, , , , , , , ,

Sports Illustrated gets theological in its slam-job on Giants pitcher who would not kneel

, , , , , , , ,

As a rule, editors and writers at major sports publications rarely make spiritual judgements about the actions of professional athletes.

This are not, however, ordinary times in America and, apparently, journalists have decided all bets are off when it comes to damning those who are not woke.

I am referring to that controversial — and quietly evolving — Sports Illustrated story that ran with the following headline (which needed three decks of type to pack everything in):

Giants’ Sam Coonrod Explains Not Kneeling for Moment of Unity: ‘I’m a Christian’

In Friday’s Hot Clicks: a Giants pitcher hides behind his religion. …

Taking a stand against inequality shouldn’t be controversial

First things first, let me note that — as an old-school First Amendment liberal — I have no problem with players kneeling whenever they want to kneel.

One could make a case that players who kneel during the national anthem are showing respect, which is one interpretation of kneeling in other circumstances. Some have said that they are praying, while they kneel. They could kneel and recite batting averages and I would back their right to do so. The same thing goes for players who choose not to kneel. I’m pro-free speech, including symbolic speech.

But back to the theological judgements woven into that SI piece about Coonrod, which was written by Dan Gartland — who is identified as a writer/editor on LinkedIn. I mention that because I could find no evidence that he is a columnist who is paid to make editorial comments about players and the games they play. Then again, that’s old-school journalism talk.

Doing a critique of this piece is complicated by the fact that there are two versions to discuss — the original and the edited version that has quietly take its place. There are screen shots and Twitter comments that capture some of the original wording.

However, the key phrase remains in the headline, at least the one I copied as I started work on this post. I’m referring to the “hides behind his religion” wisecrack.


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

New podcast: New York Times lets Planned Parenthood spin bad news about Margaret Sanger?

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Soon after the founding of Amazon.com in 1995, I began offering the following research tip to my journalism students.

When reporting about a person or a topic, especially when the subject is controversial, go to Amazon.com and type in two or perhaps three search terms — including a proper name or the keyword linked to the topic you are researching.

Of course, reporters should do broader searches online and in professional-level periodical collections — looking for experts and activists on both sides of the story being covered. What an Amazon.com search gives you is a look at who has been doing, well, book-length studies of a person or a topic.

So let’s take a look at an Amazon.com search linked to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). Let’s search for “Margaret Sanger” and “eugenics.” We are looking for sources that could have been used in the New York Times piece that ran the other day with this sobering double-decker headline:

Planned Parenthood in N.Y. Disavows Margaret Sanger Over Eugenics

Ms. Sanger, a feminist icon and reproductive-rights pioneer, supported a discredited belief in improving the human race through selective breeding

That’s a very controversial topic and this Times piece, we shall see, includes some rather blunt information about this “icon” of the cultural left.

What the story does not contain, however, is a single quote from a scholar or activist who has done years of research to gather information critical of Sanger and her legacy in American life and culture.

Right at the top of that Amazon.com search are books by two experts who, to my eyes, look solid.

One book is entitled “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race.” The author is not a scribe at a right-wing think tank. Instead, Edwin Black — on his Amazon.com biography page — is described as:

Edwin Black is the award-winning, New York Times and international investigative author of 200 bestselling editions in 20 languages in more than 190 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel.


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

Mark Hemingway: Campus free-speech fights almost always include religion landmines

, , , , , , , ,

On one level, arguments about free speech on secular college and university campuses are “secular” arguments.

However, if you know anything about the First Amendment wars in recent decades you know that topics linked to religion — especially when they involve the Sexual Revolution — are frequently in the mix. Things also get dicey when religious believers start talking about salvation, heaven, hell, etc.

Someone like Mark Hemingway totally gets that. As a former GetReligionista, Mark (click here for obligatory 30 Rock nod to Hemingway) knows the landscape of media coverage in the battlefield where fights about religious liberty and free speech frequently overlap.

