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Flashback: That popular question, 'Who was the most remarkable person you've covered?'

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Flashback: That popular question, 'Who was the most remarkable person you've covered?'

Mother Teresa was having a bad press conference.

Journalists gathered for her 1989 Denver visit seemed determined to ask a litany of questions about her views on every imaginable issue in world affairs and American politics. The soft-spoken, yet often stern, nun seemed confused and kept stressing that her Missionary Sisters of Charity would always focus on the needs of the needy and the sick, including those suffering from AIDS.

One television reporter even asked if the day's main ecumenical event — a "Celebrate Life with Mother Teresa" prayer rally — would include a Mass. Once again, the tiny sister from Calcutta was confused. How could there be a Catholic Mass if the rally included Lutherans, Baptists, Episcopalians, Pentecostal believers and clergy from other churches?

"We will pray together," she said. "That is what we can do."

I raised my hand and asked another question that I knew she might not want to answer. I had heard that she had privately toured Northeast Denver, an impoverished area hit hard by gangs. Might she open a mission there?

Mother Teresa smiled, but gently deflected the question, noting that Denver had recently been added at the end of a long list of dioceses worldwide making just such a request.

What happened next was a singular moment in my journalism career, one that awkwardly blurred the lines between the personal and the professional.

Why bring this up right now?


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Thinking about C.S. Lewis and today's emerging prophets of transhumanism

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Thinking about C.S. Lewis and today's emerging prophets of transhumanism

Are there any C.S. Lewis enthusiasts in the house?

How about people who, well, detest the famous Oxford don and Christian apologist?

It is my hope that this think piece (pounded out during a two-week road trip) will appeal to both.

Right now, I am about to finish reading — for the 10th time, or something like that — the Lewis “Science fiction trilogy.” It ends with “That Hideous Strength,” a head-spinning mix of science fiction, Arthurian legend and a blistering satire of stuffy, insular, corrupt, boring elites in British higher education (in other words, the world in which Lewis lived until his death in 1963). It’s the narrative fiction take on his prophetic “The Abolition of Man.”

I do not want to give away the plot, of course. But the big idea is that elite there’s that word again) scientific materialists, in a quest for their own brand of immortality and desire to modify the human person, turn to the occult and, well, the Powers of Darkness. You may never hear the term “head,” when used to describe the leader of a school or movement, again without thinking of this book.

So what would Lewis think of this haunting feature from Suzy Weiss at The Free Press? Here’s the double-decker headline:

The Tech Messiahs Who Want to Deliver Us from Death

They see death as a software error — and they have a plan for fixing it. But should they?

The overture:

Kai Micah Mills is going to freeze his parents. 

“They’re both going to be cryopreserved, regardless of their wishes,” Mills told me. 


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Podcast: Who gets to pin labels on the armies fighting in those good 'ole SBC wars?

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Podcast: Who gets to pin labels on the armies fighting in those good 'ole SBC wars?

Once upon a time, starting in the late 1970a, the Southern Baptists Convention had a big civil war — fighting about the authority of the Bible and “biblical inerrancy,” a rather inside-baseball term that was little known by pew-folks at that time.

There were two big armies, with the gray three-piece-suit players of the Southern Baptist establishment and on the other the rebels who, if my memory is correct, sometimes wore plaid. Cut me some slack, because it’s been a long time. But this background was crucial in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), focusing on early coverage of strife leading up to the 2023 SBC meetings next week in New Orleans.

The good guys back then called themselves “moderates” because they tended to seek compromise stances on hot-button issues — such as abortion and the ordination of women. Thus, journalists called them “moderates.”

The bad guys called themselves “conservatives” and took strong stands on the big Bible issues (with the exception, let’s say, of economic justice). Thus, many journalists called them “fundamentalists” — including some rather ordinary evangelicals who didn’t fit that f-word term.

The right said there were “liberals” all over the place and the SBC left said “liberals” didn’t exist. Truth is, there were very few doctrinal liberals around (in a seminary chair or two) who were weak in defending ancient beliefs — think the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Journalists were not interested in investigating facts related to these debates, since the “moderates” said that was all, well, disinformation.

Flash forward to the present. The few remaining “moderates” have mainline Protestant demographics and often have quiet disputes about mainline Protestant-style issues (think LGBTQ+ matters).

The hot-button SBC 2023 issues are (1) how tough to be on fighting sexual abuse and (2) the ordination of women (and old issue is back).

