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After 10 years of mystery, the Orthodox shepherds of Aleppo remain missing

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After 10 years of mystery, the Orthodox shepherds of Aleppo remain missing

Metropolitan Paul Yazigi had no way to know that he was about to vanish into the chaos of the Turkish-Syrian border during the violent rise of the Islamic State.

"If we want to be good children to God, then we don't thank Him only when He gives us [blessings]," he said, in one of his final sermons (translated from Arabic) before he was kidnapped on April 22, 2013.

"Also, when we are hurting, we say to Him: 'Your hand must be taking care of us, and we thank You.' …A Christian is a creature that gives thanks to God for all things one knows and doesn't know, for both the good and the hardships one faces in his life."

Sermons about faith and suffering are always timely in ancient churches.

The bishops of Aleppo, Syria -- Metropolitan Yazigi and Metropolitan Yohanna Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Church -- disappeared 10 years ago while seeking the release of two kidnapped priests. Their car was surrounded by a pack of armed men, as they maneuvered through risky checkpoints near west of Aleppo. Their driver died in the gunfire, but a survivor later testified that the kidnappers were not speaking Arabic and appeared to be from Chechnya.

There were no ransom demands from the terrorists. The shepherds of Aleppo simply vanished, inspiring few headlines outside the Middle East.

The 10-year anniversary passed quietly this spring, after years of special prayers during Orthodox worship services around the world.

"I don't think anyone can assume, at this point, that they are still living. But there is a sense that we don't know enough about what happened to have a sense of closure," said Father Thomas Zain, dean of St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral in Brooklyn, New York.

"It's likely that they were kidnapped in Turkish territory, which added another level of complexity to the political situation."


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Yes, Protestants disagree with the ancient churches on the status of the siblings of Jesus

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Yes, Protestants disagree with the ancient churches on the status of the siblings of Jesus

QUESTION:

“Did Jesus Have Brothers & Sisters?”

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The quote above is the headline for an article this month by Ginny Baxter, the “Woman to Woman” blogger on Patheos.com. She figures “the answer is a definite ‘maybe.’ “

On this age-old but ever-debated topic, The Guy would answer that — as is often the case — it depends on what church is fielding the question.

From ancient times, Catholicism and Orthodoxy have said “No.” They believe in Mary’s “perpetual virginity,” meaning that she and husband Joseph never had sexual relations and Jesus was the only child she ever gave birth to.

(This issue should not be confused with Christianity’s belief in the “virginal conception” or “virgin birth,” that Mary conceived Jesus miraculously without a biological human father, as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.)

In the early Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther broke from Catholicism on numerous matters, including mandatory celibacy for priests, but continued to believe that Mary was “ever-virgin,” although he believed that personally and did not state it as a required doctrine. Virtually all Protestants since his time have answered, “Yes, Jesus did have siblings.”

The New Testament does not mention that Mary was “ever-virgin.” Jesus’ (adoptive) father Joseph was present with Mary when Jesus taught in the Temple at age 12 (see Luke 2:41-50). But then Joseph disappears from the Gospels’ narratives, so interpreters assume he died at some point before Jesus began his public ministry around age 30.

The ”Proto-Gospel of James,” probably composed in the late 2nd Century A.D., may have been the first writing to depict an ever-virgin Mary.


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Podcast: Can journalists imagine 'mirror' cases in which 303 Creative protects liberals?

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Podcast: Can journalists imagine 'mirror' cases in which 303 Creative protects liberals?

If you follow Robert P. George in social media, you probably know several things about this legal scholar.

(1) He is a political philosopher and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.

(2) George is a doctrinally conservative Roman Catholic.

(3) He is a skilled Americana musician (think folk, gospel and bluegrass) who plays the banjo and a 12-fret acoustic guitar (I’m a big fan of the latter).

(4) In the public square, he is relentlessly irenic, seeking ways to view issues through the lens of those with whom he disagrees. This approach has been demonstrated during years of joyful and informative pro-tolerance dialogues with his close friend Cornel West, a liberal’s liberal known for decades of provocative classroom work at Princeton, Harvard and Union Seminary.

From a GetReligion point of view, it’s also important that — based at Princeton — George lives right on the edge of what could be called the Archdiocese of The New York Times and he pays close attention to mainstream news coverage of religion and public life.

This is why George played a key role in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which was a follow-up to my recent post with this headline: “After 303 Creative: Can readers find Twitter voices (hello David French) that help us think?”

After the latest wave of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, George posted a Mirror of Justice commentary in which he noted that Times editors seemed remarkable unaware of the actual contents of the majority opinions. The headline on the Gray Lady’s initial 303 Creative story was, in GetReligion terms, a classic: “Web Designer Wins Right to Turn Away Gay People.”

The problem was that Justice Neil Gorsuch — author of the court’s landmark Bostock decision (.pdf here) backing trans rights — said the opposite of that in his 303 Creative majority opinion (.pdf here).


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Double-thinking about atheists: What's up with their role in America's hot public square?

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Double-thinking about atheists: What's up with their role in America's hot public square?

