A newspaper buddy who worked (even as I write “worked” I wonder if a thesaurus might have a more accurate term: a fulsome word that evokes the 15-hour days, coffee-addled nights, hapless stake-outs, nowhere interviews, blown deadlines, spiked stories, clueless editors and then the breaking-news-with-a-front-page-byline-rush that made her, and maybe you, give up way too much for far too long) at the Baltimore Sun was fired Tuesday. Security guards escorted her from the building where she'd toiled for 20-plus years. She was one of 61 staffers—one third of the newsroom—who were laid off this week.

In a parallel bid to cut costs, the Dallas Morning News ended its religion beat, exiling its two former religion reporters to the 'burbs from where, we're assured, they can be plucked should a major story—hmm, the Second Coming—break.

Both examples should lay to rest any misconception that newspapers, as corporate entities, care about the news, much less their communities and employees. The decades when great families ran newspapers as private plantations, mingling with the townsfolk and being gracious to the help—are gone. The new masters have made their priorities transparent: the only question is who goes next.

But that does not mean the profession is doomed. Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I work at a journalism school, my academic training is in history, and my ring says “this too shall pass.” When it does, we need to be prepared. The blogosphere is filled with hopeful futuristic scenarios, and this one, at The American Prospect, sees public media 2.0 as an alternative to the legacy media. Authors Jessica Clark and Patricia Aufderheide admit that public media 1.0—whether NPR, PBS, CSPAN or foundation-backed documentaries—”was accepted as important but rarely loved.” Sapped by weak support and caught in the cultural crossfire, many of these news outlets could not meet their own objectives. But public media 2.0, with enhanced and expanded opportunities for participation through multiplatform projects, has the potential to inspire active and engaged publics.

This new world, freed from corporate poobahs more afraid of offending advertisers, subscribers and officials than pledged to speak truth to power, will need journalists to report the news. (Admittedly, sorting out the roles and responsibilities that differentiate “professional” journalists from citizen journalists will be a challenge.) Moreover, I have no doubt that a good portion of that news will reflect the impact of religious and ethical convictions on issues, decisions and activities at the individual and corporate levels. (Notwithstanding recent polls on the demise of religion, reports of its passing are greatly exaggerated. Read Nathan Schneider's review of two new books for some reasons why.)
 
Public media 2.0 offers a both/and solution: There is room for journalists who specialize in religion and for generalists who integrate it into their stories. The former may find a home in long-form narratives, and the latter will need expertise to report on religious and ethical issues that arise in the ongoing coverage of courts, police, health care, education, government and so on. Now more than ever, journalists need to be familiar with the hows and whys that induce people to lobby, vote, fight and kill for what they believe to be true, right and good. As specialty beats wither and experts lose their jobs, journalism educators will reconceptualize the content of their classes to meet the need for critical thinking and indepth knowledge as well as for the mastery of new media skills.

I am appalled by the Sun's treatment of its workers, and I am distressed by the Morning News' decisions. But this is the world we live in. Another world clamors to be born, and it is there I focus my attention. I don't teach students to be print reporters ready for the religion beat, I help them become multimedia journalists who understand that almost every story reflects the human need for meaning and purpose. That's why my students need to ask the hard questions, engage the tricky issues and come back with great pictures.

Diane Winston
 

A UCLA undergraduate secretly tapes a counseling session at a Planned Parenthood center and posts the encounter on YouTube. In a five-minute mini-drama, a nursing aide (later fired) tells the young woman, who says she is 13, not to report that her partner was a much older man. Across the country in a Cape Cod hospital, a per diem nurse speaks to a dying patient about the afterlife. She, too, is subsequently dismissed.

Where and when should ethics, spirituality and religion intersect with health care—and how do we evaluate, much less report, on front line service providers who make tough, in-the-moment decisions about what to say to patients? In a comparison of two recent stories, the Cape Cod Times provides a richer context for evaluating a controversial call than its counterpart in Los Angeles.

