journalists face the fact that there are two sides to the story?

, , , , , , ,

Taiwan, as of this past week, is poised to allow same-sex marriage, the first country in Asia to do so. This has gotten all sorts of cheering from various mainstream media outlets. The reason why the writers of this blog care about this issue is that the opposition to such measures tend to be from the religious community. And those folks aren’t being heard from.

There’s a lot at stake with Taiwan accepting gay marriage, as Taiwan is seen as the gateway to the rest of eastern Asia. Why else do you think McDonalds floated a TV ad showing a Chinese son coming out to his father? Anyone who thinks the religious community are the only folks in Taiwan thinking about family values must be asleep at the wheel. That McDonald’s ad focuses on a most revered family building block in Asia: The tie between father and son.

So when the world’s largest hamburger chain gets into the act, you know the stakes are high for the cultural powers that be. Tmatt has written before about Taiwan coverage that gives one side of the argument, briefly mentions the opposition from the country’s tiny Christian community but doesn’t mention what the vastly larger contingents of Taoists and Buddhists on the island are saying about it. More on that in a bit.

Also, there actually are some good religion angles on this issue, despite the reluctance among some American media in covering them. For instance, the Hong Kong-based Sunday Examiner has written on the divisions among Taiwan’s Christian groups over how to battle gay marriage. On May 24, Taiwan’s highest court ruled that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. We’ll pick up with what the New York Times said next:

TAIPEI, Taiwan — In a ruling that paves the way for Taiwan to become the first place in Asia to recognize same-sex marriage, the constitutional court on Wednesday struck down the Civil Code’s definition of marriage as being only between a man and a woman. ...
When the ruling was announced, cheers broke out among the hundreds of supporters who had gathered outside the legislature, monitoring developments on a big-screen television.


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

Judge Neil Gorsuch's Anglicanism is still a mystery that journalists need to solve

, , , , , , , , ,

It’s been about three weeks since Neil Gorsuch has been nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court and we’re no closer to figuring out what makes him tick, spiritually. However, there have been a few jabs at trying to gauge the spiritual temperature of his family's parish in downtown Boulder, Colo..

The most aggressive reporting has been by a British outlet, the Daily Mail, whose reporters have shown up at Gorsuch’s parish, St. John’s Episcopal. The Mail has also been sniffing about Oxford University (pictured above), which is where Gorsuch apparently became an Anglican during his studies there. It was also where he met his future wife Marie Louise. Her family is Anglican and the Mail explains that all here and here.

Very clever of them to nail down his wife’s British background and that of her family and to have interviewed Gorsuch’s stepmother in Denver.

They too see a dissonance in Gorsuch’s purported conservative views and the church he attends:.

He has been described as 'the heir to Scalia' and is a religious conservative whose appointment to the Supreme Court was greeted with jubilation on the pro-gun, anti-abortion Right.
But DailyMail.com can reveal that Neil Gorsuch's own church, in Boulder, Colorado, is a hotbed of liberal thinking – and is led by a pastor who proudly attended the anti-Trump Women's March in Denver the day after the President's inauguration.
Another member of the clergy at St. John's Episcopal Church is outspoken about the need for gun control, and helped organize opposition to a gun shop giveaway of high-capacity magazines in the run-up to a 2013 law that banned them from the state of Colorado…
And in a twist that may surprise religious conservatives who welcomed Gorsuch's appointment, church leader Rev. Susan Springer, 58, has said she is pro-gay marriage and offers blessings to same sex couples.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Nigerian girls are released, news media say -- but most reports keep their religion hidden

, , , , , ,

Twenty-one of those kidnap victims in Nigeria have been returned to their parents – a victory for that nation's government and for the alertness of mainstream media in this 30-month-long story.

What is not so alert is the recurring blindness of most media to the religious dimension of the conflict: the abduction of 276 schoolgirls, most of them Christian, by the jihadist gang known as Boko Haram.

We GetReligionistas have been giving very mixed reviews on the coverage. We've praised mainstream media for keeping an eye on the story, while criticizing the way they seem to dismiss the religious beliefs of captives and captors alike.

One (kind of) bright spot shines at the BBC, in its story on the 21 newly freed girls. The narrative conveys almost Passover-like imagery of deliverance from slavery:

One of the girls freed said during a Christian ceremony in Abuja: "I was... [in] the woods when the plane dropped a bomb near me but I wasn't hurt.
"We had no food for one month and 10 days but we did not die. We thank God," she added, speaking in the local Hausa language.
Many of the kidnapped students were Christian but had been forcibly converted to Islam during captivity.
Another girl said: "We never imagined that we would see this day but, with the help of God, we were able to come out of enslavement."
One parent said: "We thank God. I never thought I was going to see my daughter again but here she is... Those who are still out there - may God bring them back to be reunited with their parents."

