Sept. 11

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New religion census: That means more numbers, more maps and more hooks for news stories

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New religion census: That means more numbers, more maps and more hooks for news stories

It’s always a fun day when one of my trusted sources publishes some new raw data that I can use to better understand the religious and political world of the United States. That’s doubly true when it’s something other than survey data because it allows me to make data visualizations that are a bit different than the run of the mill bar and line graphs.

Earlier this month the Association of Statisticians of American Religion Bodies released the results of their 2020 Religion Census, which is a one of a kind dataset. Every 10 years, this very capable research team tracks religious organizations all the way down to the county level — which is a granularity that is astonishing.

For example, most surveys would be lucky to give you a sample that is large enough to understand religion at the state level. So, to have access to county level data unlocks thousands of possibilities.

This is the kind of detail that helps researchers — and journalists — look for news trends at the local and regional levels. There are news stories hidden in these numbers. The key is spotting them.

So, with that in mind, I took to map-making the last few weeks. I think that there’s a lot of surprising results in this new data.

Where is religion the most concentrated in the United States? Probably not where most people would guess.

According to data from the 2020 Religion Census, there’s obviously a strong pocket of believers in the Bible Belt — that isn’t surprising.


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Podcast: New York Times probes abortion 'abolitionist' movement, but buries the big story

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Podcast: New York Times probes abortion 'abolitionist' movement, but buries the big story

Where is the whole “life after Roe v. Wade” story headed? And while we are asking questions, shouldn’t we be saying “life after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” since that is now the defining U.S. Supreme Court decision?

Anyway, during last week’s “Crossroads” podcast (“America is splitting, says trending Atlantic essay. This is news? Actually, it's old news”), I predicted that we would be seeing more mainstream press coverage of crisis pregnancy centers — an old story hook that is, sure enough, getting lots of ink all of a sudden (see this Julia Duin post and also this one by yours truly).

I also predicted that major newsrooms would discover the abortion “abolitionists,” a small but loud flock of activists who reject all compromises in laws to restrict abortion, including exceptions for victims of rape and incest. The key: They want laws that prosecute women who have abortions, not just the people who perform abortions.

I made that prediction for two reasons, a good reason and a bad reason. First, this is a valid story, because these activists are making noise in some crucial settings (hold that thought). However, this story also allows blue-zone newsrooms to focus lots of attention on these specific anti-abortion activists (NPR reports here and then here) whose views are outrageous to most Americans, while downplaying efforts by moderate and even centrist pro-life groups seeking more nuanced legislation, mostly in “purple” states.

This brings us to this week’s “Crossroads” episode (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focuses on a New York Times story that ran with this headline: “Abortion Abolitionists Want to Punish Women for Abortion.” This story continues some important information. Please read it. However, it also downplays (this is strange) its most important information about the abolitionists, while dedicating lots of ink to yet another independent social-media preacher who provides lots of scary quotes. Let’s start with the overture:

Hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, a man with a wiry, squared-off beard and a metal cross around his neck celebrated with his team at a Brazilian steakhouse. He pulled out his phone to livestream to his followers.

“We have delivered a huge blow to the enemy and to this industry,” the man, Jeff Durbin, said. But, he explained, “our work has just really begun.”

A brief pause: Why isn’t it “the Rev. Jeff Durbin”? This raises big questions: What evangelical body or denomination ordained this man? Where did he go to seminary? Does he have ties to institutions in mainstream evangelicalism?

OK, continuing.


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Plug-In: At 20th anniversary of 9/11, faith remains big part of this world-shaking story

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Plug-In: At 20th anniversary of 9/11, faith remains big part of this world-shaking story

Like everybody alive then, I remember what I was doing the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

At the time, I was religion editor for The Oklahoman, the metro daily in Oklahoma City. I was running a few minutes late that Tuesday because I stopped at Walmart to buy a new pair of cleats for a company softball team starting the fall season that night. As it turned out, we didn't play.