Granted the Los Angeles Times story is more complicated. Lila Rose, the undercover videographer, is actually a 20-year old pro-life activist. The “gotcha”—catching Planned Parenthood clinics that fail to report statutory rape—is not new, but the outreach is. Rose and her friends edit almost hour long tapes into snappy, music-filled segments that provide a fresh face to the 30-plus year drive to roll back Roe v. Wade.

Although the Los Angeles Times devoted ample space to the story, several questions went unanswered: why did the nursing aide want to sidestep statutory rape charges and what did she do about the girl's allegedly underage status? Also left hanging was the ethics of lying. Rose, who would only provide email answers to the newspaper's questions, agreed the issue was “complicated” but that in the face of “genocide,” the ends justified the means.

But who is Rose? In the closing grafs, we learn she grew up in San Jose and attended a part-time Christian school. But what about her current situation: Does she attend church in Los Angeles and is her pastor aware of her extracurricular work? What does she study and what are her career plans? Does she use other social networking sites to advance the cause?

The Cape Cod paper paints a fuller picture of Julie Peterson, the dismissed nurse, and the context of her “controversial” discussion. According to this story, Peterson, like other nurses, was caught between wanting to provide spiritual comfort and eschewing religious sectarianism. Scholar Wendy Cadge elucidates the nurses' dilemma on Religion Dispatches. Cadge notes that many Americans turn to religion and spirituality when they, or a loved one, is hospitalized, and that nurses are particularly attentive to spirituality.

“A recent survey of 299 nurses working at a university hospital found that 84% think there is something spiritual about the care they provide (in comparison with 24% who think there is something religious about the care they provide). Only 4% think that promoting spirituality is at odds with the real purpose of medicine.”

That brings me back to the gaps in the Los Angeles Times story. What was the Planned Parenthood nursing aide trying to accomplish? Did spirituality or ethics enter into her counsel? Likewise, what about Lila Rose—how can two competing ethical claims be fairly reported and evaluated?

Diane Winston
 

Religious progressives ought to be having a field day. Obama is as close to a fellow traveler as has occupied the White House in decades, and the cultural tide is turning their way. Same sex marriage —check. Environmentalism—check. Moderated policies on abortion and birth control—check.  Transparency in government—check. Closing down Guantanamo and ending government-sanctioned torture—check.  

But the recent announcement of advisory council members to the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships set off a debate over who the real progressives really are.

Over at Religion Dispatches, a rash of recent posts made public the progressives' in-house fight. Mark Silk began the thread by citing differences between the “rabble rousers” and the “DC-based 'Religious Industrial Complex” prompting Frederick Clarkson to chide him for trivializing the “longer-term power struggle between progressives and centrists who want to pull the Democratic Party to the right.” That left it to Delwin Brown to explain the historical context of disagreements between “accomodationists” and “purists” and Diana Butler Bass to call for an addenda to Brown's typology.

Fact is, events continue whether or not religious progressives have folks lined up to speak truth to power or, better yet, deliver a savvy sound bite. Truth is, a spectrum of strategies can ensure change in both the short and long runs. What's needed now is a compelling narrative to frame what progressives want to happen as well as spokespeople to communicate the vision.

The American Values Network is an example of what not to do. Pastor Dan has a thoughtful critique of Burns Strider's new site so I'll just go for the gut. The site looks amateurish and the text is thick with platitudes. Here's a story I'd like to see: why do religious conservatives always “get” the media (that is, master its use as well as attract its attention) while religious progressives seem flummoxed by public communication?

Diane Winston

By Andrea Tabor

Trend trackers sure got a jolt to the system with that ARIS study (the one that found the numbers of “nones” were up while believers are down).  Since its release, the secular and religious press have been reeling.  It's hard to believe that Newsweek's “Decline and Fall of Christian America” still has the blogosphere abuzz. Why has the idea that New England is turning atheist managed to hold the microsecond-long attention span of the Internet for more than two weeks?

The evidence is fairly persuasive.  The number of atheists in America has nearly doubled, and the Northeast has gone into the “none” column.  But on the Sunday after Easter, when America's remaining Christians heard the story of doubting Thomas, two men are expressing their own doubts in the nation's ability to go secular.

