Journalists get ready: Here comes the 'greatest celebration in all of history'

Thinking long-term, a group of Christians has been quietly at work pulling together what they bill as "the greatest celebration in all of history."

Yes, you read that right. The Big Idea is that all imaginable sorts of believers will join in events across 24 time zones on -- mark your calendars! -- Easter morning, Sunday, April 17, 2033. That will mark the ultimate in anniversaries, 2,000 years since Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead. (That's necessarily a symbolic date since there's no consensus on the exact year.)

They call it Jesus Celebration 2033 or "JC2033."

Lest anyone freak out about the date, organizers assure us that "in no way whatsoever are we associating this jubilee with" the Second Coming of Christ. "He will return when the Father in heaven decides and it is not given to us to know when (Mark 13:32)."

Explanatory materials envision that "every disciple of Christ" on earth will participate in collective witness to show "we love each other in the Holy Spirit!"

That will take some planning. However, "Christians from all backgrounds and God seekers" will celebrate "spiritual unity, not a theological unity. We believe in unity in diversity." This is presented as "a historical opportunity to share in words and in actions the Love of God to the ends of the earth."

Christians will also be asked to join in "tangible demonstrations of God's love." Festivities are intended to be "joyful, artistic and creative." Gatherings would not only occur in churches but "stadiums, squares, parks, mountains, fields, beaches, homes and on the Internet!"

OK, editors, reporters, producers and other media planners, that's a dozen years off, and there’s no telling whether the dream will fizzle. But the concept is bold enough to invite features now.

In recent years, certain tribes in the Amazon region have been in the news because of their unpleasant habit of killing deformed or handicapped children as well as twins, and even offspring of single moms, soon after birth. They also may kill transgendered individuals.

I thought the consensus was pretty clear that such practices were evil. But along came an article (it was a month ago, but I’m only getting around to it now) in Foreign Policy magazine that argued how saving the lives of these children was a western value that didn’t fit with the customs and lifestyle of these tribes.

Call it cultural appropriation, if you will.

Now, the question you know we are going to ask, here at GetReligion, is this: Did journalists pay any attention to religion angles in this story, in terms of critics of these customs or among those defending the tribes? The story begins:

More than a decade ago, Kanhu left the homeland of the Kamayurá, an indigenous tribe with some 600 members on the southern edge of the Brazilian Amazon. She was 7 years old. She never returned. “If I had remained there,” Kanhu, who has progressive muscular dystrophy, told Brazilian lawmakers last year, “I would certainly be dead.”

That’s because her community would likely have killed her, just as, for generations, it has killed other children born with disabilities.

The Kamayurá are among a handful of indigenous peoples in Brazil known to engage in infanticide and the selective killing of older children. Those targeted include the disabled, the children of single mothers, and twins -- whom some tribes, including the Kamayurá, see as bad omens. Kanhu’s father, Makau, told me of a 12-year-old boy from his father’s generation whom the tribe buried alive because he “wanted to be a woman.”

I know this is a bit long, but please stay with me.