GetReligion
Thursday, April 03, 2025

European Union

, , , , , , , , , ,

BBC and The New York Times: Who listened to Catholics who prayed at Poland's borders?

, , , , , , , , , ,

If you read up on the life and times of the Polish man who would become St. Pope John Paul II, its interesting to note that he learned so many languages during his life that scholars are not really sure which ones he spoke fluently.

Most lists will look something like this – Polish, Slovak, Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Ukrainian, English and Latin. It is my understanding that, in his childhood, he also knew so many Jewish children that he also spoke Yiddish.

What does this fact say about Poland? At the very least, it's symbolic of the fact that in the past Poland has been seized by more than its share of empires. If you live in a Polish border town, it helps to speak several languages. Again, think of St. John Paul II's life in the time of the Nazis and then Communism.

I bring this up because Poland is a land, and a predominately Catholic culture, with a strong sense of national identity. Yet it is also a land that fears – with good reason – being conquered once again.

So, why were legions of Polish Catholics standing on the land's borders the other day saying the rosary? Clearly, this is a religious question, yet one with political overtones. So how did the world's two most powerful newsrooms handle this? Here is the top of the New York Times report, which ran with this low-key headline: "Polish Catholics Gather at Border for Vast Rosary Prayer Event."

WARSAW, Poland -- Polish Catholics clutching rosary beads gathered at locations along the country’s 2,000-mile border on Saturday for a mass demonstration during which they prayed for salvation for Poland and the world.
Many participants described it as demonstration against what they see as the secularization of the country and the spread of Islam’s influence in Europe.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Think like an editor: What happens if Trump's own plane takes Charlie Gard to Vatican?

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Think like an editor: What happens if Trump's own plane takes Charlie Gard to Vatican?

The Charlie Gard story rolls on, of course, now super-charged by those magic words that inspire headlines – "Donald Trump" and "Pope Francis."

It's interesting (and to me a bit depressing) the degree to which American media really seem to think this is story driven by American questions, which is what happens when a presidential tweet reshapes everything.

After recording this week's Crossroads podcast – click here to tune that in – it hit me that, in a way, I may be guilty of the same kind of thing, since I keep seeing this story through a religious-liberty lens.

True enough, podcast host Todd Wilken and I did spend quite a bit of time talking about church-state cases here in America that some are comparing to the Charlie Gard case. I'm talking about the agonizing court battles over the starvation death of Terri Schiavo, debates about the rights of Pentecostal parents who insist on faith healing (alone) and the complex legal battles over Jehovah's Witnesses and their doctrines rejecting blood transfusions.

However, the point I kept making was not that laws in England and the European Union should be the same as America. What interests me is why journalists don't seem to be interested in explaining to readers how religious-liberty concepts on the other side of the Atlantic affect this painful case.

A news cycle ago, we got a clue that we may have more coverage ahead that could deal with this. Consider this from a Sky News report:

Great Ormond Street Hospital says “claims of new evidence” in the treatment of Charlie Gard have prompted it to seek a new hearing at the High Court. In a statement, the hospital said: “We have just met with Charlie’s parents to inform them of this decision and will continue to keep them fully appraised of the situation.
“Two international hospitals and their researchers have communicated to us as late as the last 24 hours that they have fresh evidence about their proposed experimental treatment. “And we believe, in common with Charlie’s parents, it is right to explore this evidence.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Donald Trump visits Poland: Looking for religion (and old-school journalism) in the coverage

, , , , , , , , ,

So, what was that Donald Trump speech in Poland all about?

If you follow social media – the cutting edge of today's new New Journalism – you know that it was about the president trying to sneak encoded "dogwhistle" content past media gatekeepers to his supporters on the fringes of the postmodern world.

Consider this tweet by Jamelle Bouie, the top political correspondent at Slate and an analyst for CBS News, that said: "Imagine being a political writer in this moment and being utterly unable to identify clear white nationalist dogwhistles."

Later, he notes: "Like, this s*** is barely subtle."

Here's the opening of the nasty speech passage, from the White House transcript:

Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are. (Applause.) If left unchecked, these forces will undermine our courage, sap our spirit, and weaken our will to defend ourselves and our societies.

Trump talks about all kinds of issues that flow out of that statement, including the rule of law and women's rights. But it's clear – in social-media land – that his speech was seen as an outrageous attack on immigrants and the Islamic world.

This is perfectly stated by Peter Beinart at The Atlantic:

The most shocking sentence in Trump’s speech – perhaps the most shocking sentence in any presidential speech delivered on foreign soil in my lifetime – was his claim that “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” On its face, that’s absurd. ... Trump’s sentence only makes sense as a statement of racial and religious paranoia. The “south” and “east” only threaten the West’s “survival” if you see non-white, non-Christian immigrants as invaders.

But what, you ask, does the basic news coverage say?

To which, in this case, I sadly respond: What does news coverage have to do with this? We are talking about TRUMP in POLAND. You know what that means. We are talking about the hero of the alt-right trying to fan the flames of nationalism in the worst nation in Europe (from the point of view of European elites).