This brings me to a RealClearInvestigations.com piece that he wrote recently that ran with this headline: “A Push in States to Fight Campus Intolerance With 'Intellectual Diversity' Laws.” Here is a key passage:

In March of last year, President Trump issued an executive order making federal research funding contingent on universities having adequate free speech protections. At the state level, Texas last year became the 17th state since 2015 to enact legislation protecting First Amendment rights on campus. Currently, the conservative National Association of Scholars is working with four states – Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona – to go further: pass laws to increase “intellectual diversity” at public universities.

South Dakota has already done so, and the law’s requirements amount to the most sweeping campus reforms in the country. It was triggered last year by a minor controversy over the stifling of a planned “Hawaiian Day” on one campus -- a last straw for critics of cultural hypersensitivity, which revived intellectual diversity legislation opposed by the state Board of Regents.

Under intellectual diversity laws, not only must dissenting views be tolerated, but college administrations are required to actively take steps (yet to be specified) to ensure that students are exposed to competing cultural and political viewpoints.

So what would “competing cultural” viewpoints look like in campus debates about gender, sex and marriage? Is it more accurate to say that there are “Republican” beliefs involved there doctrines linked to traditional forms of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.?

It was on Twitter that I saw Hemingway connect some dots in ways that I thought would be of interest to religion-beat writers and religion-news readers. For example:


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

More insights and information about future conflicts between religious and LGBTQ rights

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Since the July 9 Guy Memo about how to cover future conflicts between religious and LGBTQ rights there have been significant further comments that reporters will want to keep in mind.

In addition, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s cancer recurrence at age 87 underscores for the media that the president and Senate elected in November will choose any future Supreme Court and other judicial appointees who will act on such cases. Pundits think this factor helped victories in 2016 by Republican Senators and President Donald Trump.

The tensions here are evident with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, which issued its first report July 16 (tmatt post on that topic here). Liberals decried this panel’s formation due to the members’ supposed ideological tilt. The panel is chaired by a devout Catholic, Harvard Law School’s Mary Ann Glendon (the daughter of a newspaper reporter).

The New York Times reported that Pompeo’s speech presenting this report was “divisive” because he emphasized that the commission believes “property rights and religious liberty” are “foremost” in consideration. (The report also defies current protests by lauding Founding Fathers even while admitting they owned slaves.)

Writers will want to analyze this lengthy text (.pdf here) for themselves. It does seem to The Guy that the commission’s focus on the Bill of Rights guarantee of “free exercise” of religion, ratified 228 years ago, suggests this might — as a global statement — outweigh recent LGBTQ rights that the Supreme Court has vindicated alongside its defense of religious liberty claims in other cases.

Reactions worth pondering have come from, among others, evangelical lawyer David French, who writes for thedispatch.com and, in this case, Time magazine, University of Virginia Law Professor Douglas Laycock in a National Review interview and Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, a leading critic of the transgender cause as in his book “When Harry Became Sally.”

French, who has done yeoman work on rights claims by religious groups, is surprisingly optimistic.


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

Got bias? Pompeo gave a 'divisive' speech, which implies two kinds of insiders were divided

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Let’s just say that I saw — in social media and in personal emails — two very different kinds of comments about the recent speech that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered on the subject of human rights.

Quite a few people, as always, wanted to argue about the contents of the speech itself, especially its urgent emphasis on religious freedom. That’s understandable, in light of waves of images coming out of China of blindfolded Uighur Muslims being shipped off to training camps.

Others were upset about the nature of the relatively short New York Times report about the speech, which ran with this rather blunt lede:

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a divisive speech … calling for the United States to ground its human rights policy more prominently in religious liberty and property rights.

To cut to the chase, some folks were upset by the inclusion of the word “divisive,” saying that this was a loaded, biased word to use in a lede framing the contents of a hard-news story.

