religion news

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The Rev. Bill Moyers clashed, early and often, with religion gaps in major newsrooms

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The Rev. Bill Moyers clashed, early and often, with religion gaps in major newsrooms

The year was 1976 and Jimmy Carter, a Sunday school teacher from Georgia, had shocked major newsrooms by discussing his "born again" faith.

Presidential candidates were not supposed to do things like that.

At CBS News, special correspondent Bill Moyers received a green light for a prime-time feature, "What It Means to be Born Again." After seeing the finished piece, a network executive pulled Moyers aside to chat.

The man's face was so serious, "that I thought he was about to tell me he'd been born again," Moyers told me in 1987. No, the executive said: "That was the worst show I have ever seen in my life."

The program was "cut to bits," Moyers said. Network leaders "didn't think it was news. They just didn't understand what was going on."

The broadcaster faced this disconnect many times. Moyers died on June 24 at the age of 91, after a long and complex career in which he served as speech writer and press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, followed by decades of work with CBS, NBC and PBS. However, before that, the Rev. Bill Moyers was a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas towns like Brandon and Weir. He was proud of those roots and his convictions as a progressive Baptist.

"By no means is Moyers a typical Southern Baptist," I noted, in a 1993 "On Religion" column. "He is the rare Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary graduate whose books and tapes are popular at New Age conventions. He is a hero wherever there are Baptists whose annual donations to National Public Radio are greater than their gifts to Focus on the Family."

Preaching before the first presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, another Baptist progressive, Moyers got down to basics, sharing a saying passed on by his father -- Cain and Abel were "the first Baptists because they introduced fratricide" to the biblical drama.

At the heart of Baptist life "is what we call soul competency," he explained.

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Lou Grant failed in his attempt to hire a new religion reporter: But who cared?

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Lou Grant failed in his attempt to hire a new religion reporter: But who cared?

If anyone ever writes a book about the history of religion news in the mainstream press it will need to include a photo of the glowering, and often smirking, mug of Lou Grant.

Lou Grant was a TV character, of course, played by the Emmy-winning actor Ed Asner, who died on Sunday (August 29) at age 91. But for millions of Americans, he provided -- in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the sequel "Lou Grant" -- an archetypal image of what old-school journalism was all about.

One 1977 "Lou Grant" episode certainly captured some of the attitudes I encountered while interviewing journalists for my 1982 graduate project at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, which focused on why few newsrooms made serious attempts to cover religion events and trends -- unless they were linked to politics.

Quite a few editors sounded like Lou Grant.

In this episode, entitled "Sect," the city editor of the mythical Los Angeles Tribune was wrestling with two problems at the same time. The problems seemed to be unrelated.

First, the Trib had lost its veteran religion editor. Grant searched and searched, but no one was interested in filling that empty desk. After all, what self-respecting journalist wanted to be stuck with the religion beat?

Problem number two was how to get rid of lazy, often-drunk, no-good reporter Mal Cavanaugh. All through this episode the newsroom's leaders had been searching for a way to get Cavanaugh to resign. Then came a spark of inspiration. The printed script is simple:

LOU: Well, Mal, you've been with this paper a mighty long time. As you say, this is your family.

CAVANAUGH: (All that humility) Aw, well, it's nice to be appreciated.

LOU: And I think I've found a place where we'll be able to use that special, sweet style that is Mal Cavanaugh.

CAVANAUGH: (Those eyes are getting moist; he sees himself getting a column) What's that, Lou?

LOU: Congratulations, Mal. You're the Trib's new religion editor.

(Lou sits back beaming. The information seeps in a bit slowly on Cavanaugh, who blinks at Lou.)

CAVANAUGH: Religion editor?

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Priest, firefighters rush into Notre Dame Cathedral to save what could not be replaced

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Priest, firefighters rush into Notre Dame Cathedral to save what could not be replaced

As the flames rushed through Notre Dame Cathedral's wooden rafters -- each beam cut from an individual oak -- a squad of firefighters began a strategic mission.

Their leader was Father Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain of the Paris Fire Brigade. The goal was to save a crown of thorns that pilgrims have venerated for centuries as part of one worn by the crucified Jesus. King Louis IX brought the relic to Paris in 1238, after receiving it as a gift from the embattled emperor of Constantinople.

Fournier and his firefighters were, according to KTO Catholic Television, able to "save the crown of thorns and the Blessed Sacrament." Forming a human chain, they retrieved as many relics and works of sacred art as they could, until the flames won.

Meanwhile, American television networks solemnly told viewers that "art," "artifacts" and "works of art" had been retrieved from this iconic structure at the heart of Paris. In a major story about the fire, The New York Times noted that Notre Dame Cathedral had "for centuries … enshrined an evolving notion of Frenchness."

That's an interesting way to describe the world's second most famous Catholic cathedral, after St. Peter's in Rome. Then again, is a container of what Catholics believe is bread consecrated to be the Body of Christ best described as a "cultural artifact"? Is "in shock" the best way to describe Parisians praying the Rosary and singing "Ave Maria"?

For several decades, I have been asking these kinds of questions while covering religion news and studying how our mass media struggle with religion. This past week marked my 31st anniversary writing this national "On Religion" column.

Was the Notre Dame catastrophe a "religion" story or a drama linked to cultural changes in post-Christian France? I think the answer is "yes" -- to both.

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Ignore religion's role in real news in the real world? That can be dangerous

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For more than a century, Western diplomats and scholars were sure of one thing -- that religion's role in world affairs would decline as humanity evolved toward a future rooted in logic and science.

 Those who didn't accept this vision were considered naive, irrational or perhaps even dangerous.

 The problem? There is little evidence that this secularization theory is true. In fact, it has become increasingly obvious that journalists and diplomats must pay more attention to religious traditions and practices if they want to understand many of the conflicts shaping and shaking our world, argued historian John Wolffe of the Open University in England.

 "Precisely because mainstream Western society is predominantly secular, a positive effort needs to be made to enable those who do not have a religious faith to have a better understanding both of the significant minorities in the West itself who have a religious commitment and of a continuing, and arguably growing, influence of religion in much of the rest of the world," he said, during the recent "Getting Religion" conference in Westminster, England, led by the Open University and Lapido Media.

 To be blunt, he said, confusion about the role that religion plays in the real world is dangerous. But how will religious believers and unbelievers learn to understand each other if journalists don't learn to cover religion accurately and fairly?