by Diane Winston

Just another day in the news: Chief Justice John Roberts casts the deciding vote in the Supreme Court's verdict on Obamacare, Egypt's new first lady is introduced to the American public and Steven Soderbergh's film about a male stripper garners mixed reviews.

But here's the interesting part—religion is significant in all three stories. Whether or how that angle is covered highlights Americans' ambivalence about religion as well as the news industry's attempts to shape our points of view.

Taking care of the sick? A major must in most traditions. Yet, most mainstream coverage didn't include a religion angle on the health care debate. Some online sites did report grassroots reaction. But the Washington Post's “On God” blog took note, parsing the political ramifications of potential religious infighting over the law. Still, like many mainstream news outlets, the Post assumes religion is a subset of politics rather than a broader grouping of beliefs, behaviors, ethics and spirituality.
 
The New York Times has a more capacious view, casting religion as a cultural force for good among friends and allies—and not so good among those it distrusts. Historically, the Times distrusts true believers, those who place scriptures over Style. As recently as the 1980s, evangelicals were depicted as quaint, and the Religious Right as politically naïve. Today, Western faiths like Judaism and Christianity typically get a pass—reported on as fascinating phenomena—but Islam is subtly denigrated, frequently through descriptions of its “oppression” of women.

Many Muslim women are victims of oppression, but their mistreatment often owes as much to culture as it does to religion. Child brides, marital rape, wife beating and honor killings occur in Muslim countries, but Islamic law does not sanction them. Neither does Islam seek to repress women through dress; in many countries head-to-toe female coverings are cultural not religious traditions, and in other places women choose to wear them as statements of religious commitment or Islamic solidarity. 

But the Times sees the hijab as a red flag. If it's not an outright indicator of repression, then surely it telegraphs close-minded parochialism. Read Thursday's profile of Naglaa Ali Mahmoud, the wife of Egypt's new president, as an example of the paper's flair for gracious deprecation. In the very first graf, Ms. Mahmoud is cast as backward, uneducated and unenlightened—in the nicest language imaginable.

Just for comparison, see last Friday's article on another group of religious women who wear concealing garments. But modesty among New York's Hasidic Jews isn't cause for righteous outrage or concern about repressive gender roles. The only question posed about these religiously-dictated fashion statements is how wearers cope with the heat. Cute, but in its own way a subtle take-down of religious commitment.

Over the past five years, contributors to the Scoop have had fun challenging the Times and the Post and other new outlets on why they perpetuate bad religion coverage–or giving them kudos when they get it right. We've explored how world religions are depicted; wondered why background and contextualization of religious traditions are minimized or missing; analyzed the ideological reasons for news and entertainment constructions of religion and religious folks; and called for fuller and richer probing of manifestations of belief in everyday life.

Now we're moving on to something new. A retooled Trans/Missions will be unveiled in 2013, but for the rest of the year, we're redesigning the site to feature religion coverage done right. Later this summer, we'll make it easier than ever to see KCMR-supported reporting on religion in the U.S. and overseas. We'll also keep links to the Scoop–check out the archive. We have five years' worth of savvy commentary on coverage of everything from Asian-American “model minorities” to The Wire.

And what of “Magic Mike“? Much to be written about religion and the objectification of the male body, analyses that plumb challenges to family values (especially male authority), the rise of female spectatorship and the conundrum of male commodification. Sounds yummy, right?

Looking forward to your post.

by Jane Iwamura

Last week, the Pew Research Center released a major report from its recent survey of Asian Americans. Pew's press release tagged Asian Americans as “the best-educated, highest-income, fastest-growing race group in the country,” and the highly regarded research institution further buttressed their claim with eye-catching and easily digestible graphics featuring buzzwords and catch-phrases such as hard work, education and tiger moms. Reporters ran with Pew's interpretative frame and generated their own headlines: “Asians eclipsing Latinos in immigration to the U.S.” (Reuters); “Asian Americans more educated, successful” (UPI); “Asian American parenting attitudes explored in Pew Study” (Washington Post).

Asian American politicians, advocacy groups and scholars were quick to write back with their own copy: “Asian Americans respond to Pew: We're Not Your Model Minority” (Colorlines). While there has been significant outcry, most of these criticisms are only prominently featured in West coast newspapers (Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times) and liberal publications (NPR, Huffington Post) or circulated through Asian American news outlets and blogs. The rest of the country (including Pew) seems content with its cherished stereotypes of Asian Americans.

