Small Sips: Religion Journalism, Shiny Happy Church

Greg at The Parish has an excellent commentary on religion journalism. And he should know religion journalism, because he's a religion journalist. After analyzing the suggestion that newspapers are dying/dead, he turns his attention to the credibility of the religion page. Here are a few points that he made that I really liked (Caution for language):

Most reporters don't know enough about their own religion, if they have one, to write intelligently about it. Now throw them into a story about Jainism or Wicca and watch them try to understand the vocabulary and basic concepts. People with degrees in journalism tend to know a lot about journalism, a little about their own faith, and nothing about other faiths. Think America post-9/11 when we were trying to understand Shia and Sunni and Wahhabi.

Editors don't often know what to do with religion stories because they've been given the task of assigning a reporter to explain something in 500 or 750 words, but the background information necessary to make sense of the context is not present in the audience. A reporter doesn't have to say, "Barrack [sic] Obama is a bi-racial senator from Illinois running for President..." every time she writes a piece about Obama. The background information of Democrat, Republican, Senator, President, race relations, etc., are all present to greater or lesser degrees in the audience. To do a story about Buddhism, the audience may need to understand karma, samsara, meditation, eight-fold path, four jewels, etc. That works well in SE Asia, not SE Oklahoma.

[...]

Religion reporting requires that editor, reporter, and audience understand why the story is important. How is it that our Presidential candidates are forced to answer inane questions about what Jesus means to them but we can't figure out how to make religion reporting relevant? Can't explain its impact? It's possible that all forms of religion have become so privatized, except for the civil variety that we trot out every 4th of July and every election cycle, that we are incapable of understanding how religion becomes news because we no longer believe religion motivates anyone to do anything but pick a political side. This is obvious when we read otherwise excellent magazines like The New Yorker or Atlantic and see caricatures of Christians we know. The media is guilty of elevating spokespersons to that status because they say stupid or inflammatory shit. That doesn't mean they speak for all people in the community of faith, but people in the community of faith have to help editors understand why religion reporting is important. Right now, I'm pretty sure that neither editors nor practitioners think it is.

So Greg's basic point is that reporters and editors need to 1) understand religion in general, and 2) understand why a particular story about religion is newsworthy. Nowadays, I agree that the majority of religion-based stories in national media are somehow interwoven with politics: what candidates believe (ignoring the fact that a vast majority of the nation is throwing out that whole "no religious test for a political candidate" thing when they do it) and the influence of religion on conflicts such as those in the Middle East (and even then, it's usually very simplistic, i.e., "The Jews and The Muslims are fighting again"). It seems to be a case of "ignorance breeds ignorance," really.

Our local papers feature exactly the kinds of religion stories that Greg describes elsewhere in his entry. First off, the section only shows up maybe on Saturdays. This week, the section's big story is all about how megachurches use technology. That's CUTTING EDGE~! There is a smaller story about a jury using the Bible in deliberations on a murder case, but what could have been an interesting analysis of church/state issues is relegated to a small piece of the second page, just under another small piece on Todd Bentley's extra-curricular activities. Religious figures in scandal will get a mention, and there would have been potential in the jury story, but my newspaper chose megachurch technology. Good one.

Go read the whole thing at The Parish.

At A Church for Starving Artists, Jan reflects on that aspect of ministry where people share Big Secrets with her...

And so, as a pastor, every once in a while, someone will get up the nerve to confess that he is a sex addict or she is sleeping with her married boss or he has a child with his grown daughter's college roommate's sister. And then they vanish, perhaps too mortified to face the one who knows, which is harder than praying to The One who knows. But nothing changes without letting someone in on The Secret - whether it's a secret habit that we'd like to shake or a secret burden that's crushing us or a secret hurt that makes everything hard.

This is what the church is supposed to be about. A hospital for sinners. A community in which friends are willing to drop you through the roof if it would give you the chance to be healed. A gathering that welcomes even the scuzzy and the shady and the secret sufferers.

Slowly dying - I hope - is the church that requires everybody to be shiny and problem-free. Slowly dying is the church that expects everyone to look good whether or not you are good. Until we form true spiritual communities - instead of spiritul [sic] clubs - it won't be easy to be transformed from hurting/broken/sick people into the people God made us to be. At least, that's what I think as I got stood up yesterday by someone who told me she needed to share a personal secret. It must have been too scary.