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, authors of the new book “God Is Back,” are standing behind American religion, and insisting that we're just in another period of reinventing our collective spirituality.  They rather cheekily point out in their Wall Street Journal column that “a fifth of the 'atheists' in a recent Pew Survey said that they believed in God, a semantic confusion rich in meaning.”  They also remind us that TIME Magazine made the very same claim on its Easter edition cover: “Is God Dead?”—back in 1966.

For Micklethwait and Wooldrige, American religion remains the capitalistic enterprise it has always been, spurred forward by “pastorpreneurs,” a term that applies to George Whitefield as well as Rick Warren.

It seems that the rest of the press is caught in the crossfire of this debate between Newsweek and the believers.  The result is a flurry of confusing and contradictory coverage.  According to one article, “religion is growing,” then says another, “religion is doomed.”  One Seattle PI blogger even offered the dizzying headline, “Christian America is shrinking and expanding at the same time.”

None of this really seems to move the discussion forward.  The interesting question to me is: how is religion evolving?  In a month of so much forgettable reporting on religion, the story that stood out for me was the AP's Jay Lindsay's profile of a humanist chaplain at Harvard, and the new idea of building a congregation without the notion of God.

Very few of the original American branches of Protestantism have persisted unaltered since the 19th century.  Some look very different, others have died out completely, and still others have taken root. The role of reporters, bloggers and pundits shouldn't be to proclaim the death of religion, (after all wouldn't that put some of them out of a job?) but rather to spot what new forms American religion takes next.
    
 

What to make of the veritable cascade of religion coverage? Last week the New York Times magazine profiled Rabbi Capers Funnye, an African American Jewish leader with a cousin in the White House, and this week it spotlighted the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a Pentecostal denomination that hopes to revive American Christianity. A rich and deep portrait of this Nigerian export, the piece had a lot of history and context, but I could not figure out the denomination's theology. Is it part of the New Apostolic Reformation, the prosperity gospel movement or an indigenous Pentecostalism that, drawing on African customs and beliefs, looks different than our homegrown varieties? Given the degree of influence the church seeks, I wanted to fully understand its spiritual moorings.

On other fronts, Time and Newsweek get A's for effort, and the Washington Post's On Faith blog continues to grind it out, offering opinions on everything from health and healing to God and government.

But more is not necessarily better and much of the news media's copy circles around familiar topics: religion and politics, kooks and spooks (however sophisticated the gloss: see New York Times magazine), holiday fare and conflict. The legacy media rarely seeks out stirrings beyond institutional walls or involving regular folks in search of meaning and/or community (as opposed to ecstasy, conflict or glossalalia).

If the polls are to be believed and the number of the non-affiliated is dramatically rising, reporters need to be digging into the “nones.” They can't all be atheists and secular humanists (the bus ads aren't that good) so where, when and how do they find reasons to get out of bed everyday?

One place to look is the revamped Killing the Buddha, “a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches.” Led by a new editorial team, the site has upped its verve quotient with lots of new contributors exploring how they and their friends make sense of the world. It's a good venue for narrative journalism on religion/spirituality, and an even better place for cultural pulse-taking. Another resource is Gary Laderman's forthcoming book, “Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, The Living Dead and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States.” Laderman looks at the religiosity of secular sites and shows the unexpected ways in which American culture is rife with meaning making.     

In the weeks ahead I hope to identify other sites, texts and resources where new and alternate ideas and approaches to religion can be found—all suggestions welcome.

Diane Winston

With the ostensible demise of the Christian Right, journalists are scurrying to find the next big thing. What new narrative will explain religion's role in society and where the faithful are headed? I wouldn't count out the Religious Right just yet, but I'm all for new stories, too.

Jon Meacham offers a big one over at Newsweek: the end of Christian America. Meacham cites survey data, William James, St Augustine and the Founding Fathers, to prove we are entering a post-Christian dispensation.  

“There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but he is less of a force in American politics and culture that at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.”

