A boffo conference, a grad student with a Washington Post byline, and a brand-new journalism school director – we're having a good week here at USC Annenberg. Yes we're proud of J-student Lilly Fowler and we're excited to welcome Geneva Overholser, but we're giving pride of place (at least for reporters, policy-makers and researchers) to Friday's gathering “Re/Covering Islam: who, when, where, why and how the news mediates religion and politics.”

The conference is open to the public and if you'd like to join us, here's the agenda and how to RSVP.

Re/Covering Islam is organized under the auspices of the Religion, Identity, and Global Governance project at USC, a Luce-funded initiative that “seeks to increase America's capacity for international understanding with new focus on deepening public understanding of religion as a critical but often neglected factor in policy issues throughout the world.”  To that end, Friday's speakers will look at the ways in which American and Arab language media help to construct Islamic identity and the impact of these representations on politics,public diplomacy and public opinion.

The morning's first panel focuses on Islam and Muslims in Arab-language news media, with special emphasis on new media. A second panel explores the circulation of images and their impact on the public. Following lunch, a final panel examines coverage of Islam in the (mainstream) American news media.

Introductory remarks will be made by Peter Kovach, UCLA's Diplomat in Residence; Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland will deliver the keynote speech; and USC's Philip Seib will offer closing comments.

While we're gathered in Los Angeles, a similarly-themed seminar is ongoing at the University of London. “Framing Muslims” is a collaborative network of American and European scholars interested in the “cultural, artistic, structural and legal structures which 'frame' contemporary debates about Muslims in the West.”

Last but not least, a USC/UCLA- led project with links to the Middle East made news this past week. The Israeli-Palestinian Archeology Working Group Agreement, hammered out over three years, was announced in Jerusalem. Notes the Chicago Tribune, “With a nudge from American colleagues, Israeli and Palestinian archeologists have drawn up a blueprint for sharing their intersecting cultural heritage—if and when peace comes to the Holy Land, where scholarly objectivity is often drowned out by nationalist passions.” Lynn Swartz Dodd, one of the two principal sponsors of the talks, is a member of USC's School of Religion.

In the April issue of First Things, Edward C. Green and Allison Herling Ruark offer their own journalistic intervention. In “AIDS and the Churches: Getting the StoryRight,” Green, a medical anthropologist who directs the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and Ruark, a research fellow there, offer a withering critique of a 2007 Georgetown University report on the churches' response to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

According to Green and Ruark, the problematic report, “Faith Communities Engage the HIV/AIDS Crisis,” is significant because it “reflects the thinking of many international organizations, including many of the faith-based organizations that respond to AIDS. This thinking is often drastically out of sync with the culture and the values of the beneficiaries. The Georgetown report claims to explore “development issues from the perspective of faith institutions, but in fact this report betrays a deep ambivalence about whether faith communities, particularly Christian churches, are part of the problem or part of the solution to AIDS.”

The article cites evidence that supports the efficacy of the ABC strategy (see Avert.org and USAid.gov) ) in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi among other nations. It also challenges “politically correct” assumptions that cite systemic problems—such as gender inequity, political instability, economic hardships—as a significant factor in the spread of AIDS in poor countries as opposed to  applying “old-fashioned” (a.k.a. politically incorrect and religiously conservative) remedies that call for “sexual responsibility, behavior change and morally based messages.” Or as the authors neatly sum up, “What the churches are called to do by their theology turns out to be what works best in AIDS prevention.”   

I'm an agnostic in this realm: I don't know enough about the issue to say who's on target and who's off the mark. I do know that First Things is smartly written, elegant and erudite, but way right of my own opinions. Nevertheless, this issue is too important to dismiss, which is why I welcome the discussion sparked by Green and Ruark. The mainstream media could do a lot more digging into the global HIV/AIDS crisis, and particularly the work of religious individuals, groups and NGOs in trying to stop its spread. How do religious workers negotiate religion and politics, theology and experience, cultural differences, systemic evils and individual choice? The explosion of faith-based development and relief work is both an important and underreported story—and a colorful, dynamic, complex one, too. It also has political ramifications as President Bush has been a strong proponent of ABC, providing substantial support for its implementation (see the Washington Post and ABC News).

So let's move the story forward. We all know that Bono and Rick Warren have made significant contributions to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, but who else is doing what with whom? Is it really as easy as ABC or do we need a higher calculus?