Everyone defends biblical inerrancy (while maybe offering slightly different definitions). Everyone stands together on the big doctrinal issues. In the background, however, is an important issue — when it comes to an issue like ordaining women, does the SBC have “doctrines” or “opinions”?


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Why is Amazon Prime trashing the Duggar parents and the wide world of homeschooling?

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Why is Amazon Prime trashing the Duggar parents and the wide world of homeschooling?

This past week or so has been a bad media moment for homeschooling. First there was a Washington Post expose on “the revolt of the Christian homeschoolers” that ran May 30.

Mind you, this is a time when homeschooling in America is at all-time highs. Then, starting last Friday, Amazon Prime premiered “Shiny Happy People,” its four-part series on the woes of the Duggar family, the stars of the long-running reality TV special “19 Kids and Counting.”

The latter is one of the more bizarre examples of circumstantial evidence, imputed (but not proven) guilt and overkill that I’ve seen in a long time. I’ll get to the Post piece in a moment, but the pile-on @AmazonPrime simply must be addressed.

For starters, not only does the series go after the Duggar parents Jim Bob and Michelle, but it also trashes the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) or what a lot of us who attended it in the 1970s used to call Basic Youth Conflicts. Bill Gothard, its founder, resigned in 2014 after being accused by multiple women of sexual abuse.

The series starts with a number of unidentified people (we learn their names later in the series but still) accusing IBLP of “spiritual, emotional, physical, psychological abuse” and essentially being the spiritual engine that fed the Duggar family empire. That and the fact that the Discovery TLC Network became a multi-billion-dollar company partly due to them.

“Homeschooling is the linchpin of this whole project,” said one woman.

Does that include all the homeschoolers who made it into Harvard and other forms of elite education? There are many facets to this nondenominational, multiracial movement.

“World domination is their goal,” intoned another man.

The series (I’ve watched two of the episodes so far) careens back and forth from homeschooling to the Duggars to conservative politics to the IBLP, trying to throw as much dirt as possible on them all. Is everyone who was ever involved with the IBLP and homeschooling a wacko?


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200-plus North American Muslim authorities join the sexuality culture wars

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200-plus North American Muslim authorities join the sexuality culture wars

North America’s Christian and Jewish leaders have long been active, politically and legally, in taking differing sides on same-sex and transgender issues. Authorities in Islam are comparatively disengaged. That changes in dramatic fashion with a new declaration of alarm from a broad group of 59 authorities, quickly joined by 150 further endorsers from Muslim organizations and local mosques.

Journalists will want to ponder the May 23 “Navigating Differences” statement, which is publicized on Muslim websites and social media, though The Guy has seen no “mainstream media” coverage. Yet?

The ad hoc grouping upholds the “immutable” teaching on sexuality defined by the Quran and Hadith sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, then “unanimously agreed upon” in Islamic jurisprudence over the succeeding 14 centuries.

The newer news is that these scholars also assert that believers have been unfairly put on the defensive. The signers acknowledge that North American law and culture have moved away from traditional beliefs on marriage, sexual relations and gender identity, and affirm that citizens of a democracy who disagree with Islam have every right “to live in peace and free from abuse.”

However, they say, religious dissenters face “unwarranted accusations of bigotry” and, more troubling, “an increasing push to promote LGBTQ+ beliefs among children through legislation and regulations, disregarding parental consent” and suppressing Muslims’ “conscientious objection.” This is said to “subvert” parents, worsen “intolerance” in society and violate citizens’ religious freedom.

“We call on policymakers to protect our constitutional right to practice our religious beliefs freely, without fear of harassment, and to oppose any legislation seeking to stifle the religious freedoms of faith communities.”

These thinkers also urge public figures who are Muslims to “uphold the sanctity of our faith” and shun “erroneous pronouncements” on “sexual and gender ethics that contravene well-established Islamic teachings” and spurn or misrepresent “the will of God.” They “categorically reject” as indefensible any efforts to reinterpret tenets that are “not subject to revision.”

Journalists need to assess the importance of the declaration, which agrees with other religious conservatives.


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United Methodist news in the Kansas high plains raises, again, some old questions

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United Methodist news in the Kansas high plains raises, again, some old questions

You know the old saying that “diamonds are forever”? In my personal experience, western Kansas is forever.

