by J. Terry Todd

Google Trends confirms it: Web surfers want to know about Judgment Day. On Thursday night, May 19th, as Tech News Daily reports, four of the top ten searches were apocalypse-related.  The #1 search on Google was “end of the world May 21,” followed in second place by “LinkedIn IPO.” But #4 was “Harold Camping” and #8 was “judgement day 2011.” (Yes, with the extra “e”).

As most religion news-hounds know by now, Harold Camping is the 89-year-old retired civil engineer and self-taught radio preacher from Family Radio International. Camping has cracked the Bible's secret code only to discover that the world will end on Saturday, May 21, beginning with an earthquake that will roll across the globe. That event signals the Rapture, when Jesus returns to gather the faithful few in the sky. Everyone else will be left behind in a hellish nightmare until the world is finally destroyed on October 21.

The flood of queries on Google loosed an avalanche of utterly predictable blog postings and news coverage, devoid of historical context and serious analysis. The same could be said for coverage in the dailies and cable news shows. Almost all of it, of course, was marked by a whiff of superiority and a tone of condescension, intended to put distance between “us” (the rational public) and “them” (the purveyors of prophecy belief and their gullible consumers).

First, there are the innumerable fluff pieces with headlines like “Are You Bullish on a Rapture Market?” originally posted on benzinga, and reposted on SFGate, the San Francisco Chronicle's website. It calls Camping's views “guano-psychotic,” and suggests investment options if the rapture does come. “No more worrying about cholesterol! Hop on over to Cracker Barrel (NASDAQ: CBRL). Get the farmer's omelette and all the bacon you get your paws on.” The there's the story in the Lifestyle section of the New York Daily News of an atheist business owner's offer to rescue pets post-rapture. The examples go on and on.

One can draw a direct line between this kind of journalism and the 1925 New York Times coverage of doomsday promoter Robert Reidt of East Patchogue, Long Island. Andy Newman, in a Times City Room column that ran this week, resurrected a fascinating gem from the Times' archives, noting how our paper of record gave Reidt a “run of breathlessly derisive coverage,” a subtly self-referential piece for journalists (and readers) with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Not surprisingly, much of the commentary ran even hotter (and meaner). One common reaction, usually offered up by liberal Protestant pundits, followed a “there you go again, misinterpreting the Bible” line, sometimes infused with self-righteous smugness. See, for example, “Harold Camping does not represent Christianity,” Bishop John Shelby Spong's short piece in the Washington Post's “On Faith” blog. What's worse at times like this is the way some liberal Protestant academics unwittingly play the shill to a snarky interviewer, as happened on Thursday night's “The Last Word” with Lawrence O'Donnell on CNBC (See, a professor with a Ph.D. in Bible thinks Harold Camping is a little kooky!)

True, Camping is ripe for ridicule: His low-hanging jowls, wrinkled face, muddled voice and (worse?) badly-designed website embody an elderly, outmoded expression of Christian faith, out of place in our sleekly sophisticated digital world. Yet a focus on Camping misses the point, as the best news reportage recognizes. Camping might have been the first to pronounce the May 21 doomsday prediction, but the strange winds of our times have blown the message to other quarters.

For my sensibilities, admittedly honed on public radio, Barbara Bradley Hagerty's two recent NPR reports point in the right direction. Without a trace of condescension in her voice, Hagerty interviews Camping, but goes further to introduce us to people like 31-year old Brian Haubert, who tells her, “I'm not stressed about losing my job, which a lot of other people are in this economy. I'm just a lot less stressed . . . ” In Hagerty's second story, it becomes even clearer that the uptick in prophetic rumblings have something to do with the fact that we live in an era when the social fabric seems particularly rent by economic crisis, political upheaval and even natural disaster. Turns out, it's the multiple dislocations of our historical moment – economic, political, personal – that provoke some folks to look toward the skies for deliverance from uncertainty and confusion. If we listen carefully, we know the end-time mania is about “us,” not just “them.”

If the heralds of the apocalypse are susceptible to hyperbole and hysteria, the scoffers are just as likely to be suffering from a big case of denial. We live in particularly unsettled times, which means that news stories about folks like Harold Camping are likely to proliferate. Camping and his kind are only the beginning of the story.

