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Vague doctrine at for-profit company? Tennessean nails key issue in new Ramsey lawsuit

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Vague doctrine at for-profit company? Tennessean nails key issue in new Ramsey lawsuit

Get ready for more stories in which religious believers clash with the increasingly woke doctrines proclaimed, and enforced, by the Human Resource personnel in modern corporations.

Can your company fire you for declining to use a colleague’s preferred pronouns? What happens if (a) someone declines to remove a study Bible from his or her desk or (b) some believers refuse to hang LGBTQ+ rainbow solidarity posters in their offices? What if an employee marches in a right-to-life parade? Battles continue, in some workplaces, over crosses, beards, headwear and other religious symbols.

That’s one side of the HR culture wars. Meanwhile, it’s clear — pending the outcome of the Equality Bill debates — that faith-defined nonprofits have the right to create lifestyle and doctrinal covenants for the people who chose to sign them and, thus, work in these ministries.

But what about for-profit companies led by executives who want to maintain faith-friendly images? What are the limits on their policies?

For example, Hobby Lobby won its U.S. Supreme Court case after rejecting the Obamacare requirement that contraceptives be included in employee benefits packages. But what if for-profit company leaders said that, for faith-based reasons, they could investigate and fire employees who USED contraceptives?

This brings us to another fascinating dispute inside the Ramsey Solutions empire. The Tennessean headline asks: “Can you be fired over your sex life? Dave Ramsey thinks so.” Here is the overture:

While a former employee has accused Ramsey Solutions of terminating her because of her pregnancy, the company disputes the claim. Company lawyers said in court filings the employee was fired for premarital sex and so were a dozen other employees.

Former administrative assistant Caitlin O'Connor, who was employed by Ramsey Solutions for over four years and never disciplined, said when she announced she was pregnant in June and requested paperwork for maternity leave, she was terminated for her pregnancy since she isn't legally married to her longtime partner, the baby's father.

Lawyers for Ramsey Solutions, owned by Dave Ramsey — a conservative financial titan who made headlines when he hosted a giant Christmas party during the pandemic and refused to let his employees work from home — said O'Connor wasn't fired because she was pregnant. She was terminated for having premarital sex.


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Ex-gay Catholic, Muslim shooter, Orthodox Jewish writer: They just don't fit the narrative?

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Ex-gay Catholic, Muslim shooter, Orthodox Jewish writer: They just don't fit the narrative?

An infamous gay personality known for his approving comments about pedophilia has had a 180-degree conversion, given up homosexual sex and has consecrated himself to St. Joseph.

Not a joke. The news broke about a month ago. Not read about it? Well, the story is out there, but mostly conservative sites are reporting on it.

Why is this? Well, it all has to do with narrative. Let’s start with the New York Post’s read on it:

Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has come out as “ex-gay” – announcing that he “would like to help rehabilitate what the media calls “conversion therapy” over the next decade, according to a report.

The 36-year-old British political commentator, whose speeches and writings often ridicule political correctness, social justice and feminism, declared himself no longer gay and “sodomy free,” he told LifeSite in an interview.

Yiannopoulos — who once said that sex between 13-year-olds and older men can be “life-affirming” — told the outlet that he is now leading a daily consecration online to St. Joseph.

“When I used to kid that I only became gay to torment my mother, I wasn’t entirely joking,” he said.

But what about his gay marriage?

As far as his personal life, Yiannopoulos said of his husband: “The guy I live with has been demoted to housemate, which hasn’t been easy for either of us. It helps that I can still just about afford to keep him in Givenchy and a new Porsche every year. Could be worse for him, I guess.”

Now we all know that if a major (or even not-so-major) evangelical figure can gone the opposite direction, the media would be all over it. Look at the coverage that Josh Harris, celeb author of “I Kissed Dating Good-bye,” got when he dumped his faith and was last seen marching in a gay pride parade in Vancouver, BC.


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Welcome to Holy Days 2021: How to handle the latest sensational claim about the Bible

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Welcome to Holy Days 2021: How to handle the latest sensational claim about the Bible

The New York Times often ignores developments in religious scholarship, an especially serious deficiency of its Sunday Book Review (where Nash K. Burger, who was hired by fellow Mississippian Eudora Welty, long and carefully monitored the field until he retired in 1974).

