GetReligion
Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Time magazine

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Glowing WPost profile on Pete Buttigieg spouse gets major blowback from Michigan pastor

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Ever since Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor with the hard-to-pronounce last name and good looks announced his run for the presidency, a lot of eyes have been not on him but his spouse.

Which is a man named Chasten. The combo has resulted in a series of breathless profiles, including the cover of Time magazine with a “First Family” headline.

All this mainstream media hagiography has gone unchallenged until now. And that the story of that challenge involves a Washington Post report done by a feature writer who specializes in weddings, love and relationships.

It starts thus:

NEW YORK — “Are you going to write about my meal?” Chasten Buttigieg asks, scanning the breakfast menu of a Manhattan cafe last month.

He had oatmeal with a side of fresh fruit. And tea.

The 29-year-old former drama teacher has often courted attention, but he has never been more watched than in these past few months as his husband, Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., has emerged as a serious contender for president. It’s why he cannot smell deodorants at Target without risking getting caught in the act by teenage iPhone-wielding paparazzi. …

Chasten stands out among the 2020 spouses for reasons other than the fact that he is a man married to a man, or that he is a millennial married to a millennial, or that this campaign is happening during the first year of their marriage, or that he is not yet 30. He is also the son of working-class Midwesterners, a first-generation college graduate, a guy who took a second job at Starbucks so he could have health care. The life story he tells includes bullying, estrangement, homelessness and sexual assault.

The story goes into his cash-strapped family, his two older brothers, his realizing he was gay and then coming out to his family.

Pay attention, because this is where a strong religion theme enters this story, as told by Chasten:


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'If You Want To Humble An Empire': A 9/11 story that got religion and shouldn't be forgotten

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What’s the statute of limitations for pulling a story out of the GetReligion guilt folder?

Seriously, I want to call attention to a remarkable piece of news reporting — written under tremendous deadline pressure — that predates GetReligion itself. This journalism-focused website, in case you need a refresher, launched in 2004.

As you undoubtedly know, today marks the 17th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It seems appropriate then to recall just how much Time magazine incorporated religion into its original in-depth report on the events of 9/11. My thanks to New York Times Godbeat pro Elizabeth Dias, a Time alumnus herself, for highlighting the story by Nancy Gibbs on Twitter this morning:

If I read the Time story back in 2001, I don’t remember it. At the time, I was religion editor for The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. I was focused on my own reporting, including writing four bylined response pieces on 9/11.

But I’m glad I took the time to read Gibbs’ piece today. It brought back so many memories. And yes, it covered crucial glimpses of faith present at that time.

The opening itself — written in Time’s analytical style — certainly emphasizes that element:

If you want to humble an empire it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith, and when they crumple and burn, it tells us we are not so powerful and we can't be safe. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, planted at the base of Manhattan island with the Statue of Liberty as their sentry, and the Pentagon, a squat, concrete fort on the banks of the Potomac, are the sanctuaries of money and power that our enemies may imagine define us. But that assumes our faith rests on what we can buy and build, and that has never been America's true God.


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Danes, Muslims, Christmas and why immigration is always a religion-beat story

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Know what’s new from the land of hygge and hot chocolate and high standards of living?

Denmark, which has consistently polled as one of the happiest places to live on Earth apparently isn’t so happy according to a spate of articles just out.

The reason is about a quarter-million immigrants from the Middle East and Pakistan who have sought asylum there from nasty conditions in their homelands and for the rich benefits Denmark hands out to whoever’s fortunate enough to reside there. To the point where Danes are seeing their place as the world’s happiest place to live slipping by the day.

What’s not so apparent in some stories is how big a part religion plays in it all, being that the overwhelming percentage of these new arrivals are Muslim whereas Danes are Lutheran (at least in name). The Danish government says 4 percent of its 5.7 million population is Muslim, which comes out to 228,000 people.

This piece from CityLab sees a set of new rules as a rich/poor issue instead of a religious one. The word “Muslim” is mentioned only once.

Time magazine pulled the same trick in its reports on “parallel societies” that now exist in Denmark. Remember, Denmark just passed a "burka ban" law early last month.

So I turned to a July 1 piece in the New York Times, which had a more accurate account about what’s at issue here:

COPENHAGEN — When Rokhaia Naassan gives birth in the coming days, she and her baby boy will enter a new category in the eyes of Danish law. Because she lives in a low-income immigrant neighborhood described by the government as a “ghetto,” Rokhaia will be what the Danish newspapers call a “ghetto parent” and he will be a “ghetto child.”

Starting at the age of 1, “ghetto children” must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in “Danish values,” including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language. Noncompliance could result in a stoppage of welfare payments. Other Danish citizens are free to choose whether to enroll children in preschool up to the age of six.

