The Seattle Times

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Coverage of book war at tiny library in Dayton, Washington, settled for voices on one side

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Coverage of book war at tiny library in Dayton, Washington, settled for voices on one side

Dayton is a cute little town in Washington state’s southeastern corner that hovers near the region’s fabled wine industry.

I stayed there one New Year’s Eve while skiing at the nearby Bluewood resort and let me tell you, the social scene in downtown Dayton was deader than a doornail. Maybe everyone had gone to nearby Walla Walla to party.

Which is why I was curious when the Seattle Times recently ran a piece about the townspeople possibly voting its tiny library out of existence.

DAYTON, COLUMBIA COUNTY — Book battles are raging across the nation, but none have carried the kind of stakes as the one here in Dayton, a one-stoplight farming community in the southeastern corner of Washington.

For the county’s only library, the battle has turned, quite literally, existential: Voters will decide in November whether to shut it down.

The library, which has occupied the same modest brick building a block off Main Street for 86 years, is at risk not because of a lack of funding or a lack of demand for its services. Instead, it could shutter because of a yearlong dispute over the placement of, at first, one book, then a dozen and now well over 100, all dealing with gender, sexuality or race.

More than 100 books?

I’m curious what the annual book-buying budget is for this place. This area is deep red-state Washington, not freewheeling Seattle, so where is the audience that is demanding that many books of this kind on the local shelves?

It would be the first library in the country to close because of a dispute over what books are on the shelves, according to the American Library Association.

“That is the end of the library as we know it,” said Jay Ball, who owns a local auto shop and chairs the library’s board of directors. “It’s insane, it’s just insane.”


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News-media theater? Seattle Pacific University sues state attorney general in LGBTQ fracas

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News-media theater? Seattle Pacific University sues state attorney general in LGBTQ fracas

Well, at least the Seattle Times ran the piece atop A-1.

The topic: Leaders at Seattle Pacific University, an evangelical Christian campus, had sued Washington State Attorney Gen. Bob Ferguson, essentially for interfering with their religious rights.

Bob Ferguson, for those of you who don’t live in Washington state, is an attack dog for the legal and cultural left. This is the guy who went after the owner of Arlene’s Flowers, the florist shop in south-central Washington that faced years of litigation after the owner declined to arrange flowers for a gay friend’s wedding. Ferguson went after owner Barronelle Stutzman like she was the devil incarnate, suing her professionally and personally in a case that bounced back and forth between the Supreme Court and lower courts, finally getting settled late last year.

Sensing they were in his crosshairs, SPU decided to strike first. From the Seattle Times this past Saturday:

Seattle Pacific University has filed suit against state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, charging that his investigation into possible hiring discrimination against LGBTQ+ people violates the school’s constitutionally protected right to religious freedom.

“The attorney general is wielding state power to interfere with the
religious beliefs of a religious university, and a church, whose beliefs he disagrees with,” reads the 22-page complaint, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.

Ferguson fired back in a Friday statement that SPU’s lawsuit “demonstrates that the university believes it is above the law to such an extraordinary degree that it is shielded from answering basic questions from my office regarding the university’s compliance with state law.”

SPU has been in the news recently because of a large group of students who’ve been holding a sit-in on campus this past spring to protest the school’s refusal to hire actively gay faculty. The school’s policy is that employees must confine their sexual activity within heterosexual marriage, thus honoring the school’s doctrinal statement of identity.

In a militantly secular and pro-gay city like Seattle, that’s an open declaration of war. The fact that SPU is a private religious institution that should be allowed to defend its belief system never comes across in the articles I’ve been reading about this controversy.


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Angry about Roe, many journalists focus on crisis pregnancy centers as villains behind it all

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Angry about Roe, many journalists focus on crisis pregnancy centers as villains behind it all

Before the overturning of Roe v. Wade a little more than a week ago, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) were considered by mainstream media to be the dregs of the pro-life movement, one of the last stories that anyone wanted to cover.