Now one might ask why Asian American commentators are up in arms about the Pew Research Center report. After all, is it all that bad being the “top of the class”? As critics aptly point out, the summary report's focus on Asian American mobility, happiness and sense of national belonging, as well parenting attitudes, only reinforces the discourse about Asian Americans as the “model minority.” This stereotype obscures sharp disparities within a highly diverse population. The trope is also used to discipline other minority groups, e.g., “undocumented” Latinos and “low achieving” African Americans. Furthermore, the public release of the report and much of the news coverage that followed lends itself to older stereotypes that have plagued Asian Americans: “Asian invasion,” “Yellow Peril” and “Perpetual Foreigner.”

The data generated by the report is important. Pew's “spin,” however, borders on the sensational and does little to encourage a more nuanced look at the numbers. (Compare “The Rise of Asian Americans” with other Pew titles, more neutrally posed: “When Labels Don't Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity,” or “A Religious Portrait of African Americans.”)

Representation is arguably one of the biggest challenges facing Asian Americans. And here is where news media play an especially key role. Pew obviously has an interest in garnering headlines with its reports, and journalists must try to dig beneath the hype. In this particular case, reporters might consider pre-existing stereotypes (both positive and negative), investigate the survey's construction and examine to what degree it reinforces prevailing attitudes and views. I served as an adviser to the Pew study, but only received one query from a journalist. While Pew did take into consideration some of the advisory committee's input, it failed to incorporate three of our biggest concerns: the inclusion of parenting or “tiger mom” questions; contextualization of the data (how selective migration is a significant factor in Asian American “success”); and a portrait that reflects the diversity of the group.

The Pew Research Center plans to release a second report from the Asian American survey in July; this report will focus on the religious affiliation, beliefs and practices of Asian Americans. If Stephen Prothero's “Belief Blog” for CNN is taken as any indication, the forthcoming report might only add to the misrepresentation and misunderstanding. In his editorial, Prothero ponders the significance of some of preliminary data on religion included in last week's report. He points to the high numbers of the “unaffiliated” (26 percent) and surmises that Asian immigration “may be making the United States less religious.” But if one looks at Pew's own Religious Landscape Survey, one will see that whites (non-Hispanics) make up the majority of the “unaffiliated” (73 percent) followed by Hispanics (11 percent) and blacks (8 percent). The 4 percent that Asian Americans contribute to this category—even with increased immigration—makes a very small dent in the overall figures.

Superficial interpretations do more than spread inaccurate portrayals. They also can do tremendous damage to a community. When I read Prothero's blog, I could not help but recall a time in (Asian-)American history when Chinese and other Asian Americans were labeled as “heathens” and suffered terrible consequences because of it. It is too easy for commentators and reporters to read and interpret such findings in stereotypical ways. Instead, we might use the forthcoming report on Asian Americans to ask new questions about religion and religious belonging: How might existing categories of religion fail to capture the Asian American experience (e.g., Chinese traditional religion)? How do race and class intersect when it comes to religious affiliation? What accounts for the large number of Asian Christians who migrate to the U.S.? What challenges have Asian American Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Muslims had to face in the U.S. environment? Such questions will help to move us away from illusion and more towards insight.

Jane Iwamura is a Visiting Scholar at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. She is the author of Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture and co-editor of Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America.

by Richard Flory

Evangelical Christians have a long history of co-opting popular cultural forms, giving them a nice (and wholesome) Christian gloss and turning them into tools to help convert the masses—or at least to get them into the pews at the local megachurch. For example, in the early 20th century Billy Sunday parlayed his past as a debauched professional baseball player into a career as a barnstorming evangelist, drawing thousands to his revival meetings. I've read that he would run out onto stage, slide into position as though he were stealing second base and then stand up and start preaching.

There are many other examples of this phenomenon over the past 100 years or so, ranging from popular Christian music to Christian-themed movies, some of better quality than others (remember that atrocious film adaptation of the Left Behind book series?).

More recently a sort of “X-Games” Christianity has emerged in which young evangelical Christians — some of whom happen to be very good at skateboarding, BMX or stadium motocross — are using their prowess in edgy sports to promote the Gospel. Now, as if to raise the bar on extreme Christian outreach, several evangelical churches have launched ministries that use mixed martial arts (MMA) to attract followers and to spread the message that, contrary to what one might think, Jesus liked to kick a little ass. This latest attempt at combining popular cultural forms and muscular Christianity — dubbed “Fight Church” — is the subject of a new documentary.

MMA is a particularly violent, brutal and often bloody “sport” in which contestants seek to pummel their opponents until they “tap out” or give up. The New York Times described the “fight church” as a part of efforts to attract younger males back into evangelical churches; it's also meant to introduce a little testosterone into what some Christian conservatives see as a “feminized” Christianity that promotes “kindness and compassion at the expense of strength and responsibility.”

The “fight church,” however, is only one way that macho Christianity is being promoted by evangelical ministries. Traditionally, evangelicals have focused on male Christian athletes such as Billy Sunday in the early 20th century and, more recently, media phenoms like Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow. Others have pushed the emphasis further, depicting an aggressive, even violent Jesus and decrying the “feminization” of Christianity, including, of all things, its “effeminate and queer” music.

