For the second week in a row, the Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has devoted her column to the problem of media bias. I always get a kick out of how the media treats problems in the media industry relative to problems in other industries. All of that investigative journalism, take-no-prisoners attitude and hard-hitting reporting suddenly disappears and we get limp and timid copy.

Still, kudos to Howell for taking on the topic. When polls show that people perceived media bias in favor of Barack Obama at record levels (70 percent thought the media was trying to help Obama compared to 9 percent who thought the same of John McCain, according to a Pew survey), you know you’ve got a problem. Another poll showed that a majority of voters felt that media bias was a bigger problem in elections than campaign cash. And yet how many news stories and pieces of analysis have we seen for the latter topic compared to the former? I an environment where subscriptions are plummeting and the industry is imploding, widespread distrust in the media is truly scary.

Speaking of timid handling of media bias problems, the Howell column is titled “Remedying the Bias Perception.” See, bias isn’t the problem, it’s perceptions of bias! The column is devoted in its entirety to political coverage, but I think there are some lessons on the religion beat as well.

Journalism naturally draws liberals; we like to change the world. I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.

Journalists bristle at the thought of their coverage being viewed as unfair or unbalanced; they believe that their decisions are journalistically reasonable and that their politics do not affect how they cover and display stories.

Tom Rosenstiel, a former political reporter who directs the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said, “The perception of liberal bias is a problem by itself for the news media. It’s not okay to dismiss it. Conservatives who think the press is deliberately trying to help Democrats are wrong. But conservatives are right that journalism has too many liberals and not enough conservatives. It’s inconceivable that that is irrelevant.”

I love how stories dealing with media bias always paint journalists as the good guys. Imagine a story about some major problem at Enron or in the Bush Administration where it was just asserted that the hearts and motivations of the players were good . . . but some external factor was to blame for the malaise. It’s not that I necessarily disagree with the media putting the best construction on the actions of people in the media industry — I just deplore the double standard. Howie Kurtz wrote his Monday column about the “giddy sense of boosterism” the mainstream media have displayed since Obama’s election. But then he downplays it and says it won’t really be a problem. But why should we trust the media to tell us that their bias isn’t a problem? Aren’t they somewhat compromised?

Anyway, the solution offered in Howell’s column is good. We’ve known for decades now that the tilt in journalism is out of control. Something should be done. Here’s another piece of advice:

Rosenstiel said, “There should be more intellectual diversity among journalists. More conservatives in newsrooms will bring about better journalism. We need to be more vigilant and conscious in looking for bias. Our aims are pure, but our execution sometimes is not. Staff members should feel in their bones that unfairness will never be tolerated.”

The best way to root out bias is a balanced newsroom. It’s just difficult, though certainly not impossible, for liberals to sense bias against conservatives in the same way that it’s difficult for conservatives to sense bias against liberals. This is human nature.

Having been in a variety of newsrooms, I have one suggestion for overcoming the problem. Editors should stop requiring undergraduate and graduate journalism degrees. This profession is not rocket science. A high school diploma probably isn’t necessary. Just the ability to write, a healthy curiosity and a drive to break news.

One of the newsrooms I worked in was trying to hire more non-white employees. And yet they required a master’s degree in journalism or equivalent. Perhaps I’m biased since I got neither an undergraduate nor graduate degree in journalism, but I thought this silly requirement might have something to do with the fact that everyone in the newsroom looked the same, acted the same, lived and came from the same general socio-economic background and, not coincidentally, believed the same things. Every beat — and not just religion — would benefit from breaking open this system a bit more. Alternatively, maybe the media industry as we know it is imploding and without a bailout will die a certain death. Maybe greater bias is their plan for the future. Will that work?

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Pick a metaphor, any metaphor.

Long, long ago, in a discussion of mainstream media coverage of trends in Iran, Bill Moyers told me that most journalists are “tone deaf to the music of religion.” He has used that same image in other settings.

That words. Then again, senior scholar Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute used another evocative image four years ago in his brutally candid reaction to the “values voter” mini-wave that brought President George W. Bush a second term in the White House. As a proud liberal and progressive Catholic, Clark was not amused by what he was reading about the religious conservatives who backed the GOP. He called his justly famous — some would say “infamous” — essay, “Confessions of an Alienated Journalist.” Here’s the key bite:

In my skeptic’s mind, the expression “moral values” is nothing more than code language for showy piety and patriotism, with more than a dash of racism and homophobia. In my cynic’s heart, I see Red, White, and Blue transformed by others into Guns, God, and Gays.

What am I missing? And what are you journalists not showing me?

Wait. I’m a journalist. I am that skinny guy in the mirror.

I don’t know the difference between evangelical and charismatic, but I can argue about who has sluttier videos, Britney or Christina.

