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Podcast: Why was the New York Times so interested in Marvin Olasky? Take a guess ...

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Podcast: Why was the New York Times so interested in Marvin Olasky? Take a guess ...

Why was The New York Times so interested in Marvin Olasky and his views on journalism and Christian faith?

That’s a question that I heard several times this week from readers and others.

Actually, the Times published a previous article on Olasky, which I mentioned in a post here earlier this week (“Wut happened? Tensions behind World's move to push Olasky out of his editor's chair”). So let’s tweak that question a bit, to get to the point that host Todd Wilken and I discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to listen to it).

Why was the Times team so interested — it’s a long, complex feature — in Olasky right now?

Actually, the answer to that question is pretty clear. Read the headline: “His Reasons for Opposing Trump Were Biblical. Now a Top Christian Editor Is Out.” Now,. read the thesis statement:

At one level, Mr. Olasky’s departure is just another example of the American news media sinking deeper into polarization, as one more conservative news outlet, which had almost miraculously retained its independence, is conquered by Mr. Trump.

It also marks the end of a remarkable era at a publication that has shaken evangelical churches and related institutions with its deeply reported articles. … At a time when hot takes get the clicks, these articles offered something old-fashioned and hard for any community to take: accountability reporting.

That’s actually two answers, isn’t it.

Answer No. 1: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Answer No. 2: Olasky has built a magazine known for producing hard-news articles. That’s rare, in today’s digital world dominated by a quick-click business model that loves opinions and commentary work. The editorial approach at World was shaped by cultural, religious conservatism, more than partisan politics.

Think of this magazine as an evangelical version of the late, great New Republic.


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How will media cover the secretive Afghan mullah who will shape Islam's global status?

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How will media cover the secretive Afghan mullah who will shape Islam's global status?

Showing his age, The Guy notes with amusement that early in his career "Afghanistanism" meant "the practice (as by a journalist) of concentrating on problems in distant parts of the world while ignoring controversial local issues" (per the authoritative Merriam-Webster)!

Today, many will argue that no nation is more important in news terms than the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which affects both international turmoil and Islam's global status and cultural direction.

Journalists may ask, “Why?” This is probably the most heavily Muslim of nations and the Taliban who regained power in August proudly proclaim totalist governance based upon strictly interpreted and enforced Sharia (Islamic religious law). This example of Islam in action presents a huge challenge to the world religion.

A two-page (paywalled) Wall Street Journal status report by chief foreign correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov last weekend said the militantly Sunni Taliban have yet to impose the harshest policies that provoked wide condemnation during the prior Taliban years in power.

But the future is iffy.

For the moment, females seem able to attend primary school, but mostly not high school and college. Rigid bans on women leaving home unless accompanied by male relatives have not reappeared, and some women continue careers though many do not.

Public spectacles of beheading of opponents, and street beatings by religious police, have not resumed (though there are social-media rumors), nor have music and visual art yet been restricted. Shia and Sufi Muslims, and the tiny enclaves of non-Muslims, are understandably anxious, along with Christians, both coverts and missionaries who chose to remain after the exodus. (Other aspects of autocratic rule are commonplace in that part of the world.)


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Believe it or not: A story that gives decent coverage to a Catholic crisis pregnancy center

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Believe it or not: A story that gives decent coverage to a Catholic crisis pregnancy center

I’ve been so used to reading snide MSM articles about pro-lifers in Texas who are reveling in the state’s new anti-abortion regs — and the lengths women in that state are going to have abortions.

So, when I saw a positive take on the head of a crisis pregnancy clinic, I did a double take.

On Saturday, the Washington Post profiled Tere Haring’s crisis pregnancy clinic in San Antonio and her assertion that: Give a woman some diapers and you’ll save a baby.

