Amish

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Big question right now: What religious groups oppose vaccination, even during epidemics?

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Big question right now: What religious groups oppose vaccination, even during epidemics?

THE QUESTION:

What religious groups oppose vaccination -- even during epidemics?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

Judges and public officials will be coping with the issue of vaccination mandates that President Joe Biden, states and employers are imposing to counter spread of the stubbornly contagious and virulent COVID-19 virus. This again raises the issue of religious-liberty claims for exemption from required vaccination.

Pastor Greg Locke of the independent Global Vision Bible Church in suburban Nashville has just been permanently banned from social media postings on Twitter after demanding that Christians shun vaccination (as well as preaching that Biden is a usurper and not a legitimately elected president).

Also, the Washington Post highlighted Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer of Tulsa, Oklahoma (who's running against devoutly evangelical U.S. Senator James Lankford in next year's Republican primary). Lahmeyer offers exemption letters for anyone who donates at least $1 to become an online member of his charismatic Sheridan Church. So far 30,000 supplicants have downloaded his exemption letter.

The president's new policy has already sparked a significant upswing in religious exemption requests. So, what are the facts on religious groups and opposition to vaccination?

A bit of history: Major religious objections arose with the first vaccination experiments in the American Colonies. But influential Congregationalist Cotton Mather championed scientific progress and defended smallpox experiments using adult volunteers. Eminent theologian Jonathan Edwards agreed and set an example as a vaccination volunteer when president of the school we know as Princeton University. He died as a result in 1758. Edward Jenner only achieved vaccination safety 38 years later.

Since then, official Christian or Jewish protests have generally been rare to non-existent as vaccinations are required to enter U.S. public schools, military service or particular jobs, or for foreign travel.


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Plug-In: Investigation into Amish, Mennonite sexual abuse honored as Pulitzer finalist

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It’s a heavenly time for the Godbeat.

For the second year in a row, journalism’s most prestigious awards have recognized the transcendent work of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette religion editor Peter Smith.

Smith and two colleagues — Stephanie Strasburg and Shelly Bradbury — were honored this week as Pulitzer Prize finalists for “an unprecedented investigation of child sexual abuse and cover-ups in the insular Amish and Mennonite communities.”

Just last year, Smith was a key part of the Post-Gazette team that received a Pulitzer for its “immersive, compassionate coverage of the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue that captured the anguish and resilience of a community thrust into grief.”

I asked Smith, who is president of the Religion News Association, for his takeaway on what the latest Pulitzer nod means for the Godbeat.

Here’s what he told me:

Religion journalism is vital, just as local journalism is vital, and both are central here. Our newspaper recognized the importance of this story and committed to investing our time and resources into understanding the problem in its unique cultural context, then reporting and telling the story through word and image.

I think that having a background in covering the Plain churches helped me as I got to know and understand the sources in our stories. More than one reader has expressed appreciation that we maintained a respect for the Plain culture even while addressing how aspects of the culture itself can be factors in the abuse. (For example, the Amish and Mennonites are widely admired for their magnanimous forgiveness, but that same virtue has been used to pressure a victim into reconciling with a predator, and to spare the latter from the legal consequences of criminal acts.)

There can also be a multiplier effect when a news organization commits to religion journalism. A religion reporter can team up with other journalists on other beats, and they can build on each other’s expertise.


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#WeRemember: Thoughts on the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing

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At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, I had just stepped off The Oklahoman’s eighth-floor newsroom elevator when we heard the boom and saw the smoke in the distance.

In all, 168 people died in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City — the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

Twenty-five years ago, my Oklahoman colleagues and I found ourselves covering the biggest story of our lives, even as we joined our grieving community in shedding tears over an unfathomable tragedy.

I was blessed to tell many stories of victims and survivors.

No single profile stuck with me, though, like the one about a blue-eyed, light-brown-haired baby named Danielle, who was killed in the second-floor America’s Kids Day Care. A quarter-century later, I caught up with Deniece Bell-Pitner, Danielle’s mother, whom I first interviewed in the bombing’s immediate aftermath.

In my story, published on the front page of The Oklahoman last Sunday, Bell-Pitner described how she progressed from anger at God to relying on him.

“I realized, ‘He’s the only way I’m going to get through this,’” she told me.

Another bombing-related angle: I wrote a retrospective piece for The Associated Press on an April 23, 1995, prayer service that began the healing process for Oklahoma and millions of TV viewers around the world.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. No hugs or handshakes: Pandemic complicates storm relief: You may — or may not — have heard that 100-plus tornadoes struck the South over two days this week, killing more than 30 people.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, for obvious reasons, eclipsed some ordinarily major news.