* * * * * *

J. Terry Todd is Associate Professor of American Religious Studies at Drew University. The author of many articles on religion in 20th-century America, Terry is especially interested in religious conflicts over family life and sexuality, and how Christian ideas and practices shape U.S. politics and mass media.

by Becky Garrison

The past week was a kaleidoscope of LGBT-related stories. How did they look through then lens of mainstream news media?

After Sojourners, a leading Christian social-justice magazine, decided not to run an ad welcoming the LGBT community, the Daily Beast observed, “Progressive Christian groups are asking whether Obama spiritual adviser Jim Wallis should still be the face of their movement.”

While a number of different interlocutors speak for Christian conservatism, the mainstream news media's reliance on Wallis as the sole mouthpiece for progressive Christianity leads to the misperception that all moderate-to-liberal Christians speak with one voice. Thus the subsequent outcry over the Sojourners decision reminds journalists of the need to seek a range of opinions instead of relying on just one source. One can find a number of liberal-minded spokespersons on the subject of progressive religion at Religion Dispatches, the Revealer, Killing the Buddha and AlterNet.

Also, when reporting on LGBT stories, an examination of an individual's or organization's funding streams and affiliations might uncover conservative alliances that influence a given religious leader's public statements on LGBT rights. For example, even though bestselling author and megachurch pastor Rob Bell was declared one of Time magazine's 100 People for 2011 for proclaiming “love wins,” Bell remains silent on the issues of LGBT church leadership and the blessing of same sex marriages. The reasons for Bell's silence are ripe for reporting.

In mainline progressive circles, the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) joined ranks this week with the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the UCC by voting in favor of the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy. Coverage of this event by mainstream outlets like CNN, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times failed to provide in-depth analysis or to relate the decision to broader theological and sociological shifts in mainline Protestantism and the culture at large.

Similarly, the New York Times' reporting on Jim McGreevey's quest to become an Episcopal priest opted to sensationalize rather than contextualize the former (and formerly closeted) New Jersey governor's story. A more thorough examination of the facts suggests that the impediments to McGreevey's aspirations have more to do with his bitter divorce than his sexual orientation.

Despite some recent strides toward the acceptance of trans clergy, bisexual and trans people remain almost invisible in mainstream reporting on gay rights and faith. Journalists reporting on LGBT issues and religion may want to take a closer look at these communities, especially given the recent press around Chaz Bono, who has been promoting his book and documentary on high-profile national outlets like the Oprah Winfrey Show and the Late Show With David Letterman.

Coverage of Chaz's story in otherwise reputable outlets like the New York Times was riddled with errors, indicating a lack of understanding of how to report stories related to the trans community. For example, the Times' reporter used both male and female pronouns to describe Chaz instead of simply referring to him by his current gender. The story also focused on questions relating to his body parts, a tendency one often finds in mainstream reporting on transgender issues. (Some trans activists suggest simply using the term “trans” in order to shift the focus away from the gender binary, thus enabling others to see trans people more fully.)

Time magazine ran its interview with Chaz under a headline containing the phrase “Sex-Change Operation” instead of the preferred term “Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS),” and US magazine's publication of Chaz's remarks about Brad Pitt's and Angelina Jolie's four-year-old daughter gave the mistaken assumption that tomboy behavior “might” be linked to gender identity issues.

Such prurient reporting is reminiscent of the media-fed rumors surrounding Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's sexuality, in which innuendo gets presented as fact and journalists bend (if not break) the ethical rules involved in outing a public figure.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) offers a media guide to aid journalists in the United States. As LGBT people continue to come out of the closet–and step into positions of increasingly greater authority in religious and political life–reporters will need to know not just who they are but how to tell their stories.

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.

by Dalia Hashad

Over the past few days, thousands of people in the Middle East and around the globe participated in coordinated protests commemorating the 1948 expulsion from Palestine of approximately 700,000 Palestinians who were subsequently barred, by the new state of Israel, from returning to their homes.  These events, including the forced seizure and occupation of Palestinian land, have come to be known as the Nakba.

The Arabic word Nakba is commonly translated as “catastrophe.” Western journalists, however, frequently describe the Nakba for their audiences as the “Palestinian reaction to the creation of the state of Israel,” recasting the observance as an attack against Israel rather than a reaction to a violent act of ethnic cleansing.

