by Sandi Dolbee

For journalists interested in religion, these should be anything but the dog days of summer. Their bylines ought to be cropping up all over the newspaper–from the front page to the entertainment section and even the business pages.

First, the A-1 stories: The anti-Islamic manifesto written by Anders Behring Breivik, the alleged Norwegian mass murderer, cries out for localization. Are there religious leaders or other public figures in your area who have spoken against Islam? What are their responses to Breivik's diatribe, in which he calls for a ban on Muslim immigration and the revitalization of Christianity? Since Breivik's “European Declaration of Independence” has been widely published on the Web, this also could be a teaching moment by interviewing religion scholars to help separate fact from fiction in Breivik's version of history and current events (by the way, he signed the 1,500-page document Andrew Berwick, which reportedly is an Anglicization of his name). Pursuing these angles can be tricky sledding. Journalists need to be careful not to fan the flames, but rather to sensitively and intelligently equip readers with the knowledge they need to make up their own minds.

TV news: Steven Spielberg's “Falling Skies,” a new TNT drama series about what happens after 90 percent of the human population is killed off by an alien invasion, is getting a lot of buzz for an openly Christian character named Lourdes (as in Our Lady of Lourdes?). When another character sarcastically suggests that she pray for “the big guy” to send them a “B-2 bomber loaded with nukes,” Lourdes doesn't back down. “I don't pray for God to give me things,” she says. “I don't think that's how it works. I ask God to show me what I can do for him.” Bloggers have jumped on scenes like this one, raising a litany of questions about whether anyone could believe in God after your world's been pretty much taken over by super-sized insects and their mechanical sidekicks. What are the bounds of faith? It's an interesting question that shouldn't just be left for the Internet.

Now, for the business story: Laurie Goodstein had a fascinating article last week in the New York Times on Roman Catholic priests in the U.S., Austria and Australia who are separately challenging the Vatican's opposition to ordaining female priests. While Goodstein's report focused on the female priest angle, she mentioned that the Austrian and Australian clergy also supported ordaining married men. This raises an intriguing opportunity to explore the financial ramifications of a married priesthood in the world's largest denomination.  What would it do to the church's finances to suddenly have to support not only the priest, but a spouse and children? And what would happen to the traditional parish rectory, which sometimes houses several priests at a time? The Hartford Institute for Religion Research cites a study showing the median salary package for a Protestant pastor in a large congregation is nearly $82,000 annually. The median salary for Catholic priests is less than a third of that. Critics of “what if” stories complain that they're rooted in fantasy and don't accomplish anything. On the other hand, these kinds of stories, when done well, can help foster a public conversation about the more practical–and perhaps more real–dimensions of an idea.

And then there's this week's poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, which shows, among other things, that one in five Americans continue to wrongly identify President Obama as a Muslim–while 40 percent said they didn't know his religious beliefs. As the late comedian Gilda Radner used to say, “It's always something.”

Sandi Dolbee is the former religion and ethics editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her beat coverage, she also is a two-time recipient of Religion Reporter of the Year, the Religion Newswriters Association's top award. She is a past president of the RNA, which represents reporters who cover religion in the secular media, and has received fellowships to study religion and ethics issues at USC, the University of Maryland, New York University and the University of Cambridge in England.

by Marcia Alesan Dawkins

Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow recently announced her decision to raise her children, seven-year-old Moses and five-year-old Apple, Jewish. For some this doesn't qualify as news in a world full of heinous acts committed in the name of religion. For others, Paltrow's decision is part of a larger story about Jewish identity and how it intersects with religion, ethnicity, nation and culture in the news.

The story broke first in the U.K. on the Jewish Chronicle, which reported that Paltrow, whose late father was Jewish film producer Bruce Paltrow, rediscovered her Jewish background on NBC's “Who Do You Think You Are?” show earlier this year. As it happens her father descends from a long line of eastern European rabbis. The story was picked up stateside one week later by the San Diego Jewish Journal in a report that raised some important questions about what it means to be, or to be raised, Jewish. Among other things this report suggested that Paltrow may be making a statement that's more about spiritual and cultural uplift and less about religious commitment or intensity.