I know little about the “born again” experience but can celebrate the narrative structure of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

I’ve never listened to a religious radio program or attended a church supper, but I can tell you whatever you want to know about Howard Stern and Bubba the Love Sponge. . . .

This is starting to sound like a confession. Maybe it is. I once was blind — and still can’t see. My blind spots blot out half of America. And that makes me less of a citizen, and less of a journalist.

Actually, he was saying that he suffered from a major blind spot — singular — when it came to the role of religion in the public square. Clark was wrestling with the fact that many mainstream reporters (not all, but many) often have trouble handling the intersection of faith and culture, especially the impact of traditional forms of religion in public life in America and around the world. He had a blind spot and it was painful to admit that it was affecting his work as a journalist.

This brings me, of course, to another plug for that book produced by my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life, entitled “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion.” The book is now out and, should you want more info about it, click here. If you want to buy it, by all means click here.

This topic has, for nearly three decades now, been the wall on which I have chosen to pound my head. So you will not be surprised that I volunteered to write the “how to” chapter build on advice from some of nation’s top reporters and editors on the religion beat. I offered a small piece of that puzzle in my Scripps Howard News Service column this week, marking the release of the book.

The column opens with a war story from Richard N. Ostling of Time and the Associated Press and eventually, as we would say down South, I “went to meddlin’ ” and offered some practical advice.

The problem is that journalists who cover religion news — along with those who cover other complicated beats such as science, sports, law and the arts — must write stories that work on two levels. Their stories must be accessible enough for readers, yet accurate enough to pass muster with clergy, scholars and devout believers.

How can journalists “get” religion? How do we improve the odds that our newsrooms get it right? It’s crucial that journalists find journalistic solutions to this journalism problem.

* Journalists must face this reality: It’s impossible to understand what is happening in our world without understanding the power of religion in real life at the local, national and global levels.

* Journalists must be more humble and own up to our mistakes. In particular, we need to be more careful about our use of religious language, especially loaded labels such as “moderate” and “fundamentalist.”

* Newsroom managers, even during these hard times, must seek out skilled professionals who want to work on this beat, while striving to promote cultural and intellectual diversity. They need to offer training to other journalists whose work constantly veers into religious territory. Today, religion stories are everywhere.

* Reporters and editors who cover religion must find ways to get inside the daily lives of the people they cover. When religious believers tell their stories, we have to understand what they are saying and try to accurately capture their point of view, even when what they believe is controversial.

The key, of course, is to recognize that what we have here is a journalism problem and that we must seek a journalistic solution.

I hope you check out the book and, if you are a journalist, suggest that your editors look it over. There will be a “Blind Spot” event early next semester at the Columbia School of Journalism in New York and we hope to have forums in other regions, as well. I’ll keep you posted.

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Earlier this month in the midst of election craziness, The Detroit News took what could have been a simple crime story about a rash of church robberies and interlaced the article with theological themes, historical trends and even sociological explanations.

The theme about forgiveness is a bit presumptive, but it nevertheless provides the story with a voice that emphasizes the fact that robbing churches impacts a community a bit differently than your average heist:

Many of the devout in Metro Detroit know the Bible says Jesus Christ both condemned and forgave thieves. But some of those who attend churches targeted by burglars recently say they are busier with the condemnation part.

And before they move on fully to the forgiving, they are organizing community watches near their churches, asking for the police to become more involved, dipping even more deeply in their pockets and offering their expertise to help secure their houses of worship.

“A lot of people felt they were violated, and I heard a lot of them say that they just could not believe that someone would stoop so low to steal from a church,” said the Rev. George Williams, of St. John Neumann, a Catholic parish in Canton Township. “I mean, all we do is help people.”

Generalities such as “many,” “some,” “they” are nice ways to build a theme, but there is no way to know if that claim is precisely true since it makes no specific claims. Also the analogy regarding Jesus Christ and thieves is not supported by any references. The Gospels say that Jesus spoke of thieves in the pejorative sense from time to time, and he also forgave the thief that was next to him. But where (and maybe I am missing something) did Jesus ever specifically condemn thieves?

But back to what I generally liked about the article. Instead of simply reporting on the incidents, the reporter makes an effort to explain what is going on in the community. From personal experience, my home church has experienced a rash of expensive burglaries, and I am well aware that theft from a church hits a little bit closer to home than mall shoplifting:

The irony of burglaries in churches has been long noted, and social scientists say it is unclear whether there has actually been an increase in the activity.

“I think these incidents are simply a reflection of the condition of the surrounding areas,” said Irshad Altheimer, a professor of criminal justice at Wayne State University. “If the rest of the community is failing, in some way, the problem is going to spill over to an institution like a school — in the case of school violence — or a church.”