This past weekend, some of the protesters at the Israeli frontiers with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza crossed border fences, whereupon Israel troops opened fire. Twelve people were killed and hundreds injured, all of them Palestinians. And yet, almost universally, news media described the Nakba-related events in terms that suggest the Israeli response was proportional to the Palestinians' actions. From CNN, the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor to the San Francisco Chronicle and Salon.com, outlets depicted the events as “clashes.” By contrast, when the Syrian government uses overwhelming force to suppress dissent, the most common descriptor employed is “crack-down.” Journalists, of all people, should know that words matter. Thus they should acknowledge that this difference in word-choice makes a difference.

While uprisings against repressive regimes in North Africa and other parts of the Middle East have been framed as an “awakening,” Palestinian protests have been left out in the cold during the “Arab Spring.” As Israeli police officers in black hoodies and face-masks drag protesters away at gunpoint, some journalists hunt for ulterior motives from Israel's subversive neighbors. Following the lead provided by Israeli government spokespeople, BBC News posed the question: Palestinian Protests: Arab Spring or Foreign Manipulation?

In covering Israel's treatment of Palestinians, U.S. news media typically fail to tell the full story–when it gets covered at all. Just as American reporting on Israel's Palestinian occupation often omits the kind of legal or moral analysis that is typically applied to similar conflicts, coverage of the Nakba protests places Palestinian dissent outside the frame of the “Arab Spring.” Yet the common elements of a people seeking dignity, human rights and freedom from oppression should tie the Palestinian cause to similar popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere.

Some journalists are starting to make the connection. Just this morning, NBC's Richard Engel said that the Nakba protests extended the wider movement's previous boundaries, and the Christian Science Monitor ran a piece entitled, “Nakba Protests Bring Arab Spring to Israel's Doorstep.” In an era when Americans are seldom troubled by Israeli killings of Palestinian civilians, this shift in perspective is a welcome correction to previous distortions. Still, it's too soon to say that journalists are encouraging their audiences to cheer for Palestinians along with other Arab and North African protesters. Tellingly, the Christian Science Monitor story was filed under “Terrorism and Security.”

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 Salman Hameed

One of the motivations behind the efforts to popularize science is the idea that we live in a democracy, and a scientifically informed citizenry is necessary (or is at least strongly preferred) for living in the modern world. Issues such as cloning, genetically modified (GM) foods, end-of-life decisions, and climate change, are only some of the arenas where public opinion can alter the direction of science in the country. People may still reject evolution or deny global warming, but we expect science-writers to convey established ideas so, at least, there is good science out there.

I was thinking about this while watching the coverage of the death of Osama Bin Laden. There were obvious questions about the possible complicity of Pakistan's Intelligence agency, ISI, and if Pakistan government knew about it. There was coverage of celebrations in the US of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and then questions about whether these celebrations over a killing are a good idea or not. Some even raised the issue with the short-circuiting of justice by killing an unarmed Osama instead of prosecuting him in a US court.

These are all valid and important questions, but the topic that got my attention was about whether US should now pull out of Afghanistan. This is a complicated question with huge geo-political significance. Russia, India, China, Iran, and Pakistan are all keeping an eye on US actions in their neck of the woods. While some wonkish foreign policy magazines addressed the implications of US actions on the world stage, many of the mainstream news programs looked at it primarily through the narrow lens of US domestic politics and its relation to the 'war on terror'.

This triggered the question: If scientists demand good science coverage that includes not only accuracy, but also a distillation of complex ideas into layman terms, shouldn't we expect the same for global politics? But then, can we even sort out facts (in a relative sense) in geo-political ideas, especially when the reaction time is much quicker than in the sciences? I don't know, but I think we can present a broader geo-political perspective.
 
Let me use the example of Pakistan since this is the country under a microscope right now, and I also happen to be somewhat familiar with it.
 
There was obviously much talk of Pakistan in the post Osama news coverage. The primary focus was on whether Pakistan is doing enough on the 'war on terror' or if it has been playing a double-game with the US, in the mean time, getting billions of dollars in aid packages. These are important questions, but Pakistan's own geopolitical interests in the region were rarely mentioned. This approach is not exactly new. For example, this Washington Post editorial from 2008, titled Pakistan's Double-Game, follows roughly the same template and again does not make any mention of Pakistan's geopolitical interests.
 