Genealogy experts-turned-pundits then questioned Paltrow's authenticity. Many argued that although Paltrow was raised with a Jewish sensitivity and intends to share similar values with her family, neither she nor her children qualify as Jewish according to Jewish law. They explain that Judaism itself is passed down via the matriarchal line, and Paltrow's mother (actress Blythe Danner) is Christian.  

Translation: Paltrow et al. aren't real Jews and she should be content to keep practicing Kabbalah. At best the family can keep a kosher kitchen, observe the Sabbath, celebrate Jewish holidays, learn Hebrew and associate with “real” Jewish friends and family in order to maintain a connection. Condescending as that may sound, Paltrow seems to be taking this advice, and it's turning into big business. On her Martha Stewart-esque website and e-newsletter GOOP, she recently announced the release of her new cookbook entitled My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family and Togetherness.  

Paltrow's decision created another stir that was picked up by ABC News, which reported that the star's announcement conflicts with earlier comments she made regarding her religious background. She reportedly remarked that a mixed Christian-Jewish upbringing is “a nice way to grow up” and went on to add an important caveat: “I don't believe in religion. I believe in spirituality. Religion is the cause of all the problems in the world.” That prompted stern words from a Post Chronicle op-ed writer, who remarked, “Last time we checked, Jewish [is] a religion! And religious, hypocritical attitudes are a major problem when they do not involve love for your fellow human being–but do they really cause 'all' the problems the world has?”

Additional commentary ranged from indignant (the Christian Post sniffed that Paltrow's husband, “Coldplay's frontman Chris Martin, is known as a devout Christian, and there has been no news or comments from the singer on how he feels about this radical change in faith for his children”) to laudatory (Hollywood.com told readers, “Gwyneth Paltrow does what she wants, which means you can to!”).

Despite this diversity of opinion, coverage of Paltrow's announcement generally shares one important quality: confusion over what Jewish identity is and means. Is it a matter of ancestry or a religion? Is it an ethnicity or nationality? Is it a culture or a parenting-decision? Is it a physical phenomenon like circumcision? Or is it an aura that can be manufactured and sold in popular culture?

While a glamorous Hollywood star's religiosity may seem like soft news, these questions get at the heart of some of the most important issues of our time. Rather than seeing religion in this instance as something disconnected from more serious, worldly matters, reporters would be wise to see how religion threads through stories both above and below the fold.

Marcia Alesan Dawkins is visiting scholar in Ethnic Studies at the Center for the Study of Race & Ethnicity at Brown University. She is a columnist for Truthdig, Cultural Weekly and Huffington Post and the author of Things Said in Passing (Baylor University Press, 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger, 2013). Contact: www.marciadawkins.com.

by Dalia Hashad

Last night, the state of Texas executed Mark Anthony Stroman. In the weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Stroman did some killing of his own. Brandishing a gun, the white supremacist meted out revenge on people he assumed to be Arabs. He admitted to murdering two men, one a Hindu Indian immigrant and the other a Muslim Pakistani.

Stroman attempted to kill a third man, Rais Bhuiyan, by shooting him in the face, point blank, with a shotgun. Bhuiyan survived, blinded in one eye and left with 35 metal pellets imbedded in his flesh. He forgave Stroman, and in the months leading up to Stroman's death, devoted himself to stopping the execution. The family members of the other two victims also believe that Stroman should not have been executed. On his website, Bhuiyan argues that the hatred that drove Stroman to kill was created by ignorance and that Stroman was “not capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, otherwise he wouldn't have done what he did.”

Bhuiyan outlines the reasons he campaigned for clemency:

There are three reasons I feel this way. The first is because of what I learned from my parents. They raised me with the religious principle that he is best who can forgive easily. The second reason is because of what I believe as a Muslim, which is that human lives are precious and that no one has the right to take another human's life. In my faith, forgiveness is the best policy and Islam doesn't allow for hate and killing. And, finally, I seek solace for the wives and children of Mr. Hasan and Mr. Patel, who are also victims in this tragedy. Executing Stroman is not what they want, either. They have already suffered so much; it will only cause more suffering if he is executed.