Knowing that this trend is present in downtown Indianapolis, I would be curious to see whether other communities are experiencing similar trends. Unfortunately, I don’t have a local newspaper article yet, but I’m hoping that something will show up soon explaining this sad trend.

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Criticizing Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™, for churning out glurge is now criminally easy, but Paul Cullum betrays an ignorance of flyover country in writing about Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage (direct to DVD this week). Working from a 16-point memo of Kinkade’s filmmaking tips, Cullum first tries to classify Kinkade as “a postmodern Norman Rockwell for the evangelist set.”

Oh well. Just as Episcopalians must forever live with being called Episcopals, evangelicals perhaps should now call themselves evangelists and call it quits. And since when is there anything postmodern or even Rockwellian about Kinkade? Compared to Kinkade, Rockwell was a master of brutal realism (consider “The Problem We All Live With”).

Before divulging the memo in its stream-of-consciousness glory (Kinkade: “These guidelines are not listed in order of importance, but are dictated off the top of my head”), Cullum finally delivers two worthwhile paragraphs:

To get an expert opinion on Kinkade’s manifesto, I showed it to cinematographer Ellen Kuras, best known for her work with director Spike Lee. She points out that he confuses focal length and depth of field, and questions his overall approach.

“I’ve never seen any of his paintings, but I have to say, he’s very cheesy in his descriptions,” Kuras says. “The whole gauzy, cozy feeling, darkening the edges to make your vision more myopic, I think is about trying to draw the larger metaphor for the way to heaven. But reading all of this, it’s a prescription for a bad ’60s porn movie.”

Do read Kinkade’s memo, which is truly is cringe-inducing. On a casting note, Cullum mentions two of the leads (Marcia Gay Harden and Peter O’Toole) but doesn’t flag two more incongruous appearances: Ed Asner and Chris Elliott.

Yes, Chris Elliott, the droll hipster from The Late Show with David Letterman. This could be just as hathotic as watching Tony Goldwyn in Joshua (2002) as a laid-back Messiah who belongs to a mail-order music club.

We’re approaching Thanksgiving, so surely Scrooge-like lawsuits and creche debates will not be far behind. Happy holidays, everybody!

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Remember the media narrative from the 2004 election? To explain how the country could have possibly elected George W. Bush for a second term, we were told that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls. Never mind that it wasn’t true. Bush got more evangelical voters than Republicans traditionally had, but he got more of all sorts of groups.

The narrative was constructed out of one exit poll question, which asked voters what issues had motivated them. They were given options including “moral values.” It wasn’t specific about which moral values motivated the voter. Roughly the same percentage of voters had answered in previous elections that moral values were their biggest concern but it was 2004 that they were noticed.

I was thinking about this as I read a recent Politico story that dealt with exit poll results and religion:

Despite Barack Obama’s aggressive courting of white weekly churchgoers, exit polls showed that just 29 percent of them voted for him this year, the same percentage that Democrats John Kerry and Al Gore won in the previous two presidential elections.

Obama’s inability to make inroads with highly religious whites — who made up about 30 percent of the electorate — came despite a favorable political landscape, with cultural issues eclipsed by the economy, and an aggressive attempt by Democrats to court the group over the past four years.

House Democrats fashioned a working group on faith, and Obama offered a much heralded address on faith in July 2006. In this year’s primary, Democrats held two candidate discussions dedicated to faith and values.

The article is fair, speaking with anonymous Obama staffers who denied that they tried to reach out to the group as well as people who disagree. One aspect to this story that is surprising isn’t just that Obama failed to get these voters. I read this week in an opinion piece for Newsweek that more than 4 million Americans who go to church more than once a week and voted in 2004 stayed home in 2008. They represented half the margin between Obama and McCain.

But what caught me was what was missing from this year’s exit polls. And what was missing was the “moral values” question. Here are the exit poll results for 2008. And here’s a Guardian article that deals with the question about which issues concerned voters:

Six in 10 voters picked the economy as the most important issue facing the nation. None of the four other issues listed by exit pollsters — energy, war in Iraq, terrorism and health care — was chosen by more than one in 10 people.

Isn’t it bizarre that “moral issues” would be included in previous elections’ exit polls but not this year’s? How was this decided? And why? And isn’t this a great example of how media outlets can shape the news by picking which questions to ask? Exit polls are conducted at the behest of media outlets.

Here’s the thing — the 2004 question was ineptly worded. It could mean everything or nothing. What voter isn’t motivated by moral values? What does that mean? And yet this question had quite a few ramifications — it got Democrats to wake up about their God Gap problem and it got media outlets concerned about religion reporting. Presumably Democrats have learned a few lessons about reaching out to various types of religious voters but will media outlets decide that they don’t need to worry about religion anymore? Will they decide that only certain religious adherents matter? And will that decision be based on subjective feelings or objective research?