In reality, however, it is impossible to talk about Pakistan's relation to the Taliban without mentioning the fact that the current Afghan government – which the Taliban oppose – is allied with India, Pakistan's archrival. The hedging of Pakistani bets in this context can rationally be seen as preparing for a post-US Afghanistan. Similarly, the roots of current mistrust between Pakistan and the US stretch back to 1990, rather than the post 9/11 world. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the US not only abandoned the region, but it also imposed economic sanctions on its former ally, Pakistan. US is thus seen through this lens in much of Pakistan, and it is widely believed there that US will do the same after it withdraws from Afghanistan.
 
This is a complex story in a complicated geo-political landscape. How much of this information is necessary for American viewers? I don't know, but a broader perspective can only help when lives are at stake, both American and non-American. If this were a story about science, we would have insisted on breaking down complex ideas into layman language. We routinely get Neil de Grasse Tyson on television to talk about new planetary systems as well as physics behind black holes. But I would think that the stakes are even higher for political matters. In a democracy in an increasingly globalized world, an incomplete and/or an overly simplistic picture can be a serious problem when it comes down to establishing public support or opposition to US military involvement overseas.
 
Paging Carl Sagan of Foreign Affairs.

Salman Hameed is an assistant professor of integrated science and humanities at Hampshire College. His primary research focuses on understanding the rise of creationism in the Islamic world and how Muslims view the relationship between science and religion. He is currently the lead investigator of a three-year NSF-funded study on this topic, and heads the Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies (SSiMS) at Hampshire. He blogs at Irtiqa.

by Maura Jane Farrelly

The New York Times had an interesting piece this week that reminded me of one of the principle difficulties faced by reporters who cover religion in the United States: The fact that there is no definitive survey of belief and unbelief in America.

The story was about a new major at Pitzer College, a small, liberal arts school in southern California that is known for its interdisciplinary curriculum.  Starting next fall, students at Pitzer will be able to major in Secular Studies.  They'll take courses that consider “The Bible as Literature” and “Anxiety in the Age of Reason,” and they will seek to understand when, why, and how people all over the world have chosen to eschew religion.

“The percentage of American adults who say they have no religion has doubled in 20 years, to 15 percent,” the article notes, referring to the American Religious Identification Survey that was released by Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in 2008.   

Of course, technically speaking, secularists do not have to be people who claim to have “no religion.”  Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has devoted his career to ensuring that America remains a secular nation.  Lynn is also an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

Reporter Laurie Goodstein's point, therefore, seems to be about more than just secularism in the United States.  The number of Americans who believe there may not be any god, she seems to want us to know, is on the rise.  But does that necessarily mean that the number of Americans who consider themselves to be atheist or agnostic is as high as 15 percent?

Not if you look at the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.  According to that study, just 5 percent of Americans say they “do not believe in God or a universal spirit.” And just to make things more confusing, more than 60 percent of the people who claimed they did not believe in God also backed away from the title of “atheist” or “agnostic” when pressed to be more specific.  In fact, a full 14 percent of them said they were Christian.

So what's a reporter to do?  The discrepancies between the Trinity survey and the one that was conducted by Pew undoubtedly have a lot to do with the way the questions were asked and the extent to which respondents were prompted to elaborate on their answers.  But why do reporters have to go to Pew or Trinity College to get a snapshot of the American religious landscape?  Why can't they just mine the U.S. Census data, the way they do whenever they're writing stories about poverty or immigration or education or race?

The answer is that the Census doesn't ask questions about religion – and the story behind why is really quite fascinating.  In his new book, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to its Protestant Promise,  historian Kevin Schultz charts the efforts of the statistician Robert Burgess and the demographer Conrad Taeuber to get the U.S. government to include questions about what they called “one of the major underlying social factors in American life” on the 1960 Census.  

If it were not for Adolph Hitler, the two men might have pulled it off.  Censuses, Kevin Schultz reminds us, “have played a significant role in the long history of human rights abuses” throughout the world.  In the shadow of the Holocaust, Conrad Taeuber's seemingly innocuous question – “What is your religion? Baptist, Lutheran, etc.” – was just too much for the American Jewish community to accept.