Understandably, many reporters and commentators have seized on the irony of a victim of a Muslim hate crime forgiving his would-be killer precisely because of Islamic teachings. In this age of “sharia law” hysteria and “Ground Zero Mosque” indignation, the Stroman story provides an important counterpoint to the kind of coverage that basically provides a megaphone for those intent on vilifying Islam and casting Muslims as bloodthirsty disturbers of the global peace.

A few analysts have remarked on the broader implications of the story. In the Atlantic, in a post entitled, “'My Islamic Faith Teaches Me This, Too',” Ta-nehisi Coates writes that the Stroman story isn't about anti-Muslim bigotry, but about “the injustice of the death penalty and…free worship.” Indeed, it's disappointing that journalists reporting on this chain of events tend to overlook some pretty obvious questions about the death penalty–not the least of which is asking what the state has actually achieved in executing Stroman.

But Coates makes another point worth considering: “It is tempting to direct this toward the likes of Herman Cain and the anti-Muslim bigots who he delights in stoking up. That would be a mistake.” Actually, I think that is exactly the kind of wider perspective in which the news media should frame stories like Stroman's, but generally don't. Hate propaganda plants the type of beliefs that can help fuel crimes like his. Free speech is important and must be protected, but the principle that speech is free shouldn't insulate those who spread hate from being held accountable for the consequences of their actions.

Dalia Hashad is an attorney specializing in human rights and civil rights. She has also been a host and co-executive producer of “Law and Disorder,” a weekly talk-radio program.

by Jacques Berlinerblau

A headline at some news outlet should be screaming: “Michele Bachmann Kicked Out of Her Own Church!” True, that might be a tad bit premature; perhaps the headline warrants a question mark rather than an exclamation point. In any case, I don't know how else to make sense of a very odd story that isn't developing. Let me explain.

On July 15, Washington Post reporter Sandhya Somashekhar seems to have gotten a scoop when she snared a quote from Joel Hochmuth, a spokesperson at the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod—a quote that completely contradicted an earlier claim Hochmuth had made.

That earlier claim appeared in a story reported by CNN. The article informed us that Congressperson Bachmann had left her house of worship of more than ten years, the Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman, and her husband, Marcus, withdrew their membership from Salem Lutheran in Stillwater, Minnesota, last month, according to Hochmuth, director of communications for the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the broader denominational body of which Bachmann's former church is a member.

Pundits speculated, reasonably, that she had decamped because of anti-Catholic rhetoric associated with the Synod's creedal statement. This would be a shrewd move since Catholic voters: 1) comprise the largest single denominational voting block in the United States, 2) are notoriously likely to swing either Republican or Democratic in presidential elections and hence change the course of American history and 3) might not appreciate the congresswomen's membership in a church that was still riffing on Martin Luther's conviction of nearly half a millennium ago that the Papacy was “the Scarlet whore of Babylon.”

So, at first glance, what we seemed to have here was a reprise of 2008 reporting on the religious maneuvering of Barack Obama (who abandoned Jeremiah Wright) and John McCain (who kicked Pastors Hagee and Parsley to the curb).

Yet then came the second story, and this is where things got real strange. The WAPO piece discussing Bachmann's departure features a quote from Hochmuth, the spokesperson at the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which seems to contradict what he had just told CNN: “'The impetus came from the church,” said Joel Hochmuth…. “For the pastor's sake, he wanted to know where he stood with the [Bachmann] family.”

If this is true then this is actually not a reprise of the “Musical Pastors” tune from 2008. Rather, it involves a candidate for the presidency being asked to leave her own church. I can't think of any recent precedent for such an event.

True, John Kerry and other Catholic pro-Choice politicians have been threatened with the denial of Communion by certain Catholic Bishops (as Randall Balmer pointed out, those same Bishops never denied communion to Catholic politicians who supported the death penalty). But asked to leave?

Assuming Bachmann was, in fact, shown the door, a string of questions arises. What could the Bachmann family possibly have done to deserve this eviction? Were they too liberal for Salem Evangelical? Knowing Bachman's record that would strain credulity. Too conservative? Knowing this church's anti-gay worldview that would be equally hard to believe.

Maybe the pastor asked them to leave because they were becoming a distraction. Often politicians inadvertently create a media circus at their houses of worship, to the annoyance of fellow parishioners. That's a great theory. But it is disproved by another peculiar fact that came out in all of this: the Bachmanns hadn't attended this church for over two years!

