GetReligion

Become the most eco-friendly worm food you can be

2009-07-06T23:24:12Z

Terry mentioned a report last week about Michael Jackson possibly choosing “plastination” as a grim sort of immortality. Now USA Today’s Lifeline Live blog reports that speculation has continued about Jackson’s burial plans.

Both posts reminded me of this brief item at Utne Reader’s Spirituality blog, which mentions a greener version of cremation that promoters call promession.

The Utne item links, in turn, to The Walrus magazine. Both items dwell on the green virtue of promession as opposed to cremation. Neither really explores the spiritual questions involved, especially of how to treat a dead body with respect.

As the YouTube video atop this post explains, promessa involves freezing a corpse; using vibration to break it into small pieces; freeze-drying the pieces; removing any metal bits; and burying the post-human nuggets in a biodegradable container.

The folks at Promessa, which promotes the burial method, have thought about various religions’ teachings on the afterlife, and they conclude that such issues are less clear (and ultimately less important) than what happens to a dead body:

Many of the ideas and ponderings that dwell within the inner self are, however, thoughts about there being some kind of continuation of life, even after we have taken our last breath. And there is no such thing as right or wrong in these matters. It is important that every individual is allowed to have his or her faith, since no one really has access to the answers. On the other hand, we know what happens to a body that is no longer alive. Here we have answers. But despite this we don’t want to accept the given rules, instead we have devised unbiological routines concerning our last resting place.

Oh yes, there is an additional religion element to all this: The Church of Sweden holds a 5 percent stake in Promessa. Say what you will about the Church of Sweden, but it cannot be accused of cutting corners in pursuit of green purity.

For what it’s worth: I’m most drawn to Natural Burial, which finds the via media between embalming and cremation and leaves the steps of recycling to nature.

Cell to soul

2009-07-06T19:09:12Z

Call me a dinosaur. While I don’t blink an eye anymore at sanctuary screens and televisions in the parish house, I’m still not convinced that cell phones and computers in the sanctuary aren’t a huge distraction, another manifestation of our ADHD society gone techno-nuts.

Even I have to admit, though, that it’s clear on the surface why some congregations are allowing tweeting and texting from the pew. They want to reach potential new members, spread their messages, and stay in contact with members who might not get to church, synagogue or mosque for services.

As New York Times writer Paul Vitello wrote in an article posted this past weekend, we’re still in the early days of experimenting with the mixture of ancient faith and new media. The actual effect, as his opening paragraphs demonstrate, can be hilariously (or heretically) unpredictable. Broadly scanning multiple denominations and congregations, Vitello ably describes some of the challenges facing religious groups as they try to integrate street technologies into sanctuary praise. They range from privacy concerns to unpredictability, to the possibility of obscene language and insults. Vitello describes some of the questions now being debated online and in person:

In online debates and private discussions, leaders of all faiths have been weighing pros and cons and diagramming the boundaries of acceptable interactions: Should the congregation have a Facebook page, or should it be the imam’s or priest’s? Should there be limited access? Censoring? Is it appropriate for a clergy member to “friend” a minor?

Some recoil at the informality and unpredictability of the crowds marshaled by social media, and at their seeming immunity — even hostility — to the authority of established institutions. More deeply, some in the clergy see a basic tension between the anonymous world of online life and the meaning of religious community.

Immediately after this paragraph, Vitello follows with a really incisive quote from Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik, who comments that in Judaism, “God resides in the community.” That’s not solely a practical concern. That’s a theological one.

Some of these other faith leaders must be asking profound questions also. How does the use of new social media impact the core of the message? Can you really reconnect with your faith via Twitter? How do you know if anyone is listening and if their practice or faith has been changed?

Including some of the answers to these questions — or even finding out if anyone is asking them would have given the article a mooring, instead of leaving readers with the impression that religious leaders are making it up as they go. Which may be in fact, the case.

In an article posted last week on the Jacksonville.com website, Jeff Brumley writes about the same topic, but focuses more on how new media affects worship — and whether incorporating it works as a marketing tool. Although Brumley only has a few quotes focused on the theological issues, I thought this one from rabbi Hayim Herring summed up the dilemma that many congregations seem to be finding themselves in.

It’s also too early to declare if the practice even works, said Rabbi Hayim Herring, executive director of a Minnesota-based consulting group that helps synagogues reach out to unaffiliated Jews.

But Herring said he encourages some congregations — at least those whose observance doesn’t preclude the use of electronic devices on the sabbath — to at least consider how the process could “expand their reach.”

“Because we don’t know where social media is taking us it is worthwhile to try some limited experiments,” Herring said.

Not only do they not know if it works, but what “works” for one religious group might not work for another. Journalists covering these stories might want to ask faith leaders: what is the ultimate purpose of endorsing the use of social media in your pews?

How do you measure success? The answers might be different among religious leaders, but they would be illuminating.

Pictures of Neda

2009-07-06T15:38:55Z

The Iran story has faded from the headlines in recent weeks, in large part because the Obama White House has not worked to keep it in the headlines, perhaps knowing that “America” and “Satan” are terms that tend to flow together in the minds of millions of Iranians.

This may make conservatives mad and liberals angry, but there you go.

Many mainstream journalists, as we’ve noted often here at GetReligion, are still struggling to figure out the role that doctrine is playing in this historic event. They have struggled to get the green revolutionaries and the theocratic government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to fit neatly into their usual religion-and-politics framework.

You know the one. That’s the template that has winsome, intelligent, “moderate” religious people on one side and angry, dumb, “fundamentalists” on the other. Iran has been hard to jam into that cookie cutter. After all, as a Muslim scholar told me a year or two ago, “God will always have the right to vote” in a truly Islamic culture

So, the New York Times did take a run at explaining some of this in a recent news analysis piece that has been stored in my GetReligion guilt folder. It ran with the fitting, if obvious, headline, “In Iran Battle, Both Sides Seek to Carry Islam’s Banner.” Here’s the top of that essay:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, ended his prayer sermon in tears …, invoking the name of a disappeared Shiite prophet to suggest that his government was besieged by forces of evil out to destroy a legitimate Islamic government.

The opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, in criticizing the government, demanded the kind of justice promised by the Koran and exhorted his followers to take to their rooftops at night to cry out, “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.”

In the battle to control Iran’s streets, both the government and the opposition are deploying religious symbols and parables to portray themselves as pursing the ideal of a just Islamic state. That struggle could prove the main fulcrum in the battle for the hearts and minds of most ordinary Iranians, because the Islamic Revolution, since its inception, has painted itself as battling evil. If the government fails the test of being just, not least by using excessive violence against its citizens, it risks letting the opposition wrap itself in the mantle of Islamic virtue.