And so reporters today looking to do stories about African Americans and Islam, Hispanics and Pentecostalism, or atheists and secularism are forced to rely upon a few tightly designed, well-intentioned studies that are woefully inconsistent.  Most journalists who cover religion understand that what they have to work with isn't a snapshot of the American religious landscape; at best, it is an impressionist painting.  Unfortunately, time and space constraints do not allow them to clarify this situation for their audiences – and I suspect that many people who read Laurie Goodstein's perfectly reasonable article on the Secular Studies major at Pitzer now think – incorrectly –  that one in six Americans doesn't believe in God.

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 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 John Adams

In one fell swoop, President Obama trumped the borderline tabloid-ish coverage of the royal wedding, silenced the blather of the birthers, interrupted the boardroom of the “Celebrity Apprentice” and sent people dancing in the streets.

As partiers and reporters proclaimed the death of Osama Bin Laden as a victory for democracy, I couldn't help but notice a loss of dignity as we thumbed our noses at the rest of the world.

Dignity is defined as bearing, conduct, or speech indicative of self-respect or appreciation of the formality or gravity of an occasion or situation.

Within hours, the social mediasphere had blown up with Osama reports. Twitter gave everyone a chance to voice their thoughts – in 140 characters or less, of course – and Facebook pages popped up left-and-right trying to reach the popularity of the “Princess Beatrice's Ridiculous Royal Wedding Hat” page.

And we, the news media, joined in on the festivities.

After every 30-second chunk of news misinformation – see Osama with machine gun in firefight, Osama with handgun, the wife shield, the dead wife – networks cut to the celebration outside the White House or at Ground Zero. Scores of people went crazy in front of a large TV camera with a huge spotlight inviting people to step up for their 10 seconds of fame.

During the local news, TV stations played random YouTube responses to the news of Osama's death. Blogs at the Los Angeles Times and Huffington Post touted stories about celebrity tweets after Obama's press conference. How did Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson manage to tweet the news hours before Obama's announcement?

We quickly grabbed the most incendiary photos to drive traffic to gain extra clicks on our websites and looked for the next “Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell” quote to plaster all over our homepages (WINNER: Mike Huckabee, “Welcome to Hell, Osama bin Laden“). The front pages of our newspapers boasted victory and even went as far as to say, “We Got the Bastard” and “Rot in Hell.” CNN's Belief Blog conducted a poll off the New York Daily News' “Rot in Hell” headline to ask whether Americans think bin Laden is actually in Hell.

I half expected to see an “Anderson Cooper at the Compound Where Osama Died” week-long special by the end of Obama's announcement.

Not all of the coverage was as trite as most of this, however, but the pinnacle of news abomination for me was the story that came out less than 48 hours after the death announcement: “Osama bin Laden's death boosts Obama's standing in polls.” Is there really a need to state the obvious?

Has the business of news become just a game? And what part do we in the news media play in this quest to live and “win” with dignity?

In this case, maybe a healthy dose of restraint would help as we look to find and create stories that cause people to think and not just emote. The stories, like the burial requirements of Muslims, the debate over both the rejoicing and the regret at bin Laden's death are out there. Although reflection and analysis usually don't carry the click-appeal of the inflammatory “Rot in Hell” stories, we are obligated to challenge our readers' thinking and promote informed conversation. Can't we do that with a large dose of respect and maybe even a little dignity?

John Adams worked as a pastor for 12 years before leaving his church to pursue journalism. He earned a master's in online media from USC Annenberg, and is focused on sports journalism and the web world. He is homepage editor for the Los Angeles Times and previously worked for NBC Los Angeles as a web editor and content producer. He has published articles on SI.com, WSJ.com, USAToday.com, MSNBC.com and TreeHugger.com to name a few.

by Dalia Hashad

“Osama bin Laden's death brings celebration, unity,” Politico announced. To wit, Rush Limbaugh thanked God for President Obama. Cheering crowds from Washington, D.C. to Dearborn waved American flags and screamed, “USA! USA! USA!”

But something is amiss. In Portland, vandals defaced a mosque with the phrase “Osama Today Islam Tomorrow.” The images broadcast from downtown Manhattan looked strikingly similar to those we saw during the bigoted protests against Park 51. Notably, the faces in the crowds, then and now, were largely white.

A blogger on the Angry Arab News Service received a comment that prompted further reflection on the sour note amid the jubilation:

“For a people who constantly attacked Arabs/Somalis/Pakistanis for celebrating death, Americans are out in force celebrating this death tonight.” That made me think. Take George W. Bush: he is as hated among Arabs and Muslims as Bin Laden is hated in the US. If Bush were to die, and if there are scenes of celebration among Muslims, the US news would be disgusted and guests would be invited on TV to speak about the sickness of Muslim culture.

