More Elizabeth II coverage: Washington Post goes deep on her Billy Graham contacts

Confession: I am still paying next to zero attention to American telly when it comes to rites linked to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. I’m tuned into BBC World and, via YouTube, streaming Sky News.

The few times I’ve flipped over to the major U.S. networks left me with the same impression as before — that the Royal Family is viewed as kind of a cleaned-up version of the Kardashians, with the queen as a sad, nobel celebrity matriarch. See this earlier post: “Elizabeth the Great: Why do many journalists choose to edit faith out of her Christmas talks?”

I think the big gaps (other than details about her faith) have been any sense of (a) the gravitas added by her World War II service, including her work driving an Army ambulance. Also, it’s poignant that, (b) until the stunning abdication of King Edward VIII, she was raised with zero expectation of becoming queen. This relatively normal childhood (until age 10) created tight ties to her parents and shaped her views on family.

Yes, the BBC has had a very heavy emphasis on the admiration for the queen seen in mainline, establishment churches and minority faiths. At some point I would like to know if the admiration for Elizabeth II common among American evangelicals also exists in the UK. Click here for a roundup of that, including these typical remarks from Bishop Andrew Forster of the Church of Ireland:

"Throughout her life she set Christ, and his message and his teaching, as the primary thing that has helped her and blessed her and I think made her into the incredible monarch, sovereign that she was."
Bishop Forster described the late Queen as the "grandmother of the nation".
"Maybe it was because people understood that she had an understanding of some of the issues that we might face behind closed doors, some of the issues of increased frailty, of family strife — there was that sense of a grandmotherly figure who understood the challenges of life," he said.

In my previous post, I noted that a Washington Post feature about the queen’s “most memorable remarks” that said her public appearances were “peppered with words of wisdom, faith and occasionally personal reflections.” There was content about her Christmas messages, while omitting any faith content.

However, the religion desk — veteran Sarah Pulliam Bailey (a former GetReligion contributor) — went in depth on one of the most interesting religion-news angles from the queen’s long life: “Fact checking ‘The Crown’: Queen Elizabeth’s faith and her close relationship with preacher Billy Graham.”

First things first. You are not seeing double.

Terry Mattingly and I have, in fact, written separate responses to a very interesting feature story called “The Confession.” This has happened two or three times in 17 years, with our pattern of calling dibs on new articles via email. After seeing that our pieces focused on different angles in the report (click here for tmatt’s take), he suggested that we hold my post for a bit and then run it as a kind of year-ender. I thought this was one of the best long forms of the year. Here, then, is how I saw it.

The Washington Post’s series on hate crimes has delivered another wonderfully complicated story, and this time it includes notes of forgiveness and grace.

The 5,300-word story by Peter Jamison does not engage this point directly, but calling the behavior of Nathan Stang a hate crime illustrates the occasional oddities of the category. Stang, an atheist gay man pursuing doctoral studies in music at Indiana University, served as the paid organist about 35 miles away at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom.

Stang claimed to have discovered the swastika and two messages left in black spray paint on the church’s exterior. “Heil Trump,” one message said. “Fag church,” said the other.

The latter invective led to rapid cries of a hate crime. Within six months, the Brown County Sheriff’s Department arrested the perpetrator, and it was not a neo-Nazi wearing a Make America Great Again cap or carrying a sign filled with vile insults. It was Stang, who confessed his act of vandalism to sheriff’s deputy Brian Shrader.

The deputy had suspicions about the malicious graffiti from the beginning, and Jamison’s choice of adjective for the congregation helped unlock the mystery.

Jamison writes:

The detective had put his finger on what was bothering him: the words “Fag Church.” St. David’s was indeed a beacon of support for gay rights. But the fact had gone all but unnoticed outside the church’s several dozen parishioners.