By the way, as you read that analysis piece, try to find this name — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Violence plays a key role in all of this, yet the violence must somehow be justified as an expression of Islamic justice — not simply a way of maintaining power.

This, again, brings us to the role of the holy warriors in this story, the Basij force.

The Basij — paramilitary, plainclothes vigilantes — is the main force the government uses to try to dispel antigovernment protesters. Thus far, that has been done mostly through beatings, arrests and other intimidation tactics. …

“In general, the Basij is an ideologically or culturally driven force, but the majority are very committed fundamentalists,” said Afshon P. Ostovar, who is writing his doctoral thesis at the University of Michigan about the Iranian security forces.

When violence is used in an unjust manner, what do you get? Martyrs. It is hard to make a consistent argument that you are fighting for peace and justice when people are dying while chanting “Allahu akbar.” After all, as the Times notes, “every time anyone inside Iran opens a Web site and sees the images of a teenage girl shot dead in a protest, it chips away at the government’s claim to being moral.”

This brings us back to the death of 26-year-old protester Neda “The Voice” Soltani, which the government of Iran is now arguing was staged by other protesters.

Out in the depths of cyberspace, bloggers have begun calling attention to another, less famous photo of Soltani. Actually, it is two versions of the same photo — both attached to this post. The top one is typical of several media reports.

Of course, the aftermath of Neda’s death was confusing, as the government worked hard to prevent the kind of gigantic, emotional, public funeral that is crucial in the Shiite rituals of mourning that follow the deaths of symbolic people. The funeral is the dramatic setting in which a martyr is hailed as a martyr. But Neda did not have a funeral.

It does not help that little concrete information is known about this family or about Soltani herself. Most media reports stressed that she was basically a secular person, a philosophy student and a musician (a questionable pursuit in Iran).

The mainstream press has reported that, in Soltani’s case, the police did not return the body to the family and banned public mourning services in mosques. Her family was forced out of its house.
What is going on? Some bloggers think that they know and that there is an even greater scandal at work here. Thus, we have this typical post at JihadWatch.org, linked to a report in a German publication (which I cannot read):

This is the poor young woman who was shot dead by Iranian security forces, and whose bleeding face became an image of the brutality and humanity of the mullahs. Now it turns out the Neda Soltani was a Christian — a telling indication that the analysts who dismissed the protesters as simply wanting more Sharia, or better Sharia, or Sharia with a different face, were wrong: it just wasn’t that simple.

It is also telling that the cross around her neck was cropped out when this photo circulated around the world.

The second photo has not been cropped. To me, this does not look like the cross has been inserted through digital editing. At the same time, I am not sure that a picture of her wearing a cross, with her head uncovered, is definitive proof that she was a Christian.

Anyway, the “Neda was a Christian” story has now spread to the FreeRepublic.com arena, where it is being discussed in the usual non-journalistic, or even anti-journalistic, terms. A typical reader response:

That Neda was a Christian doesn’t come as a huge surprise, nor the loathsome attempt to hide it by the media. The questions that arise from this issue are; How many Neda’s e.g. Christians are there in Iran? (I suspect far more than the ‘official’ number) and more importantly what can we, as Westerners do to help them? Send money, get involved in some charitable foundation to help Persian Christians(and Jews and other oppressed Persians)? Is there are way to help those Persians and Christians who want freedom and equality under the law and so many of the things we take for granted in the West? Can we help them escape Iran?

I mention this latest example of Internet rumor for a simple reason: The Iran story clearly isn’t over. I also wonder if there is, in fact, any reportable, journalistic information that supports this claim that “the voice” of this new Iranian revolution was, in fact, a member of a religious minority. Would the green revolutionaries accept that fact? Would this change her status? What if she had been Baha’i (and, thus, part of another very important story that has faded from the headlines)? One of the Iranian Jews?

As for me, I still want to know what’s going on behind the scenes in Iran. I hope that mainstream journalists do not leave these kinds of stories to the bloggers.

How not to push a story

2009-07-06T15:29:23Z

Associated Press reporter Allen Breed is back with another religion-fueled story on Gov. Mark Sanford, leading candidate for South Carolina’s worst husband. You sort of know the story’s not going to be so hot when it begins as follows:

Each Sunday afternoon in May, Gov. Mark Sanford and his wife hosted five other couples at the executive mansion for a spiritual “boot camp.” Topics discussed during the hour-and-a-half-long sessions included forgiveness and “not loving your wife as Christ loved the church.”

I don’t know for sure, of course, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say the topics discussed including how to love your wife as Christ loves the church, not how not to love your wife as Christ loves the Church.

The story is built largely around Warren “Cubby” Culbertson, a spiritual advisor who runs workshops for men and couples. It’s not an awful story but it has that same “Christians in the Mist” thing that Breed’s previous story — the one that alleged the Christian idea of love is, um, ‘cold.’ Take this, for instance:

In an interview with The Associated Press this weekend at his Columbia office, just blocks from the State House, Culbertson said he believed his friend when he said that this was his only marital transgression. He thinks Sanford was simply caught off guard by “the power of darkness.”

Culbertson also thinks that the only thing holding his friends’ marriage together right now is “their vow to God.”

“Because it’s not feelings — it’s not emotions,” Culbertson said, the smile fading from his tanned face. “For most Christians, at some point in your marriage, if you’re married long enough, you do it because that’s what we’re called to do — out of obedience instead of out of passion. And I think that’s where Mark and Jenny are right now.”

Putting “their vow to God” in quotes makes me chuckle. Are they really needed there? And the whole “smile fading from his tanned face” line. I mean, come on.

So after a comparison of what Culbertson teaches with some of the various religious speech used by Sanford, Breed brings in, I kid you not, “a Washington, D.C.-based body language and deception detection expert” who says she thinks Sanford is a liar. Okay …

But my favorite part is where there’s a discussion of how surprising Sanford’s cheating was:

Even Sanford’s political enemies would concede that much.

Will Folks, a former Sanford spokesman who has been excoriating his old boss in his political blog, said sex and romance “never seemed to be things that were on the governor’s radar.” Although he has since reported on two other alleged dalliances, Folks said this passionate love affair is “100 percent inconsistent with everything I ever saw of the man.”

“I honestly thought the guy was asexual,” Folks said. “I am not kidding.”

