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Pascha in Ukraine, 2023: That's a subject journalists view through a totally Western lens

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Pascha in Ukraine, 2023: That's a subject journalists view through a totally Western lens

Ask faithful members of Eastern Orthodox churches to name the most important day of the Christian year and about 99.9% of them will say this — “Pascha.”

This is the ancient Orthodox term for the feast of the Resurrection of Jesus. As the OrthodoxWiki.org website notes, “Pascha” is “a transliteration of the Greek word, which is itself a transliteration of the Aramaic pascha, from the Hebrew pesach meaning Passover.”

Pascha rites around the world began just before midnight on Saturday and proceeded into the early hours of Sunday, followed by festivities to break the long, intense fast of Great Lent. Folks get home about 4 a.m.

Needless to say, this was not a normal Pascha in Ukraine. I was curious to see how mainstream newsrooms would cover the rites in the Ukraine, where two competing Orthodox bodies are united in their opposition to the Russian invasion of their land, but separated by decades of competing claims of which church represents the future of the faith in Ukraine (see this earlier post-podcast on that topic).

I was curious, as an Orthodox layman (this Pascha marked the 25th anniversary of my family’s conversion), how mainstream news organizations would cover Pascha 2023 in Ukraine — so I ran an online search for the terms Ukraine and “Pascha.” The result — zero 2023 news reports containing “Pascha.”

Ah, but what if journalists ignored Orthodox history, tradition and theology and only referred to this feast day as “Easter,” the Western Christian term?

What if your stories contained zero references to “Pascha” and only said “Easter”? That online search yielded some mainstream reports, which often mentioned “Orthodox Easter,” thus viewing the most important day in Eastern Orthodoxy through a totally Western lens. Try to imagine doing this with any other global faith group of 260 million members, Christianity’s second largest Communion. Imagine changing the name of “Passover,” “Ramadan” or even “Easter” (when covering Rome and Protestantism).

Of course, readers need to be told that “Pascha” is the ancient Christian term for the season that, in the dominant West, is known by the somewhat controversial (for some outsiders) term “Easter.” But shouldn’t coverage of Pascha at least include, you know, the word “Pascha”?

It’s hard to imagine a more fitting metaphor to describe most, if not all, of the warped mainstream press coverage of the role that Orthodox history and faith is playing in Ukraine. I have already written about this several times and I’m about to board an airplane to head to Los Angeles. So let me be as quick as possible.

If reporters had the slightest interest in the historic Ukrainian Orthodox Church — with 1,000 years of shared history with Slavic cultures — they would be paying attention to this church’s (a) ongoing attempts to sever, within the limits of Orthodox canon law, it’s remaining ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, (b) its leaders’ opposition, since Day 1, to the Russian invasion and (c) the criticisms of this church by leaders of the new, competing Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is supported by the United States, the European Union, the current Ukrainian government and the tiny, but symbolic, Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarchate in Turkey. These criticisms have escalated into a full-tilt government attempt to crush the older Orthodox body.


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Fellowship of Christian Athletes wins an 'equal access' case, even if LATimes missed that

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Fellowship of Christian Athletes wins an 'equal access' case, even if LATimes missed that

Once upon a time, back in the days of the Bill Clinton White House, there was a strong church-state coalition that stretched, basically, from the Assemblies of God to the Unitarians. The legal activists in this coalition didn’t agree on everything, but they did agree on some basic First Amendment principles that helped defend believers in a wide variety of religious minorities.

If you know the history of that era, you can sense that a few important words are missing from the recent Los Angeles Times report (behind a paywall) that ran at Yahoo!News with this aggressive headline: “Court says San Jose school district must recognize Christian club that excludes LGBTQ kids.”

That headline, of course, could have noted — somehow — that the this victory for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes was based on the same legal principles that defend the First Amendment rights of LGBTQ support groups at the same school.

The key is that there are two crucial words — “equal access” — that are missing from this rather solid story, which includes enough quoted material from voices on both sides for readers to figure out what is going on (if they have a background in church-state studies). Hold that thought.

First, here is the Times overture:

In spring 2019, a teacher at Pioneer High School in San Jose posted a message on his classroom whiteboard questioning a "Sexual Purity" statement that a club for Christian student athletes was requiring its leaders to sign.

The club's statement said sexual relationships should exist only between married, heterosexual couples. The teacher wrote that he was "deeply saddened" that a club on the public school campus made its leaders "affirm" those ideas, and he asked students what they thought.