The New York Times reported on July 17 that the family now attends Eagle Brook church in Stillwater. Eagle Brook describes its heritage as Baptist, though it appears to be non-denominational.

Baptists incidentally are the second-largest religious denomination in the United States. Moving away from an anti-Catholic Church to a Baptist one seems like an electoral masterstroke. (In 2007, incidentally, John McCain converted from the Episcopalian denomination to the more voter-rich Baptist faith.) 

In short, there is a lot we don't know. Only one Minnesota blog seems to have noticed any of this. What we need now is for those covering the Faith and Values beat to start asking unpleasant questions of all the parties involved.  

Some will say it is inappropriate for them to dig into what is a “private, spiritual matter.” But it is the politicians, not the pundits, who have made faith such an integral part of their campaigns.

UPDATE: While today's Religion News Service time-line of Michele Bachmann's recent shifts in congregational affiliation suggests that earlier reports of the Bachmanns' being asked to leave their church have been called into question, the murkiness of the story and the importance of religion to a prospective Bachmann presidency commends further vigilance from reporters.

Jacques Berlinerblau is associate professor and director of Jewish Civilization at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (Cambridge) and the forthcoming How to Be Secular: A Field Guide for Religious Moderates, Atheists and Agnostics (Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt).

by Nicole Neroulias

More than 50 years after fleeing the Chinese military and setting up the Tibetan government in exile, the Dalai Lama retired from his political responsibilities this year. It was a widely anticipated and somewhat anticlimactic move, given his age and stagnated Free Tibet efforts against a globally rising China. But during his July visit to Washington, DC, the 76-year-old monk–who remains Tibetan Buddhism's supreme leader until his death (and possible reincarnation)–framed the move in terms of support for the American principle of separation of church and state, a view he claims to have long held, despite simultaneously wielding political and spiritual authority most of his life.

“The religious institution, the leader of the religious, and the political leadership, should be separate,” he told legislators at the Capitol.

Media outlets overlooked the irony of the Dalai Lama's well-received affirmation of church-state separation at a time when potential presidential candidates around the country are busily burnishing their Christian bonafides. Texas Gov. Rick Perry called on his fellow governors to meet for a day of prayer and fasting, which has rankled freethinkers; Rep. Michele Bachmann talks about Jesus every chance she gets; Newt Gingrich is courting evangelicals; meanwhile, Rick Santorum is shoring up support among Catholics. Even  Latter-day Saints candidates Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, who tend to keep the minority aspects of their faith quiet, may be benefiting from the mainstreaming of Mormonism.

On a more basic level, coverage of the Dalai Lama's remarks during his recent meeting with House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi generally neglected the question of whether the spiritual leader has genuinely always admired church-state separation– despite six decades of representing Tibet's centuries-old theocratic tradition–or if this is a position he's reached due to his advancing age and inhospitable political circumstances. For such a public figure, it's not one of his well-documented philosophies, though he did say he would step down from politics when Tibet was free from Chinese control in his 1997 Mother Jones interview with Columbia University Prof. Robert Thurman, a former Tibetan Buddhist monk.

There's no question that the U.S. Constitution places a high priority on religious freedom, although separation of church and state doesn't technically appear in the document; it comes from a letter written by founding father Thomas Jefferson–the president who created his own miracle-free, mortal-Jesus version of the Bible. Nevertheless, it's a major principle in American public life, one that the rest of the world acknowledges and–as evinced by the Dalai Lama's recent remarks–even admires. But the pressure for politicians to meet devout Christian standards is high; even President Obama's supporters, dismissing rumors that he's Muslim by publicizing his church attendance, find themselves awkwardly having to qualify their statements: “not that there's anything wrong with that.”

Ultimately, while reporting politicians' religious affiliations and professions of belief, the news media should improve on the whatever-you-say-boss coverage of the Dalai Lama's visit and examine whether all the pieces of the puzzle really fit together to make a coherent picture.