Sounds plausible, but it usually does. Observers proffered similar themes in the 1950s when prayer and Bible reading were banned in public schools, and many churches—following Norman Vincent Peale—turned to Christianity lite. Another alarm rang in the late 1960s when Aquarians and Eastern cults siphoned off Christian youth, and congregations bent over backwards to be “relevant.” Even in the 1980s, when the Religious Right was on the rise, doom-and-gloomers saw abortion, gays and feminism, spelling an end to Christianity as they knew it.

This may well be a post-Christian moment; after all, the numbers do show a rise in unaffiliated Americans. But whether this signals a loosening of the cultural and social ties that bind Christianity to the American experiment, or a transitional period of do-your-own-thing'ism, is an open question.

Then again, we may be loosening some ties only to bind others. That's the case Bruce Wilson makes in Religion Dispatches. Wilson's article on Third Wave Christianity explains a 300-million member movement that's caught on worldwide. Also called the New Apostolic Reformation, this form of Pentecostalism first sprang up in (no surprise here) Southern California. A central tenet is “spiritual mapping,” locating spiritual demons in a city and then praying until they are dislodged.

“In the period of the late 1980s through the early 1990s, a group of quintessentially American tinkerers grafted new practices of 'spiritual mapping' and 'spiritual warfare' onto a peculiar and radical theological substrate emerging from the Latter Rain and healing revivals that burst out in Canada and North American during the late 1940s. They molded their hybridized new Christianity into a standardized package of ideas and practices such that, by the late 1990s, they began exporting the product from Colorado Springs [Ted Haggard was one of the movement's leaders] to both the domestic American market and internationally at an astonishing rate. It was as newfangled as Henry Ford's Model T had been and, like Ford's car, it quickly became established on every continent but Antarctica.”

How could it be that so few newspapers have reported on a 300 million member movement? In a follow-up interview, Wilson explains why. Basically, the story sounds crazy, reporters weren't looking at religion and politics globally, and this version is so different than our domestic religious right that it didn't register.

Whether or not you buy Wilson's scenario, I'd think twice before writing off either right-wing politicized Christianity or the ongoing permutations of Christian influence in American society. Predicting milestones makes for good headlines but following on-the-ground developments usually leads to a more solid story.

And speaking of better stories, I want to commend my local paper for its creative holiday fare. With Passover and Easter coming up, the Los Angeles Times profiled an artist who weaves palm fronds into crosses, flowers and geometric shapes, and it reported on a new Jewish trend—kosher for Passover upscale spirits. I can't wait for the follow-up—the pros and cons of swapping Manischevitz for kosher tequila.

Diane Winston

I like speculative fiction so I enjoyed Gershom Gorenberg's leisurely exploration of why there is no Gandhi or Martin Luther King on the West Bank. Even more engrossing than Gorenberg's fantasy of a peaceful Palestinian protest in 2012 is his chronicling of actual attempts to deploy (or at least discuss) nonviolent civil disobedience against Israel.

We learn about Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian Christian who taught non-violent resistance during the 1980s. Awad, who now teaches at American University, attracted some supporters, but his lack of charisma—compounded by opposition from the PLO (Israeli authorities were almost equally hostile) doomed him. In June 1988, he was deported to the United States.

Gorenberg analyzes Awad's influence on the first intifada, which, according to some observers, adopted non-violent strategies. Says Goren:  “As with every piece of Israeli-Palestinian history, there are two stories of the uprising. What actually happened bursts the seams of both stories. The intifada included the fury and something quieter, although just as determined.”

No summary can do justice to the stories Gorenberg has elegantly assembled. But the larger point is that he's offered a perspective on the Israel-Palestine narrative that is rarely told, at least to audiences of mainstream American news outlets.

Sara Posner accomplishes a similarly masterful act of narrative jujitsu in the current FundamentaList. At this point in time, I expect everyone knows about the Obama brouhaha at Notre Dame. Pro-life proponents among the faculty, alumni and student body are lambasting the university's decision to invite the president to speak at commencement.