The resulting firestorm led to the San Jose Unified School District rescinding recognition of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes for excluding LGBTQ students in violation of the district's nondiscrimination policy. In response, the club and its international parent organization sued in federal court, alleging religious discrimination.

On Monday, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes won a major victory when a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the club be reinstated as an official student group for the current school year while litigation between the parties continues in the lower district court.

Shutting down the FCA violated the “nondiscrimination policy”?


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Political reporter says journalism has made him a better Christian. He's not alone

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Political reporter says journalism has made him a better Christian. He's not alone

Say what?

Jon Ward, chief national correspondent for Yahoo! News, writes in an essay for Christianity Today that his profession has made him a better Christian.

Ward knows many of his fellow Christians may find that hard to believe:

Conservative Christians are far more hostile toward the media now than they were when I was growing up. Some of my own family members have told me I should be ashamed of myself for doing my job. In fact, most people don’t like the media — and that’s bad for society. The media shares some of the blame for that, as I’ve written recently for Yahoo! News.

But he explains the profession’s role in his own life:

Journalism has empowered many of the most noble, the most Christian elements of my character. I have been discipled for two decades in how to discern what is true and false, and — probably more importantly — how to discern when there are no easy answers or solutions. I have been trained in pursuing truth without regard to whom it offends.

I have also been given a sense of humility about what we can know for sure and how often we need to acknowledge that our point of view is limited and incomplete. This is sometimes called “epistemological modesty,” and it is a quality that we badly need more of in our discourse.

Hey dude, you’re preaching to the choir.

Seriously, I authored a recent Christian Chronicle editorial that focused on the faith of one of my journalistic heroes: Jerry Mitchell, a Mississippi investigative reporter whose stories helped put four Klansmen and a serial killer behind bars.

From that editorial:

Mitchell recalled that a radio show host asked him once, “How can you be a Christian and a journalist?”


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Yahoo! podcast: Jon Ward offers lots of questions about evangelicals falling for QAnon

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There is no “Crossroads” podcast during this short work week, but there is another GetReligion-related podcast for those with ears to hear.

Jon Ward, senior political correspondent for Yahoo! News, contacted me after seeing some of the social-media fallout from the recent trilogy of GetReligion posts about the Atlantic Monthly “Shadowland” project, especially the content about white evangelicals and the mysterious QAnon movement.

For those who missed them, those posts were: “The Atlantic probes QAnon sect and finds (#shocking) another evangelical-ish conspiracy,” “New podcast: The Atlantic needed to interview some evangelical leaders about QAnon heresy” and “Thinking about QAnon: Joe Carter sends strong warning to evangelicals about new heresy.”

If you have not followed his work over the years, Ward describes himself this way:

I write about politics, culture and religion. I'm pro-complexity, pro-nuance, and pro-context. I've covered two White Houses and two presidential elections. I'm the author of "Camelot's End," a book released in 2019 about the epic clash between Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter in 1980. I'm trying to understand how our politics is broken and how to fix it, and host a podcast on that topic called "The Long Game." I live in D.C. with my wife and our kids.

I ended up spending an hour-plus online with Ward, recording material for an episode of his “The Long Game” series.

The podcast that grew out of our conversation (“Religion reporter Terry Mattingly on White Evangelicals and the Qanon political cult”) in part of an effort by Ward to explore the broader world of conspiracy theory life, with some extra attention devoted to the anti-vaccine movement.

During our conversation, Ward noted that he grew up in evangelicalism (as did I, on the way to Eastern Orthodox Christianity). This entire discussion, he said, has reminded him of the famous book by historian Mark A. Noll entitled, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”

Here is a key comment from Ward:


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Holy ghosts haunt story of Colorado high school wrestler who wouldn't compete against girl

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In reading about a Colorado high school wrestler who declined to compete against a girl, I couldn’t help but think that holy ghost — as we call them here at GetReligion — might be haunting the story.

I first caught this recent news via Yahoo! Sports, which made no reference at all to religion in writing about Brendan Johnson.

Curious, I clicked the Yahoo! link to the original source material from the Denver Post.

Here’s the deal: On one hand, the Denver Post piece is extremely compelling and readable.