Nicole Neroulias is a correspondent for Religion News Service, a secular news and photo service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics. A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously written for the New York Times and other media outlets. She also writes the Belief Beat blog at Beliefnet (@BeliefBeat on Twitter).

by Lee Gilmore

These quiet, languid summer days are not the busiest season for religion news. Thus, now might be an excellent time to spotlight developments on the religious vanguard and to correct some misinformed notions that often shape media coverage of new religious movements.

Contemporary Paganism (or “Neo-Paganism”) is a significant but under-appreciated religion that is routinely misunderstood, caricatured or exoticized by the mainstream press. For example, a recent article about the slaying of a prison guard in Washington state invoked Wicca in the lede in order to sensationalize the story, though the murder itself had absolutely nothing to do with Wicca and was not committed by a Pagan inmate. (A close reading of the piece reveals that the murder took place in the prison's chapel, which served Pagans as well as adherents of other faiths, but was otherwise totally unconnected with Paganism.)

Furthermore, a recent and under-reported legal case that actually does concern the religious rights of Pagan inmates raises troubling questions about religious pluralism and the freedom of religion. A Pagan volunteer prison chaplain named Patrick McCollum has, for the past several years, sought to change the so-called “Five Faiths” policy of the California Department of Corrections, which stipulates that only members of Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Native American traditions are eligible to be hired as prison chaplains. After a lengthy review and appeal process, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled just last month that McCollum— as one seeking to challenge employment discrimination, rather than as a prisoner suing for his/her rights— had standing to bring his claim, but that the suit could not go forward until Pagan inmates proved their right to a chaplain. On complex technical and procedural grounds, the court declined to review the religious discrimination claims of Pagan inmates also named in the suit.

Yet the court's decision also affirmed that inmates who belong to one of the five “approved” faiths have a presumptive religious right to a chaplain, implying that members of other religions may not. This twist in the ruling places the burden on minority religions like Paganism to demonstrate the “authenticity” of their faith and thus claim their rights to free exercise, though the five listed faiths were never required to meet such obligations.

In the broader culture, Paganism remains comparatively small in numbers, but influential in terms of the broader cultural trends it embodies. The definitive number of American Pagans remains elusive, but reasonable estimates place the number between 750,000 to 1.2 million, or possibly more. Religious censuses like the Pew Forum's Religious Landscape survey often lump Pagans in with “Other/New Age” faiths, thus missing the extent to which the values that typify Neo-Paganism are increasingly found in other arenas.

The allure of magic and witchcraft— whether in practice or in fancy—also bubbles up in cultural phenomena like the “Harry Potter” franchise and the new Wiccan subplot in HBO's “True Blood.” There is also a growing cultural turn toward “green spirituality” in which individuals and faith communities strive to value ecological sustainability and to seek harmony between nature and the sacred. And while it may seem like old news, the widespread and ongoing fascination with the romantic, pantheistic world of “Avatar“—along with its sequels in the offing—is also part of this important cultural trend.

Questions about what counts as “authentic religion” will continue shape our politics and popular culture for the foreseeable future. Reporters would do well to take a closer look at Paganism, and other minority faiths, to get a sense for how these trends and debates are likely to develop.

by Becky Garrison

A recent Salon article analyzing the Supreme Court's decision to overturn a ban on the sale and rental of violent video games to children notes accurately that the culture-wide acceptance of violence over sex deserves some critical attention. The assessment, however, doesn't mention how religious values might shape the prevailing viewpoint that minors need to be shielded from sexually explicit materials but not from violent video games.

More pointedly, in their reporting on violence against the LGBT community, journalists should probe the religious roots of our culture's lopsided relationship to sex and violence.

Where to begin? A 2009 poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicated that most white evangelicals and Roman Catholics, along with most frequent churchgoers, say it's OK “sometimes” or “often” to use torture on suspected terrorists. Less than half of those who identified with a mainline faith tradition or who were religiously unaffiliated answered in the affirmative. Conversely, and not surprisingly, a higher percentage of evangelicals and Catholics oppose gay marriage than do their more liberal Protestant counterparts and the secular culture at large.

The relationship between the tolerance of violence and intolerance toward diverse expressions of human sexuality urgently needs to be examined but is often missing in reportage on the murder of gays and transsexuals. More specifically, exploring the religious culture that informs the belief systems of both the murder suspects and the community at large can deepen the analysis in these stories.

