I have received several texts and emails about a recent New York Times story that ran with this headline: “Suspect in Abe Shooting Held a ‘Grudge.’ Scrutiny Falls on a Church.”

If you run a quick search for “church” in this report, you will find the term used 25 times. That’s quite a few uses of what appears to be, for the Times team, a word with no specific meaning.

Thus, we need to do that GetReligion thing that we do. Let’s look at some online dictionaries and see what the word “church” means. This Dictionary.com reference is typical and we need to see several of its secondary definitions:

church:

* a building for public Christian worship.

* public worship of God or a religious service in such a building: to attend church regularly.

* (sometimes initial capital letter) the whole body of Christian believers; Christendom.

* (sometimes initial capital letter) any division of this body professing the same creed and acknowledging the same ecclesiastical authority; a Christian denomination: the Methodist Church.

What’s the basic issue here? As one veteran journalist put it, in a text about this Times report: “I didn’t know the Unification Church was a Christian church.”

Once again we need to talk about how journalists use, or don’t use, tricky words such as “sect” or even “cult” — which may affect how news publications use a word like “church.” When dealing with the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity and the work of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, we also need to pay attention to the word “messiah.”

The bottom line: Moon’s movement called itself a “church” and identified it’s leader as either (lines tend to blur) a messiah or “the” new messiah. The problem with the Times report is that readers are told that this is a “church” and that is that — no additional information is needed. Here is the overture:

TOKYO — When Tetsuya Yamagami was arrested after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, he told the police he had “a grudge” against a “certain group.” But the authorities haven’t identified the organization or explained its connection to Mr. Abe.

Scrutiny, amid a swirl of Japanese media speculation, is now focused on the Unification Church, the religious group known for its mass weddings and efforts to cultivate relationships with conservative political parties worldwide.

At a news conference …, church officials detailed the organization’s ties to Mr. Yamagami’s mother, describing her as a longtime member. She had joined the church in 1998 but lost touch with the group for a long period before returning earlier this year, Tomihiro Tanaka, the head of the church’s Japan branch, said.

As you would expect, there is a bite of historical background material latter in this report:

The Unification Church was founded in South Korea in 1954 by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. It later expanded overseas, building a network of newspapers and civic organizations that it used to develop ties with conservative political parties around the world. It also generated questions about its recruiting and business practices. In the 1970s and 1980s, the group faced lawsuits over soliciting funds and charges of “brainwashing” by parents who said their children had been forced to join.

Readers can see a very similar, doctrinally vague report at CNN: “Unification Church puzzled by reports of alleged grudge held by Shinzo Abe assassination suspect.” There’s some information about what this “church” does, but nothing about its messiah.

Things get more complex in this Washington Post report: “How Abe and Japan became vital to Moon’s Unification Church.” In this case, “complex” is a good thing. Trigger warning: Donald Trump material ahead.

Abe, like many other world leaders, had appeared at Unification Church-related events as a paid speaker, most recently in September on a program that also featured former president Donald Trump, who spoke via video link.

In his remarks at the “Rally of Hope,” which was organized by Moon’s widow, Hak Ja Han Moon, who is known in Unification circles as “True Mother,” Trump called her “a tremendous person” and praised “her incredible work on behalf of peace all over the world.” …

Sun Myung Moon, who called himself a messiah, preached that Jesus had instructed him to continue his work on Earth.

The term “True Mother,” note the capitalized letters, is a door into some interesting topics looming over the future of the Rev. Moon’s remaining followers.

Here is one final reference from an NBC News report — “Scrutiny falls on Unification Church after Shinzo Abe's assassination” — that is short and to the point:

The church, founded by self-professed messiah Sun Myung Moon, is distancing itself from media reports that the suspect's mother made a hefty donation to the group. …

A messianic religious movement known for conducting mass weddings and courting prominent U.S. conservatives has found itself at the center of the speculation surrounding the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

There is no question that the Unification Church calls itself a church. That isn’t the issue. The question is what journalists do — for clarity — on follow-up references in a news report. That reference to a “messianic religious movement” is actually solid. It’s clear that at least one or two sentences should be included on Moon’s unique claims about this messianic authority.

That New York Times report? Why did editors allow that to run containing such vague, shallow language?

FIRST IMAGE: Photo of mass wedding for the Unification Church, posted by author and journalist Hardy Green.