Meanwhile, I was actually intrigued by the word “divisive” for a rather different reason, one directly linked to debates about objectivity and fairness in journalism.

You see, if a speech is “divisive” that would imply that people who heard the speech were divided, in terms of their views of its contents. It’s hard to cover a “divisive” speech without presenting accurate, fair-minded content about the views of people on both sides of that divide. Does that make sense?

The problem with the Times peace — #DUH — is that it contains zero input from people who support the views presented by Pompeo and, thus, would be willing to provide information and input that would explain the speech from their point of view.

Maybe this is one of those cases in which there was only one point of view worth quoting, in terms of reacting to Sec. Pompeo’s words?


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

Where is the national news coverage of current surge of vandalism at Catholic churches?

, , , , , , ,

What kind of year has it been for news?

Consider this: At the start of 2020, Australian wildfires raged, President Donald Trump was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial, former basketball star Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape.

None of these would likely make it into a top three list of the most-important news stories of the year.

Then came March 11. It was the night Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing the NBA to suspend games. It was the same night we learned actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson had tested positive as well. It was the day our reality was changed and the United States had officially entered the COVID-19 era, a pandemic that has altered the lives of millions and millions of Americans. It continues to do so for the foreseeable future.

The decision to report on the aforementioned stories involved something journalists employ while reporting and delivering information — news judgement. That’s the fuel — motivation if you will — that keeps journalism moving. Without deciphering what is news and what isn’t, it’s impossible for editors and reporters to package what’s happening around the world to readers.

One important trait of news judgement is the word “new.” After all, if it’s not new to those who consume it, then it really isn’t news. That isn’t all. The decisions that newsroom managers, beat writers and journalists in general — no matter the size of the publication — make each day can be very difficult, involving matters that include importance, audience interest, taste and ethics.

What does this have to do with the defacing and destruction of so many religious statues — predominantly Catholic ones — around the country and the world these days?

As Americans go from the racial reckoning that has engulfed America for the past two months to the start of the general election season, vandalism involving the burning of a church or the decapitation of a Jesus statue can become highly symbolic and significant.

That was the case last year when France — a nation seemingly proud to have moved on from its Christian past into secularism — saw widespread church fires and other acts of vandalism. It was a wonderful piece of journalism by Real Clear Investigations that delved into this frightening trend. The feature by Richard Bernstein, a former foreign correspondent at The New York Times, even called these acts “Christianophobia,” a term U.S. news outlets never use.


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

Thinking with Ryan Burge charts: Whaddaya know? Some evangelicals are rethinking Trump

, , , , , , , ,

If you follow American evangelicalism closely, you know that there are quite a few divisions and fault lines inside the movement. I’m talking about evangelicalism as a whole, but this is also true among the infamous “white evangelicals.”

It’s true that, heading into the 2016 election, white evangelicals played a major role in Donald Trump’s success in the primaries. However, many evangelicals supported other candidates — including the most active evangelicals in Iowa. I continue to recommend the book “Alienated America” by Timothy P. Carney, for those who want to dig deeper on that subject.

In the end, about half of the white evangelicals who supported Trump in the general election really wanted to vote for someone else. They were voting against Hillary Clinton.

Now, there is evidence — thank you GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge, as always — that some white evangelicals have started to rethink their reluctant votes for Trump.

To be honest, I have been telling reporters, since 2016, to watch for this mini-trend. But, in the end, the force that will pull many of these voters back to Trump has nothing to do with Trump himself. The support is rooted in opposition to Democratic Party actions on crucial issues linked to abortion and also the First Amendment ( that’s “religious liberty” in most news reports),

While pointing readers to these recent Burge tweets, let me frame them with some material from an On Religion column I wrote two years ago about the whole 81% of white evangelicals love Trump myth. The bottom line? It’s the issues, not the candidate.

Most "evangelicals by belief" (59 percent) have decided they will have to use their votes to support stands on specific political and moral issues, according to a … study by Wheaton College's Billy Graham Center Institute, working with LifeWay.