On a totally different wavelength, check out two fascinating stories about alternative religions. NPR's Day to Day is doing a three part series on a 1960s polygamous commune and TimesOnline had an absorbing first person piece about a blend of shamanism, Christianity and hallucinogens that's spreading worldwide. In both instances, reporters do a nice job of telling a story rather than judging, dissing or dismissing.

For two years I've taught a class called Religion, Media and Hollywood: Faith in TV that explores the ways in which television dramas embody lived religion. Lived religion encompasses the daily practices of faith and belief, and according to religion scholar Robert Orsi, it “cannot be separated from other practices of everyday life, from the ways human do other necessary and important things or form other cultural structures and discourses (legal, political, medical and so on. Nor can sacred spaces be understood in isolation from the places where these things are done (workplaces, hospitals, law courts, homes and streets) from the media used to them, or from the relationships constructed around them.”

Television dramas provide a window onto lived religion because their legal dilemmas, medical quandaries, and familial tribulations occur within long narratives arcs that permit us to develop relationships with characters. Their stories instruct, inform and inspire. When Jack Bauer tortures his own brother, we know his moral core—honed through sacrifice, suffering and uncompromising loyalty—remains intact. When Gregory House announces that he is God in the Princeton-Plainsboro hospital, we understand that his subsequent suspension of conventional medical ethics will be a desperate bid to save a dying patient. And when Grace Hanadarko strips down for yet another round of meaningless sex, we apprehend her struggle to overcome a childhood that ended with her priest's caress.

Very few people think that television has any religious meaning (unless you count televangelists, televised stories and the odd PBS documentary). But that's because they're not paying attention to how, what and why they watch. Even as growing numbers of Americans question traditional religion, the desire to find meaning, feel connected, and experience wonder remains. So, too, does the instinct to revel in stories that lay out our lives in larger-than-life dimensions. For this reason, I suspect the Bible stories, like many of our own most resonant narratives, were ripped from the headlines, and why television has become our society's central storyteller.

Which brings me to Battlestar Galactica.  I am amazed that so few students have watched it (much less grownups). But I assure them that once they get over the cheesy name and the sci-fi label, they will be hooked. This is a show that tackles religion and politics head-on, upside down and in-between.  From its initial premise—monotheistic robots decide that polytheistic humans have lost God's favor and deserve to die—to its questioning the morality of waterboarding, suicide bombing and cultural annihilation, BSG tackles the ripped-from-the-headlines stories that most series don't dare touch.

After a year-long hiatus, the series returns April 4 for its final season. Looming large are questions including: What constitutes being human? Whom can we trust? How do we create a just and peaceable society? In what can we believe? (And that's leaving aside the more basic issues of sex, power and who has the biggest guns.)

For newcomers and returnees, Salon had a great introduction and a helpful recap. Wired also welcomed BSG back as did newspapers nationwide from Los Angeles to New York.

If you want more than a 750-word story, check out “BSG 2007: The Politics, Poetics and Philosophy of Battlestar Galactica,” a one day symposium, whose papers you can access through Google Scholar. Or the Battlestar wiki for in depth scoop on plot, characters, religion and culture. Or the scores of fan sites where presequels, sequels, new myths, romances, games, and videos delve deep into the mysteries, battles and sexual entanglements that the series doesn't have time (or probably the inclination) to develop.

Battlestar Galactica takes religion seriously. Not in the nicey-nice, New Age Touched by an Angel way or the X-Files woo-woo, something's out there, supernatural style. Rather, in BSG, belief, faith, conviction are front and center for a people who have lived through a holocaust and are seeking a promised land. On the way, they encounter false prophets, great temptations, merciless enemies and their own short-sighted, stiff-necked, self-absorbed arrogance.

Sounds like a good story to me.

To hear executive producer Ron Moore's talk to my class, click here.

Two types of stories emerged in the wake of Barack Obama's March 18 speech on race, religion and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. One focuses on politics, the other on religion. Guess which gets more attention?

Data from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press indicates that the speech “is arguably the biggest political event of the campaign thus far”– with 85% of the public saying they've heard something about it.  Many voters disliked Wright's remarks but their feelings about the pastor did not affect their support for Obama, a finding corroborated by other polls.  So if nothing really changed, why is this still a story? Probably because the tangled web of race, religion and politics is too good for media and the blogosphere to give up especially when candidate Clinton is happy to keep it alive.