Like its sibling fundamentalism, evangelicalism has from its beginnings been an authoritarian, patriarchal movement. These various efforts to restore Christianity's purported masculine essence serve to illustrate the point. The “fight church” approach is just a natural, although incredibly violent, progression in promoting this ideology. Yet beyond simply reporting the titillating and sometimes baffling aspects of these ministries, journalists might ask why evangelicals remain so keenly focused on masculinity and male dominance in church and society? How does this core gender ideology, in turn, shape evangelical views on relations between the sexes, LGBTQ rights, same-sex marriage and the like? Finally, given that there is an apparent shift among younger evangelicals on issues related to sexual ethics, is the hyper-muscular Christianity represented by MMA ministries the first inkling of a backlash? Or is it, instead, the last gasp of patriarchal evangelicalism?

Richard Flory is associate research professor of sociology and Director of Research in the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. He is the co-author of Growing Up in America: The Power of Race in the Lives of Teens (Stanford, 2010) and Finding Faith: The Spiritual Quest of the Post-Boomer Generation (Rutgers, 2008).

by Kevin Healey

A recent headline at Jezebel made a startling claim: “Study Suggests that Eating Organic Foods Contributes to Moral Depravity.” It sounds counter-intuitive, given that many who eat organic do so for ethical reasons. Yet it conjures the love-to-hate-her stereotype of the wealthy and obnoxious Whole Foods mom. Psychology professor Kendall Eskine had unwittingly published a study ripe for sensationalist coverage. In the bitter commentary that followed, a broader issue was lost: the tension between consumerism and ethics that plagues every contemporary value system, from the religious to the secular.

Despite Jezebel's misleading headline, Eskine's study does not measure the effect of eating organic foods. Rather, it suggests that exposure to organic food labels can make people more judgmental and less altruistic. The argument: When we identify with a “good” product we feel that we have a credit in the bank, morally speaking, and therefore are less likely to help others. Similar research suggests the same effect for “green” products.

Given adverse reaction to crass consumerism in the recent film version of The Lorax—which transformed the story's central figure from a prophetic social critic into a sales mascot for laundry detergent—one might expect that organic food and environmental advocates would appreciate the implications of Eskine's study. In fact, Eskine insists that “organic products are indubitably environmentally sound and ethical choices,” and suggests that marketers should modify ad campaigns so consumers don't perceive their purchases as a moral license. That way individuals can become healthier—and economies more sustainable—without the psychological pitfalls he describes.

In other words, the problem is not organic food itself, but rather the commodification of ethics. Arguably, that problem is epitomized by the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church. But it continues today in the form of “cause-related marketing” such as Bono's product-driven RED campaign, which benefits AIDS research. As Mara Einstein argues in Compassion, Inc., “[T]he ultimate consequence of merging profits and purpose is further desensitization to those less fortunate, while doing little to engage people in meaningful altruism.”

Of course, the sale of indulgences led not to the wholesale rejection of Christianity but rather the attempt—by Protestants and Catholics alike—to recover its integrity. Likewise, the issues raised by the RED campaign, as well as organic and “green” marketing, should prompt a re-examination of the notion of the “citizen-consumer,” not a rejection of cause-related activism.

Unfortunately, media coverage of Eskine's study eschews these nuances in favor of sensationalism. An MSN headline reads, “Does organic food turn people into jerks?” A Huffington Post headline suggests that “Organic eaters might be meaner than their counterparts.” At Fox News and Psychology Today, psychologist Dale Archer argues that organic shoppers are not actually any smarter or “greener” than their “McDonald's chomping neighbors,” but are simply overcome by a “moral superiority syndrome.” In fact, Archer claims that “the behavior of an organic shopper”—along with anti-fur advocates and hybrid car owners—is “comparable to that of a cult member.”

The message: If organic shoppers are simply “jerks,” we needn't address the broader question of whether organic food is, in fact, healthier and more environmentally sustainable. But to dismiss questions of food ethics based on the ill-effects of their appropriation by the marketing industry is like dismissing AIDS activism because of the distasteful consumerism of the RED campaign.

No religious tradition has escaped the problems of consumerism. One can find religiously branded products to suit any niche interest, from Buddha key chains to Jesus T-shirts. And while today's organic shoppers are too ethnically and economically diverse to qualify as a cult (notwithstanding the origins of the health food movement), marketers suggest they are nevertheless driven by “common values and principles.” The numerous “denominations” within the organic movement have different practices and sites of worship—backyard gardens, corner bodegas, food coops and, yes, large-scale retailers. Not surprisingly, then, mass retailers who target this diverse group may resemble churches of sorts. Headed by CEO John Mackey—a Buddhist—Whole Foods appears in CNN's list of “10 Religious Companies.”