Now that abortion access is heading toward the deep-blue coastal regions with a few blue islands in the middle, a villain must be found. And voilà; the once despised CPCs are to blame for it all. Now, CPCs are worse than a non-story.

Apparently these places are pretty effective, judging from the editorial hate being poured down on them. They’re the bricks and mortar of the pro-life movement. Instead of reporting about how these CPCs — and the churches that tend to support them — have been defaced, set on fire or otherwise attacked, we have hit pieces like this Associated Press article about a “so-called” crisis pregnancy center in Charleston, WV.

The piece is so front-loaded with trash quotes from its opponents — with no rejoinder allowed from leaders or volunteers at the CPC itself — that you almost miss the story about the woman who visited the center back in 2014 planning to abort her child. She was (very reluctantly) dissuaded from doing so and now is “very happily” raising her 7-year-old son.

So, what’s the moral of this story? That this particular mother should have decided that this kid should be dead? The two reporters who did this disaster of a story don't want to go there.

Considering the invective tossed at these CPCs by places like Planned Parenthood, why aren’t reporters treating this more like a business story?

Like, the CPCs have outwitted the abortion clinics when it comes to figuring out what many pregnant women really want and it’s clear the abortion facilities have suffered financial losses as a result. How about asking people at the latter hard questions about the clients they’ve lost to the CPCs and whose bad marketing decision that was?

Hint: It might have to do with the free ultrasounds offered by the CPCs. Offering this service was a trend that began a decade or more ago and it really cried out for coverage.


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NPR affiliate dumps Jewish meteorologist who compares Seattle to Kristallnacht

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When it comes to freedom of speech, journalists are in a tough place these days.

Yes, you are free to vent your views on social media, but should you? Those of us who covered regular beats in the past were told to not air our private views about some of the major players on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

We were even coached to not place so much as a bumpersticker on our car that advertised our leanings — on anything –- one way or another. For instance, if a reporter covering a crisis pregnancy clinic pulled up to the interview with a Planned Parenthood sticker on her rear bumper, the CPC folks would have every right to conclude they would not get professional, objective treatment.

But if the reporter was a columnist, all bets were off, as he or she was being paid to be opinionated. Which is why the latest weird outrage — National Public Radio firing a Seattle-area meteorologist because he likened the city’s recent riots to an anti-Semitic mob in 1938 Germany — makes no sense.

From the Seattle Times:

KNKX Public Radio announced … it was axing its long-running weather segment with meteorologist Cliff Mass after the University of Washington professor wrote a post on his own blog comparing some Seattle protesters to the early Nazi militia known as the Brownshirts.

Mass wrote that “Seattle has had it(s) Kristallnacht and the photos of what occurred during the past weeks are eerily similar to those of 80 years ago.”

Kristallnacht was a pogrom carried out by the Nazis in 1938 that is widely seen as a precursor to the Holocaust, a turning point in Germany when social, political and economic persecution of Jewish people turned physical.

“We abhor the comparison and find it sensationalized and misleading — it does not reflect who we are and what we stand for at KNKX,” the radio station wrote on its website.

Aren’t college professors supposed to have opinions? Note that this was on Mass’s own personal blog.

Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the UW, said Friday morning that he was “stunned by the reaction. It exploded in a way I was stunned by.”

He said Friday morning, and wrote in a comment on his blog post Thursday night, that he wasn’t referring broadly to all protesters, just referring to people who destroyed property. “I compared those DOING VIOLENCE to Brownshirts,” he wrote in an email to The Seattle Times.


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Seattle Times' story on evangelical race relations nabs most of the local power players

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I was surprised to see a story in the Seattle Times about evangelicals saying ‘we repent’ about racism, mainly because the writer isn’t known for her coverage of people of faith and the newspaper hasn’t exactly been burning the midnight oil on religion news.

Especially anything having to do with evangelicals.