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Remember August (yes, it seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?) when the McCain campaign produced this Internet ad?

Mocking Obama’s rock star aura, adorned with a shot of a cinematic Moses parting the Red Sea, the ad labeled him “The One.”

After a brief chuckle, I forgot about it. That is, until a few evenings later, I was watching CNN at the gym and saw a panel of experts chatting with Campbell Brown about the “wild” rumor that Obama might be the Anti-Christ.

CNN Reporter David Mattingly linked the McCain ad with a torrent of web hits on sites speculating Obama could surely be the One—the Other One.

After I picked myself up off the YMCA floor, I forgot about the flap — as apparently did most of the mainstream media.

But the Anti-Christ story refuses to die, having been resurrected this past week (excuse the expression) byNewsweek’s Lisa Miller.

Given the depth of suspicion about Obama on the part of some American conservatives, and the deep roots of the apocalyptic tradition in Christianity, it seems fair to expect a balanced analysis of the Beastly phenomenon.

“Is Obama the AntiChrist?” ask the headline — that’s straightforward enough. But check out the subhead: “The winning lottery number in Illinois was 666, which as everyone knows, is the sign of the beast.”

Where to start?

First of all, while there definitely is a “Beast” in chapter 13 (see particularly 13:8) of the Book of Revelation, it is not identified by the writer with the anti-Christ. The word, or words “anti-Christ” aren’t used in Revelation — a book that has been notoriously susceptible to diverse interpretations over the centuries.

Maybe it’s just me, but. . .

If one accepts the notion that 666 signifies the Beast, and that the beast is commonly portrayed as the Anti-Christ — would he announce his coming with a winning Illinois lottery ticket?

Miller’s lede zooms in on the enterprising Todd Strandberg and his apocalypse biz.

On Nov. 5, Todd Strandberg was at his desk, fielding E-mails from around the world. As the editor and founder of RaptureReady.com, his job is to track current events and link them to biblical prophecy in hopes of maintaining his status as “the eBay of prophecy,” the best source online for predictions and calculations concerning the end of the world. Already Barack Obama had drawn the attention of apocalypse watchers after an anonymous e-mail circulated among conservative Christians in October implying that he was the Antichrist. Former “Saturday Night Live” ingenue Victoria Jackson fueled the fire when, according to news reports, she wrote on her Web site that Obama “bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ.” Now Strandberg was receiving up-to-the-minute news from his constituents in Illinois. One of the winning lottery numbers in the president-elect’s home state was 666—which, as everyone knows, is the sign of the Beast (also known as the Antichrist). “It is very eerie, and I take it for a sign as to who he really is,” wrote one of Strandberg’s correspondents.

Miller goes on to summarize the history of American millenialism, which, she asserted, “gains prominence especially when the world grows chaotic.”

Here’s one intriguing sentence: “According to a 2006 study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, a third of white evangelicals believe the world will end in their lifetimes.”

Oh oh. . ..it’s those “white evangelicals” again — but what does anyone else think? Are we to assume (since they are the only group targeted for mention) that it’s only these folks who are worried?

Miller has a few tantalizing quotes from Liberty University Law School dean Mat Stavers — which doesn’t go nearly far enough in explaining what he thinks.

Obama’s own use of religious rhetoric belies his liberal positions on abortion and traditional marriage, Staver says, positions that “religious conservatives believe will threaten their freedom.” The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions, but they’re not nuts: “They are expressing a concern and a fear that is widely shared,” Staver says.

Is Staver saying that because Obama uses religious language he’s a hypocrite—or worse? What’s the “concern” and “fear?”

Then Miller returns to Strandberg — and a modern day numerological tool he calls a “Rapture Index.” Who knew?

Miller never quotes any scholars, non-conservative religious figures, or Obama supporters to rebut the idea that the President-Elect is demon spawn — or the Devil himself. That’s a pretty serious charge to leave unanswered — even worse than being labeled a “Socialist.”

The article leaves us readers ready to dismiss the “Anti-Christ” phenomenon as another piece of American weirdness.

Given its Internet legs, and the fact that the apocalpyse guessing-game has such deep roots in our culture, I’m not convinced. I’d like to see someone tackle this story in-depth — and take it a little more seriously.

(A few years ago, on 6/6/06, a National Public Radio reporter did a super job of collecting “666 Trivia,” including the fact that ancient Hebrew, Greek and other languages didn’t actually have characters to indicate numbers (thus the practice of numerology) and that the number 666 is part of every UPC barcode and the sum of all the numbers of a typical roulette wheel.)