The key for me is in that last paragraph. I may be more cynical than her, as I think that the Shiny Happy Appearance church has a lot of life left in it, and it's not just in well-polished megachurches and suburban churches either. Smaller rural churches can have this problem, too. Or maybe that's why she uses the word "slowly." Churches need to learn a very high degree of trust in order to speed up Shiny Happy Church's death. It also involves a complete overhaul in one's understanding of church, from safe haven from sinners to safe haven for sinners.

But Jesus didn't teach anything like that. Oh, wait...

Small Sips: Sabathia, Sports fans can be really dumb, Wings at Wrigley

An all-sports Small Sips...

At least the Cavs still have Lebron, right? Right?: As was rumored the other day, C.C. Sabathia is off to Milwaukee...

The Indians have agreed to trade the ace Sabathia and two lower-level minor leaguers for a package that includes top prospect Matt LaPorta and other minor leaguers, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The deal is contingent on the paperwork and medical records, the paper reported.

Sabathia went 19-7 with a 3.21 ERA to win the AL Cy Young last season and would give the Brewers another power pitcher to pair with Ben Sheets as Milwaukee tries to make the playoffs for the first time since 1982.

The big lefty is 6-8 with a 3.83 ERA for the Indians, but has also been plagued with a lack of run support. In nine of his 18 starts, Cleveland has scored two runs or less for him.

Sabathia could make his debut as early as Tuesday for the Brewers against the Rockies.

Story problem: One of your best pitchers has a losing record, but it's mostly because your lineup hasn't produced run support.

Apparent solution: trade said pitcher for a hitter who...eh...might be okay. Oh, and some other minor leaguers.

The Indians are good at trading big names away for prospects, but then building those prospects into big names...and then trading them away for more prospects.

This is why I don't put U-M stuff on my car: Because I have a pretty solid suspicion that something like this might happen...

A Cape Cod man faces charges for allegedly beating another man with a baseball bat because he thought he was a New York Yankees fan.

Authorities say 20-year-old Robert Correia is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Falmouth District Court on charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon and malicious destruction to a motor vehicle.

Police say Saturday night's alleged incident occurred when Correia and others spotted a car with New York license plates leaving Falmouth's fireworks display.

The group accused the man, whose children were in the car, of being a Yankees fan, then beat him and vandalized his car. The man, whose name was not released, was treated at Falmouth Hospital with non-life threatening injuries to his head and body.

Way to keep things in perspective, genius. Who needs politics or religion when you can use sports as an excuse for violence?

I gave a sermon the other week that was all about how our loyalties shape our behavior, and I touched on sports as a strong influence as any: game time influences schedule, team's winning or losing affects mood, etc. I failed to mention how rivalries can cause us to retreat into our reptilian brains and try to inflict actual harm on others.

If only Harry Caray could call it: The Red Wings are going to play the Chicago Blackhawks at Wrigley field...

Michael Russo of the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul reports that the Red Wings will play the Blackhawks in the next NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs.

"The outdoor game has been in the works for some time but finally approved last week when NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman met with the Blackhawks, Cubs and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley," Russo writes.

The last Winter Classic was at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo as the Sabres lost to the visiting Penguins in a shootout.

The only question I have is: will anyone actually televise it? It's hard to find hockey on TV nowadays.

I've actually seen the Wings play the Blackhawks in Chicago when I went with a friend a few years back. I recall seeing almost as many red and white jerseys as fugly home-team jerseys in the stands, I recall the Wings being in first place, yet Chicago fans repeatedly chanting "Red Wings suck!" in order to better support their fourth-place team, and I recall getting beer thrown at me after the Blackhawks eventually won in overtime. Good times.

Go Wings.

Small Sips: Church as Spiritual Community, A convenient rapture website

Jan at A Church for Starving Artists writes:

When people join a church to be served instead of to serve, the church's most basic identity is diminished. And already our congregations are confused.

• There are churches that are basically social communities offering great opportunities for meeting new people and nurturing friendships.
• There are churches that are basically wholesome values communities, teaching adults and children traditional civic values.
• There are churches that are social services communities housing the homeless and feeding the hungry.

While there is nothing wrong with nurturing friendships or teaching people to be solid citizens or caring for community needs, the church is a spiritual community in which we gather to support and equip each other to serve the world in the likeness of Christ.

Jan makes a great point that churches miss too often, that being what they're supposed to be at their core: communities of Christ's disciples. The fellowship and service that she mentions, it should be noted, can be and are a part of that, but I think that churches need to be more intentional about thinking about why they do it. Is it because it's "a nice thing to do," or because Jesus calls us to do it?