So I was surprised to see how this story hit up a lot of the major players in the region on this issue. It’s as if someone in the newsroom discovered a long-disused Rolodex of religion sources and actually used it. In the five years I’ve lived here and been reading the Times regularly, I’ve never seen any of these folks — black or white — quoted before.

Here is what social issues reporter Nina Shapiro came up with:

Joseph Castleberry, president of Northwest University, an evangelical school in Kirkland, was sitting at his desk in early May when he started seeing Facebook posts about a Black man killed while jogging through a coastal Georgia town.

As Castleberry read about 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, fatally shot by white men shown on video chasing him down, he said: “It just broke my heart.”…

Having grown up in small-town Alabama where racism was front and center, Castleberry, whose photo runs with this piece, decided he had to speak out.

Around the same time, Harvey Drake, an African American pastor presiding over Emerald City Bible Fellowship, in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, was also issuing a call — on Facebook, naming Castleberry and other white evangelical leaders he considers influential. “I’m tired of apologies and I’m tired of sympathy,” Drake said, explaining the gist. “There’s got to be something else you can do.” He suggested a news conference or an open letter.

Castleberry already was drafting a condemnation of the Arbery killing and statement of solidarity with African Americans he wanted the university’s board members to approve, which they did. Spurred on by Drake, he invited evangelical leaders nationwide to sign it. Eight hundred have done so.


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Seattle's de-policed CHAZ district is a religion-free zone, even in mainstream press

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While coverage of religion during the protests surrounding the death of George Floyd has revolved around the antics of President Donald Trump hoisting a Bible, there’s been no mention of it here in “occupied” Seattle.

Living in the suburbs as I do, I wondered if there is some faith-based news happening on Capitol Hill –- the part of the Emerald City that’s been taken over by protestors and devoid of police for more than a week. If so, journalists are not mentioning it. After scouring the pages of the Seattle Times and other publications, I only found one mention, by the Wall Street Journal’s religion reporter, of a group of chaplains on site.

So on Sunday afternoon, I decided to repair to what was known as CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) –- a six-block area -– to see for myself. (As of Sunday, the area is also known as CHOP for Capitol Hill Occupied Protest to signify these folks aren’t leaving the area any time soon. I’ll use the CHAZ moniker).

I’d hung back before, mainly because (1)I didn’t know if I’d be welcome as a white person; (2) The weather has been rainy for weeks here; and (3) I don’t know that area of town very well. Then #VisitSeattle ran this post on their Facebook page last Friday telling everyone to drop on by.

Contrary to what you may have seen in some news reports, Seattle is not under siege. We are healing. We are growing. We are coming together to learn from each other and support our neighbors. This is our community. And it's beautiful.

Then I saw a widely distributed video showing a white preacher getting beaten by a vicious crowd at CHAZ (shown below). The preacher was hoisting a sign and yelling “Sin is worse than death!” Yes, a mob congregated, flung themselves on him, forcibly kissed him (sexual assault anyone?) and stole his phone. I am not excusing his horrible treatment, but I wondered at the wisdom of this guy trying to use the #BlackLivesMatter space as a Gospel-preaching platform.

CHAZ is not a space for white folks to do street preaching at this point. The emotions are too raw. Why didn’t he team up with black Christian friends and have them preach instead of him? What he did was just stupid.

Yes, he had a First Amendment right to be there, but remember, dear readers, that the mayor has ceded this area to CHAZ, so forget about constitutional rights and police protection as well.


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Helpless in Seattle: How journalists are/are not covering coronavirus, churches and conferences

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Here’s a dispatch from the center of the evolving pandemic — which where I live.

When the national epicenter for the coronavirus is 13 miles away from one’s home, life becomes a place somewhere between Albert Camus’ “The Plague” and Gabriel Garcia Márguez’s “Love in a Time of Cholera.”

If you live in major urban areas — think New York City and greater Washington, D.C. — you can expect to see these patterns sooner, rather than later. What’s in your newspapers this morning?

