resurrection

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Farewell, after 20 years: Why we did what we did

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Farewell, after 20 years: Why we did what we did

If you know anything about world religions, then you know that Easter is a big deal in Christianity.

In Eastern Orthodox churches, the Big Idea is stated this way, over and over, in rites for Pascha (Easter): “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life” (see this flash mob celebration in Lebanon).

I don’t bring this up as a matter of evangelism or some other #triggerwarning behavior. I am noting that this is an essential fact about Christianity, the world’s largest religious faith. Easter isn’t a “bunny” thing.

This brings us to one of the more unusual “religion ghosts” we spotted several times during the 20-year history of GetReligion. Here’s a case study at Newsweek and another at Facebook news. However, the classic version of this ghost appeared in the holy (in journalism terms) pages of The New York Times in this 2014 feature: “Hoping War-Weary Tourists Will Return to Israel.” Here is the key passage:

On a recent afternoon in the Old City of Jerusalem, while fighting raged in Gaza, Bilal Abu Khalaf hosted a group of Israeli tourists at his textile store in the Christian Quarter — one of Jerusalem’s tourist gems. …

“That’s the first group I’ve had here in more than a month,” Mr. Abu Khalaf said. “There have been whole weeks when no one has been inside the shop. I’ve sold almost nothing the entire summer. Business hasn’t been this bad since the first intifada in 1989, when the Palestinian groups ordered us to shutter our stores.”

Nearby, the vast Church of the Holy Sepulcher marking the site where many Christians believe that Jesus was buried, usually packed with pilgrims, was echoing and empty.

Now, what’s unusual about that? Well, it helps to know that the printed version said:

Nearby, the vast Church of the Holy Sepulcher marking the site where many Christians believe that Jesus is buried, usually packed with pilgrims, was echoing and empty.

It’s all about the word “is,” isn’t it?

Inquiring minds wanted to know: Was there anyone in the editorial chain at the world’s newspaper of record who knew the essential fact that traditional Christians don’t believe Jesus is buried anywhere? It’s that whole “Easter” thing.


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Building the GetReligion archives: Flashback to journalists avoiding Gosnell trial horrors

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Building the GetReligion archives: Flashback to journalists avoiding Gosnell trial horrors

If you pay close attention to the details, it’s clear that your GetReligionistas are already preparing to close our doors on Feb. 2.

Look at the masthead, for example. We have inserted “2004-2024” under the name and the original first post — “What we do, why we do it” has turned into a “History” link. I’m already working on the “Why we did what we did” final piece.

Like I said the other day, we are closing — but some GetReligion features will continue in other places.

The religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling will keep writing some form of news “Memo” for Religion Unplugged, where his editor will be our own Clemente Lisi. I will continue the “Crossroads” podcast with our partners at Lutheran Public Radio and they will be available here at the GetReligion archive (see the new logo on the right sidebar), Tmatt.net and the podcast pages at Apple. We’re talking about some form of Q&A podcast or video. The GetReligion feed on X will remain open. I’m pondering a Substack newsletter — “Rational Sheep” — on religious faith and mass culture.

But the main thing that is going on is that we are working to turn this massive website into a searchable archive for people — journalists, book writers, etc. — who want tons of information, URLs and commentary about the past two decades of religion-beat news (with a heavy emphasis on First Amendment issues). It helps to remember that I am married to a reference librarian who started working on computer networks when she was a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate student in the late 1970s.

One of the things we will do, on the “Search” page, is offer some suggestions for search terms to find some classic GetReligion work. I have, for technical and legal reasons, been reading my way back through the history of of this blog and, the other day, I hit 2013.

Let’s just say that i urge readers to do a search for these terms — “Hemingway,” “Gosnell,” “trial,” 2013 — and dig into what they hit.


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United Methodist news in the Kansas high plains raises, again, some old questions

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United Methodist news in the Kansas high plains raises, again, some old questions

You know the old saying that “diamonds are forever”? In my personal experience, western Kansas is forever.

That isn’t a complaint. I’ve been driving across the Kansas high plains since the early 1980s — with more cause now that I have family in Kansas — and I have grown to love the wide open horizons. This long drive also leads to our family’s old stomping grounds in Colorado, where I’m on vacation this week.

Kansas is a real place. There’s a there, there. I have lots of friends with ties to Kansas and they love its combination of Midwestern values and access to the Wild West.

I bring this up because of a story I read last week in the Topeka Capital-Journal, with this headline: “96 United Methodist churches in Kansas, including one in Topeka, are leaving denomination.” This is another example of newspapers at the local and regional level having to handle developments in a complex, global conflict that has been raging since the early 1980s. That’s when I started covering this story in Colorado — a flashpoint from the start. Here’s the Topeka lede:

The United Methodist Church is seeing the exodus of 96 conservative Kansas congregations over theological matters, including same-sex marriages and ordaining openly LGBTQ clergy.