The best quote in the piece:

“I always tell people, ‘Diapers save a lot more babies than ultrasounds.’ ” Haring said. “I don’t want an ultrasound machine. I want tons of diapers. Buy me $20,000, $40,000, $50,000 worth of diapers because if you have a woman who comes in with four kids — yeah, looking at the baby, she realizes it’s a human being. But if you tell her, ‘I’m going to give you diapers for all four kids,’ believe me, the diapers for all four kids is going to save that baby a lot quicker than a little pennant on the screen.”

Wow — a piece about a Catholic woman doing the unglamorous work of helping the pregnant and poor through a crisis pregnancy center — written with no snark whatsoever.

That’s historic. And against the grain, judging from the horrible comments appended to the piece, many written by some really demented people who can’t conceive of someone out of the goodness of her heart doing such a work.

It’s been my position that there are tons of religious folks all over the globe who do valiant work for unpopular causes. It just takes a little digging to find them. And reporter Casey Parks, who worked for the Oregonian 11 years before coming to the Post this past September, found one.

SAN ANTONIO — Tere Haring worked the math. Already, the antiabortion nonprofit she runs had given away a record number of baby items during the pandemic. She’d helped five women a day in 2020, and she’d handed out 71 car seats, 45,569 diapers, and $71,000 in rent assistance. Then, in September, a state law banning abortions after six weeks went into effect. By late October, Haring was seeing seven or eight clients a day. The phone rang, then rang again.

That uptick was just the beginning, Haring figured.


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Holy Communion wars: What is news at this week's USCCB meeting depends on what you read

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Holy Communion wars: What is news at this week's USCCB meeting depends on what you read

What is news?

It’s the key question editors and reporters continuously ask themselves when approaching and covering a major event.

Days before a pre-scheduled event or meeting like a political convention or the Super Bowl, these same people working in newsrooms prepare for what they can expect — although much of journalism deals with the unexpected such as a scandal, a crime or natural disaster.

Reporters are not in the seeing-the-future business — but there are storylines that they look for ahead of a pre-arranged event.

One such event will be the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops annual fall meeting in Baltimore (the first in-person assembly since the pandemic struck in March 2020) that started Monday and runs through Thursday. What used to be largely overlooked week by mainstream news organizations, the meeting has been catapulted into the spotlight in recent years for several reasons.

Many prominent Catholic bishops have become increasingly vocal in the ongoing culture wars and that’s drawn more media attention. At the same time, American Catholics have increasingly become split along political and doctrinal lines on issues such as abortion during the trump years. Last year’s election of Joe Biden, the first Catholic president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, and his open advocacy of pro-abortion policies.

Thus, the USCCB meeting has become a news even that now lives outside the Catholic media ecosystem. Alas, there may even be political-desk reporters covering this event.

The main storyline since the 2020 election season has been the ongoing argument over whether Catholic politicians who openly advocate for abortion are in direct conflict with church teachings and therefore should not receive Holy Communion.


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Wut happened? Tensions behind World's move to push Olasky out of his editor's chair

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Wut happened? Tensions behind World's move to push Olasky out of his editor's chair

First things first: Readers need to know that Marvin Olasky has been a friend of mine for yearly three decades. If I was dangling off a cliff, I’d trust Olasky to hold the rope.

Through the years, Marvin and I have disagreed on many journalism issues and had some stimulating debates. For example: He was dead right when, in the first years of Internet life, he predicted that life in the digital world — think social media in particular — would undercut old-school standards of balance and objectivity in journalism. In GetReligion terms, think “Kellerism” and much of today’s New York Times.

Back to the present, and a pretty solid Times piece that is lighting up Twitter. Here’s the double-decker headline:

His Reasons for Opposing Trump Were Biblical. Now a Top Christian Editor Is Out.

A clash over culture and politics comes to World, a groundbreaking journalistic institution that covers evangelical Christians.

There is, of course, no way to leave Donald Trump out of this story, with Olasky submitting his resignation (he was planning to retire next summer) after a coup in the World board after several years of tensions. Among the hot-button issues, readers learn, were COVID-19 masks and voter fraud (#DUH).