A few journalists have expressed unease with the cheering. On Salon.com, David Sirota objected to the “unbridled euphoria” demonstrated by the Washington Press corps. But then he too succumbed to the reflexive cheer-leading impulse of American exceptionalism when he wrote, “[I]n the years since 9/11, we have begun vaguely mimicking those we say we despise, sometimes celebrating bloodshed against those we see as Bad Guys just as vigorously as our enemies celebrate bloodshed against innocent Americans they (wrongly) deem as Bad Guys.” As if Americans, by nature blameless when it comes to the world's troubles, are simply led astray by the terrible behavior of the evil Muslims living in those strange countries way over there.

In his speech to the nation, President Obama proclaimed that the assassination of bin Laden “is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people. We are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to.”

The headline of Kai Wright's piece for Colorlines offered the perfect critique of that sentiment: “The Ability to Kill Does Not Make America Great.” Wright went on to note, “The president says we can do anything we want because we can kill. We could not stop poverty rates from spiraling upward to a record-setting 14.3 percent of Americans in 2009, but we can kill so we are exceptional. One in four black and Latino families live below the poverty line now, and as a result America's child poverty rate—one in five kids—is the second worst among rich nations, behind Mexico. But we can kill, so we are great.”

The world was not a better place with Osama bin Laden in it. But the rejoicing that has followed his death—and the largely uncritical coverage of that bloodlust in the mainstream press—demands careful consideration. It shows that after a decade of hard lessons, a significant portion of the U.S. population is still mired in the Why-do-they-hate-us? mentality, unable to critically reflect on America's role in the world, let alone understand the consequences of American military and economic policy.

Here's what we should remember: The U.S. is engaged militarily in four countries (let's not overlook Colombia) and has operatives and “advisers” in uncounted others. By the most conservative estimates, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians—including thousands of children—have died in U.S. military operations since 9/11. Drone strikes in impoverished Pakistani villages stoke resentment against our imperiousness. And as if to prove the point, people who can't find Pakistan on a map—and who are happy to remain blissfully unaware of the names of the dead or the consequences that follow—take to the streets to cheer the murder of a ruthless giant-killer whom we ourselves had a hand in creating.

How does the press figure into all of this? Better to ask, How doesn't the press figure into all of this? As scary as it might be to report facts that fickle news consumers don't want to hear, catering to willful ignorance isn't journalism. It's propaganda.

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 J. Terry Todd

It's the triumph of the mediated “Old World” spectacle this week, with London's royal wedding and the May Day beatification of Pope John Paul II in Rome.

Of course, the event in Rome is much more compelling, religion-wise. The Archbishop of Canterbury plays a bit part in the fairytale romance of British royal weddings, but in ancient Vatican City rites, the popes – both living and dead – play the major roles.

Predictably, coverage of the beatification has included retrospectives of John Paul's 26-year papacy, as well as Q-and-A's about the sainthood process of the Roman Catholic Church. Stephan Faris' reportage at Time employs a conflict narrative, focusing on critics of the beatification who blame John Paul II for his silence as the Church's sex scandals unfolded. Other media accounts fixate on the planned display of John Paul's blood. Of the beatification's spectacular elements – the pageantry, the crowds, the costumed arcana – the exhibition of a vial of the late pontiff's blood is sure to be the most offensive to rationalist sensibilities. Which may explain why many media accounts, like the Guardian's, carry the Vatican's explanation that John Paul's blood is still liquid because it was treated with anticoagulants at the time it was taken from the Pope during his dying days.

The best analysis I've read of the workings of the Catholic sainthood process is John Alan's BBC report, which relates how John Paul II himself enacted reforms to create a “faster, simpler and cheaper” saint-making process. For me, the takeaway in Alan's piece is how cultural realities and PR concerns shape the roster of potential saints. For instance, Alan speculates that the large number of women beatified in recent years is intended to signal that the Church isn't “hostile toward women.”

There's a related angle to the story, one hidden in plain view, and that's the degree to which religion is imbricated with the global culture of celebrity. (It's true not only of the Vatican, of course, but of the Dharamsala court of the Dalai Lama and just about every other religious establishment.)