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Stories near you? Ultra-Orthodox Jews making news in a time of coronavirus self-isolation

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TV binge-watching has emerged as a primary coping strategy for — I’m estimating here — the gazillions of people tired of 2,000-piece puzzles and cleaning their homes, but who still find themselves indefinitely sequestered because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Dare I say, thank God for cable streaming?

I’d include in my moment of praise the new four-part Netflix series “Unorthodox,” the story of a young Jewish woman raised in the ultra-Orthodox, Hasidic Satmar community in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood who runs away because, as she says, “there are too many rules.”

Click here to view the show’s official trailer. The dialogue is in Yiddish, German and English — a linguistic stew that my late in-laws also spoke, often in the same sentence. They also added some Hebrew and were particularly adept at mixing curse words. But I digress.

The show is based on the real-life story of Deborah Feldman. As with virtually all such shows, some details of Feldman’s best-selling (according to Amazon) memoir were changed or invented for dramatic impact.

Media depictions of insular religious communities — be they polygamist Mormons, as in HBO’s TV series “Big Love,” or the Amish in the Academy Award-winning Harrison Ford film “Witness” — require unusual sensitivity.

Journalism, regardless of the form taken (I’m including here cinematic documentaries), requires an equally deft hand. One reason is that the most insular religious groups are notoriously mistrustful of outsiders, making them difficult to penetrate. That in turn often leads to innocent misunderstandings that undercut credibility. (I’ll leave intentional distortions and sensationalism for another post.)

I’ll get back to the how-to issue below. But first let’s give “Unorthodox” a deeper look. This is a topic that could point to news stories linked to other tight-knit religious communities, here in America and around the world.


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Friday Five: Thanksgiving, missionary death, Jordan Peterson, hurricane heroes, homeless church

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Happy (day after) Thanksgiving!

I’ve been mostly away from the news this week, enjoying my favorite holiday.

If I missed any important headlines that I should have included here, by all means, leave a comment below or tweet us at @GetReligion.

In the meantime, let’s dive right into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: This is an international story, so you might have missed it. The Washington Post reports from New Delhi on an American missionary who tried “to meet and convert one of the most isolated hunter-and-gather tribes in the world” by offering them “fish and other small gifts.”

Instead, the Post reports that “the tribesmen killed him and buried his body on the beach, journals and emails show.”

The story offers revealing insights from the journal as well as quotes from the missionary’s mother.

2. Most popular GetReligion post: As often happens, the words “Jordan Peterson” in a headline tend to attract attention.

Last week’s No. 1 most-read post was by our editor Terry Mattingly — the piece that he wrote to support last week’s “Crossroads” podcast. The headline on that: “Why is Jordan Peterson everywhere, right now, with religious folks paying close attention?” Here’s a bite of that:


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The Amish population is booming: Could religion have something to do with it?

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had a fascinating story recently about the booming Amish population.

The trend piece — much to its credit — contained a fair amount of religion-related details that gave insight into what the Amish believe.

At various points as I read the feature, I found myself both (1) appreciative that the Post-Dispatch delved into the faith of the Amish and (2) wishing that the newspaper had unraveled the yarn just a little more. 

The lede set the scene:

LICKING, Mo. — The story of abrupt change in this small south-central Missouri town starts with the water tower. A giant baseball is painted on top as a fading reminder of when Rawlings was king.
As sporting goods manufacturing dried up, a $60 million maximum-security prison opened in 2000. The South Central Regional Correctional Center doubled the local population to more than 3,000 people.
“We just try to go with the times,” said Licking Mayor Keith Cantrell. “Whatever happens, we try to deal with it and go on.”
Unlike Rawlings, the prison hunkers out of sight, just west of downtown. Now, another group has settled that also appreciates privacy, only its members arrived under the shade of straw hats and black bonnets.
The Amish, who are undergoing exponential growth, have chosen Licking as one of many new settlements. Facing overcrowding and increased government pressure in more traditional areas, they broke new ground here in 2009, after buying an 800-acre ranch. They bought another large property a few years later.

Big question: Why is the Amish population growing? Hang on to that thought.


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Toughest church-states battles: When faith-healing doctrines lead to children dying

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Anyone who has studied the separation of church and state knows that there are all kinds of issues in this field that cry out for compromise -- but compromises acceptable to both sides are often next to impossible to find.