As I said, the story is pretty good, with Olasky — rare, this — portrayed in the elite press as a good guy. However, there is one statement that I need to challenge right up front:

At one level, Mr. Olasky’s departure is just another example of the American news media sinking deeper into polarization, as one more conservative news outlet, which had almost miraculously retained its independence, is conquered by Mr. Trump.

Has the newsroom at World been “conquered by Trump”?

I would say that we do not know that, yet. It’s clear that the World board signed off on the creation of an ambitious World-branded commentary website — without Olasky’s approval as editor. But do we know that the news team will not bravely carry on with its work?

We do not know that, do we?


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Plug-in: Supreme Court questions inmate's demand for vocal prayers in Texas death chamber

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Plug-in: Supreme Court questions inmate's demand for vocal prayers in Texas death chamber

Last week, we set the scene for the U.S. Supreme Court’s hearing of a religious freedom case involving a Texas death-row inmate.

This week, we summarize the mixed response justices gave in that inmate’s case.

Christianity Today’s Daniel Silliman lays out the plot aptly:

If you give a man in a Texas execution chamber the right to a prayer, is he entitled to two?

Can he ask for candles?

Or Communion?

If the United States Supreme Court says a condemned man has the religious right to have his pastor touch his foot while the state injects a lethal dose of chemicals into his veins, then will the court also have to allow a pastor to touch a man’s hand, his head, or even the place where the needle pierces the skin?

The justices quizzed attorney Seth Kretzer about the slippery slope of death penalty prayer on Tuesday morning, as they weighed whether the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), passed by Congress in 2000, give 37-year-old John Henry Ramirez the right to have his pastor lay hands on him and pray aloud when the state of Texas puts him to death.

The high court was skeptical of the inmate’s “demand that his pastor be allowed to pray out loud and touch him during his execution,” according to The Associated Press’ Jessica Gresko.

Justice Clarence Thomas raised concerns “about inmates ‘gaming the system’ by asserting dubious religious claims that served to delay their executions, notes the Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin.

The court “seemed divided,” explains the Washington Post’s Robert Barnes, who produced a “deeply reported and evocative” advance piece on the case, reporting from Corpus Christi, Texas.


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Private conversations, public debates: Concerning bishops, Joe Biden and Holy Communion

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Private conversations, public debates: Concerning bishops, Joe Biden and Holy Communion

Asked if he discussed abortion with Pope Francis during their recent Vatican summit, President Joe Biden said: "No, it didn't. It came up -- we just talked about the fact he was happy that I was a good Catholic, and I should keep receiving Communion."

The next day, the Associated Press noted that Biden received Holy Communion at St. Patrick's Church in Rome.

Asked to validate the president's second-hand quotation, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told reporters: "I would consider it a private conversation."

What do U.S. bishops think? That has remained a hot topic as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops braces for its fall 2021 meetings next week (Nov. 15-18) in Baltimore -- its first in-person assembly since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

What is labeled as "draft 24" of a proposed USCCB statement on "Eucharistic coherence" flashes back to an earlier controversy about Catholic politicians, Holy Communion and an atmosphere of "scandal" among the faithful.

"We repeat what the U.S. bishops stated in 2006: 'If a Catholic in his or her personal or professional life were knowingly and obstinately to reject the defined doctrines of the Church, or knowingly and obstinately to repudiate her definitive teaching on moral issues, he or she would seriously diminish his or her communion with the Church," said this draft from late September -- first obtained by The Pillar, a Catholic news website.

The quote continued: " 'Reception of Holy Communion in such a situation would not accord with the nature of the Eucharistic celebration, so that he or she should refrain.' "

As insiders have predicted, this draft of "The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church" doesn't mention debates about the sacramental status of Catholic politicians who have consistently served as advocates for abortion rights, such as Biden or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

It does, however, connect some dots on this subject, while drawing from the writings of Pope Francis.