The man is married. With four children. Does Folks not understand what the word asexual means? Should we, perhaps, include someone who does understand the word? I know we’re really working overtime in these AP stories to present the Christian view of love as cold, but this strikes me as just nonsensical. It’s as if the only notion of “sexy time” that the culture has comes from Britney Spears and Borat. Memo to reporters: sex doesn’t have to be base, illicit or videotaped in order to be sex.

Elephant in this evangelical analysis

2009-07-06T14:59:23Z

When I was an intern at the Ventura County Star, an editor taught me to avoid writing ledes that require weak modifiers like “may.” The same goes for headlines that end with a question mark. It’s a cheap trick designed to imply a big story that really isn’t there — though I will admit I use it often when blogging.

So what to expect from this story in last Sunday’s Los Angeles Times: “Will scandals inspire evangelicals to stray from Republican Party?”

How about very little you haven’t heard before.

A series of sex-related scandals over the last few years has undercut the party’s assertions of moral authority and, worse, may serve to reinforce the doubts that many evangelical voters have traditionally harbored about the unholiness of the political realm.

“If we place our hope in a political party or a politician, we’ll be let down,” said Brandt Waggoner, 25, a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., who said he spoke for many young evangelicals. “My hope is in God and not in the government.”

A sudden and overwhelming shift of Christian conservatives from the GOP to the more secular-minded Democratic Party appears unlikely. As Laura Olson, an expert on religion and politics at South Carolina’s Clemson University, put it: “The Republican Party is still going to be, at a minimum, the lesser of two evils.”

The Times reporter than goes on to say, in what amounts to the story’s nut graph, that “in politics, subtraction can be just as important as addition.” But really, the story has already died by the time we get to Olson’s quote, which appears in the fourth paragraph.

The article bounces all over the place — noting that while Mark Sanford and Mark Foley and Larry Craig are the Republican’s cross to bear, well Democrats have John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer and, of course, Bill Clinton — and offers a lot of conjecture without a lick of statistics. No mention of exit poll data from the last three presidential elections; no comment from The Barna Group, whose entire operation focuses on distilling evangelical patterns and behaviors into spreadsheets; not even a quote from John Green of the Pew Forum.

The article’s subhead had suggested that even if the recent spate of sex scandals didn’t disenfranchise some GOP voters they could at least “reinforce some Christian conservatives’ doubts about politics in general.” Well, I sure hope so. Too many Americans are too quick to accept the publicly professed beliefs of polticians who make a living pandering to whatever interest will make them popular.

But aside from Waggoner, “who said he spoke for many young evangelicals,” the story provides no such evidence of that either.

And why would it matter if evangelicals split from the Republican Party? The Times reporter briefly mentions their significance to the GOP since the late ’70s, but he doesn’t break down the breadth of conservative “religious voters.” Believe it or not, they’re not all evangelicals; many aren’t even — stop the presses! — Christians.

Unlike many stories that have focused on evangelicals since George Bush was re-elected in 2004, the flaw of this article wasn’t that the reporter seemed to have never met an evangelical in his life, but that too much effort was made to slip a story into the paper that offered nothing new to the reader.

Southern Baptists in brief

2009-07-04T14:55:26Z

It’s time to take a trip deep, deep into the tmatt folder of GetReligion guilt. You see, with the Iran explosion and a bunch of other major news, I don’t think we made a single reference to coverage of the Southern Baptist Convention meetings in Louisville.

As anyone knows who has ever covered one, SBC gatherings are big sprawling affairs, even though they are no longer the must-cover events that they were in the 1980s during the civil war for control of America’s largest non-Catholic flock.

When you are there, the daily stories go marching by, from the election of the present to some resolution about this or that political issue. This year, the mainstream press stirred a bit about the Southern Baptists voting to celebrate the election of the nation’s first African-American president, even while stressing the many, repeat many, issues that divide Southern Baptists and President Barack Obama.

As you cover those daily stories, it is often easy to lose sight of the big-picture issues that are looming in the background. Then, if you decide to write about one of these larger stories, it’s hard to crunch it into the small amounts of space that reporters are working with these days.

So let’s pause to celebrate one such effort, by veteran scribe Bob Smietana of the Tennessean in Nashville, home of the SBC headquarters that many call the “Baptist Vatican.” I know, I know, that nickname makes no sense in terms of church polity, but relax.

In the middle of a feature about the convention, Smietana dove into a very complex subject — which is why the Southern Baptists, after decades of growth, have finally suffered some slight membership declines. This, of course, stands in contrast to the demographic earthquake that has hit the “Seven Sisters” of liberal Protestantism. If you are interested in a longer, insider’s take on this SBC issue, see these two essays — here and here — by Will Hall, the head of Baptist Press.

But here is the heart of Smietana’s crisp mini-look at this huge subject:

Three major factors derailed the Southern Baptist system.

First, the birth rate among white Americans fell. That was a problem because most Southern Baptists are white and because they found most of their converts among their children. …

Second, Americans moved from rural areas into cities and suburbs. That’s a problem because almost half of Southern Baptist churches are in rural areas. And Baptists have, until recently, started few new urban churches. Hall disagrees with some critics who think the decline in membership and baptisms is a spiritual problem.

“The problem is not a lack of evangelistic fervor,” he said. “It’s location, location, location.”

The third factor? New churches that don’t act like Southern Baptist churches. Those churches have often exchanged their choirs for rock bands, met in nontraditional places, and have preachers who dress casually and give edgy sermons. And many new churches also have dropped Baptist from their names as denominational loyalty fell.

Now there is a lot going on in there and, yes, there’s a lot more that could be said. The keys, however, are the hard facts about demographics and the reality of the post-denominational age. However, when I was reading up on the decline issue — I plan to write on it myself, sooner or later — one thing stuck out.

When it comes to racial diversity, Southern Baptists are actually seeing a tremendous amount of success. Mainline church leaders may struggle to grasp this, but the most ethnically diverse churches in America are found in these three bodies — the Roman Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God and, yes, the Southern Baptist Convention.

The SBC has been opening many Hispanic and African-American congregations and seeing increases in its ethnically mixed congregations. The Tennessean article notes:

There are signs that the Southern Baptist Convention may be able to reverse its decline. From 1998 to 2007, the number of ethnic minorities in the faith doubled, to 8 percent.

In other words, they have had success — but not enough. Southern Baptists are not keeping up with the rising tide of ethnic diversity in modern America, even though they are doing better than most other denominations. That’s the largest of the larger realities, especially when combined with the issue of declining white birth rates.

This is a very big story. I hope the Tennessean lets Bob return to it and dig much, much deeper.