By comparison, the religion story is still developing. In many churches and synagogues, Obama's speech inspired sermons, meetings and discussions about race. In some instances, the focus is homiletics—and where Wright's sermons fit in the tradition of African American preaching.  According to the Chicago Tribune, “while the rhetoric may come across as harsh, experts say its goal is to convince bitter skeptics that reconciliation is indeed possible.” In San Francisco, pastors across religious, political and racial lines said Obama's speech “offered an opportunity to be open to others' experiences without automatically triggering the shame, guilt and strife such conversations usually entail.” And during a meeting of black ministers in Fort Worth, Wright was praised because he “dared to unwrap the flag from the cross.” (Another fascinating take on the speech and, by extension Wright's words, was a Washington Times article on the  generation gap among African Americans)

These themes reflect realities that don't usually make page one or get airtime on the evening news. The San Francisco story includes perspectives on race from an Asian church, the Forth Worth piece tackled theology, and the Chicago article went deep into the prophetic tradition in African American preaching. In each case, reporters are lifting up examples of how faith, belief and practices intersect with daily experiences and, by extension, enable churchgoers to consider the role of race in American politics and their own lives.

For many white Americans, especially in Southern churches, there's a feeling of déjà vu. When northern and southern Presbyterians, split since 1861, reunited in 1983, confronting racism was part of the process. Twelve years later, when the Southern Baptist Convention 'repented of racism,” members sought to confront an unhappy legacy. But it's one thing to apologize for racism at a time, place and manner of your own choosing. It's another to thing to begin a discussion when the oppressed start the dialogue.

Obama's speech is a milestone, whether it represents the end of his campaign, the beginning of his presidency or the state of race relations in the 21st century. It also offers a historic opportunity for American religious groups, one that deserves continued coverage.

How great to drive to work Monday and catch Morning Edition's interview with REM.  The seven-plus minute feature (with extras online) was tagged to the release of the band's 14th album, Accelerate.
After a promising tease, “the rock group REM isn't exactly religious but religious themes keep creeping into their lyrics,” lead vocalist Michael Stipe confessed that he came from a long line of Methodist ministers, and guitarist Peter Buck added that as Southerners they “swim in a sea of faith.” (What next I wondered: Would this explain their 1991 hit “Losing My Religion?”)

Host Steve Inskeep tried to stay on point, asking about the lyrics of “Houston,” a song Stipe wrote about the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and “Living Well is the Best Revenge,” the new CD's opening track. (I had attributed the aphorism to F. Scott Fitzgerald but turns out he got it from George Herbert, the 17th century Welsh poet and priest, which does turn things around.) But either Inskeep didn't push hard enough or the band didn't want to go very deep. So instead we learned Stipe thinks the Religious Right has twisted religion, that Buck comes from a long line of non-believers and that bassist and keyboardist Michael Mills attended church because he liked the music (actually those two last ones were online revelations.)

Don't misunderstand, I liked the segment, I stayed in my car just to hear it all. But why the disconnect between the intent and the actuality? (The story is headlined, “REM Tackles Songs of Faith and Revenge.”) That Stipe believes the Right misuses religion and that our national response to Katrina wasn't very Christian isn't new news – the band has been among the most politically progressive, activist and outspoken for years.  I wanted to know what happened when he ended that line of Methodist ministers, what Buck meant by “swimming in a sea of faith” (and how it affects their music) and which churches Mills visited most (and why).

I did learn what “Losing My Religion” was about but for that I had to go to Wikipedia. Remember all the religious imagery in the music video (angels, Hindu deities and Tevyes)? Turns out it was just poetic license. Stipe said the phrase referred to losing one's temper and that the song is about unrequited love. Maybe the group's been doing bait and switch on the religion angle for awhile.

If a child has ever asked you what Easter has to do with the Easter bunny (there is an answer and here's where to find it, you can appreciate the difficulty of reporting and writing the annual Easter Sunday story. Reconciling popular holiday customs with the theological mystery of the resurrection is not an easy assignment. And trying to find a new angle on either end is all the more hare-raising. (My spell check hasn't failed me, it is an Easter pun.)

Unlike Christmas, where some levity is allowed, Easter isn't appropriate for breezy human interest pieces or top ten lists. But as I rediscovered this year, it can be mixed with tried-and-true genres, including the weather story, the business story, and the food story. There also can be interesting hybrids (such as the food-and-business story),  topical stories (think of the environmental impact of all those candy wrappers) and stories that remind us why the religion beat used to be called “kooks and spooks.” (Note Coca-Cola is a  sponsor – “it's the real thing.”)