Challenging rather than simply propagating myths about sexuality is another service journalists can provide their audiences. Toward this end, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) offers helpful resources to aid reporters in separating fact from fiction. Also, the SPLC's listing of anti-gay organizations deemed to be hate groups is an important point of reference when religionists insert themselves into debates over LGBT rights and culture.

Journalists should also question the sources cited by spokespeople from religious organizations. Often their claims about “the homosexual lifestyle” are at odds with the findings of reputable medical and scientific organizations. For instance, when Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council makes appearances on national media outlets such as “Hardball,” he often cites statistics from organizations like the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) to prove that homosexuals harm children. When host Chris Matthews fails to question the veracity of these claims, he leaves the viewer with the false perception that the ACP is an established medical organization when in fact it is an advocacy group founded to promote traditional (read: anti-gay) values.

Similarly, journalists cannot assume that a “progressive” evangelical organization advocates for liberal causes relating to human sexuality such as abortion and gay rights. In particular, they need to be mindful when a progressive evangelical leader such as Tony Campolo, a spiritual adviser to former President Bill Clinton, compares his Red Letter Christian group to the theology of the Family (a.k.a. Fellowship), given the latter group's connections to the anti-gay legislation pending in Uganda.

Where can journalists find alternative religious voices to balance conservative perspectives on sexuality, Scripture and social values? Religious organizations like Integrity USA, the United Church of Christ's LGBT Ministries and Dignity USA all champion gay rights. Furthermore, many LGBT rights groups like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign include faith-based components as part of their advocacy outreach efforts.

Too often, these voices are not included in coverage of LGBT-related stories. To some extent that's simply a consequence of lazy reporting. But it's also a reflection of the fact that a religiously conservative tolerance for violence and an aversion to sexual diversity informs our culture in ways both overt and subtle.

Becky Garrison is a panelist for the Washington Post's “On Faith” blog. Her additional writing credits include work for the Guardian, Killing the Buddha, Sojourners, Religion Dispatches, the Revealer, Geez magazine, the High Calling, and U.S. Catholic.
 

Maura Jane Farrelly

Independence Day weekend brought to mind a bit of “news” that is a few days old, but nevertheless remains relevant: Michele Bachmann's latest gaffe about how the Founders “worked tirelessly to end slavery,” and how John Quincy Adams should be considered a “Founding Father,” because he happened to be alive during the American Revolution. JQA, it should be remembered, defended those now-famous “Amistad” slaves in 1841 – 65 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. If Bachmann can just get the news media to accept that he was a Founder (at the age of 9), she might also be able to convince them that the three-fifths compromise in the U.S. Constitution doesn't undermine her assertion at all.

Until recently, Bachmann's historical missteps (such as her observation that the “shot heard 'round the world” happened in New Hampshire) have seemed unworthy of anything more than a chuckle about the hypocrisy of a woman who invokes the revolutionary period, yet doesn't seem to know a whole lot about it. The same goes for Sarah Palin's convoluted understanding of what Paul Revere was up to when he rode (quietly, I might add) through the rolling hills of Middlesex County in 1775.

Bachmann's latest mistake, however, is one that the news media really have an obligation to investigate. Anyone who is familiar with the work of David Barton will recognize that her belief in the abolitionism of the Founders echoes the agenda-driven “scholarship” of a self-proclaimed evangelical “expert” with an astounding amount of influence. Given the impact Barton is having on America's political landscape, the media have an obligation to rigorously interrogate his vision of history.

To cite one example, Barton's authority has been used to justify de-emphasizing Thurgood Marshall in the curriculum used by public schools in Texas so that room can be made to explore the supposedly “biblical” roots of the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution. His honorary doctorate from Pensacola Christian College allows him to claim the moniker of “Dr.” and to assume the air of authority that goes with it. Barton has advised the presidential campaigns of Bachmann, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich as well as the gubernatorial campaigns of Rick Perry in Texas and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. His decontextualized work on the revolutionary period – which treats the Founders with a fundamentalist's reverence and unabashedly gives them modern motives that they simply could not have had – has served as the foundation of the Tea-Party's insistence that America is and always has been a “Christian nation.” Yet Barton's arguments remain woefully unchallenged by most journalists, who seem ill-equipped to deal with an ideologue who, unlike Bachmann or Palin, actually does know a little something about American history.