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Love it or hate it, the Washington Post is a fine newspaper and it is very rare to see a story hit its front page with a large and glaring hole in it. But that’s what happened today, with the story that ran with the headline “Some Abortion Foes Shifting Focus From Ban to Reduction.”

The story is accurate when it states that there are major tensions inside the pro-life movement.

But the story misses the actual source of the conflict, insisting that the division is between those on the progressive side of things who want to focus on helping women and single-minded people on the right who still want to ban abortion — period. You can tell that the story is too simplistic because it ends up suggesting that crucial leaders in the Roman Catholic Church are somehow opposed to new efforts to help those who are below the poverty line.

More on that later. Here’s the top of the story:

Frustrated by the failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions.

Some of the activists are actually working with abortion rights advocates to push for legislation in Congress that would provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education — services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies.

Their efforts, they said, reflect the political reality that legal challenges to abortion rights will not be successful, especially after Barack Obama’s victory this month in the presidential election and the defeat of several ballot measures that would have restricted access to abortions. Although the activists insist that they are not retreating from their belief that abortion is immoral and should be outlawed, they argue that a more practical alternative is to try to reduce abortions through other means.

Now something huge is missing and it can be summed up with one date — July 17, 2007. That’s the day when candidate Obama told leaders at Planned Parenthood: “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing that I’d do.” The president-elect is a co-sponsor of this bill, which would, in the words of the National Organization for Women, “sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies.”

In other words, the real tensions inside the right to life movement are not about whether to back legislative efforts — such as the Democrats For Life “95-10” package — to support women and their children (although there are some debates about issues linked to birth control). The tensions are about FOCA and efforts to erase restrictions on abortion that are supported by many or most Americans, including conservative, moderate and even some liberal Democrats.

If you want to understand the real issue that people are debating, I suggest you look — of all places — in the editorial pages of the Post, where the outspoken Catholic Democrat E.J. Dionne, Jr., nailed it in a column with the headline “Obama’s Promise to Pro-Lifers.”

During the campaign, Obama stressed that, “Nobody’s pro-abortion.” Thus, Dionne writes:

Once he assumes office, Obama might be tempted to forget that moment, issue the pro-choice executive orders that the abortion rights movement expects and move back to the sagging economy. But doing this would be both politically foolish and a breach of faith with the pro-life progressives who came to Obama’s defense during the campaign. They argued that Obama truly was committed to reducing the number of abortions. He shouldn’t turn them into liars.

Rep. Tim Ryan, a pro-life Democrat from Ohio, stumped all over his state urging Catholic groups and others on his side of the abortion question to put their faith in Obama’s pledge. He’s confident Obama will keep it. In moving quickly, he says, Obama would “show that there is a new politics by acting on one of the most divisive issues of the last 30 years.” This should not be hard, Ryan says, since the central elements of their bill are “bread-and-butter issues for Democrats.”

In other words, the tensions inside the pro-life movement are linked to Obama’s support for FOCA and other efforts to erase existing restrictions, not the new proposals to serve the poor and needy — born and unborn.

You can see these issues at play during the recent coverage of the U.S. Catholic bishops meetings in Baltimore, where concern over FOCA was voiced early and often — by bishops across a wide political spectrum. Over at Religion News Service, reporter Daniel Burke noted, focusing on the words of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago:

George devoted a sizable portion of his two-page statement to denouncing the legislation, known as FOCA, saying that it would “coerce” Americans into subsidizing abortion with their tax dollars, outlaw parental notification laws and “have lethal consequences for prenatal human life.” The law would also threaten the Catholic health care system, which George said Tuesday comprises about a third of all U.S. hospitals, and force doctors to perform abortions against their will, according to the cardinal.

“The danger the bishops see at this moment is that a bad court decision will be enshrined in bad legislation that is more radical than the 1973 Supreme Court decision itself,” George said.

The issue of FOCA’s negative impact on health-care professionals who oppose abortion and the institutions in which they work also showed up in Julia Duin’s “Stairway to Heaven” column at the Washington Times.

The bishops already were thinking out loud this week what they’d do in the face of such a law. Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki said the bishops must be prepared to close Catholic hospitals if they are forced to perform abortions. Selling such hospitals would not do, he added, because that would merely transfer the guilt to a different party.

Because the nation’s 615 Catholic hospitals constitute one-sixth of our health care system, closing these institutions would be a very big deal.

Note the presence of the word “Chicago” in the titles of these bishops. That is not a coincidence.

Whenwhile, the Post A1 story argues that major anti-abortion groups are opposing the efforts to increase vital services to offer women more options other than abortion. Really? Are they opposing these efforts, or are they opposing the arguments that these bills alone are enough? Since the article does not even mention FOCA, it’s hard to know.