Rather than rehearse the he said/she said line—which is the gist of most news reports—Posner uses the ruckus to review the current status of the abortion issue. Read the piece for yourself, but Posner argues that the administration's “abortion reduction” rhetoric pleases neither side. Moreover, the newly reconstituted Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFBNP), which is handling the issue, is keeping a tight lid on its plans. Posner knows OFBNP met with conservatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women of America, but she can't find out who the other discussants will be:

“Who else is the OFBNP meeting with? The White House has not responded to my repeated requests for a list. So much for White House transparency. It's odd, too, if the secrecy is at the behest of the religious activists who say they want their voice heard in the public square.”

Posner is onto something. Following OFBNP and the Obama Administration's attempts to find “common ground” is going to be a much richer story than handicapping the Fighting Irish's intramural fight.

Diane Winston

Templeton's best efforts notwithstanding, most religion reporters don't know much about science nor do science reporters “get” religion. And with much of the news business teetering on insolvency, I don't expect general assignment reporters, mustered to fill in gaps left by the demise of specialty beats, to do much better. So the prospect of moving beyond the science versus religion saga—this week illustrated by the Texas State Board of Education's deadlocked vote on the teaching of the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution is not likely to improve in the near future.

But if a reporter did want to find some new and interesting ideas for writing about religion and science, she would not have to go much further than her own Mac or PC. SEARCH, a magazine exploring the intersection of science, religion and culture, has really smart writers penning surprisingly appealing pieces on everything from astronomy to health care to foreskins.

SEARCH is edited by the very busy Peter Manseau, author of last year's award winning novel, The Butcher's Daughter and this year's newly released Rag and Bone, a non-fiction account of religious relics. In his spare time, Manseau has managed to cajole articles from P.J. O'Rourke about his hemorrhoidal cancer, Adam Gopnick on atheism and Asra Nomani on Hindu-Muslim violence. There are also wonderful wild card essays, such as religion scholar Stephen Prothero's piece on the Dao of poet Mary Oliver:

“Oliver, who has just released a new book, The Truro Bear and Other Adventures (Beacon, October 2008) is neither a scientist nor a preacher. But like Henry David Thoreau of Transcendentalist fame she is a naturalist whose attention to what used to be called the Book of Nature borders on both devotion and experimentation. Her poems work in my course [on death and immortality] because they are animated by death, and they work on me because they speak about the mysteries of mortality in a language that feels like home. Perhaps that is because, like Oliver, I live on Cape Cod, so I am familiar with the fiddler crabs, great horned owls, humpback whales, irises, goldenrod, and honeysuckle that populate her poems, I suspect, however, that her poetry vibrates at frequencies close to my own because I share with her something of a Buddhist sensibility, particularly when it comes to an awareness of the transiency of things.”

SEARCH is not a perfect publication. It doesn't strive for balance, objectivity or political correctness—and many of the contributors seem to be piggybacking on previously published work. But it's the kind of intelligent effort that even disgruntled readers have to admire.

Consider Kenneth Lux, writing to cancel his subscription: “It seems that the magazine has adopted the position that ID [intelligent design] is merely another approach to 'Creationism' or, worse, religious fundamentalism, and no writers favorable to it are ever represented in your pages. [Lux then makes a case for ID and directs readers to an article on it.] In any event, I wish you the best with what is otherwise an excellent and important publication. Maybe I'll be back with you in the future.”

See you soon, Ken.

Diane Winston

Tired of war, Wall Street and Barack around the clock? Check out Monica Rozenfeld on tattooed Jews.

“Evocative, disrespectful, proud, antithetic: these are just some of the words used to describe Jews with tattoos. Seth Alamar, who has 30-odd tattoos, calls most of his markings religious or 'Jewish.' He has heard all the reasons why a Jew should not get tattooed—including the false myth that he would not be buried in a Jewish cemetery. But despite all the controversy surrounding ink in the Jewish faith, he did not think twice.”  

Rozenfeld does a solid job of explaining why tattoos are controversial as well as debunking some widespread misconceptions—including prohibitions against tattooed Jews being buried in Jewish cemeteries or participating in Jewish rituals.