I live in Southern Appalachia, which is in Bible Belt territory on anyone’s map of America.

Then again, I live near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory — a place where the nerdy PhD’s per-square-foot count is the same or higher than, well, the California Institute of Technology or the University of California, Berkeley. In other words, it’s surprisingly easy to run into local atheists and agnostics just about anywhere one engages in conversation (take the gym, for example).

Are these unbelievers hostile? Let’s just say that the real people I meet in this niche religious group (#ducking) are different from those I encounter in cyberspace. Maybe there’s something about the Southern Highlands that attracts friendly atheists-agnostics?

I thought about this phenomenon when I saw this recent Graphs about Religion headline from political scientist (and GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge: “Just How Much Do Americans Dislike Atheists?”

This new Burge piece reminded me of his earlier piece: “No One Participates in Politics More than Atheists — Even White Evangelicals.” Remember these reflections on the Cooperative Election Study question: “Have you done any of the following activities in the previous month?”

The group that is most likely to contact a public official? Atheists.

The group that puts up political signs at the highest rates? Atheists.

HALF of atheists report giving to a candidate or campaign in the 2020 presidential election cycle.

And while they don’t lead the pack when it comes to attending a local political meeting, they only trail Hindus by four percentage points.

Anyway, I stashed these Burge URLs in my growing “Thinker piece” file — along with a very interesting (and I would argue, related) Pew Research Center post with this headline: “One-in-six Americans have taken steps to see less of someone on social media due to religious content.”

Let’s try to connect a few dots.


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Notable Muslim angle in that Wall Street Journal survey of religious changes in Africa

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Notable Muslim angle in that Wall Street Journal survey of religious changes in Africa

The New York Times “Sunday Opinion” section, a consistent source of valuable news analysis by journalistic pros in its former incarnations, has oddly transmogrified by indulging in off-the-news features, self-absorbed memoirs and random social psychology musings, often running at considerable length.

By contrast, the “Review” section of the weekend edition at The Wall Street Journal’s has maintained its customary serious mix of news analyses, book reviews and snappy little running features.

In particular, the in-depth articles that lead off each Journal section have emerged as must reading. In particular, religion writers and the news consumers that follow the beat should note that the first two pages in the June 24-25 edition offered an important survey under the capitalistic headline “The Competition for Believers in Africa’s Religion Market (yes, this is behind a paywall).”

Much of the Journal scenario in this essay — written, in part, by Vatican correspondent Francis X. Rocca (who frequently covers other religion news and trends — will be familiar to those who closely follow international religion news, but The Guy will spotlight one notable news angle here regarding Islam.

We’re told that the African continent, apart from its Muslim northern tier and south of the Sahara Desert, is “one of the world’s most active and contested religious markets.”

The Guy would amend that to say it’s clearly the single most contested market, one where shrinking indigenous faiths have given way to strong and all-too-often violent religio-political competition between Christians and Muslims.

The experts at the World Religion Database say the region had 7.4 million Christians in 1900 and is projected to have 1.3 billion by 2050, by then making up 38% of the world’s Christians. The team at the Pew Research Center figures that by 2037 the region’s Muslims will outnumber those in their religion’s historic heartland of North Africa and the Mideast.


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Covering the 303 Creative decision: Why do reporters keep ignoring the fine print?

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Covering the 303 Creative decision: Why do reporters keep ignoring the fine print?

Judging from the recent coverage on the US Supreme Court’s decision on 303 Creative v. Elenis, you’d think that a pogrom against LGBTQ Americans is in process.

Many of the headlines came out and said that SCOTUS was allowing businesses to turn away gay customers, period. That’s false and that’s clear in the majority opinion. The truth was that you cannot compel people to create and deliver a message demanded by these customers if you don’t agree with that message (in this case for reasons of religious doctrine and practice).

I’ll start with the Denver Post, in whose backyard the whole case developed.

First, a note to the Post editors: Underneath the headline (“Colorado wedding website designer can refuse gay customers, U.S. Supreme Court rules”) the subhead spells Justice Neil Gorsuch’s name wrong. Being that Gorsuch, the writer of the opinion, is very well known by locals — as he was a longtime Colorado resident before ascending to the high court — the Post might want to correct that.

The First Amendment allows a Colorado graphic designer to refuse to make wedding websites for same-sex couples, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday in a decision that could have a sweeping nationwide impact.

The high court ruled for Littleton graphic artist Lorie Smith, who said her Christian faith prevents her from creating wedding websites for same-sex couples. Smith, who runs the business 303 Creative, wanted to make wedding websites only for straight couples.

I skimmed the article and didn’t see anything about religious beliefs being the reason behind Smith’s decision until well into the piece.

Also, note that — once again, we’re talking about the printed content of the majority decision — declining to do same-sex wedding content is not the same thing as the ability to refuse customers, period.

She challenged Colorado’s public accommodation law, which says that if she offers wedding websites to the public, she must provide them to all customers. Businesses that violate the law can be fined, among other penalties.