As I flashed my company ID at the security guard outside the newspaper building, he asked if I'd heard about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York. I had not. Minutes later, after I arrived in the ninth-floor newsroom, my colleagues and I watched on television as a second plane hit the twin towers. Almost immediately, ABC anchor Peter Jennings likened the attack to Pearl Harbor.

That's when I grasped the significance.

The rest of that day is a blur. Like my reporter colleagues all over the nation, I immediately put aside any personal feelings and operated on journalistic adrenaline. I wrote four bylined stories for the next day's paper: one on the religious community's response, one on Muslim fears of a backlash, one on Oklahoma City bombing victims' reactions and one on an eyewitness account by an Oklahoma professor's daughter.

Like many (most?) Americans, I tossed and turned that night.

In the days and weeks after 9/11, I recall interviewing religious leaders and ordinary congregants as they looked to God and sought to explain the seemingly unexplainable.

Twenty years later, faith remains a big part of the story. Here is some of the must-read coverage:

• Eastern Orthodox shrine to replace church destroyed on 9/11 nears completion (by Peter Smith, Associated Press)

• Generation 9/11 (by Emily Belz, World)

• Young Sikhs still struggle with post-Sept. 11 discrimination (by Anita Snow and Noreen Nasir, AP)


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Finding comfort in faith after 9/11, as well as hard questions that never fade away

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Looking back at the events on Sept. 11 and its aftermath requires looking back into time and also looking within, deep into the mind, the heart and the soul.

If it’s true that time heals all wounds, 9/11 could be the exception to that adage. As a reporter for the New York Post that day, I was a witness to the deadliest terror attack on American soil.

How did I feel? What did 9/11 do to me? How did it affect the way I did my job? These are all questions I get from students each time I do a talk about the attacks.

Looking back on 18 years ago, I remember feeling angry at God. Had He allowed for this to happen? I yearned for the answer to that question. I looked to my church (I am a Roman Catholic) for adequate ways to quell my inner frustrations. I recall saying a prayer the morning after the attacks on my way to work. It was my way of trying to find some inner peace.

So I am looking back on that stunning day as a journalist and as a Christian.

The entire time, I had a job to do. I had to divide the personal from the professional. Never in my life has that been so hard to do. It wasn’t until three days later, after hearing Billy Graham speak, did I feel more at ease with what had happened. It helped me make sense of the brokenness.

Indeed, one of my first reactions had been, “God, how could you let this happen?” Of course, God didn’t let this happen. What happened that day was pure evil, the work of Islamic militants who had perverted their religion to justify death. It was the good that would later come out of the tragedy, the stories of heroism and sacrifice, that reflected God’s love.

In the weeks that followed, I covered dozens of funerals, primarily those of firefighters. I found those funeral masses both extremely sad and comforting. I participated in them. When I wasn’t taking down notes and interviewing grieving family members, I remember praying along within everyone else at each one of those services. I was grieving along with everyone else.

There was, you see, no way around the faith elements in this event and this story. That was part of the pain, as well as the basic facts.


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'If You Want To Humble An Empire': A 9/11 story that got religion and shouldn't be forgotten

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What’s the statute of limitations for pulling a story out of the GetReligion guilt folder?

Seriously, I want to call attention to a remarkable piece of news reporting — written under tremendous deadline pressure — that predates GetReligion itself. This journalism-focused website, in case you need a refresher, launched in 2004.

As you undoubtedly know, today marks the 17th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It seems appropriate then to recall just how much Time magazine incorporated religion into its original in-depth report on the events of 9/11. My thanks to New York Times Godbeat pro Elizabeth Dias, a Time alumnus herself, for highlighting the story by Nancy Gibbs on Twitter this morning:

If I read the Time story back in 2001, I don’t remember it. At the time, I was religion editor for The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. I was focused on my own reporting, including writing four bylined response pieces on 9/11.