Got news? Religious freedom and India

2009-07-04T00:30:41Z

As you would imagine, I have — since my return from Bangalore and New Delhi — been especially sensitive to news reports with India datelines. At the same time, I am always interested in coverage of human rights issues, especially those linked to religious freedom and the rights of minority groups. Call me an old-fashioned liberal.

Thus, this news report caught my eye. We’ll discuss the source in a moment. For now, just read the exerpt:

India has rebuffed a U.S. government watchdog group tasked with monitoring religious liberty abroad by denying entry visas for the group’s planned visit.

A delegation from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom intended to discuss conditions with officials in India, which has seen recent outbreaks of violence against religious minorities, especially Christians. The Indian embassy in Washington did not deliver the visas necessary for the delegation’s June 12 departure, however, and has not offered any official explanation for the decision. …

India is the only democracy to have blocked a visit by USCIRF, which had been requesting entry since 2001. More than 20 other countries, including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, have allowed the commission to enter.

Now, this is amazing, even stunning news. It is, of course, linked the controversial 2007 riots in the state of Orissa. Click here for some GetReligion material on that, including a New York Times report that drew protests from Hindu groups.

So why were the visas denied?

The Times of India reported June 17 that prominent Hindu leader Shankaracharya Jayendra Sarawati had demanded that USCIRF not be allowed into the country, labeling the organization an “intrusive mechanism of a foreign government which is interfering with the internal affairs of India.”

The American branch of the Hindu World Council also had bristled at the idea of a USCIRF visit to India, calling it “incomprehensible” and accusing the United States of lumping India, whose constitution guarantees freedom of religion, with countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Cuba.

Now, if you search Google news for the terms “religious,” “freedom,” “India” and “visas” you will find quite a bit of coverage of this. After all, there is all kinds of on-the-record material available about this shocking turn of events, both here in the United States and, obviously, in mainstream news in India.

But when you get your Google results, you will notice that all of the coverage is on the other side of the world, when it comes to mainstream media. And here in America, this seems to be another one of those strange cases where human-rights issues linked to religion somehow fall into that strange nowhere land called “conservative news.”

The report quoted above, after all, is of a major U.S. government agency. But the report comes from Baptist Press.

Did I miss mainstream coverage elsewhere?

Just asking.

Inquisitive Vatican — or Vatican inquisition?

2009-07-03T16:06:38Z

It’s very appropriate that the New York Times highlight one of the developing, perhaps major religious news stories. And it’s even better, most of the time, when that story is told by religion writer Laurie Goodstein, who has a gift for nuance and ability to give her readers revealing details about her subjects in a way that is spare, usually undramatic, but enlightening.

So I was a little taken aback by the way she handled what’s likely to be a hot topic for a while — several Vatican investigations of American nuns. The article has a lot of good, informative material — but some very distracting flaws.

Here’s the lede. Read it and ask yourself: is Goodstein taking sides here?

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.

Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planting schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming. But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining — to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965.

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

Who do you think of when you hear the words “sweeping investigation?” And how about the word “inquisition?” Right. Let’s move on — the “oft-unsung” nuns who have adapted to the “modern” world seem to be the heroes of this story.

Part of the problem here is that you have a natural tension between the investigators, notably “apple-cheeked” and habited Mother Mary Clare Millea, and the nuns under investigation. Unless you already think “about time these nuns got their comeuppance,” or have been keeping up with the story of U.S. nuns, as a reader your sympathies are probably more likely to lie with those being “investigated.” The fact that Goodstein quotes liberal nuns in academia and a journalist with strong opinions (formerly a religion writer for the New York Times!) really doesn’t help.

What are the doctrinal issues? How come they don’t get discussed?

Where are the moderates — the nuns who feel called to life in the world, may or may not wear a habit, but aren’t universalists or even into Reiki? Where are the nuns who taught my daughter?

More to the point — what prompted this investigation? OK, so the Vatican provided “only a vague rationale.” Did Goodstein ask Mother Millea? I know you aren’t supposed to be pushy with nuns, but even a “no comment” would have told us something. To her credit, however, Goodstein gives Millea a lot of space to explain the visitations and the standards by which they are being evaluated.

Yes, it’s a challenge to write a story like this one, where much of the intepretation depends on church historians, journalists or the subjects of the visitations themselves. Possibly gaining access to Millea herself was something of a coup, although one has to believe that it was authorized by a higher-up. It’s clearer (who leaked the letter from Cardinal Levada?) why the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is being examined.

Goodstein notes that we don’t know what the Vatican did or didn’t do as a result of the previous visitations. Given that there are nuns willing and interested in talking to the media, I suspect we’ll be hearing more — from one of the sides. But there are many angles to this story, many sides and many opinions. Polarizing it doesn’t serve either the Vatican or the diverse group of U.S. nuns — who remain, in this story, basically “unsung.”

P.S. Tmatt was already on to the story, and has some good background on Sinsinawa Dominican Sister Laurie Brink’s 2007 address to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious — which could have set many dovecots aflutter. If you want to read the whole address, Rod Dreher has a link — and commentary.

A Roman Catholic “inquisition,” portrayed by Goya — from Wikimedia Commons

The Christian view of love is … cold?

2009-07-03T05:10:32Z

When I was criticizing that awful Washington Post piece about how morally confounding Mark Sanford’s love life is, it just seemed odd to me that no media outlet has really explained the Christian view of love. For being a country that is majority Christian, it’s shocking how little we read about some of the basic tenets of the theology.

Anyway, no sooner had I hit publish on that last post when I came across an Associated Press story (“For born-again Sanford, love is more than a feeling”) that explains what it calls the “born-again, evangelical Christian” approach to love. You might also recognize it as the Catholic approach to love. And the Orthodox approach to love. And the Lutheran approach to love. And so on and so forth. But I digress.

Here’s the beginning by reporter Allen Breed:

In one especially soul-baring e-mail to his Argentine mistress, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford quoted from 1 Corinthians 13 about the nature of love.

It is patient and kind, he wrote. It is NOT jealous or boastful.

The Christian counselors Sanford sought out while trying to decide whether to stay with his wife or jump on a plane to South America advised him what else love is and isn’t.

“Their point is that love is not a feeling,” Sanford told the Associated Press in a tearful two-day confessional. “It’s a choice. It’s an action.”

That sentiment might seem cold to many Americans, but it is perfectly consistent with the born-again, evangelical Christian world that Sanford inhabits, says sociologist John Bartowski.