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Think piece that's tissue worthy: The Pillar goes inside one family's clergy sex-abuse hell

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Think piece that's tissue worthy: The Pillar goes inside one family's clergy sex-abuse hell

This week’s think piece is more than think piece. It’s more like a shudder, shake your head and even weep piece. Then you can think about it.

I am referring to a long, first-person piece that ran the other day at The Pillar and it’s causing lots of buzz in Catholic online life, for good reason. The headline doesn’t really tell you what is coming: “Cleveland priest gets life. Victims’ mother: ‘God is with us'.”

The first-person voice is essential and steers this away from hard-news territory — even though there are facts and news hooks buried inside the narrative. That’s the “thinking about it later” or thinking about it on the re-read side of this piece.

It’s really long, but you have to start at the beginning, with this editorial note:

Cleveland priest Fr. Robert McWilliams was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday, after the priest pled guilty to federal child trafficking, child abuse, and child exploitation charges.

McWilliams, 41, was ordained a priest in 2017. He was arrested in 2019, and pled guilty to federal charges in July of this year.

At his Nov. 9 sentencing hearing, the mother of four boys preyed upon by McWilliams urged a life sentence. That mother and her family told The Pillar their story.

The Pillar team also made the editorial team to change the name of the family and the victims, in order to protect their privacy.

In terms of the story itself, here are three moments — starting at the beginning:

“Ok. I love my Church, I love my family. I want my Church to be healed. Ok.”

When Rachel Christopher … begins to tell her family’s story, she usually starts with a few phrases — a litany, really — that remind her who she is, and what really matters.

This time, I think, she’s using them to remember why she is sitting down with a stranger — sitting down with me — to share the kind of painful memories that no parent wants even to imagine.

Rachel is telling the story of the priest who hurt her children.


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New podcast: Left, right, middle? Two giant U.S. seminaries are pro-vaccine, but anti-mandate

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New podcast: Left, right, middle? Two giant U.S. seminaries are pro-vaccine, but anti-mandate

Let’s do a COVID-19 religion-news flashback, looking at a storyline or two near the start of the pandemic.

I’m doing this in order to analyze how the press is framing a major new development — the federal-court lawsuit filed by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Asbury Seminary challenging the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate. These are, by the way, two of the largest seminaries in the United States and, while other seminaries are collapsing, these two are growing.

Coverage of this lawsuit was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. (CLICK HERE to tune that in.)

So now the flashback. Remember when I was writing — at GetReligion and in my national “On Religion” column for the Universal syndicate — about the vast majority of American religious groups who were caught in the middle of the “shelter in place” and lockdown wars linked to COVID-19?

Remember the Catholic priests in Texas who were trying to hear confessions out in the open air (in a big field and parking lot), while following guidelines for social distancing? Or how about the churches that were under attack for holding services in drive-in movie theaters, with the faithful in cars, while it was OK for folks to be in parking-lot scrums at liquor stores and big box super-marts? Then you had the whole casinos are “essential services” while religious congregations were not “essential.”

I argued, at that time, that this was way more complicated than religious people who cooperated with the government and those who didn’t. This was not a simple left vs. right, good vs. bad situation. In fact, there were at least FIVE different groups to cover in these newsy debates:

They are (1) the 99% of religious leaders who cooperated and took worship online, (2) some religious leaders who (think drive-in worship or drive-thru confessions) who tried to create activities that followed social-distancing standards, (3) a few preachers who rebelled, period, (4) lots of government leaders who established logical laws and tried to be consistent with sacred and secular activities and (5) some politicians who seemed to think drive-in religious events were more dangerous than their secular counterparts.

That’s complicated stuff.

The problem is that, in the world of American politics, things have to be crushed down into left and right templates or even, there for a few years, into pro-Donald Trump and the anti-Donald Trump. I’m sure we’re past that last part. Right?


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