To wit, Jon Stewart, who is normally so good at backing people like Barton into a corner, failed miserably when he had Barton on his show this past May. At least one set of bloggers recognized the significance of this event, but Stewart's fans among mainstream media critics haven't mentioned it.

Whenever they have covered Barton, most news outlets have, like the New York Times, noted  that “many professional historians dismiss” his work. But that feeble caveat does nothing to highlight Barton's abuses to an American audience that has been skeptical of pronouncements by “eggheads” since at least the 1950s. Why do professional historians dismiss his work? Journalists have an obligation to ask them and translate their findings for a broader audience. If they can undertake this kind of backgrounding when they're dealing with the work of economists and nuclear physicists, there's no reason they can't do it with the work of American religious historians.

In September, Harvard University Press will release The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age. Authors Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson assert that members of the news media have not only failed to interrogate Barton's questionable scholarship, they have actually helped to bolster his reputation among evangelicals by creating the impression that there is some degree of intellectual equivalence between Barton's work and the work of prize-winning historians like Gordon Wood and Mark Noll.

This is a book that all journalists covering religion, education, science and politics in the United States today ought to read. At the very least, Stephens and Giberson would serve as valuable sources in future stories about political candidates who make questionable assertions about the religious beliefs of the Founders.

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, will be published by Oxford University Press later this year.

by Kevin Healey

In May, doomsayer Harold Camping garnered extensive coverage—from the curious to the condescending—for his ill-fated prediction of the Second Coming. While “The Colbert Report” spoofed the incident, NPR offered more sober speculations on an apparent “prophesy upswing.” When similar predictions arise from a source whose claims to mathematical accuracy and are far more credible than Camping's, journalistic sobriety is definitely the appropriate response.

Enter Ray Kurzweil, the famed inventor and author who is making the rounds on cable television to promote his vision of a post-human future. Kurzweil says we are approaching two crucial turning points: first, when science will reverse-engineer the human brain (2029); and second, when super-intelligent machines will merge with humans (the so-called “Singularity”) to make us effectively immortal (2045). This month Kurzweil launched a publicity blitz, speaking to Jimmy Kimmel and Bill Maher to promote the documentary “Transcendent Man,” which explores his vision.

Kurzweil is aware that his ideas invite comparison to the Harold Campings of the world. In a publicity photo for his book of the same name, Kurzweil clutches a street-preacher-style cardboard sign reading “The Singularity is Near.” (A New York Times reviewer called this his “crazy man photo.”) But Kurzweil can afford such feats of self-deprecation because, he argues, his ideas are “based on a detailed scientific analysis of the history of technology and not on faith.” Any comparison of the Singularity to religious prophesy is simply “incorrect.”

Of course, critics disagree—often vehemently. Technologist Jaron Lanier has criticized the Singularity as “rapture for nerds.” Wired magazine's Kevin Kelly suggests that Kurzweil's “unwavering” certainty amounts to a kind of “faith.” Biologist P.Z. Myers lambasts Kurzweil's understanding of brain physiology, saying that “he seems to have the tech media convinced that he's a genius, when he's actually just another Deepak Chopra for the computer science cognoscenti.”

News outlets have also picked up on the quasi-religious themes, describing Kurzweil as “proselytizing” on behalf of “the gospel of 'Singularity.'” The New York Times compares his Singularity “dogma” to third-century Gnosticism. The Globe and Mail gets personal, suggesting that Kurzweil's fascination with tech-driven immortality reflects a deep-seated longing to reconnect with his late father.

Kurzweil's post-human predictions may or may not be correct; only time will tell. In the interim—while Singularitarians are still merely human—claims of scientific objectivity may veil a quasi-religious ideology with real political-economic consequences. Whatever nuance Kurzweil maintains is easily lost amid the throngs of followers at Burning Man-style events like the upcoming Extreme Futurist Fest 2011. For this reason it's important for journalists to keep working what Forbes columnist Lee Gomes calls “the Singularity skepticism beat.”