Maybe it’s because I’m in a marriage and have contemplated marriage a bit, but I can’t help but laugh that this sentiment might seem cold. To me, cold is cheating on your wife with an Argentine bombshell because you feel like it. Cold is messing up your sons’ view of marriage, romance and love through your narcissism and lack of foresight. Cold is breaking the heart of your wife and partner. Cold is telling the world that you so callously disregarded your marital vows that you somehow managed to pick up a “soul mate” who lives 5,000 miles away. Dios mio! But believing that love is demonstrated through your behavior? That doesn’t seem particularly cold to me.

I think what people are missing about this view is that the head is much more an agent of romance as are the heart and, uh, other body parts. Sanford used his brain to make love choices in recent years — he could have just as easily used that same brain to make different love choices. This isn’t cold so much as reality.

The story goes on to quote someone saying that evangelicals are “carving out a subcultural view of love” that is not so highly romanticized as we see in movies. I think that the source might be confused about whether the Christian view of love predates the chick flick or not, but that’s his fault more than the reporter’s:

That worldview, [Bartowski] says, “divorces” love from emotion, because “feelings are fleeting and not to be trusted.”

“Love is something that is cultivated in the trenches of living a day-to-day relationship,” says Bartowski. “That is not a Hallmark moment.”

Still, it would be nice to have at least one source argue for the romance inherent in the Christian view of love. Let’s go back to that 1 Corinthians quote that began the piece. It’s considered romantic, being used at so many weddings as to be predictable. Here’s a relevant portion:

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

It may be impossible for marriage partners to achieve, but it’s certainly not something I’d describe as cold.

The article quotes a number of evangelicals all reinforcing the idea that love is demonstrated through actions rather than experienced via ephemeral emotions. There’s a lot missing about what that means, though. For instance, the Christian view is that love is not self-serving (see Corinthians, above). Love is directed at something. It’s how you get to take care of others. You love your children by feeding, clothing and taking care of them when they’re sick. It can be viewed as drudgery or a great blessing. You love your spouse by meeting their sexual, emotional and physical needs. Again, it can be viewed as drudgery or a great honor. Lutherans refer to the estate of marriage in vocational terms. I would have loved to see this idea, as described here by Gene Edward Veith, included in the article:

The purpose of every vocation is to love and serve our neighbor. God does not need our good works, commented Luther, but our neighbor does. In our vocations we encounter specific neighbors whom we are to love and serve through the work of that calling. Husbands and wives are to love and serve each other; parents love and serve their kids; office and factory workers love and serve their customers; rulers love and serve their subjects; pastors and congregations are to love and serve each other. And God is in it all.

Of course, we also sin in vocation — insisting on being served rather than serving; loving ourselves rather than our neighbors; misusing the gifts and the calling God Himself has given us — we come to Him on Sunday mornings in repentance, hearing God’s Word, being built up in our faith. Whereupon God sends us back into our callings, with all of their trials and tribulations, for that faith to bear fruit in love, service, and sanctification.

The competing vision is of love as a feeling that is its own judge. The heart reigns above all. But who, really, is being served in such an emotion-based scenario other than Sanford? The AP article really hammers home this idea that the Christian view of love is about duty, drudgery and coldness. That’s a deeply flawed take on the Christian view — one that reinforces Sanford’s views as expressed in his rambling press conferences and bizarre interviews.

I salute Breed for tackling this story, though. And I’m honestly unsure who is to blame for the story’s flaws. Is it him for his “Evangelicals in the Mist” approach and his use of a narrow range of sources? Or is it the inadequacy of the sources themselves?

Devout goose, meet devout gander

2009-07-03T02:16:32Z

The Associated Press report is very, very, very short and raises many more questions than it answers. Here is a typical version (or click here for a longer version in the Los Angeles Times):

WASHINGTON — Authorities have arrested and charged a Duke University official who they say offered his adopted 5-year-old son for sex.

The FBI’s Washington field office said the school’s associate director of the Center for Health Policy, Frank Lombard, was caught in an Internet sting. Authorities said that Lombard tried to persuade a person — whom he did not know was a police officer — to travel to North Carolina to have sex with Lombard’s child.

Court documents charge that Lombard identified himself online as “perv dad for fun.”

The papers also say an unnamed informant, facing charges in his own child sex case, tipped off authorities to Lombard’s activities.

Sadly, in this Culture Wars age, whenever the mainstream coverage is shallow — try to find coverage of any substance (here’s one short report) in North Carolina newspapers — a story as dark and disgusting as this one is going to leap right over the world of journalism and into advocacy media. In some cases, these op-ed style pieces have raised some valid questions. In many more cases they have added fire and heat, rather than light.

Yes, Lombard is openly gay, living with his partner and their two adopted sons. Yes, his job at Duke focuses on medical issues linked to HIV/AIDS in the rural South. Yes, the details in the affadavit in support of the arrest warrant are absolutely hellish. Yes, there are people in mainstream newsrooms who are asking questions about this case and, sooner or later, the answers to those questions may actually make it into balanced, responsible news coverage.

But let me be clear on one thing, concerning the screams about this story out on the online right. The sins and alleged crimes of one gay parent say as much about the motivations and beliefs of those who advocate legal adoptions by gays and lesbians as, well, the sins and crimes of one anti-abortion activist who shoots an abortionist say something valid about the motivations and beliefs of people in the mainstream pro-life movement. In other words — next to nothing. We are not going to be discussing that issue here. Trust me.

So why, pray tell, do I mention this story at GetReligion?

As it turns out, Lombard was — until just a few days ago — a veteran member of the vestry at the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in Chapel Hill, N.C., a progressive, activist congregation on gay issues that has been actively scrubbing most signs of his existence from its website. For those not familiar with Episcopal polity, the vestry is the church’s controlling board. Being on the vestry is similar to being on the parish council, in a Catholic or Orthodox context, or on the board of deacons, in a Baptist context.

Now, here’s the journalistic question that we will discuss: Do you think that journalists would be interested if you had a similar criminal case and the accused was a deacon or board member in an evangelical or Catholic congregation that takes strong stands on these kinds of hot-button social issues?

If this kind of sexy story broke in the mainstream press, would this deacon be called a “devout” Southern Baptist or a “devout,” “practicing” Roman Catholic? I would imagine so.

If so, should Lombard be called a “devout” Episcopalian?

If the religion would be relevant in the case of a Christian conservative, should the religion be relevant in the case of the Christian liberal?

Just asking.

What is love?