Even so, many Jews have a deep-seated revulsion against what they perceive as defacing the body and enacting belief in contrary behavior.

“Some want to be evocative. When they walk into a room, they want people to know they are a proud Jew,” Rabbi [Niles] Goldstein said. “If you're really serious about being a Jew, go out and be a Jew. I'm not saying go wear a kippah (yarmulke), but go do Jewish work – do social justice, make Jewish art.”

Although the Jew tattoo story hasn't had much play (ok–the New York Times did it last summer), that may change if Tattoo Jew, “an examination about the ways in which we all express and define our cultural identity” gets traction. The film's website has a great spread of Jewish body art.

Why is this a good story? In 2007, a Pew poll found 40 percent of Americans between 26 and 40 have at least one tattoo. I knew the line was crossed when I saw the inked arms of a kindergarten mom at my daughter's elementary school. Young Jews—like young Christians a decade ago—are reveling in the transgressive aesthetics of embodying one's faith: tattoos as witness. The poobahs push back and both sides have to negotiate what “faithful” means for a new generation. There's drama, currency, conflict and best of all—great art.

Diane Winston
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I don't know if Robert Wright will like being compared to Gaius Baltar (so many choices but this and that for starters), but his piece in The Atlantic reminds me of the sexy scientist's unexpected sermonizing in the Battlestar Galactica finale. Desperate to stop an end-times showdown between rival theologies, Baltar said it was in the adversaries' power to break the cycle of violence: “It requires a leap of faith. It requires that we live in hope, not fear.”

Wright's piece may have lacked Baltar's pithy poetry, but his message was similar: the Abrahamic faiths must find a way to get along.  Arguing that globalization can spur religious tolerance, Wright notes that “either people of different faiths, ethnicities and nationalities get better at seeing the perspective of one another, and acknowledging the moral worth of one another, or chaos ensues.”

One could quibble with aspects of Wright's argument just as bloggers are having a field day with BSG's woo-woo moralizing. I thought Wright's extended analysis of St. Paul's entrepreneurial genius was a bit too cozy for contemporary readers, making our market-oriented perspective seem normative when it actually helped create many of today's worst problems. Then again, all good prophets speak in the vernacular and Wright knows his readers.

The negative proof of his point was underscored in recent days by news that religious zealotry may have played a role in the Israeli Army's campaign in Gaza. McClatchy News Service, breaking the story in the US last week, wrote: “Rabbis affiliated with the Israeli Army urged troops heading into Gaza to reclaim what they said was God-given land – effectively turning the 22-day Israeli intervention into a religious war, according to the testimony of a soldier who fought in Gaza.”

Needless to say, Israeli soldiers are not alone in claiming to fight a holy war. As Wright notes Christians and Muslims have used the same rationale to kill civilians indiscriminately. But the pervasiveness of the practice does not justify it.  That's Wright's point as well as Ronald D. Moore's, BSG's executive producer.

Most rank-and-file journalists would say they don't write fiction (like Moore does) or extended opinion pieces (which is what Wright has done). Their job is to report the news from a balanced perspective. But “report,” “news” and “balance” are slippery terms that are constructed by choices journalists and editors make about what is important, whose voice should be heard and how a story is told.

Thinking about alternatives is hard, especially at a moment when many reporters' jobs are insecure and the future of news seems uncertain. But for those able to take a leap of faith, peace journalism is worth contemplating as a destination.  Despite its cringe-inducing name, peace journalism is a compelling approach “that provides a new road map tracing the connections between journalists, their sources, the stories they cover and the consequences of their actions – the ethics of journalistic intervention.”

Despite all the good reasons why peace journalism ought to gain traction in today's world, there are just as many obstacles that prevent its adoption. Some are practical (how to teach it), others are ideological (critics question its objectivity) and still others are market-driven. The corporations that own the news believe that fear, not hope, sells. Peace and tolerance may be what we desire, but hatred and war make money.

Diane Winston