Kamp Krusty presents something from the Fundy Theatre of the Absurd that I had to quote in its entirety:

Q: How do I witness to my hell-bound friends after I'm raptured?

A: With this website.

Q: And does it automatically send out emails to my friends six days after the rapture?

A: Yes.

Q: And do the emails tell my friends that I got raptured, so that's why I didn't show up for pilates, and yes, you can borrow my iPod now?

A: Yes.

Q: And does it only charge me only $40 a year to reach my loved ones for Christ?

A: Yes.

Q: And can we edit our own outgoing memos, to say what we really mean, like, say, "RE: Boo Ya"?

A: Yes.

Q: Could the post-rapture, auto-send feature fail, thereby sending false "I love you, but I've been raptured, and you've been left behind" emails to the person currently sitting next to me in the cubicle?

A: Yes, quite easily.

Q: Is this for real?

A: It's for real.

Q: And, like Annie Dillard, do we sometimes wonder why God doesn't just blow our dancing bear act to smithereens?

A: Every day.

I don't really have anything to add. He pretty much said it all.

Small Sips: Racism Alive and Well, UCC Article in U.S. News, No More Internet Monk?

What Racism Problem?: An article on MSN reports on some of the discrimination and hate that local Obama supporters are running into...

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Huh. You don't say.

So, for every Pollyanna anecdote about how people are much more racially tolerant nowadays and how race couldn't possibly factor into whether some people vote for a black candidate, there's a story like the above (and the rest of the disgusting stories in that article) to help keep our heads out of the sand. Whether Obama wins the election or even the nomination, at least he's helped expose, or re-expose, one of this country's enduring problems.

UCC in U.S. News: U.S. News and World Report has a very well-done article on the United Church of Christ in light of the Jeremiah Wright fiasco. The article provides a brief history and recap of more recent trends within the denomination, and mostly focuses on the conservative/liberal battles that have become increasingly heated. Eventually, the article reaches this conclusion:

Whether an unabashedly progressive church can become a growing part of the American religious landscape is still an open question. "They may become the refuge for liberals from all sorts of denominations, " says University of California-San Diego sociologist John Evans, though he sees no evidence that the UCC's liberal branding campaign has worked. In the meantime, just as leaders of evangelical churches tend to be more politically conservative than most people in their pews, so the leaders of the UCC will probably continue to be to the left of most of their flocks. And that may only contribute to the view, particularly among many younger Christians who are leaving both mainline and evangelical churches, that overly ideological leadership is one of the weaknesses of contemporary institutional Christianity.

Does a "liberal brand" have a long-term future in American denominationalism? I've reflected before that, while more "conservative" churches have left the UCC, more "liberal" churches have joined or have been planted. So while older branches are falling away, new branches are being grafted on or are budding. It'll look like a much different tree, but it'll still be standing.

The Still Speaking campaign, in part, has always been about attracting disaffected churchpeople from other places, or encouraging non-churched believers to give our church a try. I think that it'll take a lot more than a commercial and a website to do that (personal invitations and local community interaction, for starters). But that has been the goal, and there hasn't been much to dispute that. The trick, especially in light of denominational trends in general, will be less to say, "Look how 'liberal' our national office is!" and more, "We welcome you right here in this particular church, and if that's 'liberal,' then whatever!"

Yes, very articulate. My kid was up half the night.

A Monk-less Existence?: Yesterday, Michael Spencer (aka The Internet Monk) posted this on his blog:

Dear Internet Monk Readers,

Over the next few weeks, while I am on sabbatical, I will be deciding the future of this web site.

As of today, it is quite likely (though not certain) that this site will come to the end of its almost 8 year run this summer. I am not resolved to this at this point, but I am considerably persuaded that the time may have come to bring Internet Monk.com to a close.

Should that actually be the decision, this site would go inactive in early July, and a new blog would begin, with an eventual redirect of all IM traffic to the new blog.

That blog would be a much more focused exploration of Jesus-Shaped Spirituality, i.e. the intersection of Jesus studies and spiritual growth and formation. This subject is animating and working in me right now, and I can see much good fruit and practical help available if I pursue that direction.

The first thing that I need to say is that the new blog focus he's thinking about greatly intrigues and excites me. I'm greatly interested in the same subject matter, and have been for a year or two now. So I love the fact that, if he decides to take on this new venture, I'll follow him to his new space with no problem.

That said, this is potentially an end of an era. The iMonk has been around for 8 years. I've only been reading him for about 3 1/2 of those years now, but he has been a staple on my sidebar, and a great jumping-off point for my own thinking on more than one occasion.