2009-07-02T17:24:27Z

One of the things my pastor told my husband and me in premarital counseling is that we should think of love as a verb, not a noun. The Christian couple, he said, should know that love is what you do, not what you feel. On a somewhat related note, my father told me that he had counseled couples for marriage who wanted their vows to read “as long as we both shall love” instead of “as long as we both shall live.” Dad pointed out that they’d need something to keep them going after their first week of marriage.

It seems to me that society views love as an emotion, even a sacred emotion. It’s not, as Jenny Sanford wrote in her statement last week, “a commitment and an act of will.”

There’s a huge chasm between people who think that the goodness of a thing is determined by strength of feeling and the people who think the goodness of a thing is determined through some objective measure. And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the former viewpoint so well represented as it is in this horrifying (to me, at least) article by Neely Tucker in the Washington Post. He writes that Sanford’s affair with an Argentinian woman is completely different from all those seedier political sex scandals because he actually loved this woman. There is clearly a difference between New York Governor Elliot Spitzer paying tens of thousands of dollars to prostitutes and what we know of Sanford’s relationship with the woman who is not his wife. But both cases deal with lust and a decision to forsake marriage vows — and I’m not so sure the distinction is as important as Tucker seems to think it is.

After describing their love letters as adult epistles from the heart, we get a lot of quotes about how all everything good about romance comes from passion and suffering, not the drudgery of fidelity:

It’s pretty much Shakespearean now. The governor’s wife has taken the children and left him, but says she’ll have him back if he repents. Lawmakers are calling for his head. Paparazzi are circling outside the Buenos Aires apartment of The Other Woman.

“There is something admirable and authentic in his and Maria’s passion for each other, empathy for each other, honesty with each other,” writes Cristina Nehring, author of “A Vindication of Love,” a new book about passion and romance, in an e-mail after reading the pair’s letters. “That said, the relationship of course represents a moral dilemma, to which the answers are not obvious.”

Many other people are quoted talking about the moral dilemma. And how do I put this? I don’t want to speak for all religious people, but there are quite a few Christians for whom the answers are exceedingly obvious. Last week my mother and I were talking about how apparent it was that Sanford had serious feelings for this woman not his wife. She told me that during the course of her (quite passionate, incidentally) marriage, she had met men with whom she would have been much more compatible than my father. She said that the Christian woman must make the immediate decision against pursuing such relationships with people who aren’t her spouse. That God had given her my father and she was the man to whom her love must be directed. In other words: it is an obvious answer. It might be difficult to live the way God wants you to, but it’s obvious none the less.

And yet nowhere in the Post’s secular paean to romance is this idea even broached. Is it because newsrooms don’t even understand the specifics of marital commitment? Do they assume that people who are faithful simply never had an opportunity — or a real desire — to break their vows? I kind of suspect that’s the case. But this piece actually feels like something of an assault on traditional values.

The thing that got me was that the entire piece seemed like a tribute to the most juvenile forms of love. Now that I am married, my understanding of romance, fidelity and love are so much more developed than when I was crazy and single. Take this sample, for instance:

“Happy love has no history,” Denis de Rougemont wrote in “Love in the Western World,” more than two decades ago. “Romance only comes into existence where love is fatal, frowned upon and doomed by life itself. What stirs lyrical poets to their finest flights is neither the delight of the senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple; not the satisfaction of love but its passion. And passion means suffering.”

And: “How widespread and disturbing is our fascination with the love that breaks the law. Is this not the sign that we wish to escape from a horrible reality?”

The horrible reality: That perhaps we have found, against all odds and comforts, a love that transcends the meaningless of life, of our reality of dry-cleaning receipts and stubble in the bathroom sink; and that this balm is denied to us.

Sigh. A few centuries ago, Luther responded to this idea that family life is drudgery quite well.

It’s a shame that no opposing perspective was permitted to share space in Tucker’s article. Sure, we’re all obsessed with love that breaks the law. But some people actually mature beyond the Romeo & Juliet idea of romance and are much better off for it.

Trust me — being cognizant of how your behavior affects others doesn’t make your love life less interesting. Far from it. It deepens the passion and the intimacy. That the Washington Post would articulate a love-sick teenagers view of how romance should be is disappointing, to say the least. Believe it or not, religion has something wise to say about all these affairs of the heart. If the Post can mock religion in the Style pages, certainly it can discuss it in other ways as well.

A pastor and his pay

2009-07-02T17:58:14Z

The Rev. Brad Braxton’s trials at Manhattan’s famed Riverside Church have been much reported since a few members of the congregation unsuccessfully sued their new pastor in April for receiving a pay and compensation package that exceeded $600,000 annually.

Monday night, only nine months into the job, Braxton decided he had had enough and email to congregants announcing his resignation.

“The consistent discord has made it virtually impossible to establish a fruitful covenant between the congregation and me,” he said.

The New York Times responded yesterday with a story that did a nice job explaining the theological tension within which Braxton was drawn and quartered. Though the Times reporter only obliquely referenced the sweeping gains in membership evangelical churches have experienced at the expense of dwindling mainline, and particularly urban, Protestant churches, the reporter showed how Braxton’s Baptist approach was out of line with enough of Riverside’s big-tent congregants to create a vocal faction.

According to dissidents, Dr. Braxton went about that by bringing elements of evangelical tradition into church services. They said he called on worshipers to come forward and bear witness to their faith, favored the gospel choir over the church’s traditional choir, and preached at times what they considered a Riverside heresy: that Jesus and only Jesus was the way to salvation.

Some members of the congregation may believe that, said Constance Guice-Mills, a member of the church. “But his focus on personal salvation, on the individual, was diametrically opposed to the tradition of Riverside. Here, we believe you achieve salvation by doing social justice. Out in the world. And we have people from all backgrounds. Buddhists.”

According to supporters like Ms. Schmidt, the council chairwoman, Dr. Braxton’s theological views were consistent with the Riverside culture. But he also recognized the great challenge facing liberal Protestants — the extraordinary growth of evangelical churches for 30 years.

Oddly, the Times does not mention money until the third-to-last paragraph. Now, I know you’re supposed to avoid talking about money around friends and that finances are one of the top stresses on any relationship, but this placement seems like a major oversight.

By comparison, Religion News Service mentions Braxton’s salary in the second paragraph of its resignation story — though RNS fails to evaluate church officials’ claims that “the package was consistent with that of similar high-profile pulpits.” The Daily News also accepted that assertion without seeking confirmation.

I’m not sure how one would seek out comps — Riverside Church is in its own league — but that really wasn’t what was needed. What each of these stories was lacking was any — any — sort of a theological perspective on money.