Thus, hallelujahs should greet a huge article by culture reporter Jennifer Schuessler, posted March 10 and granted two full pages in the Arts & Leisure section of last Sunday's print edition.

The piece reports that young Israeli-American scholar Idan Dershowitz may have identified "the oldest known biblical manuscript by far," which offers "an unprecedented window into origins and evolution of the Bible" and, in particular, the Book of Deuteronomy. If substantiated, some say, this "will be the most consequential Bible-related discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947."

Or not. Journalists assessing what's hot should consider that across the years, manuscript frauds and ill-supported speculations about the Bible have been rife.

The Times is known to sometimes "bury the lede," and in this case it buried the news peg. The piece was nicely timed for Jewish Passover and Christian Holy Week when media often dig into biblical mysteries and controversies. But the news here is the April publication of Dershowitz's book "The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book."

The book will fill in the missing element in the Times story and thus provide major fresh substance for reporters to develop: Which portions of Deuteronomy are involved in this discussion, and how do specific wordings and passages in today's Bibles compare with the purportedly ancient texts Dershowitz cites? On that basis, what do the agreements and contrasts tell us and why?

Dershowitz seeks to rehabilitate Wilhelm Moses Shapira, whose 19th Century Jerusalem shop sold both tourist trinkets and allegedly valuable ancient manuscripts. He tried to sell these Deuteronomy fragments to a regular customer, the British Museum, but its expert and others declared them forgeries in 1883, based on what Dershowitz considers slipshod study.

Shamed, Shapira soon committed suicide in Rotterdam. The leather fragments themselves then disappeared.


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Returning to Kamp Kanakuk: Is this new expose a work of journalism, theology or both?

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Returning to Kamp Kanakuk: Is this new expose a work of journalism, theology or both?

Readers with long memories will recall that, when the Internet arrived it had an immediate impact on important subjects that rarely received adequate coverage in mainstream media.

Take religion, for example. The lower cost of publishing online led to an explosion of forums, listservs, newsletters, online “radio” channels, podcasts and weblogs. Some failed or evolved into new forms — consider the long and complicated histories of Beliefnet and Patheos — and others became, well, normal.

Now, in the “cancel culture” era, it’s clear that another example of online evolution is affecting serious coverage of religion, as well as other complicated topics.

I am referring to the controversies surrounding Substack and the myriad newsletters and alternative publications thriving there. For a sample of the fea paranoia surrounding Substack, click into this thread from a professor at the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry or read between the lines of this Washington Post column: “The Substack controversy’s bigger story.” Here is a sample of that:

Substack is a start-up for self-publishing email newsletters: Writers decide how often to write and whether and how much to charge; Substack sends the newsletters and collects any fees. The ease of use has made it popular with journalists. …

Some of the most prolific users are heterodox political writers who had found mainstream publications an increasingly poor fit. A number quickly rose to the top of the Substack leader boards. This attracted the gimlet eye of the cancelers: Other online writers — some of whom had their own Substack newsletters — have leveled accusations of transphobia and other offenses. A nascent boycott aims to pressure Substack into deplatforming the alleged offenders. Reportedly, their campaign is having some effect.

“Heterodox” is an interesting word. It appears, in this context, to define the work of various kinds of conservatives or, even worse, free thinkers (Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss, for example) who accuse many “liberals” or “progressives” of turning dangerously illiberal.

This brings me to this weekend’s must-read missive from Nancy and David French, care of The Dispatch, an alternative conservative online publication that is thriving in this new online environment. Here is the dramatic double-decker headline atop this long feature:

‘They Aren’t Who You Think They Are’

The inside story of how Kanakuk — one of America’s largest Christian camps — enabled horrific abuse.


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Plug-in: Double standard? Treatment of Boulder suspect's faith raises tough question

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Plug-in: Double standard? Treatment of Boulder suspect's faith raises tough question

Another week.

Another mass shooting.

Another 21-year-old suspect.

Last week's news coverage of Robert Aaron Long, charged in the deaths of eight people — including six women of Asian descent — at three Atlanta-area spas, focused on his ties to a Southern Baptist congregation.

Long's arrest sparked a barrage of stories and columns on evangelical theology, racism and "purity culture," including a Religion News Service op-ed headlined "Blaming Christians for the Atlanta shootings isn't persecution, it's prosecution."