This time around, 50 percent of evangelical voters said they cast their votes to support a candidate, while 30 percent said they voted against a specific candidate. One in five evangelicals said they did not vote in 2016.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , ,

Seattle Times' story on evangelical race relations nabs most of the local power players

, , , ,

I was surprised to see a story in the Seattle Times about evangelicals saying ‘we repent’ about racism, mainly because the writer isn’t known for her coverage of people of faith and the newspaper hasn’t exactly been burning the midnight oil on religion news.

Especially anything having to do with evangelicals.

So I was surprised to see how this story hit up a lot of the major players in the region on this issue. It’s as if someone in the newsroom discovered a long-disused Rolodex of religion sources and actually used it. In the five years I’ve lived here and been reading the Times regularly, I’ve never seen any of these folks — black or white — quoted before.

Here is what social issues reporter Nina Shapiro came up with:

Joseph Castleberry, president of Northwest University, an evangelical school in Kirkland, was sitting at his desk in early May when he started seeing Facebook posts about a Black man killed while jogging through a coastal Georgia town.

As Castleberry read about 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, fatally shot by white men shown on video chasing him down, he said: “It just broke my heart.”…

Having grown up in small-town Alabama where racism was front and center, Castleberry, whose photo runs with this piece, decided he had to speak out.

Around the same time, Harvey Drake, an African American pastor presiding over Emerald City Bible Fellowship, in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, was also issuing a call — on Facebook, naming Castleberry and other white evangelical leaders he considers influential. “I’m tired of apologies and I’m tired of sympathy,” Drake said, explaining the gist. “There’s got to be something else you can do.” He suggested a news conference or an open letter.

Castleberry already was drafting a condemnation of the Arbery killing and statement of solidarity with African Americans he wanted the university’s board members to approve, which they did. Spurred on by Drake, he invited evangelical leaders nationwide to sign it. Eight hundred have done so.


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

RNS gives the life of another civil rights hero -- the Rev. C.T. Vivian -- the ink it deserves

, , , , , , , ,

If you have been awake in America for the past few days, then you know that cancer had claimed the life of one of America’s most important crusaders for human rights — Rep. John Lewis of Georgia. He was among the first Freedom Riders and in 1986 won a seat in the U.S. House of Representative.

This was also a case in which it pretty easy, in the mainstream media obits, to learn something about the role that Christian faith played in this man’s career, since he was studying to become a pastor when he became active — in the late 1950s — in the Civil Rights Movement.

In this case, the religious element of the Lewis story made it into many mainstream obits — since it’s hard to discuss the Civil Rights Movement without mentioning black-church leaders. This New York Times passage was a good example of this:

John was responsible for taking care of the chickens. He fed them and read to them from the Bible. He baptized them when they were born and staged elaborate funerals when they died. …

His family called him “Preacher,” and becoming one seemed to be his destiny. He drew inspiration by listening to a young minister named Martin Luther King on the radio and reading about the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott. He finally wrote a letter to Dr. King, who sent him a round-trip bus ticket to visit him in Montgomery, in 1958. By then, Mr. Lewis had begun his studies at American Baptist Theological Seminary (now American Baptist College) in Nashville, where he worked as a dishwasher and janitor to pay for his education.

In Nashville, Mr. Lewis met many of the civil rights activists who would stage the lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom Rides and voter registration campaigns. They included the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., who was one of the nation’s most prominent scholars of civil disobedience and who led workshops on Gandhi and nonviolence. He mentored a generation of civil rights organizers, including Mr. Lewis.

Like I said, coverage of the death of Lewis was everywhere — with good cause. In this post, my goal is to point readers to the Religion News Service feature (by veteran Adelle Banks) about the death of another towering figure in the Civil Rights Movement, the Rev. C.T. Vivian.


Please respect our Commenting Policy