Denmark’s government is introducing a new set of laws to regulate life in 25 low-income and heavily Muslim enclaves, saying that if families there do not willingly merge into the country’s mainstream, they should be compelled.

This sounds to me like some pretty desperate measures that are just short of kicking all these immigrants out.


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Friday Five: Big Godbeat news, Billy Graham's casket, 'sit and shiver,' Oprah talks to God and more

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At long last, the New York Times has hired its new national faith and values correspondent: Elizabeth Dias, Time magazine's award-winning religion and politics writer.

Early last year, the Times announced that it was "seeking a skilled reporter and writer to tap into the beliefs and moral questions that guide Americans and affect how they live their lives, whom they vote for and how they reflect on the state of the country."

But one aspect of the national newspaper's search for a journalist to join veteran national religion writer Laurie Goodstein on the Godbeat struck some observers — including GetReligion editor Terry Mattingly — as extremely odd: The Times said, "You won't need to be an expert in religious doctrine."

Wait, what!?

But in hiring Dias, the Times got a skilled, respected journalist who — as the paper's news release notes — has an undergraduate degree in theology from Wheaton College and a master’s in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. (At Wheaton, Dias was a classmate of Sarah Pulliam Bailey, one of the Washington Post's national religion writers.)

Here at GetReligion, we frequently have praised Dias' exceptional work. We offer our heartfelt congratulations on her awesome new gig!

But now, let's dive into the Friday Five:


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National Prayer Breakfast finally gets the intelligent coverage it has long deserved

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Covering the National Prayer Breakfast, always on the first Thursday of February, is a lot tougher than it looks. First, you have to be up before the crack of dawn to drive downtown, find a parking place and make your way to one of the White House gates where you have to go through a security check before sprinting over to the press briefing room in the West Wing where you’re directed to a convoy of about 20 cars.

The reporters and photographers (along with camera equipment) all have to cram into the last three cars for the mile-or-so long ride to the Washington Hilton, where some 3,800 people are waiting for the President to arrive. While he strides onstage, the press pool gets to pile off to one side. After the president makes his remarks, he then leaves, taking the reporters with him.

I was always tasked with covering the religion angle of the event, so returning to the White House with the event only half over wasn’t in my best interests at all. I ended up leaping from the stage onto the ballroom floor and finding an empty seat, much to the consternation of Secret Service folks who yelled at me for breaking some obscure protocol. (Apparently if you come with the president, you’re expected to depart with him).

One of my aims was to put together something interesting about the prayer breakfast, itself. You see, very few media bothered to cover it –- or at least cover it well – back in the George W. Bush era, which was when I was there. More than a decade later, I’m glad to see the coverage has gotten much more sophisticated, no doubt because the evangelicals organizing the breakfast have become power players in their own right.

So I want to call attention to some of the more creative ways the breakfast was covered this year. It’s no secret that the prayer breakfast is part of a multi-day conference that involves a lot of secret gatherings that reporters know about, but rarely can sneak into. Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post found out about an alliance of evangelicals and Muslims connected with the breakfast.

The best paragraphs were the following:


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The theology behind Oprah's 'stirring, spiritual call to arms' at Golden Globes? Time magazine nails it

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Unless you live in a cave with no television, social media feeds or electricity, you know about Oprah Winfrey's "stirring, spiritual call to arms" at the Golden Globes.

Winfrey's speech — tied to the #MeToo movement — "has fans dreaming" of a presidential run by the talk-show icon and Democrats from Hollywood to Iowa "captivated" by the possibility.

Here at GetReligion, editor Terry Mattingly suggested months ago: "Yes, the religious left exists: Can you think of a logical person (Oprah) to serve as its leader?"

Oh, her.

But speaking of religion, have the breathless news reports since Sunday night acknowledged — or mostly ignored — Oprah's Gospel-meets-New Age religious maven role?

Take a wild guess.

However, a leading Godbeat pro has an extremely insightful story on the surprising theology shared by Oprah and, believe it or not, her potential 2020 adversary, President Donald Trump.

I'm talking about Time magazine religion writer Elizabeth Dias, who notes that Trump and Winfrey both "preach a gospel of American prosperity, the popular cultural movement that helped put Trump in the White House in 2016."

More insight from Dias' highly relevant piece:


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The pope’s Myanmar plight recalls church struggles with rotten regimes of the past

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The pope’s Myanmar plight recalls church struggles with rotten regimes of the past

Journalists might tear themselves away from U.S. evangelicals’ moral entanglements with Donald Trump and Roy Moore to consider how church leaders should handle rotten regimes overseas as grist for a reflective essay.

Pope Francis’s visit to Buddhist Myanmar put this on the news docket. Beforehand, Father Thomas Reese said Francis risked “either compromising his moral authority or putting in danger the Christians of that country,” so “someone should have talked him out of making this trip.”