Christians are taught from an early age that the love of money is the root of all evil. Can someone who earns more than half a million a year not love money? We know well Jesus’ parable of the challenges a rich man will face if he wants to enter heaven. But what is rich? And how does a pastor’s salary play in a church with historically liberal values?

While these stories don’t let us in on answers to those first two questions, the last question seems pretty self explanatory — at least in the Rev. Braxton’s case.

Vanity Fair diagnoses Sarah Palin

2009-07-02T17:38:03Z

Whatever Vanity Fair pays its national editor, Todd S. Purdum, he earns every dollar with expertly crafted hit pieces. His lengthy takedown of Bill Clinton last year was satisfying for readers long troubled by Clinton’s various indiscretions, political and otherwise.

Now Purdhum has turned his withering gaze on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whom Purdum depicts as coming entirely too close to the vice presidency, simply by becoming Sen. John McCain’s running mate. Her ambition and ruthlessness would give Lady Macbeth good competition, if Purdum’s account is to be believed.

Mark Hemingway, spouse of my colleague Mollie, has begun investigating who leaked so many campaign insider’s details to Purdum, and possibly why. Some of Purdum’s shots simply are cheap, regardless of their ultimate sources.

He dismisses Palin’s future publisher, Zondervan, as “the Bible-publishing house,” which apparently tells us all we need to know about the company that also publishes Philip Yancey, Rick Warren, Shane Claiborne, and dozens of academic texts.

He mentions that Palin’s hometown newspaper “recently published an article that asked, ‘Will the Antichrist be a Homosexual?’” but doesn’t make clear that it was an opinion column by an independent Baptist pastor rather than front-page news.

He drags up the case of Wasilla’s librarian who was fired, without mentioning such trifling details as these from FactCheck.org: “She was also re-hired the next day and never claimed that Palin threatened to oust her for refusing to ban books.”

He notes that Palin confessed, at a pro-life dinner, to brief thoughts about abortion when she learned that her youngest son, Trig, had Down syndrome. Then he adds this bombast: “It is almost impossible not to be touched by the rawness of her confession, even if it is precisely this choice that Palin believes no other woman should ever have, not even in the case of rape or incest.”

Most voters recognize the difference between a politician’s pro-life ideals and what actually is possible in a culture well to the left of Western Europe on abortion laws. Ah, but Palin believes laws should forbid abortion unless a woman’s life is at stake, which makes her a bad person.

This, however, is the most grotesque paragraph:

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy” — and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”

I never knew the DSM IV was such popular reading among the pop psychologists of Alaska — especially in an Alaska that Purdum repeatedly portrays as a cultural backwater. As for that letter to friends and relatives, if Purdum cannot distinguish between sentiment and self-aggrandizement, he needs to broaden his reading habits — if only to include the occasional Christmas family letter or Snopes.com’s Glurge gallery.

Blessed Francis, healer?

2009-07-02T17:53:20Z

Does a saint’s intercession heal? Or are the faithful in the Roman Catholic Church praying with the saints to Jesus Christ?

That’s the big doctrinal question that is a wee bit mysterious in a well-researched, lengthy, and generally helpful article about the procedure for examining whether 19th-century Maryland priest Francis X. Seelos, should be declared a saint.

There are a few other, more minor problems with this generally thorough story. The most evident one is in the photo caption of the article in the Baltimore Sun. One GetReligion reader wrote us that the term “charm” (more reminscent of Shakespeare and witchcraft) to refer to the religious relic Mary Ellen Heibel wears around her neck was so “ignorant” that he couldn’t read the article.

The canonization process (Seelos was beatified by the Vatican in 2000) is a long one, and requires that those arguing for sainthood document a second event that fulfills the criteria for a miracle. The context for Arthur Hirsch’s article is the healing of Mary Ellen Heibel, a parishioner at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Annapolis, Maryland — which might or might not be the miracle that those campaigning for sainthood need to make their case.

Starting with a few paragraphs about the Maryland parishioner, Hirsch cuts back and forth between her story and the process that the Archdiocese of Baltimore is undergoing in evaluating whether it should ask the Vatican to canonize Seelos. This isn’t simple stuff, by any means. And generally, Hirsch does a pretty nice job explaining it. Heibel doesn’t pray “to” Seelos. She prays “with” him.

But these two paragraphs in particular seemed confusing.

For only the fifth time in its 200-year history, the archdiocese has launched a test of faith and science to help the Vatican determine whether one of its own was not only exemplary in virtue during life but now has the power in death to intercede with God. In the end, it will be up to the pope to rule on whether Seelos is to join the men and women held up by the church through the centuries as models of holiness.

“Did what happened come about by the intercession of Blessed Seelos? That’s what we have to discover,” said the Rev. Gilbert J. Seitz, the judicial vicar who heads the committee, emphasizing that its job is not to judge the case but to gather information in a process akin to taking a deposition.

As I understand the Roman Catholic doctrine of intercession, the saints can pray with and for believers, but it is not up to them as to whether the prayer is answered. It would be up to God.

I wish the author had asked Seitz how any earthly court would be able to figure out whether Seelos was responsible for the healing — and what that means..

Closer to the middle of the story, when discussing the “painstaking” canonization process, Hirsch quotes Seitz again. “Hundreds stall at the midpoint of beatification, either for lack of a verifiable miracle or the support neccesary to bring such information to the Vatican’s attention.”

Now that’s a fascinating sentence. Readers might want to know what makes a healing or other occurrence a “verifiable” miracle — and what kind of bureaucratic, financial ( for research and writing), or popular suppport is neccesary to get the attention of the Vatican.

I’m not thrilled with the use of the word “magical” a few paragraphs later to describe events in the lives of the saints. On the whole, however, Hirsch displays what seems to be a willingness to both understand and chronicle carefully the beliefs and language of the people he’s telling us about. Local readers probably appreciated that — and would eagerly wait for more chapters in the ongoing story of a homegrown pastor made very, very good.

I know you’ll know this, but that’s not the “real” Seelos in the YouTube video — it took me a minute to figure it out

A chaplain in the right place

2009-07-01T18:55:59Z

I was stunned the other day by the total lack of interest in the religion elements of the big story here in Washington, D.C., as in the tragedy on our Metro subway system. The coverage has been major league, as you would expect, and the story on which I focused was one out of many worthy of discussion.

(Sound of crickets on a still night)

OK, I don’t care.