So who cares about old-school news coverage, anymore?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spot the religion ghosts: Who loves Charlie Gard the most, his parents or state officials?

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Like millions of other people in the social-media universe, I have been following the tragic story of the infant Charlie Gard (see http://www.charliesfight.org) and the struggle between his British parents and various government and medical elites over his future.

What is there – journalistically speaking – to say about mainstream media coverage of this complex story?

The easiest, and certainly the least surprising, thing to say is that a sad story about a baby's fight for life is way more interesting to gatekeepers in major media when Citizen Donald Trump and Pope Francis enter the drama. #SURPRISE

So now we have some pretty in-depth coverage of the story of infant Charlie, his parents and their supporters around the world. Hold that thought.

If you have followed this story closely you know there are religious issues at the heart of this crisis. There are religion ghosts here. The big question: Who loves Charlie the most, his parents or the state? Who should get to make the final decisions about the long-shot efforts to save his life?

The parents are clearly motivated by religious beliefs and want to fight on, defending his right to life. The odds are long, but they have faith in both God and science.

Government leaders, backed by some (not all) medical experts, say they are defending the infant's quality of life and that the state has the ultimate right to end his pain and suffering.

One of the strongest points in a major New York Times story on this case is that it stresses that money is not the issue. The parents have a vast network of supporters – now including Trump and the Vatican's pediatric hospital – to help fund further, desperate treatments.

So what is the issue here? The big question appears to be when government experts can trump parental rights and, yes, religious liberty. Thus, I did find it disconcerting that readers did not learn the names of Charlie's parents – Connie Yates and Chris Gard – until 650 words or so into the Times story.

Still, the material that made it into this report is strong.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Time to wrap up 2016, starting with: 'Religion still matters, whatever your beliefs'

, , , , , , , ,

If you have followed GetReligion through the years, the you know that we never completely close our cyber-doors during the 12 days of the Christmas season – but we do slow down a bit.

We also mark the end of the religion-news years with quite a bit of commentary from hither and yon about the news events and trends of the year that is ending. We'll post the Religion News Association Top 10 stories list, as well as my annual "On Religion" commentary on that, along with a podcast about both of those. Religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling has already turned in a pair of memos looking ahead to 2017.

You get the idea. We will also post more than the usual number of think pieces about subjects we assume will be of interest to people who care about the state of religion news and topics linked to that.

So let's start that off with a piece from The Times on the other side of the pond that ran with this GetReligion-friendly double-decker headline:

Religion still matters, whatever your beliefs
From US politics to Middle East terror, it has never been more important to understand how faith shapes our world

Commentator Tim Montgomerie begins with the rather obvious – now – observation that Hillary Rodham Clinton probably wishes, when looking back on the year that was, that she had hired a few more people to pay attention to religious voters in the American heartland, especially the Midwest, when picking out the 4,200 members of her campaign staff.

For example, there wasn't a single Clinton campaign staffer – saith Slate magazine – who was assigned to investigate the concerns of evangelical Protestants. If Clinton had done half as well with evangelicals as did Barack Obama, she would be president-elect.

So what's the bigger story here? It's the fact that many journalists just don't get religion, of course.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Journalists: Religious lessons you (could have) learned from Trump win can help explain Putin

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.

Everywhere you look in the news right now, journalists are trying to get a handle on Vladimir Putin and Russia. This post is about Russia – consider it a sequel to the earlier "Dear editors at The New York Times: Vladimir Putin is a Russian, but Putin is not Russia" – but that is not where I want to start. Please be patient, because I want to start with an American parable.

Surely, some journalists have learned by now that our recent presidential race was more complex than Hillary Rodham Clinton vs. Citizen Donald Trump. There were, fore example, Democrats who wanted to vote for Clinton. However, there were others – #feelthebern – who did so reluctantly, but felt they had to vote against Trump.

On the Trump side, there were people who sincerely backed his campaign (including a large number, perhaps even a majority, of white evangelicals). Then there were millions of people (including blue-collar Democrats) who didn't like Trump at all, but supported some elements of his alleged platform, so they voted for Trump. Then there others who actively opposed Trump, but felt they had to vote for him – think U.S. Supreme Court – to oppose Clinton. It will be interesting to learn how many people (like me) voted for an alternative candidate.

What does this have to do with Putin? Well, lots of elite journalists (hello, New York Times) have been trying to figure out why so many American conservatives are fond of Putin or think it's important to improve U.S. relations with Putin and Russia. In Times speak, anyone who sees anything positive in Putin's actions and worldview is automatically an "extremist." Thus that recent headline: "Extremists Turn to a Leader to Protect Western Values: Vladimir Putin."

Everyone pretty much goes into that "extremist," pro-Putin bag, including the alt-right, lots of Trump voters, racists, extreme nationalists everywhere, anti-Semites and, ultimately, the Russian Orthodox Church. Was Brexit in there too?

But think of that Trump parable. The problem is that there are lots of people who either loathe or totally distrust Putin (they see him for what he is), but they do not reject everything that he stands for in his warped version of a pro-Russian agenda. Thus, they are sort of "voting" for Putin, or they want America to deal with him more realistically, because the alternative, to be blunt, is the postmodern worldview of the European elites.