No, I am not talking about LGBTQ issues that pit religious liberty against emerging concepts of sexual liberty.

I'm talking about cases in which the religious convictions of parents -- specifically the belief that all medical issues should be handled through prayer and "natural" remedies -- lead to the death of children. Basically, courts are being asked to draw a line limiting parental rights, when it comes to a contest between faith and modern medicine.

As a rule, state officials are supposed to avoid becoming entangled in matters of faith and doctrine. However, there are limits. Here at GetReligion, I have repeatedly noted that state officials have the right to intervene when cases involve fraud, profit and clear threat to life and health. "Faith healing" cases pivot on whether a religious group's teachings represent a "clear threat" to believers, especially children.

A reader recently pointed me to a massive PennLive.com (Gannett newspapers in Central Pennsylvania) report that ran under the headline: "God's will vs. medicine: Does Faith Tabernacle beliefs put children at risk?"

I want to stress that there is much to recommend in this piece, including the fact that it places debates about Pennsylvania law affecting "faith healing" in the context of ongoing national debates about Christian Science, the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the traditions of the Amish and others. There are places where I would question the wording used by the PennLive.com team, but I still want to salute the research done here.

This piece is way better than the norm on this difficult topic. Here is a long, but crucial passage:


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Horse diapers -- yes, horse diapers -- spur useful Wall Street Journal data dump on RFRA

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Headlines don't get more provocative -- or clickable, to use modern lingo -- than this one from the Wall Street Journal (behind its strong paywall): "When Horse Diapers and Freedom of Religion Collide." 

Yes, I wonder if the late Immanuel "Worlds in Collision" Velikovsky would appreciate the humor.

True to its general form of getting the story straight, the WSJ piece sets forth the conflict between the town of Auburn, Kentucky, wanting to keep its roadways clean(er) and the Old Order Swartzentruber Amish, whose theological conservatism precludes diapering horses:

Horse diapers have been thrust into the debate over religious freedom.
Two Amish men in Auburn, Ky., filed a lawsuit last month saying a city ordinance requiring horses to wear equine diapers -- bags designed to catch manure -- violated the ability of Amish residents to exercise their religion.
The ordinance, passed in 2014, broadened an existing law mandating the removal of dog waste in public places. The new law, which the city said was spurred by complaints from neighbors about horse manure, requires a “properly fitted collection device” to be placed on all horses walking on the street.

What could have been an occasion for lowbrow comedy turns out, in fact, to be a respectful and frank discussion of the merits of an ostensible public health law, as well as competing efforts to defend individual religious freedoms -- specifically the free exercise of religion.

Members of the town’s Amish community have refused to comply with the ordinance, saying equine diapers violate the community’s religious standards. That stance has landed many of them in court, or worse.


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'Twas their gift to be simple (and celibate), but now the Shakers are all but gone

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If you have studied the history of religion in America -- part of my double-major as an undergraduate and then my master's degree work in church-state studies -- then you will have run into the fascinating movement called the Shakers. Trust me, there is more to these believers than their influence on the Arts and Crafts Movement and, well, L.L. Bean.

The Shakers are in the news right now for reasons that are easy to understand, but a bit harder to explain -- if you care about the details.

The best report I've seen on this topic so far (combining elements of several other news stories) ran last week in The Washington Post with this headline: "One of the Shakers’ last three members died Monday. The storied sect is verging on extinction." It's a solid report, but does contain a very interesting and important hole. Meanwhile, here's some key material at the top of the story:

Sister Frances Carr died at the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine, “after a brief battle with cancer,” according to a statement on the community’s website. It continued, “The end came swiftly and with dignity surrounded by the community and her nieces.” Carr was 89.
Carr was a member of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearance, a Christian group formed in 1747 in Manchester, England. They earned the name the Shakers when critics began calling them “Shaking Quakers” because of “their ecstatic and violent bodily agitation in worship.” ... The Shakers eventually abandoned this particular dancing-style worship, but the congregation adopted the term, according to the Associated Press.
The religious sect moved to the United States when Ann Lee, one of its leaders (known as Mother Ann) who was imprisoned in England for her views, fled to the New World with eight of her followers in 1774. Eventually, the group established its first American community in New Lebanon, N.Y. Slowly, it blossomed into 18 communities across the Eastern United States, including locations in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Massachusetts.

The last remaining Shaker community is at Sabbathday Lake, with two members.

Now, if you know anything else about the Shakers -- other than about their music (think "Simple Gifts") and furniture -- then it is probably a rather logical reason for the movement's decline:


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