On the other hand, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa's Muslim background has figured less prominently — so far — in reporting on the suspect in Monday's massacre that claimed 10 lives at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.

In profiling the suspect, some major news organizations haven’t mentioned his religious affiliation at all. RNS has emphasized concerns that Alissa's arrest might ramp up "Islamophobia" and spark hate crimes as Muslims gather in congregational settings. (It’s a familiar storyline, going at least back to 9/11.)

"I think there definitely is a double standard," said Warren Smith, an evangelical who serves as president of the independent charitable giving watchdog MinistryWatch.com.

Smith, a longtime investigative reporter, offers this advice for covering a mass shooting: Stick to the facts. Avoid speculating on the gunman’s motives. Focus on the victims and the helpers.

"The perpetrator’s story will have an opportunity to come out in the legal process,” Smith said. “Let coverage of that process be the place where the perpetrator’s story is told factually, dispassionately, empathetically."

But the facts, not a double standard, are the reason for the different emphases in the Georgia and Colorado cases, said a journalist friend who is reporting on the Boulder massacre.

"The big difference to me is that police investigators brought up the 'sex addiction' question quickly and directly in Atlanta, which led people to seek where that guilt came came, which led to religious background," my friend said.


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Catholic left seeks (and finds?) signs of hope after Vatican ruling on same-sex unions

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Catholic left seeks (and finds?) signs of hope after Vatican ruling on same-sex unions

After a media firestorm ignited by a Vatican condemnation of same-sex unions -- because God "cannot bless sin" -- Catholic progressives immediately looked for hope in the words of bishops, President Joe Biden and even Pope Francis.

In his Sunday Angelus address after the March 15 ruling, the pope stressed that modern seekers want to "see Jesus" in acts of love, not persecution.

Catholics must promote "a life that takes upon itself the style of God -- closeness, compassion and tenderness," said the pope. "It means sowing seeds of love, not with fleeting words but through concrete, simple and courageous examples, not with theoretical condemnations, but with gestures of love. Then the Lord, with his grace, makes us bear fruit, even when the soil is dry due to misunderstandings, difficulty or persecution, or claims of legalism or clerical moralism."

While Pope Francis gave "his assent" to this ruling, the Jesuit publication America cited anonymous Vatican sources saying the Angelus remarks suggested that he was "distancing himself" from the work of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

That document said God "does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed." As for same-sex unions, it added: "The presence in such relationships of positive elements … cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator's plan."

Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp -- who represented Belgium at the 2015 Vatican Synod on Marriage and the Family -- said those words left him "ashamed on behalf of my Church. … I want to apologize to all those for whom this 'responsum' is painful and incomprehensible: faithful and committed Catholic homosexual couples, the parents and grandparents of homosexual couples and their children, pastoral workers and counsellors of homosexual couples," he wrote on Facebook.

"I know homosexual couples who are legally married, have children, form a warm and stable family, and moreover, actively participate in parish life. A number of them are employed full-time in pastoral work or ecclesial organizations." Why, he added, deny the "similarity or analogy with heterosexual marriage here?"


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Purity culture questions: A friendly, but crucial, dialogue between two evangelical thinkers

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Purity culture questions: A friendly, but crucial, dialogue between two evangelical thinkers

The purity culture wars continue over on Twitter, where a crucial question — from a journalism perspective — can be seen in the following sequence.

There is no question that some church leaders went too far with purity culture themes and rites, including hellish actions by abusive men. Can anyone deny that? However, can journalists (and their academic and activist sources) assume that because evil happened in some cases means that it happened in all cases? And, to be specific, do journalists have on-the-record evidence that the alleged shooter in Atlanta was, in fact, warped by abusive people at an abusive church?

GetReligion published two posts linked to these debates. Check out Julia Duin’s post here: “Panning purity culture: What the press doesn't get about basic Christian doctrines on sex.”

Then, I raised other basic journalism questions here: “Wait a minute: How is a sermon on the Second Coming linked to shootings in Atlanta?”

Before we get to this weekend’s two “think pieces” on this topic — by religious-liberty activist David French and Crossway books executive Justin Taylor — here is a flashback to a key passage in my post, which is linked to some of Taylor’s constructive criticism of the French piece.