Again, Dionne’s column is right. FOCA is a dagger at the heart of the pro-life left and hopes for compromise and common-ground initiatives. The Post story should have addressed that or, at the very least, mentioned the issue. Instead, we read:

A study sponsored by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good cited recent research that found that the abortion rate among women living below the poverty line is more than four times that of women above 300 percent of the poverty level. The authors of the study found that social and economic supports, such as benefits for pregnant women and mothers and economic assistance to low-income families, have contributed significantly to reducing abortions in the United States over the past two decades.

“Clearly, poverty impacts the abortion rate,” said Alexia Kelley, the group’s executive director.

But established abortion opponents dispute that approach. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said last week during a meeting of the conference that social-service spending is no substitute for legal protections for the unborn. He also questioned research showing that improvements in areas such as employment and health care can reduce the likelihood that a woman will want to end her pregnancy. “It’s still to be proven what the connection is between poverty and abortion,” he said.

Now is that all that what the cardinal said? Does the cardinal of Chicago truly believe that there is no connection between reducing poverty and reducing abortion? Really? Or does he argue (a) that unborn life is worthy of legal protection and (b) that policies built on social-service spending — alone — are not enough to cut the abortion rate?

Is the Post really trying to tell us that the Catholic bishops and other leaders in the pro-life movement are divided over whether or not it is good to help the poor? I have serious doubts about that. Like I said, someone in the newsroom needed to read that Dionne column to understand what is going on.

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There are almost too many stories about California’s Proposition 8 to keep up. But let’s look at a few dealing with religious groups.

The Los Angeles Times ran a story about the Mormon Church feeling heat — somewhat literally — over its support of the initiative:

Protesters have massed outside Mormon temples nationwide. For every donation to a fund to overturn Proposition 8, a postcard is sent to the president of the Mormon Church. Supporters of gay marriage have proposed a boycott of Utah businesses, and someone burned a Book of Mormon outside a temple near Denver.

“It’s disconcerting to Latter-day Saints that Mormonism is still the religious tradition that everybody loves to hate,” said Melissa Proctor, who teaches at Harvard Divinity School.

I’m never sure if it should be mentioned that, for instance, Proctor is LDS. The Boston Globe ran a great story on her and other Mormon scholars earlier this year.

Anyway, the Times piece has this really curious theme that I didn’t quite get. Here’s the subhead:

The church, which has long sought to be seen as mainstream, joins other religious organizations to back California’s gay-marriage ban. But now it has become a political target.

This notion of the LDS seeking to be mainstream is mentioned four times in the piece. Here, for instance:

That push helped the initiative win narrow passage on election day. And it has made the Mormon Church, which for years has striven to be seen as part of the American mainstream, a political target.

The article says that the LDS decision to join with evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox groups to pass the initiative carries “risks and rewards” toward its goal to be considered mainstream. But what could be more mainstream than supporting an initiative that passed with a majority of the vote? What could be more mainstream than supporting an initiative to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman — something that has passed the 30 states where it has been proposed? The only state to ever decline an opportunity to pass such an initiative has since reconsidered and passed it, meaning that it has a 100 percent success rate?

The only support for the assertion that the LDS joining with all these other religious groups somehow puts it out of the mainstream is that it “could hurt its efforts to expand.” But, of course, it could also help its efforts to expand. The article does quote Jan Shipps, another scholar who says that the Mormon Church has a more tolerant stance on homosexuality than some evangelical groups. Other than the “mainstream” problem, in fact, the article does a great job of letting Mormons defend their theology and political involvement.

Downplaying the popular appeal of traditional marriage seems to be a theme of mainstream media coverage. I think it’s funny how mainstream publications describe the victory of Barack Obama (with 53% of the national vote) as a landslide but the Proposition 8 victory (with 52% of the statewide vote) is described thusly:

Ever since a slim majority outlawed gay marriage in California, opponents have waged national protests and petitions, urging the judicial system to reconsider the results of the Nov. 4 referendum.

I guess that one percentage point is pretty significant!

Another story submitted by a reader was an LA Times piece about lawsuits attempting to overturn the democratic vote of Californians. The latest lawsuit to overturn Prop. 8 was filed by the California Council of Churches, the Episcopal Bishop of California, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations and the Progressive Jewish Alliance. It’s interesting that liberal religious groups were mentioned frequently in the run-up to the Prop. 8 vote but have been largely ignored in the aftermath. Even this story, which was about California Attorney General Jerry Brown (yes! Jerry Brown!) officially having to “defend” Proposition 8 despite his vociferous objection to the measure, is brief and doesn’t get into any substance.