Back to Kirkland — the expensive suburb (described here by the Los Angeles Times for those of you who have never been). Kirkland is merely one of several cities on Seattle’s Eastside where this thing has hit. Kirkland used to be the place we’d go for some beach time on Lake Washington when I was in high school. It was unglamorous and kind of shabby until the tech boom hit, Microsoft moved into neighboring Redmond and Google began gobbling up reams of office space in Kirkland, sending rents soaring.

Living two suburbs away as I do, I can say that the pall over Kirkland is now upon us all. Visiting local stores is like entering the Twilight Zone. I’ve never seen the shelves at Trader Joe’s so empty. Target has zero, I repeat zero, cough drops. Lines are forming at the local Costco first thing in the morning so folks can get toilet paper. The King County bus system greets you with hygiene announcements when you board.

We will get to religious groups and coverage in a moment. Hang in there with me.

Traffic for the past few days has been delightfully free of gridlock but it feels, writes one Seattle Times columnist, like Seattle is being symbolically quarantined from the rest of America. Conventions, conferences and meetings are being cancelled left and right. The Seattle-based Alaska Airlines put lots of flights on sale, begging folks to fly or buy before the end of March. But interestingly, while one school district has totally shut down, the others are not.


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Podcast: Stop and think. How will coronavirus affect nurseries, worship and last rites?

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At this point, it’s clear that the coronavirus story has moved past concerns about whether members of ancient Christian churches can catch the disease from wine in golden Communion chalices.

People will debate that issue for one simple reason — people have researched that issue for centuries and argued about the results. That story is the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to reporting on how religious congregations — past and present — have reacted during times of plague.

So read up on the “common cup” issue and then move on. Oh, and resist the temptation to spotlight the inevitable proclamation from the Rev. Pat Robertson. And there will be more to this story than Episcopal bishops turning a scheduled meeting into a “virtual” gathering.

That’s the message at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). And while many journalists tend to focus on Catholic churches — lots of people in sanctuaries that photograph well — I think that editors and producers need to consider how this crisis could impact highly independent Protestant megachurches and institutions linked to them. Mosques and synagogues will be affected.

Everyone will be effected. Reporters will need to focus on specific facts and broad trends.

While we were recording the podcast, I told host Todd Wilken that journalists may want to note that spring break is not that far away. In addition to sending legions of young people to jammed beaches and crazy watering holes, this is also a time when churches and colleges organize short-term mission trips to locations around the world. Sure enough, I saw this notice on Twitter a few hours later, from a campus in Arkansas:


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Think about this: How many religious flocks are ready for children with 'hidden' disabilities?

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On one level, this week’s think piece is not about religion. Then again, it is a personal and transparent piece from The Seattle Times — written by GetReligion contributor Julia Duin, a veteran religion-beat professional.

It’s a piece about what it’s like to travel with one or more children with “hidden disabilities.” She is talking about PTSD, autism, anxiety disorders and other intense conditions that, to be blunt, may not immediately be obvious to people at nearby restaurant tables, in lines at theater parks or jammed into adjacent airplane seats.

OK, what about people of various ages who are settled in for peace and quiet, or even transcendence, in a nearby pew during Mass?

So read Duin’s article and picture that in your mind. Look for the situations that religious leaders of all kind need to stop and think about, in terms of their own communities, activities and facilities. Think about that as you read this:

You’ve seen them at the airport, at the beach or in a restaurant. A child is thrashing or kicking or on the ground while a desperate parent hovers nearby, trying to ignore angry glances from passersby. I know because I’ve been that anguished parent.

On display are “cognitive disabilities,” invisible handicaps related to how children’s brains work. For many kids with cognitive disabilities or developmental disorders, a car can be a prison, a plane or a new hotel room can be sheer terror.

In the past, families were stuck, barely venturing outside the county, certainly not on an overnight trip. Travel meant potential trauma minefields, and unfortunately, we live in a world where bystanders are more apt to call the police or Child Protective Services than offer help to the parents.

Can you see the potential for any of that in, oh, a loud suburban megachurch?


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