The words “theological matters” are, of course, disputes about 2,000 years of Christian doctrines on a host of important, even creedal, subjects. But, as always, the only specific given is LGBTQ+ matters.

Later on, the story notes that a key vote in Kansas:


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Thinking about Bari Weiss, Twitter, evangelicals and New York Times op-ed doctrines

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Thinking about Bari Weiss, Twitter, evangelicals and New York Times op-ed doctrines

Here’s a question for you: When it comes to defining the doctrines of blue-zip-America, which is more important — the news pages of The New York Times or the newspaper of record’s op-ed pages?

In the old days, I would have said the op-ed pages.

But that was back when most of the Times news desks were, to one degree or another, still part of (to one degree or another) the American Model of the Press (background in this .pdf file). That was certainly the case in the era of the late, great A.M. Rosenthal.

At this moment in time, there are signs of actual diversity — even tension — in the op-ed pages and maybe, just maybe, signs of a few glowing embers of editorial independence in the news papers.

But let’s still assume — as I argued in my Religion & Liberty essay, “The Evolving Religion of Journalism” — that the Times news operation is still operating as a niche-news, advocacy journalism publication anxious to please the new liberal, maybe illiberal, readers who pay cash for its content.

Let’s assume that the July, 2020, resignation letter posted by Bari “The Free Press” Weiss remains a must-read “think piece” for all news consumers. For those who need a refresh, as part of this “think piece” doubleheader, here are two key passages from that shot over the bow of the Gray Lady’s principalities and powers:

… [A] new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

Here is another essential passage from this “read it all” classic. This comes after Weiss — a gay, Jewish, old-school First Amendment liberal — describes the in-house digital bullying that made her hit the exit door:


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Just in time for Easter media and academic discussions: Did Jesus Exist?

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Just in time for Easter media and academic discussions: Did Jesus Exist?

THE QUESTION:

Did Jesus Exist?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

Yes.

It would be the ultimate blow to the Christian religion if Jesus, and with him the entirety of the New Testament, is totally fictional.

However, the strong consensus among historians, including non-Christians and skeptics, is that, yes. Jesus was an actual person of the 1st Century (Anno Domini!!). Yet an Ipsos poll for the Episcopal Church, released last month, showed only 76% of Americans "believe in the historical existence" of Jesus, with 89% of self-identified Christians, 43% for adherents of other religions and 38% among the non-religious.

Among scholars, across the years certain "mythicists" have contended that he never existed.

University of North Carolina Professor Bart Ehrman, author of "Did Jesus Exist?" (2012) and rather skeptical himself, knows of only one such thinker among thousands of scholars with Ph.D. degrees who are working in the New Testament field. He's Robert Price, a onetime Baptist minister, member of the radical "Jesus Seminar," and author of "The Historical Bejeezus" who teaches at Johnnie Coleman Theological Seminary, a "New Thought" school.

Other mythicists have included Frank Zindler, a science educator, Jesus Seminar participant, and an editor with American Atheists. In 1970, Doubleday published an eccentric book by Britain's John M. Allegro, who thought there never was a Jesus and Christianity originated as a drug cult. John Remsburg, a 19th Century superintendent of public instruction for Kansas, backed mythicism by listing 42 ancient authors never wrote about Jesus. (A newsman like The Guy would figure that's what you'd expect with an itinerant teacher executed as a criminal in a backwater of the Roman Empire.)

But Remsburg raised an interesting question. Let's say for the sake of argument we totally exclude the New Testament as evidence (which historians would never do in judging the existence of other figures from ancient times). Do we have any other relevant documentation?


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Journalists get ready: Here comes the 'greatest celebration in all of history'

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Journalists get ready: Here comes the 'greatest celebration in all of history'

Thinking long-term, a group of Christians has been quietly at work pulling together what they bill as "the greatest celebration in all of history."

Yes, you read that right. The Big Idea is that all imaginable sorts of believers will join in events across 24 time zones on -- mark your calendars! -- Easter morning, Sunday, April 17, 2033. That will mark the ultimate in anniversaries, 2,000 years since Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead. (That's necessarily a symbolic date since there's no consensus on the exact year.)

They call it Jesus Celebration 2033 or "JC2033."

Lest anyone freak out about the date, organizers assure us that "in no way whatsoever are we associating this jubilee with" the Second Coming of Christ. "He will return when the Father in heaven decides and it is not given to us to know when (Mark 13:32)."

Explanatory materials envision that "every disciple of Christ" on earth will participate in collective witness to show "we love each other in the Holy Spirit!"

That will take some planning. However, "Christians from all backgrounds and God seekers" will celebrate "spiritual unity, not a theological unity. We believe in unity in diversity." This is presented as "a historical opportunity to share in words and in actions the Love of God to the ends of the earth."