That Jerry Brown situation reminds me of my former Gov. Roy Romer who was the official defendant in a lawsuit against a Colorado initiative (that prevented any state or local government from granting homosexuals minority status) despite the fact that he marched in the streets the night it passed overwhelmingly. Needless to say the “defense” didn’t quite deserve the name and the courts overturned it. Gov. Romer, incidentally, had an intriguing marital situation — but that’s another story entirely. Anyway, the Times story has this paragraph:

The California Supreme Court voted 4 to 3 on May 15 to overturn a state ban on same-sex marriage, but Christian groups gathered enough signatures to place Proposition 8 on the Nov. 4 ballot. It passed with about 52% of the vote.

But Christian groups gathered enough signatures? What bizarre phrasing. Who gets left out in that phrase? The reader who submitted the story noted that the article’s tone was “Christian groups” versus the state.

It’s also worth noting, in light of some of the extreme targeting of Prop. 8 supporters, that the Los Angeles Times is offering a service to its readers where they can search for donors to both sides of the Prop. 8 battle and find out names, cities, zip codes, and employers. Is that ethical in this environment?

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For those of you who are looking for prime examples of the “big ideas” that motivate us at this here weblog, here’s one.

We believe that journalists should strive to avoid hard-to-define, shallow labels to describe complex religious believers and, whenever possible, describe those believers in terms of what they do and do not believe. What the heck, sometimes you can even quote them as they describe what they believe and, yes, how those beliefs shape their actions.

To see this in action, click here and head over to the Dallas Morning News report on the latest Episcopal diocese to leap out of the smaller pond of the Episcopal Church mainstream in order to — they would say — stay in larger mainstream of the worldwide Anglican Communion. In the News, that sounds something like this:

Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker championed the move, arguing that the national church has strayed from orthodox Christian faith in various ways, including ordaining female priests, allowing the blessing of same-sex unions and having an openly gay bishop.

“The Episcopal Church we once knew no longer exists. It’s been hijacked,” Bishop Iker said.

Later, the newspaper offers this summary of the historical background:

The Fort Worth Diocese has long been in tension with the Episcopal Church. Though the Episcopal Church officially permitted female priests in 1976, the Fort Worth Diocese has still not had one. Bishop Iker and his predecessors hold that the Bible restricts the priesthood to men.

Conflict heightened in 2003 when top church leaders approved the election of the Rev. Gene Robinson, who is openly gay, as bishop of New Hampshire. Bishop Iker has repeatedly argued that the Episcopal Church, at the national level, abandoned orthodox Christianity and “biblical authority” for a liberal social agenda, including acceptance of homosexuality.

To be honest with you, that isn’t bad. However, it really isn’t fair to say that “Iker and his predecessors” believe in a male priesthood, when the support for that doctrine is rather larger, when seen in the context of, well, the Roman Catholic Church, all of the churches of the Orthodox East and scores of Protestant bodies, including most of the Anglican Communion (if you are counting national churches and bodies in pews).

Then, in the next paragraph, you have the scare quotes around “biblical authority.” You could simple say that the left and the right disagree on whether scores of ancient doctrines — rooted in clashing methods of biblical interpretation — need to be modernized or redefined. Both sides believe that their concept of biblical authority is the correct one. So there.

Meanwhile, check out this contrasting passage in the New York Times report on the same event. Yes, I am complimenting the Times. It happens.

Again, the question is this: How does Iker justify his big leap?

Bishop Jack L. Iker laid blame for the split on what he described as “a church that is increasingly unfaithful and disobedient to the word of God, a church that has caused division and dissension both at home and abroad, a church that has torn the fabric of the communion at its deepest level, a church that acts more and more like a rebellious protestant sect and less and less like an integral part of the one holy catholic and apostolic church. It is time to say enough is enough.”

The problem, of course, is how to balance that quote with a similar, blunt, concise quote from the other side. This is a case when the Times does not have that strong voice from the left. Perhaps there was no one willing to speak on the doctrinal level? We do not know.

One more thing: The News report includes links to several resources offering more info about this event, including URLs for the national and local headquarters. However, it does not include what I think would have been the most useful link of all — this one. It takes you directly to the text of Iker’s speech at the convention. When in doubt, we can use the resources of the WWW to let people speak for themselves.

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A few weeks into Major League Baseball’s off-season, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had a short story on long-time major league pitcher Salomon Torres and his announcement of his second retirement. The article focuses almost 100 percent on baseball but contained one of those classic paragraphs that briefly mentions religion and then runs away from it like it was some sort of third rail.

For a little bit of background, Torres started pitching for the San Francisco Giants in 1993 and retired after the 1997 season with the Seattle Mariners to return to his home country of the Dominican Republic to coach a summer league team. Torres started pitching again in 2001 and returned to MLB in fall 2002:

Acting on a promise he made to himself midway through the 2008 season, Torres informed Milwaukee Brewers general manager Doug Melvin on Tuesday morning that he was retiring as an active player. The club made the announcement official later in the day.