I’m going to write about this subject again, because the Washington Post had a follow-up story the other day that was simply baptized in religious themes and images, for a totally valid, journalistic reason. You see, one of the survivors from that first Metro car, the one that was crushed to one third its size, was — wait for it — was a military chaplain with two tours worth of experience in Iraq. He was in the wrong place at the right time.

In the end, the Post turned Car 1079 into a kind of urban version of “The Bridge of San Luis Rey.” Who was in that car at the crucial moment, when it was “Three Minutes to Fort Totten”?

I do have a few questions, however.

With this kind of anecdotal story, any feature writer has to ask two questions right up front: (1) What’s the symbolic story that gives me a lede? And (2) What’s the over-arching principle that provides the structure (and how does the lede fit into that)?

Now, it’s clear to me that Dave Bottoms, the chaplain who has just arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, provides most of the information and insights that provide the structure of the story. Yet, the lede starts somewhere else, with Tom Baker, a doctor, and the last man to step onto the train before the doors closed and it began its short, final trip. I understand that choice. Yet I also wonder if leading with the chaplain was, oh, too religious? Did the editorial team conclude that this would be too focused on the faith element of the story?

I could pick many different passages from this story demonstrating that writer Eli Saslow “gets it,” in terms of the faith element that was already in this story. But let’s start with the introduction of Bottoms:

In the far rear of the car, Dave Bottoms listened to an iPod. A chaplain who had just finished his first day on the pastoral staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Bottoms, 39, felt scattered from the stress of a new job. Wasn’t today his dog’s seventh birthday? Did his new BlackBerry work? Were there any leftovers in the fridge for a quick dinner? Bottoms reached into his backpack and grabbed a photocopy of a homily by St. Irenaeus. Maybe, Bottoms thought, a little reading would quiet his mind.

Baker stopped walking when he reached the chaplain and stood near him, leaning against a wall by the rear exit of the first car. Baker had moved from Texas to Washington four years ago, bought a downtown condo and sold his car. So liberating. He loved the predictability of Metro. It was 4:57 p.m., and Train 112 lurched into motion, with Car 1079 at the lead. Baker grabbed a pole to steady himself and turned to face the door he planned to use to exit the train. He would make it to the gym by 5:45, probably home by 7:30. A good night ahead. Three minutes to Fort Totten.

After the crash, Bottoms does what you would expect a chaplain with battlefield experience to do — he comforts the injured and the dying.

A writer doesn’t have to add drama to this kind of story. It also helps, of course, to be interviewing someone (most clergy are amazing, trust me) who is used to hearing people describe their lives, their emotions, their feelings — even at the moment of death.

When he was training, we are told, a mentor gave Bottoms this motto: “You don’t let anyone suffer alone.”

This is the real thing. The quote is long, yes, but where would you cut it?

The chaplain leaned over, his face inches from the top of the debris, and spoke into the darkness. He said the first thing that came to his mind.

“We can pray,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

Bottoms spoke the Lord’s Prayer. He had recited it thousands of times, but its six simple sentences still resonated within him. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” he said. “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

There was familiarity and comfort in those opening lines. Only an hour earlier, Bottoms had visited and prayed with about a dozen injured patients at Walter Reed, a part of his daily routine. He believed that prayer fortified the injured and pacified the dying. During a year in Iraq, he had watched over a three-bed medical clinic that sometimes overflowed with 30 patients, and those experiences returned to him in the train car: dying soldiers to whom he had administered last rites; a badly burned Iraqi man who died on the street in Bottoms’s lap.

Bottoms was an Army brat from birth, trained for trauma. In Car 1079, his voice remained steady and calm.

The young woman’s voice pitched and trembled. She had graduated from Largo High School in 2003, tried a few years of college in Ohio and then returned home to attend beauty school. Her mother did hair, so she decided to do hair. Fashionable and girlish, she had compiled so many outfits that she kept one closet filled with unworn garments that still bore their tags.

“Please,” she said now. “I’m dying.”

“You’re not alone,” Bottoms said. “What’s your name?”

“LaVonda,” she said.

“LaVonda,” he said. He wanted to write it down. Another passenger handed him paper and a pen.

“Can you spell it?” he asked.

“L-a-v-o-n-d-a,” she said.

“Okay. Great. And what’s your last name?”

She moaned, so Bottoms repeated his question. On the second try, LaVonda King tried to spell out her last name, but her reply was sporadic, and her voice was quieter. Bottoms wrote down K-L-I-N-G on his piece of paper, adding an extra letter. “Okay,” he said. “Good.”

From his perch against the wall and on top of a pile of rubble, Bottoms looked out the window and spotted a police officer standing across the train tracks. Bottoms banged hard against the glass, quick jabs with the side of his fist, but the police officer walked in the opposite direction. Bottoms banged one final time in frustration. Why couldn’t the officer hear him? LaVonda King was only moaning now.

“Hold on, LaVonda,” Bottoms said.

He had been told once in Iraq that hearing was the last of the senses to fail before death, and he remembered that now. Maybe, somewhere beneath the chairs, carpeting and glass, LaVonda was still listening. Maybe she could hear him, even now.

“LaVonda, are you bleeding?”

No reply.

“Keep talking to me, LaVonda.”

No reply.

“LaVonda.”

Nothing.

Bottoms looked behind him at what remained of Car 1079. Baker was comforting the 15-year-old boy with a trapped leg while the young architect looked on. Everyone else had exited. Bottoms looked back down into the pile.

“LaVonda,” he said. “I’m still right here.”

That scene is the heart of this story, as you will see when you read the whole feature (and I hope that you do).

After I finished, another question hit me. If this man is a chaplain, should his name be the Rev. Dave Bottoms? Or would his U.S. Army rank trump the religious title? That led to another question: He’s reading a sermon by a great saint, one of the most famous defenders of Christian orthodoxy who has ever lived. What kind of chaplain reads St. Irenaeus on the Metro?

So I did what any reporter would do — I looked him up in Google. As it turns out, Bottoms is an Anglican. Thus, it’s possible that the reporter should have called him Father Dave Bottoms. Was he wearing clerical clothing on the Metro? There is a chance that the “Anglican” reference, as opposed to “Episcopal,” means that he is an evangelical or Anglo-Catholic who is now in an alternative Anglican church. As a simple matter of Associate Press style, I think he needed to be identified in some way. Right?

But to return to my main point: This is another fine example of letting the faith element of a story shine through. The faith details are not forced. There is no need for that. The faith details are right where they should be — at the heart of a stunning, tragic, deeply spiritual moment in the lives of ordinary people. Amen.

Photo: By Sharon Renee Taylor at www.Army.mil