Let’s start with a big chunk of the opening (more text than I usually copy and paste) because it really sets the scene:

Once the curveball leaves life’s fingertips, the swinging part is up to you. The way Judy Johnston tells it, she just happened to snatch the first open seat she saw near the floor of the gymnasium at Legend High School in Parker last month. What she didn’t know at the time was that the open seat just happened to be next to the one occupied by Angel Rios’ mother, Cher. Or that Angel, a junior 106-pound wrestler at Valley High in Gilcrest, just happened to draw a matchup against her son, Brendan, a senior wrestler from The Classical Academy.

Or how Cher was going to react once she heard Brendan wouldn’t wrestle a woman. Not now. Not ever.

“It was a fluke,” Johnston recalls from a stairwell inside the Pepsi Center during the 2019 Colorado High School Activities Association State Wrestling Tournament. “I had been told Angel is really good, she wants to go the Olympics, so we knew a little about her. And the (Valley) coach came by and said, ‘He’s going to forfeit.’ And Angel came over to her mom and said, ‘He’s going to forfeit.’ She was disappointed. Her mom was disappointed. And me not being able to turn away from a challenging conversation…”

With Cher fuming, Judy introduced herself.

“Well,” she said, words dancing carefully to avoid stepping on any toes, “my son happens to be the one that’s forfeiting.’”

“Why is he doing that?” Cher replied.

“She explained why she felt disrespected,” Johnston recalled. “I said, ‘I totally understand that.’ I said, ‘I know she’s worked hard, but he feels it’s not appropriate to interact with a woman that way, to be physical on or off the mat, at this stage in life.

“So I kind of explained my side. It took a while, but she was able to kind of say, ‘Yeah, I kind of see your point.’ I wished her well and wished Angel well. And that was the end of it.”

Only it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.


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Barring any evidence to the contrary, let's assume that Yahoo! 'News' is meant to be commentary

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It's time for another edition of "What is this?"

This is where we at GetReligion attempt to determine whether a particular piece of journalism -- or in some cases, a media organization in general -- is news or commentary or something in between.

The traditional American style of journalism -- the model that this website unabashedly promotes -- relies on impartial, accurate reporting with named sources cited. On controversial topics, it's really nice to see some balance in terms of the quoted sources.

But much U.S. journalism has given way to a European brand of advocacy, frequently making it difficult to distinguish between what is meant as "Just the facts, ma'am" and what is purposely told with a (biased) attitude. Lean forward!

Today's example comes to us courtesy of a reader, who questions whether a piece on evangelical voters from Yahoo! News and attributed to the website's "senior political correspondent" really falls under the category of news.

The reader notes that the story is "full of snark and opinion, but not labeled as opinion or even analysis."

The lede:

To Americans who stand outside the evangelical tradition, Franklin Graham’s recent proclamation that there’s “no question” that God supports Donald Trump’s presidency was another head-scratcher in a growing list of puzzling statements by Christian leaders over the past year.
Even without getting into the question of whether God chooses sides in elections, or how Graham can be so sure of his preference, there is the obvious fact, much discussed in the campaign, that the generally non-churchgoing, avidly materialistic Trump seemed an unlikely vessel for God’s will.
But Graham’s remark and white evangelicals’ continuing support of Trump make more sense when viewed in light of American evangelicalism’s history and DNA. It is a subject explored in depth in “The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America,” a new history of the movement by Pulitzer Prize-winner Frances FitzGerald.
“He did everything wrong, politically,” Graham told the Atlantic’s Emma Green. “He offended gays. He offended women. He offended the military. He offended black people. He offended the Hispanic people. He offended everybody! And he became president of the United States. Only God could do that.”
Graham’s mentality reflects the evangelical obsession with dramatic solutions and easy answers that Michael Horton, a professor of theology at Westminster Seminary in California, described in his 2014 book, “Ordinary.”
“American Christianity is a story of perpetual upheavals in churches and individual lives. Starting with the extraordinary conversion experience, our lives are motivated by a constant expectation for The Next Big Thing,” Horton wrote.

Um, OK. Where to start?


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Must we keep talking about Citizen Trump and evangelicals? We must, we must ...

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Must we keep talking about Citizen Trump and evangelicals? We must, we must ...

First things first: Why the nod to the classic farce "Blazing Saddles" at the end of the headline for this post?

Well, why not? Don't you sense the hand of comedy genius Mel Brooks behind the scenes in this election year? Believe me when I say, "I do, I do."