Time's coverage of the beatification includes a link to a retrospective of pictures by the late photojournalist Gianni Giansanti, widely recognized as John Paul II's “unofficial photographer,” who, we're told, also documented the life of fashion designer Valentino. But the most revealing of the story's links is the reprint of a Worldcrunch article titled “At Home with the Pope: Inside Benedict XVI's Daily Life (and Menu).”  Meet Loredana, the Pope's “queen of the kitchen,” who works with Carmela to prepare the Pope's meals. The Pope's kitchen has onyx counter-tops! The Pope's favorite dessert is tiramisu! Lights. Camera. Cue the selective details of a celebrity's private life laid bare. It seems as if Benedict, Barack and Michelle, William and Kate and Lady Gaga have more in common than we might think.

The packaging of the pontificate did not begin under John Paul II. After all, it was the jet-setting Paul VI who inaugurated the era of papal travel, making it one of the essential components of the modern papacy. But it was John Paul II, with his relentless globe-trotting and his ability to strike a pose, who really unleashed the papacy's celebrity potential. The Catholic system of sainthood is particularly well suited to a global culture of celebrity, and John Paul II – in death just as much as in life – is an especially presentable saint-celebrity.

When the British Catholic intellectual G. K. Chesterton visited New York's Times Square in 1922, he sardonically noted that the commercial world had stolen the passion and excitement that had once belonged to sacred realms. What Chesterton could not have anticipated was how modern Catholicism, in cahoots with a 24/7 media culture, would take back those “colours and fire” by turning the culture of celebrity to serve its own ends.

Will John Paul eventually be elevated to sainthood? How could he not be? His fans demand it, as they did on the day of his funeral, with shouts of “Santo subito!” – Sainthood now! Have electronic media disenchanted our world? As you tune in or log on to the coverage of events at Westminster Abbey and St. Peter's–along with tens of millions of other consumers…er, believers–see whether the answer comes to you.

J. Terry Todd is Associate Professor of American Religious Studies at Drew University. The author of many articles on religion in 20th-century America, Terry is especially interested in religious conflicts over family life and sexuality, and how Christian ideas and practices shape U.S. politics and mass media.

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist recently profiled in The New Yorker, sounds like the smartest person I will never meet. Truly, just trying to keep up with what Eagleman is currently working on sequentially taxed, depressed and delighted me.

Don't expect a rehash here. Suffice to say when Eagleman wrote his dissertation he kept a bucket of potatoes under his desk, microwaved one when he was hungry and ate as he typed. (The article did not explain whether he used a fork or just took really big bites.) Equally crazy-making: Soon after Eagleman's published a book of short stories conjuring 40 variations of the afterlife, the musician Brian Eno helped stage a reading that has now morphed into an opera. The two then collaborated on a project examining whether drummers' brains are different from the rest of ours. (They seem to be.)

Running through Eagleman's various projects are fundamental spiritual concerns: What makes us human; how do we know what's real; who is my “I”? As he told The New Yorker, “I'm not saying, 'Here is the answer.' I'm just celebrating the vastness of our ignorance.” Accordingly, Eagleman calls himself a Possibilian—a belief system capacious enough for a secular Jew who became a teen-age atheist and now wants something more.

To wit, consider this passage from the profile: “From the unfathomed complexity of brain tissue–'essentially an alien computational material'–to the mystery of dark matter, we know too little about our own minds and the universe around us to insist on strict atheism, he said. 'And we know far too much to commit to a particular religious story. Why not revel in the alternatives?'”

When Eagleman reveled on a radio show, he expressed hope of growing his movement beyond its membership of one. Now almost a thousand Facebook members identify their religion as Possibilianism. Here's the basic possibility that I see: People want new ways to think about deep connections where labels like “religion” or “science” don't necessarily have to apply. These realities are as pressing to anyone wondering whether their computer is smarter than they are–and what does smart mean anyway?—as they are to devotees of “The Singularity” and to brainiacs like Eagleman.

I liked The New Yorker profile because Eagelman's intellectual commitments were presented as all of a piece. It wouldn't have made sense to distinguish his ontological concerns from his scientific ones. In fact, writer Burkhard Bilger makes clear that Eagleman might have had a harder time of it had not Nobel Prize winner Frances Crick begun mainstreaming the study of consciousness—a move blocked for a lot of the 20th century by the Skinnerian paradigm of mind-as-machine.