I re-read two of his entries fairly regularly, and I commend them to you:

When Loving You is Killing Me: Thoughts on Pastoring the Small Church (and his follow-up, Four Years: Reflecting on a First (and Only) Pastorate)

The Temptation to Quit

Small Sips: A Christian Response to Torture, More Rev. Wright, The "Real" U-M

"An Act of Blasphemy:" Aaron at Street Prophets posts an excellent response to torture from Tom Perriello, a Democrat running for Congress in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District:

Q: In 2004 as co-director of Faithful America you aired commercials on al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya featuring prominent religious leaders apologizing for the treatment of prisoners in Abu-Gharib. Why did you feel that was necessary to come from religious leaders and should they be apologizing for actions taken by military officials?

A: Torture is immoral and, in my reading, an act of blasphemy against the image of God in another human being. When our leaders make the decision to condone torture, something powerful in the soul of our country is suffocated.

Torture also undermines our national security, produces bad intelligence, and puts our troops at risk. The images from Abu Ghraib became powerful propaganda weapons for Osama Bin Laden to use in recruiting a new generation of terrorists to threaten our great nation. Terrorism is fundamentally immoral and a grave threat to our country, and one purpose of our ad was to blunt the recruiting bonanza that Bush handed to Al Qaeda in the wake of those images. One of the many things this Administration has never understood about the threats we face is how to fight back successfully against their propaganda battle. I am proud that we were able to produce an ad that spoke to America’s highest principles and helped make us safer at the same time.

As for whether one can ethically apologize for someone else’s actions, the theologians and faith leaders involved in this ad were careful to make it an expression of regret, and not an apology in order to clarify the lines of culpability. Our great nation could use a boost of people taking personal responsibility seriously, so it is distressing to see this Administration refuse to step up to the plate. In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, it has repeatedly had our men and women in uniform take the blame without taking its own responsibility for this disaster. The religious leaders in our ad exemplified what moral leadership looks like.

Perriello nails both the theological and political pieces of this quite well. It's hard to claim the moral high ground and that God has our backs while at the same time refusing, for instance, to call waterboarding torture. It also gives the terrorists fodder for recruiting, and it's human nature to say whatever people want to hear to make the pain stop.

The counterpoint to this, I suppose, has to do with "being tough on our enemies" and "protecting American lives," and "do what it takes to defend ourselves." But I've yet to hear a counterpoint that convincingly justifies it as morally A-OK in God's eyes, or that directly answers the question of bad intelligence.

The Wheels Under the Bus Go 'Round and 'Round: Here's one more from Street Prophets about Obama's complete separation from Jeremiah Wright...

My much-beloved blog friend Pam Spaulding recently asked what it would take to start a sane dialogue on race in this nation. She thinks white folks need to develop the emotional strength to deal with racial conflict. I think it's even more basic than that. I think white folks are going to have to learn to deal with the uncomfortable idea that black folks don't always have the same interests as they do, and that comes out in their political stances.

There's a lot of discomfort that white people need to work through in order to get to a point where we'll be able to speak honestly, but even moreso to hear clearly. While at Eden, I attended a discussion on racial divides that was introduced with a video featuring eight men of different races talking about the problems that each community faces. One of the two white men kept using phrases such as, "I don't understand why blacks just can't get over [this]," or "work through [that]," or "still have an issue with [this]." The two black men kept answering and trying to get him to understand until finally one of them broke out in a loud, passionate rant about what he and his community have had to deal with. He'd run out of patience.

We have too many white people, before and during the Wright fiasco, saying things like, "I don't understand why blacks just can't get over [this]," or "work through [that]," or "still have an issue with [this]." We have to be comfortable and ready enough to hear why not.

Feelin' Blue: Peabody at Michigan Against the World makes me sad:

Memo to "Angry Michael:" You ARE LESS IMPORTANT!! See, when I got the thick packet from the U and you received a thin letter and an application to Dearborn, it basically said that DP's test scores and hard-work through high school earned him a spot at a top 25 school and afforded him the opportunity to participate in student activities. Your thin letter said "here, try getting into the glorified community college we've created, and if there's room, we'll let you drive 25 miles to watch us play football." Hey Angry Michael, I hate to crush your dreams, but if you tried to play football here? You couldn't. BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT A REAL STUDENT.

Regular readers know that I occasionally entertain the notion of enrolling in a U-M program just so eventually I can call myself a U-M alumnus. The minor problem with that is that I live in northeast Ohio, so it'd be a bit of a commute.