With regard to the problems of consumerism, traditional religions may find forgiveness more easily since they can appeal to a “golden age”— real or imagined—that preceded the onset of mass commercialization. By contrast, the relative youth and diversity of the organic movement, and its lack of a coherent “grand narrative,” make it more susceptible to quick dismissals. In fact, emergent ethical systems may have a harder time achieving cultural legitimacy because their authenticity is compromised from the get-go.

Eskine's findings are no reason to dismiss issues of food ethics out of hand. But his call for more effective marketing also falls short. Rather, the study should prompt far more sweeping questions (for journalists as well as consumers): If Whole Foods is selling indulgences, who is nailing theses to its doors, and what would be the foodie equivalent of a Protestant Reformation?

Kevin Healey currently holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship through the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Kevin's research on media and religion appears in Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, and Symbolic Interaction. His co-edited volume on the “prophetic” critique of popular media is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2012.

by Maura Jane Farrelly

Reporters, columnists, campaign strategists and admen have once again discovered the Catholic vote – and it isn't just because Catholics make up a quarter of the American electorate and are the largest religious group within America's fastest growing voting bloc, Latinos. It's because Catholics are some of the hardest cattle for our cowboy politicians to get their lassos around.  They went for Reagan and Bush in the 1980s, Clinton in the 1990s, Gore in 2000, but then Bush in 2004 – when, ironically, the evangelical convert was running against the first Catholic to achieve a party nomination since 1960. In 2008, the Catholic vote went back to the Democrats, when 54 percent of Catholics cast their ballots for Barack Obama.  

Obama's slim victory among Catholics was nothing to crow about – and in this sense, it was pretty typical of candidates' performances over the last 30 years. In only one of the last eight presidential elections did a candidate actually snag a sizable majority of Catholic voters: Clinton beat Dole by 16 points in 1996. In all of the other elections, however, Catholics were pretty evenly split, with the winning candidate (who also won the overall election seven out of the eight times) getting just a few percentage points more. Indeed, as Jim Arkedis recently noted in the New York Times, “perhaps no presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy has been able to unite this disparate flock” (Arkedis prefers the bird analogy, while I prefer the cow…).

This makes Catholics a fun group for reporters and columnists working the presidential beat to write about – and one that campaign strategists and political action committees feel they can't ignore. Catholics, after all, seem to be pretty good at picking presidential winners, and you never know which candidate they're going to pick.  

Hence, in addition to the coverage of the “Vatileaks” scandal and the ongoing rift between the Holy See and American nuns (a rift that was in the headlines again this week, when the Vatican condemned a book on sexuality that was written by Sr. Margaret Farley at Yale University), we've seen a flurry of articles and editorials about the so-called “Catholic vote.” Ross Douthat at the New York Times and Ramesh Ponnuru at the National Review have both assured us that the Catholic vote is very real, and Michael Gerson at the Washington Post has theorized that Obama is deliberately offending the Catholic vote in an effort to get young people to turn out for him in 2012, the way they did in 2008.

But I wonder if Michael O'Brien at MSNBC might not be on to something when he insists that the “Catholic vote” is a myth?  He points to a recent Gallup poll that shows Mitt Romney and Barack Obama running neck-and-neck among Catholic voters and notes that the split among Catholics is pretty indistinguishable from the split among other voter groups, such as women, whites or even Protestants. In other words, like other constituencies, Catholics who describe themselves as “very religious” support Romney, while Catholics who describe themselves as “not especially religious” support Obama.  

This raises the question of whether Republican strategists should be – or even are – targeting a “Catholic” vote, per se, when they draw voters' attention to the Obama administration's desire to see employers include coverage for contraception in their health insurance plans. One of the loudest groups to come out against the contraception mandate, after all, is the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Strategies aimed at the Catholic vote, therefore, may really be about rallying the Republican base.

But even if there isn't an actual “Catholic vote” out there, there are Catholics who vote – and who are strongly guided by their faith in their voting decisions. Because of this, I believe it is important for members of the news media to continue to explore the ways in which faith influences voting behavior within the largest single religious denomination in the United States. But the diversity within this single denomination must at all times be emphasized – and it would serve us all well if journalists eliminated the phrase “the Catholic vote” from their lexicon and spoke instead of “Catholic voters” in all their complexity.

Maura Jane Farrelly is assistant professor of American Studies and Director of the Journalism Program at Brandeis University. In the past, she was a reporter for Voice of America and Georgia Public Radio. Her first book, Papist Patriots: The Making of an American Catholic Identity, was recently published by Oxford University Press.