The Brewers had a $3.75 million option for 2009 on Torres, which they would have exercised by the Saturday deadline after his strong performance as an emergency closer last season.

“I wanted to make it easy for him,” said Torres, 36, reached at home in Pittsburgh. “I already had made up my mind and wanted to tell him this was my last season.”

Torres, 36, a deeply religious man, said he wanted to devote more time to his family, including three young children, as well as his faith.

The Associated Press also notes that Torres made the decision to retire in order to “spend more time with his family and faith.” Is that all we get to hear?

An August 2007 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette informs us that Torres is “a devout Jehovah’s Witness.” The article discusses a decision by Torres to drop a grievance and lawsuit against the Pittsburg Pirates “solely on his religion.”

“It is not up to me, as a Christian, to seek justice on my own. It is up to God to handle the situation, and I will let Him do that for me,” Torres said. “After a long talk with myself, I’ve decided this is the right path to take.”

Any reason why readers should be privy to more details on Torres faith and how it has impacted his life? Somehow I suspect it’s a more interesting story that what we’ve been given.

Image of Torres throwing a pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates used under a Wikimedia Commons license.

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A few days ago we looked at some decent media coverage of a Roman Catholic Womenpriests story. A few more stories worth looking at have been filed or discovered.

The Associated Press ran a particularly bad story about the Roman Catholic priest who faces excommunication for participating in a Roman Catholic Womenpriests ceremony. Here’s how it begins:

A Roman Catholic priest faces excommunication for attending a ceremony to ordain a woman in the United States, a Vatican official said Friday.

It wasn’t attendance at the ceremony that got the Rev. Roy Bourgeois in trouble. He officiated at the ceremony in some capacity, delivering the homily and laying hands on Janice Sevre-Duszynska at the service at a Kentucky Unitarian Universalist church. The homily, incidentally, denounced Roman Catholic teaching on the male-only priesthood. This isn’t news. It was reported by the Boston Globe’s religion reporter in August.

Here’s the AP report explaining the penalty:

Recent popes have said the Roman Catholic Church cannot ordain women because Christ chose only males as apostles. Excommunication is the most severe penalty under church law, cutting off a Catholic from receiving or administering sacraments.

The ordained woman, Sevre-Duszynska, also faces excommunication.

A reporter who had done his research might note that women who go through such an ordination ceremony are automatically excommunicated by the church. They don’t face excommunication — they are already excommunicated. Other than these mistakes, the article also fails to explain anything about Sevre-Duszynska or Bourgeois’ history of activism or anything about the Maryknoll order. The “recent popes” line is also somewhat silly — as if only recent popes have supported a male-only priesthood.

One of my favorite pieces about the excommunication was on Slate and written for its “Explainer” column. The question answered this past week was “Can the Catholic Church enforce excommunication?” It explains that excommunicated priests may no longer perform clerical duties or receive communion, although they may still attend Mass. But do they have any way of enforcing this punishment?:

Yes. Those who refuse to comply with their sentence can be “dismissed from the clerical state,” also known as being “defrocked.” As a result, they lose their benefits provided by the church, which usually include housing, health insurance, and a small salary. (Canon law states that “provision must always be made so that [a priest] does not lack those things necessary for his decent support.” If you’re excommunicated, you can still get these perks, but not if you’re defrocked.) If the priest still refuses to leave, the church can summon the police and have him thrown out for trespassing on private property.

Usually, defrocking isn’t necessary. The purpose of excommunication is not to drive priests away but to make them repent. Once they do, they are usually welcomed back into “full communion.” (The civil law equivalent of excommunication would be “contempt of court”: A judge can throw you in jail for refusing to testify, but the moment you agree to cooperate, you’re free.)

Isn’t that helpful? Also, it makes me wonder why so many of the stories about Bourgeois played up his fragile financial situation if he only faces that in case of defrocking

For instance, the New York Times story that broke the news of the looming excommunication did a great job of getting many of the facts straight. But note this paragraph:

On a practical level, Father Bourgeois also faces the loss of his benefits and the $1,000 he receives monthly for living expenses. But, he said, “if I am without health care, I will be joining millions of people in the U.S. who don’t have health care.”

If Bourgeois only faces the loss of his benefits if he defies his excommunication, that’s different than losing his benefits because of his excommunication. This is an important distinction that wasn’t made in many of the stories about Bourgeois.

Anyway, the Slate piece also explains the difference between automatic and imposed excommunication in nice detail. It also explains the difference between disciplines imposed by the Vatican and a local bishop. Finally, the story explains that there are other punishments less severe than excommunication. For a brief article, it was terribly informative. I also appreciate that the reporter solicited help from professors at Georgetown and Sacred Heart Major Seminary.

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