The one solution to that problem that I've come up with is enrolling in an online program, and the only U-M campus that offers such a thing is Dearborn. So I'd have a degree that says "University of Michigan" on it, and I'd give to the University of Michigan Alumni Association, and I'd have an MBA that would be moderately helpful in church work. But the above confirms my one worry: the stigma that it still isn't a "real" U-M degree because I didn't go to Ann Arbor. Obviously, at least some AA students and alumni feel this way. Not surprisingly, Flint and Dearborn students feel differently on the matter.

Maybe at some point I'll wind up closer to Ann Arbor. There are both a UCC and a Congregational church there that are in the search process. Just sayin'.

Small Sips: Stupid Church Signs, "Gentlemen's Agreements," Paternity Leave, Da Bard

"Small Sips" is a new POC flavor where I run down a few different stories or topics in fairly quick succession.

More on the morons: According to the pastor who put up the wonderful, loving, certainly-not-false-witness-bearing message, "Obama, Osama, Hummm, Are They Brothers?", he "just wanted to get people thinking." The problem is that he clearly wants people to think a certain thing, and we're way past that thing getting played out. So Obama kind of sounds like Osama, and that must mean that Obama is an evil Muslim terrorist. This pastor is, however, able to take this stupid notion to the next level by asking whether they're brothers. Obama is Barack's last name. Osama is bin Laden's first name.

Obviously, this guy didn't get the memo that suggesting Obama is a Muslim is so two months ago. Most people have moved on to accepting that he's a Christian, but suggesting that he isn't the right kind of Christian. Come on man, try to keep up.

As perhaps readers have guessed based on my past few entries, I'm greatly souring at this whole election cycle.

Update: the church was told by the denomination to take it down.

No Gentlemen in Columbus: I'm a little late to this party, but since I'm already all bent out of shape this morning, why not? A few months ago, Purdue football coach Joe Tiller got all upset after one of his recruits, Roy Roundtree, decided at the last minute to go to Michigan instead. Tiller called Rich Rodriguez a "snake-oil salesman" and stated that there's a "gentleman's agreement" among Big Ten coaches not to go after each others' recruits after they've committed. Well, of course someone had to ask Ohio State coach Jim Tressel about this, specifically whether there really is a "gentleman's agreement" in the Big Ten, to which he responded, "I guess only between gentlemen." And then OSU fans were all like, "OMG he slammed teh RichRod~! Woooo!!1!1"

There's just one problem with that:

Last December, Melvin Fellows orally committed to play football for Illinois, declared his decision final and said, "This is the end of the process for me."

According to a vague, unwritten Big Ten code of conduct, at that point Fellows was off limits to other league coaches. That's how it is supposed to work, at least -- once a kid commits, back off.

Far from backing off, though, Ohio State came after him hard. Just weeks after his Illinois commitment, the Buckeyes offered Fellows a scholarship. And on Saturday, the big defensive end from Garfield Heights will stand on the Ohio Stadium sidelines, watching the Buckeyes' spring game instead of the Illini's game, as he had originally planned.

The high school junior once was rock-solid in the Illini camp, but he now says, "I'm pretty up on Ohio State. I like Ohio State."

So, when Tressel says, "only among gentlemen," I wonder who he's talking about.

Adventures in Paternity: So I'm into my second week of paternity leave, and I thought I'd let you know how it's going. Coffeewife and I take night feedings/changings/prayer vigils that he'll go back to sleep in shifts. She more or less handles 11 to 3, and then I take 3 to 7. Coffeeson is fed both au naturale and with formula, so it's easy for us to do this. Honestly, he's pretty good. Coffeewife feeds him around midnight or 1, and then he's good until sometime between 3 and 4. As such, I've caught some early morning Comedy Central Presents and ESPN highlights, and way more Girls Gone Wild commercials than I'd care to count. For the most part, though, he sleeps pretty well through the night, comparatively speaking.

There's been a bit of a downside to the paternity leave experience. First off, there's this weird aura that tends to surround my time off. This past week marked my fourth vacation/leave time during which a church member has died. She was one of the saints, so I had no issue with stepping in to officiate. I've actually been approached by several people making sure that I'm going to make up this time. I was planning on doing that anyway, but it was great to hear them bring it up first.

Happy Birthday, Bill: Tomorrow is William Shakespeare's birthday, and Coffeeson's projected due date. So in honor of The Bard, here's my favorite of his sonnets, number 112:

Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue:
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred
That all the world besides methinks are dead.