It’s not enough to say that this or that conservative congregation, or counseling center, or parachurch ministry is “evangelical” and, thus, the public can assume that Christian doctrines were used in manipulative ways. …

Ponder this equation: Journalists cannot assume that a specific evangelical flock advocates dangerous doctrine X, simply because there are experts (progressive evangelicals even) who insist that all evangelicals teach dangerous doctrine X and, thus, we know that dangerous doctrine X causes broken, manipulated individuals to do hellish things.

At some point, journalists need to find specific people advocating specific ideas and actions — using research methods that are deeper than second-hand reports and the convictions of hostile experts on one side of fights about the Sexual Revolution.

This brings us to French’s must-read piece:


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New podcast: Tensions with NCAA and Christian schools? That issue will not go away

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New podcast: Tensions with NCAA and Christian schools? That issue will not go away

A decade or so ago, I had a chance to speak to journalism students at Oral Roberts University. My strongest memories — other than visions of the shiny modernist architecture — center on an unusual moment during a campus chapel service.

There’s nothing unusual about a Christian university having a full-house chapel service. There’s nothing unusual about a student-led praise-rock band blasting out Contemporary Christian Music songs that inspired lots of people to do their share of swaying and dancing.

But here’s the memory. My visit to the campus took place during a meeting of ORU’s board of trustees, who sat together near the front of the auditorium during chapel. Looking down from the balcony, I was surprised to see that (a) many of the trustees were rather young, (b) a much higher than normal number of them were Black or Latino and (c) several were enthusiastically dancing with the students, including at least one in an aisle (the current board doesn’t look quite as young).

All of this was a reminder that much of the racial and cultural diversity at ORU — a major factor in campus life — was and is linked to the school’s roots in charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, a movement that as been highly multiracial since its birth. Founder Oral Roberts was a famous, and often controversial, leader among charismatic Christians, even though, as an adult, he aligned with the United Methodist Church (which is more conservative in Oklahoma than, let’s say, parts of Illinois and other blue zip codes).

I bring this up because of a recent USA Today “For the Win” column that served as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). Here’s the headline for that piece, which was written by the “race and inclusion editor” at USA Today sports: “Oral Roberts University isn't the feel good March Madness story we need.” Here is a crucial passage:

… As the spotlight grows on Oral Roberts and it reaps the good will, publicity and revenue of a national title run, the university’s deeply bigoted anti-LGBTQ+ polices can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.

Founded by televangelist Oral Roberts in 1963, the Christian school upholds the values and beliefs of its fundamentalist namesake, making it not just a relic of the past, but wholly incompatible with the NCAA’s own stated values of equality and inclusion.


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Catholic journalists are must-read sources for those seeking reality of Cuomo scandals

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Catholic journalists are must-read sources for those seeking reality of Cuomo scandals

It was just two months ago, in the aftermath of the U.S. Capitol riot, that an idea was floated that could help stop all the misinformation in our society: a “reality czar.”

It was a New York Times piece by tech columnist Kevin Roose (his new book “Futureproof” is a must read if you’re interested in automation replacing you at work) on Feb. 2 that quoted experts who floated ideas to stop what the paper called the “scourge of hoaxes and lies.”

Roose’s piece threw out some interesting solutions — although “reality czar” is Orwellian, a Soviet-style solution to misinformation.

The harsh reality is that news consumers will need to read a wider variety of news sources if they are interested in finding solid facts, on-the-record sources and some sense of balanced reporting. On issues linked to religion, culture and politics, that will mean paying more attention to independent religious publications — including Catholic websites — that are now punching way above their weight. Hold that thought, because we will come back to it.

The truth is reality used to be what journalism purported to report on.

That’s no longer true given how polarized the news media has become over the past decade, a progression that sped up during the Donald Trump years and following the proliferation of partisan news sources during the internet age.

From a political standpoint, this brand of one-sided journalism has allowed politicians to earn cover from many mainstream newsrooms for alleged wrongdoings. On the left, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, embroiled in dual scandals regarding nursing home deaths during COVID-19 and growing claims of sexual harassment, is a prime example of this phenomena.

At this time last year, professionals at news organizations were fawning all over his press conferences as the country plunged into the pandemic. Many journalists considered Cuomo the coronavirus reality czar.

Why? Cuomo, a Democrat, served as the counterweight to then-President Trump.


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