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After 303 Creative: Can readers find Twitter voices (hello David French) that help us think?

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After 303 Creative: Can readers find Twitter voices (hello David French) that help us think?

It’s been a scary couple of days for post-liberals in America, with two major Supreme Court decisions (one of them unanimous) defending old-liberal concepts of religious liberty and free speech.

When the 303 Creative LLC decision hit the headlines (click here to read the majority opinion), I did something that’s quite rare in my household — I turned on the television and tried to watch mainstream cable-TV news.

Let’s face it: I struggle to understand why we have journalists who want the state to have the power to compel speech (intellectual content in general) in the work of writers, artists, video professionals, etc. But this post isn’t about the content of the news coverage of these decisions.

No, this is a post that I was requested to write after a recent luncheon with clergy, students, faculty and others at the Overby Center at Ole Miss. We kept coming back to a crucial question for news consumers: How do we find a compelling mix of news and commentary — representing different points of view — in an age in which most newsrooms embrace business models in which they tell paying customers exactly what they want to hear?

Here is another way of stating that: How do we find news and commentary that helps us understand the views of people what we need to respect (or at the very least truly tolerate), even when we disagree with them?

This led me to Twitter. I told folks that, when the 303 Creative decision was released, they needed to read whatever First Amendment specialist David French wrote about it. Why? Because I was convinced that he would find a way to parse the opinions and offer insights that made people on both sides of the decision very uncomfortable.

This is, frankly, why I have followed his work for several decades. This is why he is on a short list of people that I follow on Twitter when digging into major news trends and events. Hold that thought, because I will share my current version of that list at the end of this post.

But back to French and the headline on his New York Times column about this SCOTUS decision: “How Christians and Drag Queens Are Defending the First Amendment.”

Told ya.


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New York City has evolved into a complex, tense 'post-secular' cultural chess board

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New York City has evolved into a complex, tense 'post-secular' cultural chess board

Early in his church-planting work in New York City, the Rev. Tim Keller focused on what he called the Center City, which started in lower Manhattan, near Wall Street, and extended past Central Park.

The Presbyterian Church in America seminary professor camped in the old Tramway Diner under the 59th Street Bridge at 2nd Avenue, asking New Yorkers probing questions about their lives. He dug into the socialist Dissent Magazine to learn the city's secular lingo.

But New York was already evolving in 1989, when Redeemer Presbyterian Church opened its doors two weeks after Easter, said Tony Carnes, leader of the "A Journey through NYC Religions" website.

Changes began in the 1970s in the city's boroughs "with more internationals arriving from all over," including Global South cultures in which "no one doubts that faith is an important part of life," he said, reached by telephone. "It took time to see these changes affect Manhattan, but they did."

In 2000, Carnes' team found -- through a face-to-face census with church leaders -- 120 evangelical congregations in the Manhattan Center City. That number reached 197 a decade later, 251 in 2014, 308 in 2019 and are expected to near 370 in 2024.

"We know there are others, because we hear things all the time," said Carnes. "We just haven't found them all -- yet."

For decades, researchers considered New York City a lab for the brand of secularism defined by Harvard Divinity School historian Harvey Cox, author of the influential "The Secular City" in 1965. In a famous quotation, he noted: "Secular Humanism is opposed to other religions; it actively rejects, excludes, and attempts to eliminate traditional theism from meaningful participation in the American culture."

However, at sidewalk level it's obvious that there are "two New Yorks," noted Carnes. While secularism remains dominant in mass media, academia and other parts of the cultural establishment, the reality is more complex in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island and now parts of Manhattan.


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Add to newsroom calendars? Millions of Christians marked the Feast Of Sts. Peter and Paul

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Add to newsroom calendars? Millions of Christians marked the Feast Of Sts. Peter and Paul

The feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul is a significant celebration on the Christian calendar, especially in the ancient churches of the East and West, because it commemorates the lives of two of the most important martyrs and leaders in all of Christian history.

However, this is not a holy day that shows up on the “must cover” list in many newsroom calendars. A quick Google News search for the past few days will demonstrate that reality.

Should that change? The annual feast is observed on June 29 and holds deep religious and historical significance for Christians around the world.

The date commemorates the death of the two saints. They are believed to be buried at the two basilicas that bear their names — St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome. Through their tireless efforts and unwavering faith, Peter and Paul left an indelible mark on Christianity, shaping the faith’s foundations and spreading the message of Jesus in the world.

The feast day serves as a reminder of the enduring power of faith and the transformative impact of Christ’s message. It calls believers to emulate the courage and commitment displayed by these apostles. Their lives serve as a testament to the transformative power of encountering Christ and the call to proclaim His message of love and salvation to the world.

In recent years, it has also become — more than once — the hook for major ecumenical events involving Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Here is what journalists and readers need to know about the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul:

St. Peter, also known as Simon, was one of the 12 apostles chosen by Jesus to be one of his closest followers. Catholics consider him the first pope and the founder of the church in Rome. Peter was a humble fisherman when Jesus called him to be a “fisher of men.”


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