Nobel Peace Prize

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Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: Why did some journalists bury the faith tie that binds them?

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Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: Why did some journalists bury the faith tie that binds them?

If it’s been said once it’s been said a thousand times: Jimmy Carter may have been a very unsuccessful U.S. president, but his life after the White House has been top-notch.

In fact, according to a 2015 poll, the American public thinks he’s No. 1 among the nation’s post-presidents.

Obviously, there was that Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, which was awarded for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." But if you ask average Americans what they admire about Carter’s life post-White House, I think most of them would mention two, or maybe three, parts of his life.

First, there is his record in volunteer work and public service, symbolized by decades of work with Habitat For Humanity building homes for the working poor. If you have followed that story at all, you know that Carter doesn’t just show up with a hammer for the photo-ops. Second, there is the remarkable marriage-partnership between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. I have heard Southerners refer to them as the “anti-Clintons,” as in Bill and Hillary Rodham.

Finally, there is — as Jerry Falwell, Jr., of all people, once put it — Carter’s many decades of work as the “world’s most famous Sunday school teacher.” Ths smiling Baptist did that work week after week whether there were TV cameras present or not.

That faith element was the subject of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) in which host Todd Wilken and I looked at three mainstream-press features about Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary. If readers are interested in the faith tie that binds in this marriage, they should start with this fine Washington Post feature, with it’s one-word headline: “Inseparable.” Here’s the overture:

PLAINS, Ga. — When they arrived, they strolled hand-in-hand toward their pond with a graceful willow at its edge.

“We’re going to be buried right there, on that little hill,” Jimmy Carter said, motioning toward the lawn sloping up from the pond.


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Another trial by media: In defense of Mother Teresa and why she is a saint, not a 'cult leader'

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Another trial by media: In defense of Mother Teresa and why she is a saint, not a 'cult leader'

Historical figures are going through another mass-media reckoning. They have been for some time. Some with good reason.

Christopher Columbus? Understandable given what was unleashed by his arrival from Europe.

Thomas Jefferson? A paradox that’s worth examining given his ability to pen the Declaration of Independence and also own slaves. In some cases, there is evidence that he fathered children with them.

Other figures haven’t been so obvious. Following the tragic murder of George Floyd last May, many statues were toppled or removed across the United States, including those of 18th century Spanish priest Junipero Serra, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi. These weren’t so obvious to explain. I’m not sure those who damaged them knew either.

This takes me to the latest reckoning: Mother Teresa, now known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

Yes, that Mother Teresa. The diminutive woman who dedicated her life to helping “the poorest of the poor” in India. And the same one who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and Pope Francis canonized a saint in 2016. Turns out she was a cult leader.

Michelle Goldberg penned an opinion piece in The New York Times, which ran Saturday on its website, under the headline: “Was Mother Teresa a cult leader?”

With a headline like that, is it possible the thesis will be that she wasn’t?


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The pope’s Myanmar plight recalls church struggles with rotten regimes of the past

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The pope’s Myanmar plight recalls church struggles with rotten regimes of the past

Journalists might tear themselves away from U.S. evangelicals’ moral entanglements with Donald Trump and Roy Moore to consider how church leaders should handle rotten regimes overseas as grist for a reflective essay.

Pope Francis’s visit to Buddhist Myanmar put this on the news docket. Beforehand, Father Thomas Reese said Francis risked “either compromising his moral authority or putting in danger the Christians of that country,” so “someone should have talked him out of making this trip.”

That is, Francis might harm Myanmar’s tiny, persecuted Christian flock if he denounced the military’s campaign of rape, mass murder, arson and forced exile against Rohingya Muslims. Yet sidestepping of atrocities had already besmirched the moral stature of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The pope decided not to publicly utter the word “Rohingya” in  Myanmar,  offering only generalized human rights pleas. Only later, meeting Muslim refugees in Bangladesh, did he cite their name: “We won’t close our hearts or look away. The presence of God today is also called Rohingya.”

On the flight back to Rome, Francis told reporters that naming the victims in Myanmar “would have been a door slammed in my face.” Instead, he figured keeping silent  facilitated behind-scenes “dialogue, and in this way the message arrived.” So, did he defend the Rohingya when meeting the military? “I dared say everything I wanted to say.”

Despite criticism of the papal performance from human rights activists, Reese says Francis balanced his roles of “diplomat” and “prophet” to protect Christians while lobbying in private, and it’s unlikely public attacks “would have had any effect on the military.”

That recalls perennial complaints that Pope Pius XII should have more forthrightly denounced Nazi extermination of Jews.


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Real fake news: Facebook's role in Buddhist Myanmar's deadly war against its Rohingya Muslims

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Real fake news: Facebook's role in Buddhist Myanmar's deadly war against its Rohingya Muslims

Before I get to the Facebook angle of this post, please indulge me as I note what I believe are two widely held beliefs that we'd be better off dropping. Blame it on a recent The New York Times piece on Buddhist Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority.

The first is that Buddhists are all about peace and compassion. This idea persists in some circles, thanks to how Mindfulness and other Buddhist meditation practices are sold in the West. Well, get over it.

The exiled Tibetan Buddhist religious leader Tenzin Gyatso, better known by his title, the Dalai Lama, is a rare exception. In Myanmar, Buddhist monks are some of the fiercest instigators of nasty anti-Rohingya ethnic cleansing.

Two, we tend to believe that all Nobel Peace Prize winners are saintly advocates for equal justice for all. Well, what about Myanmar’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the esteemed prize in 1991 while under house arrest for her peaceful opposition to her nation’s dictatorial military government.

These days, as her nation’s prime minister-equivalent, she defends the way the Rohingyas have been treated by her Buddhist brethren. She argues that the Rohingya are simply Muslim Bangladeshis who, in essence, are illegal squatters in Buddhist Myanmar.

So what do you know? Buddhists and Nobel Prize winners can be just as broken as the rest of us.

Now for that New York Times piece out of Myanmar written by the paper’s new Southeast Asia correspondent, Hannah Beech. She’s new to the Times, but certainly not to the region or elite journalism.

What struck me most about her excellent piece, however, were not the naive beliefs cited above. Rather, it was what she reported about the role that Facebook and other social media have played in the conflict. (Facebook and other social media are also the subject of Congressional hearings this week because of how the Russians used them in an attempt to confuse voters in the United States' 2016 president election.)


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