That isn’t a complaint. I’ve been driving across the Kansas high plains since the early 1980s — with more cause now that I have family in Kansas — and I have grown to love the wide open horizons. This long drive also leads to our family’s old stomping grounds in Colorado, where I’m on vacation this week.

Kansas is a real place. There’s a there, there. I have lots of friends with ties to Kansas and they love its combination of Midwestern values and access to the Wild West.

I bring this up because of a story I read last week in the Topeka Capital-Journal, with this headline: “96 United Methodist churches in Kansas, including one in Topeka, are leaving denomination.” This is another example of newspapers at the local and regional level having to handle developments in a complex, global conflict that has been raging since the early 1980s. That’s when I started covering this story in Colorado — a flashpoint from the start. Here’s the Topeka lede:

The United Methodist Church is seeing the exodus of 96 conservative Kansas congregations over theological matters, including same-sex marriages and ordaining openly LGBTQ clergy.

The words “theological matters” are, of course, disputes about 2,000 years of Christian doctrines on a host of important, even creedal, subjects. But, as always, the only specific given is LGBTQ+ matters.

Later on, the story notes that a key vote in Kansas:


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Plug-In: Fear and heroism recounted at Tree Of Life Synagogue massacre hearings

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Plug-In: Fear and heroism recounted at Tree Of Life Synagogue massacre hearings

Good morning, Plug-in readers.

Among the news we’re watching: Jehovah’s Witnesses, a global denomination of 8.6 million, are resuming their large conventions for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, as Religion News Service’s Alejandra Molina reports.

Meanwhile, a real longshot has paid off in Las Vegas — aka Sin City, according to Crux’s John Lavenburg:

This temple to secular hedonism, where even the airport has slot machines, and where a 2020 study of the ratio of residents to restaurants found the answer to be the classically diabolical number of 666, became the first new Roman Catholic Archdiocese in America in 19 years.

Whoa, that’s some kind of lede!

This is our weekly roundup of the week’s top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We begin with a long-awaited trial in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

What To Know: The Big Story

Fight for killer’s life: As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s religion editor, Peter Smith was a key part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting, which claimed 11 lives.

Now with The Associated Press, Smith is providing must-read coverage of the federal trial in the case that started this week:

Show of defiance: In compelling testimony Wednesday and again on Thursday, survivors recounted the fear they experienced and the heroism they witnessed during the attack. At several moments, Smith noted, witnesses “used the opportunity to educate the jury about their faith — a show of defiance before the man who tried to destroy them and who has expressed little emotion while seated at the defense table.”

Tracking antisemitic threats: The Tree of Life shooting “led to arguably the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to protect Jewish institutions in America.”

In a front-page piece for the New York Times this week, Campbell Robertson details the expansion of “the Secure Community Network, the closest thing to an official security agency for American Jewish institutions.”
Like Smith, Robertson is covering Bowers’ trial, as is the Wall Street Journal’s Kris Maher.


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World watches as Sufi singer awaits death in Nigeria -- for lyrics said to be 'blasphemy'

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World watches as Sufi singer awaits death in Nigeria -- for lyrics said to be 'blasphemy'

This much is clear: Kano State authorities in northern Nigeria accused the Sufi Muslim singer Yahaya Sharif-Aminu of circulating social-media messages containing lyrics they said attacked the Prophet Muhammad.

 What did the song say? It's impossible to find direct quotations, although his accusers say he sang praises for his Sufi faith and, thus, spread false teachings about Islam.

 Did Sharif-Aminu actually send those WhatsApp messages? Again, it's hard to separate facts from rumors backed by mob attacks.

But this much is clear: Sharif-Aminu was found guilty of blasphemy in 2020 by a regional sharia court and sentenced to death by hanging. He remains imprisoned, while human-rights activists around the world -- including the European Union parliament -- keep urging his release and the end of blasphemy laws.

"You're not sure, in many of these cases, what the person is actually accused of doing or saying because key people are afraid to discuss the details," said scholar Paul Marshall, who teaches at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and lectures around the world. He is the coauthor of "Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide," with Nina Shea of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.

The result is a deadly puzzle. Anyone who shares facts about blasphemy accusations may then be accused of spreading blasphemy. Depending on the time and location, any public opposition to blasphemy laws may be considered an act of blasphemy.

Meanwhile, the definitions of "apostasy" and "blasphemy" keep evolving when used in cultures as different as Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, India and parts of Africa controlled by Islamic State leaders and its sympathizers, Marshall explained.


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