That is, Francis might harm Myanmar’s tiny, persecuted Christian flock if he denounced the military’s campaign of rape, mass murder, arson and forced exile against Rohingya Muslims. Yet sidestepping of atrocities had already besmirched the moral stature of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The pope decided not to publicly utter the word “Rohingya” in Myanmar, offering only generalized human rights pleas. Only later, meeting Muslim refugees in Bangladesh, did he cite their name: “We won’t close our hearts or look away. The presence of God today is also called Rohingya.”

On the flight back to Rome, Francis told reporters that naming the victims in Myanmar “would have been a door slammed in my face.” Instead, he figured keeping silent facilitated behind-scenes “dialogue, and in this way the message arrived.” So, did he defend the Rohingya when meeting the military? “I dared say everything I wanted to say.”

Despite criticism of the papal performance from human rights activists, Reese says Francis balanced his roles of “diplomat” and “prophet” to protect Christians while lobbying in private, and it’s unlikely public attacks “would have had any effect on the military.”

That recalls perennial complaints that Pope Pius XII should have more forthrightly denounced Nazi extermination of Jews.


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After #TexasChurchMassacre, it's an obvious must-cover story — and major news orgs are doing so

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"How can we be safe?" asked a minister I interviewed after Sunday's mass shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas.

With the death toll at 26, countless church leaders — all eager to protect their flocks — are posing the same question.

Again.

Just six weeks ago, a separate mass shooting at a church — this one at the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, Tenn. — raised the church security issue, as I pointed out in a GetReligion post:

Sadly, in America in 2017, a mass shooting in which one person dies is not going to dominate the news cycle for long. Such tragedies have become too common. Even then, I noticed a national Associated Press piece just today on houses of worship addressing security in the wake of the Tennessee shooting.

Two years ago, church security made a bunch of headlines after nine people were killed at a Wednesday night Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. I remember writing a front-page story for The Christian Chronicle with the headline "God, guns and keeping churches safe."

And no, the issue of church safety didn't start with Emanuel.

Sadly, here we go again.

Given the magnitude of Sunday's tragedy, church security is an obvious must-cover story for journalists across the nation. Already, some major news organizations are doing so, including Time magazine.


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Donald Trump promised to work to free Americans held captive abroad. Here's what happened next

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First, let's address the headline on Time's new story on President Donald Trump's efforts to free Americans held captive abroad: "The Art of the Hostage Deal."

Kudos to the magazine for a clever take on Trump's 1987 bestseller "The Art of the Deal."

Now, to the story itself: It's excellent. It's thoroughly reported and compellingly written. But that's no surprise given the byline: Elizabeth Dias. She's the Time correspondent who covers religion (often mixed with politics), and her Godbeat work has won frequent praise from GetReligion.

So yes, it's obvious that this is a fantastic piece of journalism. But is it my favorite Time piece from a religion reporting standpoint? If I'm honest, it's probably not. I'll explain why in a moment.

Before I get to that, a few readers may be wondering right about now: What exactly does hostage dealmaking have to do with religion anyway?

Good question.

This story doesn't deal overtly with religion, but religion figures — at least figuratively — throughout the piece.

The first mention of church appears in the second paragraph of the graphic opening scene:

RIVERTON, Utah — Armed Venezuelan police stormed Thamara Candelo's apartment complex at dawn on June 30, 2016. It was two weeks after her wedding day, and Candelo's American husband, Joshua Holt, was lying in their bed in Caracas. One officer demanded to see his visa. Others ransacked the rooms, took Holt's phone and finally ordered him to get into a pickup truck. For the next five hours, his gun-toting captors mocked and hit him. Then they took him to the Helicoide, a prison home to the Venezuelan intelligence police. He has not been allowed out since.
Holt, 25, sent this account of his capture in a letter last August to his parents, who live south of Salt Lake City in his childhood home. It was only the beginning of an ordeal his family could never have fathomed when the young couple met online through their church that year. Holt was accused of arms possession, though witnesses told his family and lawyers that they watched agents plant firearms in the apartment after the arrest. He and Candelo have been held without trial. Five preliminary hearings have been canceled, with no explanation other than judges or courts were unavailable.
According to his family, Holt has lost more than 50 lb. subsisting on the prison's diet of uncooked chicken and raw pasta, meals former Helicoide inmates have claimed are mixed with feces. He was denied medical care for bronchitis, a kidney stone and pneumonia. When an infection spread from his jaw to his eye, authorities pulled a tooth and filled the hole with cement, right atop his exposed nerve. Holt became suicidal. On July 3, the 368th day of his imprisonment, he fell from his bunk when guards woke him, sustaining what his family fears was a concussion and a back fracture. "Demons stroll the hallways," Holt wrote of the prison. "I have been told by 10 or 20 people, prisoners and guards, that I am here because I am American."

Later, Time refers twice to families placing their "faith" in Trump.

Also, there's this note:


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