Podcast: Why was the New York Times so interested in Marvin Olasky? Take a guess ...

Why was The New York Times so interested in Marvin Olasky and his views on journalism and Christian faith?

That’s a question that I heard several times this week from readers and others.

Actually, the Times published a previous article on Olasky, which I mentioned in a post here earlier this week (“Wut happened? Tensions behind World's move to push Olasky out of his editor's chair”). So let’s tweak that question a bit, to get to the point that host Todd Wilken and I discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to listen to it).

Why was the Times team so interested — it’s a long, complex feature — in Olasky right now?

Actually, the answer to that question is pretty clear. Read the headline: “His Reasons for Opposing Trump Were Biblical. Now a Top Christian Editor Is Out.” Now,. read the thesis statement:

At one level, Mr. Olasky’s departure is just another example of the American news media sinking deeper into polarization, as one more conservative news outlet, which had almost miraculously retained its independence, is conquered by Mr. Trump.
It also marks the end of a remarkable era at a publication that has shaken evangelical churches and related institutions with its deeply reported articles. … At a time when hot takes get the clicks, these articles offered something old-fashioned and hard for any community to take: accountability reporting.

That’s actually two answers, isn’t it.

Answer No. 1: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Answer No. 2: Olasky has built a magazine known for producing hard-news articles. That’s rare, in today’s digital world dominated by a quick-click business model that loves opinions and commentary work. The editorial approach at World was shaped by cultural, religious conservatism, more than partisan politics.

Think of this magazine as an evangelical version of the late, great New Republic.

The New Yorker torches Teen Challenge residential programs in vivid, one-sided report

This must be the season for exposés on Christian youth ministries.

Business Insider just came out with a huge piece on Young Life and a lot of folks are talking about the New Yorker’s recent exposé on the Christian drug rehab organization, Teen Challenge. Based on 60-plus interviews, it’s about one teen-aged girl’s story of being taken from her adopted parents’ home in the middle of the night and forced into a hellish residential program in central Florida.

The story has been framed as Teen Challenge attacking gay teens, although Emma, the central character, arrives at the school pregnant and ends up marrying a man four years later. Much of the story is about how she was forced to give up her child while sequestered at Teen Challenge.

It’s important, when reading this vivid story, to keep asking: Where are the voices on the other side of this drama?

Many of the events reported by The New Yorker took place a decade ago. Here’s how it started:

In the spring of her freshman year of high school, in 2011, Emma Burris was woken at three in the morning. Someone had turned on the lights in her room. She was facing the wall and saw a man’s shadow. She reached for her cell phone, which she kept under her pillow at night, but it wasn’t there. The man, Shane Thompson, who is six and a half feet tall, wore a shirt with “Juvenile Transport Agent” printed on the back. He and a colleague instructed Emma to put on her clothes and follow them to their car. “She was very verbal, resisting,” Thompson told me. Her parents, who had adopted her when she was seven, stood by the doorway, watching silently.
Thompson drove Emma away from her house, in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, and merged onto the highway. Emma, who was fifteen, tried to remember every exit sign she passed, so that she could find her way home, but she was crying too hard to remember the names. …
Part Scottish and part Puerto Rican, Emma was slight, with long, wavy blond hair. Her parents, whose lives revolved around their church, admonished her for being aggressive toward them and for expressing her sexuality too freely. She watched lesbian pornography and had lost her virginity to an older boy.

“Being aggressive toward them?”