Then again, for those with basic questions, the straightforward Q&A works well. The Times Online featured ten things you didn't know about Easter, and the first one had me. I didn't know that the word Easter comes from the goddess Eostre, who was associated with the Spring equinox and whose symbols were the hare and the egg. (Another derivation is the Old English Eastre, which means from the East.)   And then I found a very helpful article that answered the one question the Times Online missed: Why is Easter a month earlier than Passover this year when the two usually coincide?

Of course, there's a weekend more of stories to come—and a goodly number will be on Easter. If I were an enterprising reporter, and wanted to pursue my own hybrid, I'd track the religion and politics beat. What will the Rev. Jeremiah Wright say about crucifixions, resurrections and new beginnings, and what might the Clintons, Obamas, and McCains glean on similar subjects?

Back in the day, my editors sent me to church every Sunday to see if I could find any news. I'd spend all day Friday working the phones—looking for a Sunday sermon that might have some bite. Then I'd head to church and pray that I didn't have to write a story that had nothing newsier than First Baptist's annual offering for foreign missions.

I swore that once I'd established my creds, I'd never ever cover Sunday sermons again. The real religion stories took place Monday through Friday in classrooms, courtrooms, boardrooms, and smoke-filled backrooms.

Looks like I was wrong.  The controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barak Obama's former pastor, suggests that my editors in Raleigh were onto something.

What they were onto was the gotcha story—the perfect storm of religion, politics and hypocrisy. They were hoping to catch a clergyman (they were mostly men in Raleigh during the mid-1980s) saying something that may have been heard one way  within the church family (“There's Pastor Joe on his soapbox again…”) and very differently when quoted in the newspaper (“That minister is a left-wing loony!”).

Accordingly, the avalanche of stories about Rev. Wright's remarks raises three very thorny questions for the public (I'll get to the actual people in the pews later.) The first: What are we to make of black anger spoken from the pulpit? The second: What is the appropriate response of congregants (political candidates or not) to that anger? The third: Are congregants responsible for their ministers' remarks?

In a speech Tuesday, Obama offered a “Yes, but” response. He clearly criticized Wright's most egregious remarks, but he also recalled the pastor whose message of love, hope and courage drew him to church and helped him to become a Christian. He alluded to the distance between sermonizing and practice by contrasting Wright's fiery words to his respectful behavior toward people of all races and religions, “As imperfect as he may be, he is like family to me…. He contains all the contradictions–the good and the bad– of the community he has served diligently for so many years.“

News stories and blogs have focused on the third question, and many criticize Obama for remaining in Wright's church. Are the stories justified? According to surveys, many Americans believe that religious commitment is essential for political candidates, so it follows that his/her spiritual formation is fair game for reporters.

But apply the principle equitably and consider the context (Is this a political connection or an ongoing relationship?) When Mike Huckabee was still in the race, he deep-sixed sermons from his ministerial days and few reporters tried to discover why. Likewise, John McCain has been backed by the Revs. Rod Parsley and John Hagee, but their inflammatory comments on Islam, Catholicism and liberal groups like Planned Parenthood haven't stirred much comment. Hillary Clinton is a longtime member of two conservative prayer groups, but few reporters have pursued her ties to The Fellowship.

Bottom line: Is it worse for Obama to remain in his church home than for McCain to accept Parsley's support, or for Clinton to pray with a secretive, politically conservative group? Most stories assume Obama is more culpable.  Why? The conclusion ignores a central fact of church membership: Few believers agree with everything their pastor says. As MJ Rosenberg writes, “He is my spiritual advisor not my political advisor.” Insofar as Wright was an advisor to Obama's campaign, what was the substance of his advice for the political arena?

Question two asks, “What should Obama have done about Wright's remarks?” Obama first distanced himself from Wright's remarks and then from Wright himself. Typically, candidates say they don't agree with everything a religious leader says and that's that. But it hasn't been enough for Obama. That's because the key issue here isn't religion as much as race, which brings us to the third question.

Ezra Klein nails this with his observation about “normalized extremism: “The Biblical extremism of a rabbi or a pastor is an acceptable extremism (e.g. Hagee and Parsley), while the racial anger of Jeremiah Wright is disallowed.” 

White America is still not ready to face the legacy of racism, much less the ongoing anger of some/many African-Americans. As Michele Norris noted Sunday morning on Meet the Press, what was spoken in Wright's church was “not altogether different from what many people are hearing at this moment in churches all across America.”