The religion angle? The press needs to grasp that, often, Orthodox leaders are not backing Putin when they support elements of Putin's policies that just happen to run parallel with centuries of Orthodox teachings. Oh, and they would really like to prevent the massacre of millions of Christians in Syria and what remains of the church in the Middle East.

This brings me to a recent, and typical, Associated Press report related to all of this. Here is the overture, care of Crux:

MOSCOW, Russia – The Russian Orthodox Church is expanding its influence in what was once an officially godless state – and President Vladimir Putin appears eager to harness that resurgent power of faith to promote his own agenda.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Oh my ... British Prime Minister Theresa May appears to be a serious Anglican Christian

, , , , , , , ,

As the world continues to reel from the populist shocks of 2016, here's another stunner for which I hope, dear reader, you are sitting down.

Seated? Good.

Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is – an Anglican Christian, who dares to let her faith influence her politics. Maybe.

This stunning insight comes via Foreign Policy magazine's website and a first-person piece by one Andrew Brown, who is said to cover religion for Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Behold, the headline proclaims: "Theresa May Is a Religious Nationalist." A key passage adds this:

One of the least understood, yet most important, things about British Prime Minister Theresa May is that she is the daughter of a Church of England vicar. The fact that she is personally devout, by contrast, is well-known. I have heard several anecdotes about her time as a member of Parliament and minister when she would turn up at local parish initiatives that could offer her no conceivable political advantage. Such devotion to the church is unusual if not unknown among British politicians. Gordon Brown remains a very serious Presbyterian; Tony Blair went to Mass most Sundays.

Holy condescension, Batman! A politician who clings to her childhood faith and uses it in her daily life. And despite May's personal opposition to "Brexit," the referendum that decrees the U.K. should exit the European Union, she is poised to try and carry that out because leaving the EU is in parallel with Henry VIII's departure from the Roman Catholic faith to set up the aforementioned Church of England. Brown explains:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Save this New York Times Sunni-Shiite conflict backgrounder while awaiting Trump's moves

, , , , , ,
Save this New York Times Sunni-Shiite conflict backgrounder while awaiting Trump's moves

The New York Times – still outclassing its Americans rivals in Middle East coverage – has served up a valuable historical overview of the Saudi-Iranian proxy war conflict. It's not only worth reading, it's worth saving for those deadline moments when a quick history check is in order.

I've posted here before about the Saudi-Iranian competition for Middle East domination. I've also posted on the ongoing, multi-angled coverage of Saudi Arabia at the Times.

Why so much attention to this topic? And how might President-elect Donald Trump handle the situation?

First question first.

Why, because the conflict, at its root a continuation of Islam's historic, internal holy war between the religion's majority Sunnis (read, Saudi Arabia) and minority Shiites (read, Iran) is at the core of today's seemingly endless Middle East bloodshed.

(Yes, it's the Sunni-Shiite contest, inflamed by political maneuvering by a coven of authoritarian dictatorial governments, and Russia, that's at the root of the chaos. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as central as it may be to these two actors, long ago took a backseat to the Islamic sectarian war.)

Here's how the Times historical overview explains it, starting with the lede:

Behind much of the Middle East’s chaos – the wars in Syria and Yemen, the political upheaval in Iraq and Lebanon and Bahrain – there is another conflict.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dear editors at The New York Times: Vladimir Putin is a Russian, but Putin is not Russia

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

As you would expect, quite a few GetReligion readers have asked for my take on the recent New York Times analysis piece about Russia and the Orthodox Church that ran under this headline: “In Expanding Russian Influence, Faith Combines With Firepower.”

Now, the editorial powers that be at the Gray Lady did not label this sprawling piece as a work of analysis, but that is what it was.

It was packed with all kinds of material that Orthodox people could argue about for hours (members of my flock, especially Russians, love a good argument). In many crucial passages, the Times team didn’t bother to let readers know who they were quoting — which usually means that they are quoting themselves or quoting beloved advocacy sources over and over and over and they didn't want to point that out with attribution clauses.

Thus, I am not going to try to dissect this piece, in part because (1) I am an Orthodox Christian and (2) I spend quite a bit of time hanging out with Russians and with other Orthodox Christians who hang out with Russians. But I do want to share one big idea.

You see, I hear people talking about Vladimir V. Putin quite a bit. I would divide these people into at least three groups.

* First, there are the people who consider him a corrupt, brutal strongman, at best, and a tyrant at worst.

* Second, there are people who do not admire Putin at all, but they enjoy the fact that he gets under the skin of liberals and post-liberals here in the West. Putin is, in other words, a Russian and he drives elites in the West a bit mad.

* Third, there are Orthodox people who appreciate the fact that Putin – for whatever reasons – is defending some (repeat “SOME”) of the teachings of the Orthodox faith, whether he sincerely believes these moral doctrines or not. Of course, Putin's sins against Orthodoxy on many other issues are perfectly obvious.

Now, the tricky thing is that most of my Orthodox friends who closely follow events in and around Russia are in all three of these camps at the same time.


Please respect our Commenting Policy