Increasingly, students tell me they want to write about science and religion. “What about?” I ask them, hoping it's not the conflict that intrigues them or an equally soggy interest in a mushy mash-up. The Eagleman profile suggests we need less writing on those topics and more about the vast possibilities that exist both within and beyond us.

Diane Winston

by Richard Flory

Shocking! According to the New York Times, there are gay and lesbian students at evangelical colleges, and they actually want to be recognized by their schools for the people they are, not as some sort of sexual rehabilitation project. Perhaps this is not exactly shocking; rather, it is another story among several over the last few years documenting the changing relationship between evangelicals and homosexuality (for example, see here, here and here). The New York Times article, like another recent story by Cathleen Falsani, focuses on the rise in the number of gay and lesbian student groups organizing on Christian college campuses.

At Biola University, where I taught for several years, homosexuality among students, faculty and staff members was an open secret, as it is within most evangelical organizations. But according to the university's bylaws and public relations officials, there are no gay or lesbian students, and certainly not any staff or faculty who identify as homosexual.

The recent stories in the New York Times and other news outlets, coupled with the outward expressions of belief at Biola and other evangelical schools, suggest that evangelicals have always opposed homosexuality. That notion hinges on the fact that the guiding documents of their organizations, particularly at evangelical colleges and universities, include prohibitions against sexual behavior outside of marriage, whether hetero- or homosexual. Yet this depiction of evangelical culture doesn't quite square with the history of the schools that serve as its intellectual anchors.

Explicit prohibitions against extramarital sex appeared only after veterans from the Second World War began to enroll at Christian colleges. These prohibitions—generally the core components of the “codes of conduct” at such schools—thus evolved in response to developments in the larger society that threatened the social-moral worldview of the school and its supporters. While it is true that many of the prohibitions were, and remain, oriented toward controlling sexual behavior (and, more broadly, toward reinforcing evangelical notions of proper gender identity and roles), up until the 1970s the rules were geared almost exclusively for male-female relationships. From the 1970s on, however—just as American society began to experience the “sexual revolution,” and the gay community began to take a more public role in American culture—additional rules appeared that specifically proscribed homosexual behavior.

The importance of evangelical colleges and universities has to do with what they represent about the present and future state of evangelicalism. For evangelicals, their colleges and universities are a safe harbor where young people can ask important questions about their faith as they prepare for a career. They also function as a fortress from which evangelical scholars can critique secular society as well as the dire state of secular higher education and otherwise warn against the perils of sending evangelical youth into the world before they are adequately prepared for the inevitable conflict of values in a pluralistic society.

To outside observers, evangelical colleges represent the best and the worst that evangelicalism has to offer. On the one hand, these schools can appear to be institutions of indoctrination that actively repress young peoples' natural desires to expand their horizons and to experience new things—whether intellectual or sexual. On the other, stories like the recent New York Times piece usually present the valiant few—whether lone faculty members or gay and lesbian organizers—who attempt to subvert the repressive moral tenets of their schools.

Christian colleges and universities are important institutions within the evangelical subculture; they are also much more complex than either their supporters or outside observers usually realize. There are a number of questions that reporters could pursue to get a deeper understanding of these schools and their influence on the lives of their students and staff, as well as their role in the wider evangelical community and society at large.

First, are the kinds of groups described in the Times article truly representative of younger evangelical attitudes toward gay and lesbian identity? There are conflicting survey results that suggest that younger evangelicals are either more liberal or as conservative as their parents in their attitudes toward homosexuality—including issues like gay marriage. Second, what threat does homosexuality really represent to evangelicals? And finally, do proscriptions against “homosexual behavior,” as distinct from gay or lesbian identity, allow for the possibility that a celibate or otherwise “non-practicing” gay or lesbian person could be a fully accepted member—or even a leader—of an evangelical college, seminary or church?

At Biola, students would often approach anyone who was perceived as open and accepting to talk about their struggle to reconcile their sexual identity with their understanding of Christianity—at least the version they'd been given. The powerful alchemy at work in that kind of spiritual crucible shouldn't be underestimated, either by evangelicals themselves or by reporters who want to explore how the evolution of evangelicalism will likely shape the wider culture.

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).