But I’m glad I took the time to read Gibbs’ piece today. It brought back so many memories. And yes, it covered crucial glimpses of faith present at that time.

The opening itself — written in Time’s analytical style — certainly emphasizes that element:

If you want to humble an empire it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith, and when they crumple and burn, it tells us we are not so powerful and we can't be safe. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, planted at the base of Manhattan island with the Statue of Liberty as their sentry, and the Pentagon, a squat, concrete fort on the banks of the Potomac, are the sanctuaries of money and power that our enemies may imagine define us. But that assumes our faith rests on what we can buy and build, and that has never been America's true God.


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The New York Times gets the ground zero shrine story, but misses St. Nicholas Church

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First things first: I am thankful that The New York Times covered this highly symbolic rite at the St. Nicholas National Shrine at the World Trade Center.

I was at the site just over a week ago and asked some of the crew if they knew when a cross would be installed atop the emerging dome on the shrine. This project represents the end of years of struggle to replace St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church -- the only house of worship destroyed on 9/11.

This is a "local" issue for me, in a way, since I am an Orthodox believer and I walk past the site every morning on my way to The King's College, when I am teaching in New York City. Click here, here and here for my columns about the church, beginning just after the attack.

The Times piece gets many things right, but leaves some major holes about the church itself -- as in the people of St. Nicholas. From the very beginning, this is a news story about a New York landmark, as opposed to a house of worship. Here is some summary material near the top:

The topping out of the shrine with the cross was a milestone in the tortuous effort to rebuild St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, a little parish outpost at 155 Cedar Street in Lower Manhattan that was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, when the south trade center tower fell on it.
And it is more than that. The cross is the first overtly religious symbol to appear in the public realm at the World Trade Center, where officials have often contorted themselves to maintain a secular air. (What almost everyone knows as the “World Trade Center cross,” for instance, is officially referred to as the “intersecting steel beam.”)

I appreciate that the story gives a precise location for the original church, in terms of a street address. The key is that government agencies needed that tiny piece of land, so they took it. So what happened to the displaced church and its people?


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The Palombo 10: At the 9/11 anniversary, an exceptional story of family and faith from CNN

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I didn't read or watch a whole lot of coverage of the 9/11 anniversary.

To a large extent, I can identify with what a good friend and fellow reporter wrote on Facebook:

Truth: I want to forget what I saw live on television on Sept. 11. I want to forget that it brought April 19 back to life for me. I want to forget what I saw in person on April 19. I won't forget. I can't forget. But I really don't want to remember.

Like my friend, I covered the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The bombing was, until Sept. 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. And like my friend, I still can't think about one without recalling the other. 

But I did allow myself to digest one story timed to the 15th anniversary of 9/11 — and I'm so glad I did. I perused this piece because a faithful GetReligion reader shared the link and suggested that it really needed our attention. 

"IT IS SO GOOOD," the reader said.

After reading it, I agree 110 percent. In fact, this is one of those cases where I really should just share the link and tell you to read it. No commentary necessary:


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Sorry, Heartland, you suffer from a major case of Islamophobia — an elite newspaper said so

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On the front page of Sunday's Washington Post — below the banner coverage of "A blizzard for the ages" — ran a long, long profile of a young Muslim woman from Kansas.

The nearly 4,000-word story, told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature writer, follows a now-familiar media premise: Americans, particularly those in backward places like the Heartland, treat Muslim women who wear hijabs with suspicion and even disdain.

In this story — dubbed "The Education of Maira Salim" — the Post declares that Muslims like Salim are "enduring the worst spasm of Islamophobia in their lifetime as they decide their relationship with America."

We have, of course, repeatedly highlighted the problem with that word.

Granted, a lot of people on Twitter seemed to really like the Post's story on Salim. The piece was described as "beautifully sensitive," as "an engrossing read" and as "the very best of what the Washington Post does," just to cite a few examples.

And certainly, the story benefits from a talented writer:

 

 


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