The irony is that Obama may well be a product of Wright's church—a political leader who has taken the legacy of anger in a different direction.  But before accepting someone who wants to overcome the suspicion and resentment on both sides, we need to know more about blacks and whites are thinking, feeling and experiencing. Tracking that story would mean more than sifting through a few Sunday sermons, but it would be key to understanding race, religion and politics in the 21st century.

[Check out Election 2008, USC's “Special Resource for Journalists” for more on this issue.]

No surprise that the Vatican's update of seven deadly sins is an incisive indictment of capitalism—this Pope, like the one before him, sees our economic system as spiritually corrosive. The new list isn't substantively different from the old one, but it puts a fresh face on some all-too-familiar abstractions. So pride is manifest as genetic manipulation and envy is morally debatable experiments; gluttony means too much money and lust is drug trafficking and consumption; greed leads to inflicting poverty and sloth causes environmental pollution; anger, well, that leads to violating fundamental rights of human nature.

Hedonism, narcissism, rampaging selfishness—sounds integral to the plotlines for a lot of popular entertainment not to mention the staple of the daily news.  But rather than wrestle with what sin looks like in 2008—be it on the campaign trail, the medical beat, the science corner, or the business page, many American news outlets made light of the story or relegated it to blogs. TV news favored the former solution  and newspapers the latter

All in all, few American news sites carried comprehensive features on the list as did the BBC, Times Online,  and the Sydney Morning Herald, to name a few.

Okay, the Vatican condemning sinful behavior is not a news flash, but the frame it provides—specifically, engaging the contemporary world in a collective reconsideration of systemic and personal sin—is noteworthy. We forgive our peccadilloes all too easily, which is why the Vatican wants a wholesale return to confession.

It's early in the week so perhaps we'll see more on how American Catholics are responding to the new list and whether it can serve as an impetus to greater self-examination. It also would be interesting to tie this latest missive to the Vatican's recent pronouncement that gender neutral language is impermissible for the rite of baptism. (In other words, “Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer” cannot replace “Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”) http://www.religiousintelligence.co.uk/news/?NewsID=1693.)

The Pope is waging his own culture war, and his sights are set on several American heresies. Whether or not individual Catholics are comfortable espousing a male-gendered Trinity much less copping to the 21st century versions of mortal sins is the question. But according to market theories of religion, the Vatican may be onto something. Religious groups with stringent demands and strict doctrines differentiating believers from outsiders attract more adherents than those that accommodate to the secular culture. Given the Pew Forum's recent findings about the precipitous decline in American Catholicism, the Pope may have the message right.

When I first asked David Simon to speak in my media, faith and Hollywood class, he was pleasant, polite, and surprised. The Wire, he emailed back, doesn't draw on religion. Its dramatic cues come straight from Greek tragedy. No matter, I replied. Its themes, stories and characters are religious enough for me—What is my responsibility to others? Can I make things better? Why am I here? What do I care about? These are the demons plaguing Bunny Colvin, Cutty Wise, Bubbles, and Jimmy McNulty. And Simon, a former colleague at the Baltimore Sun, is equally passionate about the questions.    

I would have loved The Wire even if the first season wasn't shot in my old neighborhood. (How many times did I rewind just to see if that old grey building was really my house?) The series felt real in ways that highlighted the falseness of almost everything else on television. It wasn't just the street language or the mixed race cast or even the portrayal of urban devastation. Rather, Simon's approach had more in common with journalism than entertainment: he wasn't about to tidy things up in an hour (or 50) by allowing the good guys to win and making the problems all go away.

In its depiction of post-industrial capitalism, The Wire brings to life horrors that many would prefer not to see. Speaking to USC students and faculty this past week, (yes, he did come) Simon explained that this season shows how the media helps to obscure the view. “Watching a TV drama to get the truth, that's the real joke,” he said.

Hour after hour, year after year, The Wire portrays seemingly intractable waste, corruption and ineptitude. It felt like it did when I reported in Baltimore, and it reminded me why I got out so fast.
What I didn't understand then, and what The Wire reminds us now, is that the problem isn't Baltimore, it's a society rich in religious rhetoric but surprisingly short on follow-up. David Simon doesn't have to put religion in The Wire: it's impossible to watch and not wonder what Jesus would do.

The Wire ends March 9, but its storylines will continue running in most of our cities. David Simon's soon-to-be classic series will be available on DVD.