Christians will also be asked to join in "tangible demonstrations of God's love." Festivities are intended to be "joyful, artistic and creative." Gatherings would not only occur in churches but "stadiums, squares, parks, mountains, fields, beaches, homes and on the Internet!"

OK, editors, reporters, producers and other media planners, that's a dozen years off, and there’s no telling whether the dream will fizzle. But the concept is bold enough to invite features now.


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New York Times went tone deaf when Matthew McConaughey started talking about God

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Let’s see. I feel an urgent need, right now, to write about news coverage that has nothing to do with Donald Trump, Joe Biden or Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick.

There is, you see, a side of my journalism personality linked to those long-ago days when I was an entertainment reporter-rock columnist. Also, when I taught at a seminary, I spent most of my time trying to get future pastors, religious educators and counselors to realize that, for ordinary Americans, “signals” sent via entertainment matter way more than those in news content. That’s tragic, but true.

So let’s flashback to that New York Times feature that ran not so long ago under this headline: “Matthew McConaughey Wrote the Book on Matthew McConaughey.” Let’s skip the second deck of that headline since it contained the obligatory reference to “all right, all right, all right (or in Texan, that would be '“alright” or some other spelling with an extra “w” or “h” in there somewhere).”

I was curious if this book — or perhaps I should say this Times feature about the book — would make any references to this complex superstar’s take on Christian faith. Maybe a reference to his infamous, by Hollywood standards, Oscar acceptance speech in 2014? You remember, when he said:

First off I want to thank God, because he's the one I look up to, he's graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human kind. He has shown me that it's a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late (British actor) Charlie Laughton, who said, 'When you got God, you got a friend and that friend is you.’ “

There was more, but we’ll leave it at that. It was kind of a short “Pilgrim’s Progress” with his trademark twang.

The Times feature does use the safe b-word — “beliefs” — but doesn’t seem very interested in the who, what, when, where, why and how. Thus, readers are told:

... McConaughey wants readers to look beyond the boldface name on its cover and focus on its fundamental message. No one can escape hardship, he said, but he can share the lessons “that helped me navigate the hard stuff — like I say, ‘get relative with the inevitable’ — sooner and in the best way possible for myself.”


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Going, going: Whatever happened to 'Mainline' Protestantism in America's public square?

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THE QUESTION:

Whatever happened to U.S. “Mainline” Protestantism over the past half-century?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

What’s known as “Mainline” Protestantism was pretty much America’s culture-defining faith till well after World War II.

Fifty years ago, these church groups still maintained high morale and together boasted at least 28 million members. But by the latest available statistics they’ve shrunk 45%, to 15.5 million. During those same decades, the U.S. population increased 61%.

Across U.S. religious history, nothing like this has been seen before. What happened?

We’re talking about several small denominations included with several larger bodies in the familar “seven sisters” — American Baptist Churches USA, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ and the largest, the United Methodist Church.

The Religion Guy recently culled his basement library and came across two remarkably prescient books from a half-century ago, “The Gathering Storm in the Churches” (1969) by sociologist Jeffrey K. Hadden at Case Western Reserve University (and later the University of Virginia), and “Why Conservative Churches Are Growing” (1972) by the Rev. Dean M. Kelley, director for civil and religious liberty at the National Council of Churches (NCC).

Mainline groups share several key traits: predominantly white memberships, origin in Colonial times through the early 19th Century, ecumenical affiliations with the NCC and World Council of Churches, and pluralism that tolerates liberal religious thinking in contrast with the strictly conservative white “evangelical” Protestants. (Black Protestants often share evangelical traits but embrace a distinct subculture.)

Hadden’s book reported on his pioneering survey of 7,441 pastors in five Mainline Protestant groups (plus the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod), and incorporated survey data on lay Protestants in California as reported in 1968 by Rodney Stark and Charles Glock.

He said churches faced a dangerous and “widening gap” between lay members and clergy who were pursuing civil-rights activism (Vietnam War protests emerged later) and downplaying or shedding traditional religious beliefs. For example, only 49 percent of the Methodist clergy believed in “Jesus’ physical resurrection as an objective historical fact.”

Clergy revisionism on doctrine was strongly associated with devotion to liberal politics, but not so with lay members.


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'We got $1,000 from an atheist': Amid lots of bad news, here's an inspiring Easter story you must read

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The Easter Sunday massacre in Sri Lanka has dominated religion headlines the last few days, and rightly so.

That depressing news came on the heels of last week’s catastrophic Holy Week fire that ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

As Anne Murray sang, “We sure could use a little good news today.”

I found some in a rather unexpected place: a Washington Post story about one of the three predominantly black Louisiana churches recently destroyed by arson.

Now, you wouldn’t expect a report on a burned church to be inspiring. Yet this one was.

Give credit to the Post for sending a reporter to cover the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church’s Easter Sunday worship at its temporary home:


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