Thus, People keep asking me things like, "Why are we still talking about Donald Trump and the evangelicals?" Of course, the word "evangelicals" in this case has little or nothing to do with theology. It is a reference to one camp -- stress, one camp -- of mostly white evangelicals who at this point in time are either supporting Trump or who have not made up their minds on the issue.

We are still talking about them because no Republican has a chance to reach the White House in the era after Roe v. Wade without a massive turn out by these highly motivated voters. Republican winners also need strong support from conservative (think daily Mass) and middle-of-the-road (think Sunday Mass, most of the time) Catholics, but that's an issue very few people seem to be talking about. Has anyone heard a word from a U.S. Catholic bishop about anything for about six months?

We are also talking about Trump and this one camp of old-guard, white evangelicals (many can accurately be defined as "fundamentalists") because other evangelicals are talking about them, from the other side of a bitter and painful divide in pulpits and many pews. At this stage, even Trump's evangelical advisory team is packed with people who have not endorsed him.

So, once again, "Crossroads" host Todd Wilken and I, during this week's podcast, talked about the slow-motion train wreck that is Trump's campaign to get right with the God voters. Click right here to tune that in.


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Jew attacked because of his kippah -- why do few media want to know what that is?

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Why wear a kippah? What does the Jewish skullcap mean?

In France, one meaning is "walking target," as an attack on a Jewish teacher in Marseilles shows.  

The brutal machete attack has prompted a public debate among Jewish leaders over whether to stop wearing the traditional headgear in public. Beyond that, however, media accounts seem to lose interest.

Here are some of the horrendous details, as reported in the International Business Times:

A teenager who attacked a Jewish teacher with a machete in France claimed he acted in the name of the Islamic State (Isis/Daesh) group, authorities said. Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin confirmed the stabbing was anti-Semitic and involved some degree of premeditation.
The victim, a 35-year-old teacher at the Franco-Hebraic Institute in the southern city, was on his way to work on 11 January when the boy of Turkish Kurd origins charged him from behind.
The youth, who will turn 16 next week, first slashed the man's shoulder and then went after him as he fled. The teacher eventually fell on to the ground and fought off a second attack using his arms, legs and a holy book, Robin said.
The assailant dropped the weapon and ran away before being caught by police some 10 minutes later. Upon arrest he invoked Allah and IS also telling officers that "the Muslims of France dishonour Islam and the French army protects Jews".

You could hardly ask for stronger religious angles in a news story: jihadism, anti-Semitism, marking an enemy by his religious garb, use of a holy book as a shield. Even the machete recalls the half-dozen hacking attacks on secular bloggers in Bangladesh.

But like IBTimes, most media ignored or downplayed the religious facets. They didn’t even ask about the "holy book" used as a shield by the teacher. Among the very few that did was Yahoo News; it says the book was a Torah, a collection of the first five books of the Bible -- the basis of Jewish law and theology.

More typical is the account by the BBC:


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Sing it! Going to the 'chapel' (maybe) and we're gonna get married (on our terms)

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Sing it! Going to the 'chapel' (maybe) and we're gonna get married (on our terms)

There is an old saying in the religion-beat world that goes something like this: You can always find interesting news trends if you keep looking at what happens when each generation moves through the symbolic crossroads of life -- being born, getting married, having children and dying.

During this week's Crossroads podcast (click here to tune that in), host Todd Wilken and I talked about a number of different trends linked to marriage in this day and age, spinning off from two New York Times stories. One was about people flocking to New York City for secular weddings in a state-run marriage bureau chapel. Yes, "chapel." The other was about the trend toward very sexy -- but still white -- wedding dresses.

All kinds of issues came up in this discussion. For example: Lots of churches have had to establish policies on how to handle couples who have been "living in sin" -- that's what people used to call it -- before marriage. There are still interesting stories to be found linked to that topic. But times move on. I am curious. In the age of R-rated wedding dresses, are religious leaders going to have to have wedding dress codes for brides? Do priests and rabbis need to approve wedding dresses in advance?

Truth be told, there is a big, big subject looming in the background during this chat. We are talking about radical American individualism and its whole "this day is all about you" wedding ethos that produces both gigantic, break-the-bank church weddings and all of those destination weddings on beaches, mountain cliffs and who knows where.

The bottom line is even bigger than the financial bottom line: Is the wedding a sacrament or not? Is the rite defined by individuals or by worshipping communities?


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