Strong clues indeed about the faith of the girls and their families. The story would have been stronger still if the BBC had detailed the occasion for the reporting. The article says only that it was during a "Christian ceremony" in Abuja, the national capital. Wish they'd said what kind of ceremony, and who performed it. (It was a church service, as you'll see in a bit.)


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

What do Seattle, San Diego and West Virginia have in common? Right now, it's revivals

, , , ,

Several months ago, a church in Seattle had a weekend revival. Then the meetings from that event carried over into the following week. And the next week after that. By the time they hit the fifth week, the church was getting bigger crowds, the event had its own hashtag (#westcoastrumble) and the nightly meetings were being broadcast online.

Similar revival meetings in San Diego were making this look like a regional phenomenon. By the eighth week, I decided this just might be news and so I started pitching a story about it. Religion News Service was interested and my story ran April 19.

This got me to thinking about revivals, mass meetings and movements, all of which are notoriously hard for a secular newspaper to cover well. Just what does constitute a large religious movement? Crowds? Miraculous healings? The fact that it’s spread to other locales?

Which is why I was interested to hear of a similar revival happening in West Virginia. The religious media, in this case CBN, were the first to arrive on the scene after a mere three weeks. CBN began with:

MINGO COUNTY, W. Va. – There's a new sound coming forth from the hills of southern West Virginia - a sound many prophets have foretold but haven't heard until now.
For the past three weeks, the large sports complex in the small coal-mining town of Williamson, West Virginia, has been filled to the rafters with people crying out for God


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, ,

Hey journalists, if the Greater Church of Lucifer says it's not Satanic, check it out

, ,

There's a new church in the Houston area — and it's drawing a ton of media coverage.

Protesters showed up at Saturday's first service of the Greater Church of Lucifer in Spring, Texas, and the Houston Chronicle gave the clash prominent play in Sunday's print edition:

The centerpiece headline on the City-State section front:

Protesters denounce Church of Lucifer

The subhead:

Spring group's first service marked by demonstrators against alleged Satanism

Alleged Satanism, huh? This ought to be interesting.

Let's start at the top:

Protesters holding signs in Spanish and English stood Saturday along the road leading to the Greater Church of Lucifer as the church in Spring held its first service.

The signs proclaimed the power of Jesus, and one protester blew a horn fashioned from antlers. They said they attended various Houston-area churches as well as a few from other cities and states.

The Luciferians, who use the name Lucifer because it is Latin for "light bearer," say they do not worship Satan or practice animal sacrifice. Most of the protesters refused to believe it.

"They said it was in the news that they were building a satanic church in Spring," said Esther Limbrick, 77, of Spring. She predicted that God would bring a flood that very day to wash away the Luciferian church.

"I'm here to stand against a satanic church," said Christopher Huff, 46, a deacon and self-described evangelist from the Conroe Bible Church. Huff joined others pacing uttering prayers - sometimes shouting them - at the intersection of Spring Cypress Road and Main Street a few hundred feet from the Church of Lucifer. Huff said he had seen the Greater Church of Lucifer web site and described it as filled with "satanic symbols and lies."


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

Memory eternal: Human-rights activist and, yes, Christian journalist Kenji Goto is gone

, , , , , , ,

First there was the beheading of Haruna Yukawa, a military consultant who had – by all accounts – lived a unique, if not troubled, life leading him the Middle East as a military consultant. Now, it certainly appears that veteran journalist Kenji Goto has also been beheaded, on video.

Who is Goto? What is the media reporting about his life? As I noted in my first post on this topic, the force at the heart of Goto's life and work depends on the publication that you read. If you look in conservative and Christian media, you will see language similar to the following from the Christian Broadcast Network:

The slaying of Goto, a devout Christian and freelance reporter whose work focused on refugees, children and other victims of war, shocked this country, which until now had not become directly embroiled in the fight against the militants.

"I feel indignation over this immoral and heinous act of terrorism," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters after convening an emergency Cabinet meeting. "When I think of the grief of his family, I am left speechless," he said. "We are filled with deep regret."

Was this simply an issue of Christians mourning the loss of a fellow Christian, who just happened to be a veteran and respected journalist? Well, maybe not.

Consider the following material – a lengthy passage from the English-language website of The Japan Times:


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

Luke Russert on snark, journalism, faith and easy targets

, , , , , , , ,

Let’s start the day with a quick thought from Luke Russert of NBC News, who recently sat down with David Brody of The Christian Broadcasting Network — the rather rare reporter in the Christian television world who often talks with real, live national leaders and thinkers.


Please respect our Commenting Policy