Interestingly, Bill Maher raises a point that most journalists have missed—namely the strong reaction that may arise from traditional religious communities. “You're selling crack on their corner” by talking about immortality, Maher warns. Indeed, Kurzweil's prediction of achieving the Singularity by 2045 has already ruffled the feathers of some of the millions of Americans who believe Jesus will return by 2050. While Kurzweil's quirky persona may keep him in the news, the developing story here may be a broader culture clash between those who envision a future techno-utopia and those who fear being “left behind.”

Kevin Healey received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Communications Research at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His dissertation is titled “The Spirit of Networks: New Media and the Changing Role of Religion in American Public Life.” Kevin's research on media and religion appears in Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Cultural Studies<=>Critical Methodologies, and Symbolic Interaction.

by Nick Street

As the New York Times reported yesterday, the Republican-controlled Senate of the state whose political establishment gave us the term “Rockefeller Republican” has passed legislation that, by the end of July, will double the number of gays and lesbians living in jurisdictions where they may legally wed.

That development may seem like a victory for political and religious progressives. But like a shuffleboard shot aimed aft-ward on a cruise ship, the puck set in motion by a trio of GOP moneymen and a couple of steely operatives in Governor Andrew Cuomo's office will ultimately trace the route of the larger political trends that provided the setting for the game.

This more nuanced perspective on context and history is exactly what was missing in the otherwise brilliant analysis of the Albany vote from the Times' Michael Barbaro. His summary of how careful pressure from Republican financiers Cliff Asness, Daniel Loeb and Paul Singer (who has a gay son)—coupled with the bare-knuckle discipline that Cuomo's advisers applied to advocacy organizations and fellow Democrats—led to a historic win for marriage-equality proponents is a fine piece of political reporting. But he overlooks the degree to which the increasing conservatism of the LGBT community is the essential factor in the gay-marriage equation.

How has a movement that began with calls to “smash the church, smash the state” evolved into an establishmentarian cultural force that sets the ordination of gay clergy in mainline denominations and the legal recognition of same-sex marriage as two of its primary goals? It's a question seldom asked by LGBT folks who consider themselves progressives, much less by reporters covering contemporary gay political priorities.

To be sure, there are still historians, cultural critics and legal scholars who remember the deep liberationist roots of the movement and highlight the ambivalence with which many LGBT people—particularly queer youth—regard the marriage-equality issue. Bob Ostertag of the Huffington Post, Columbia University scholar Katherine Franke and journalist Charles Kaiser have done a valuable service by suggesting ways that journalists can get a wider angle on the current scene.

What you can see from these vantage points is that while public opinion and political tides may appear to have taken a “progressive” turn on the issue of gay marriage, valorizing the institution of marriage (whether gay or straight) is itself an inherently conservative move. In other words, the story largely overlooked in the Times and other mainstream news media is that the gay rights movement, like the country as a whole, has become markedly more conservative since the 60s and 70s. You can see this trend quite clearly in exit-poll data from 2008—when over a quarter of self-identified gay voters opted for the McCain-Palin ticket—and the 2010 midterm elections, in which Republican candidates won nearly a third of the LGBT vote.

Why are growing numbers of gays and lesbians casting their lot with a political party that includes powerful factions that revile them? A commenter on this trend at LGBTQ Nation remarked, “[W]e as individuals are not defined by our sexuality. We have other things in our life that concern us. There are other reasons to vote Republican, and there are Republican candidates who don't platform on an anti-gay basis. Our rights will be given to us, it is only a matter of time.”

Another commenter, responding to Amanda Terkel's reporting on gay conservatism in last year's midterms, put the matter more bluntly: “If neither party is going to support making me a first-class citizen, then I may as well vote for the party that will let me pay less taxes, i.e. Republican's. Yes, the religious fanatics are loud and annoying, but the Log Cabin Repubs and several prominent conservatives are showing far more guts than the Democratic party has in at least *trying* to secure some of my rights.”

So while the dominant media narrative is that the vote in New York augurs a cultural shift leftward, the counter-narrative–that marriage as the capstone issue for gays is really a reflection of the rightward turn in the country over the past three or four decades–has yet to be probed or even perceived in much of the mainstream press. It's a rich story that deserves far more attention.

Nick Street is the managing editor of TransMissions and journalist-in-residence at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture.