Culture wars in the App Store (and what they mean)

In a career packed with sound bites, the late Steve Jobs offered one of his best when describing his vision for a family-friendly Apple App Store. "We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone," he famously responded, in an email to a customer. "Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone."

This stance was clear, but hard to apply in the flood of information and images on the World Wide Web. After all, many consumers are very easy to offend, when hot buttons get pushed. What about that Playboy app, which was accepted?

In the introduction to the App Store guidelines, which many observers believed were written by Jobs, it's clear where Apple executives expected to encounter trouble – sex and religion.

"If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app," stated this 2010 document. "We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, 'I'll know it when I see it.' "

Sex is sex, but many consumers are just as offended by religious views they consider dangerous or judgmental. Mix sex and religion and Apple team really gets nervous.

Brian Pellot, a London-based reporter on religion-liberty issues, recently dug into App Store history and produced a list of symbolic faith-based products rejected by Apple.

"I basically just searched around until I came up with five that were somewhat relevant to religion," he said, via email. "I think a lot of these were flagged because of perceived or feared offense. Not so much because they had to do with religion but because Apple doesn't want to upset users."

It doesn't help, he added, that it's "easier for people to pick fights behind the online mask of anonymity."

In his Religion News Service essay, Pellot focused on these apps:

* "Me So Holy," which allowed "users to paste their faces onto the bodies of religious figures including nuns, priests and Jesus."

* The "Jew or Not Jew?" app helped users investigate Jewish celebrities.

* 3. The "iSlam Muhammad" app pointed readers toward "violent and hateful" Quran passages that "encourage Muslims to attack and behead anyone who does not agree with them." Apple accepted some apps that "ridicule other religious texts, including the Bible," noted Pellot.

* An app from the "ex-gay" ministry Exodus International was removed after protests from gay-rights organizations.

* The Manhattan Declaration app promoted the work of those affirming the "sanctity of human life and the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife." It also was deemed offensive by gay-rights groups.

This latter decision was especially aggravating to leaders of traditional religious groups – Protestant, Catholic and Jewish – active in the drafting of the online manifesto.

"Apple is, obviously, a private company with the right to allow or disallow any apps it wants," said Russell Moore, the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

"The exclusion of the Manhattan Declaration app is troubling because it signals one more example of a cultural marginalization of the expression of belief held by those of various faith traditions. ... The freedom of consumers to download an app obviously doesn't imply endorsement of a viewpoint by Apple, so why exclude this one?"

It's crucial to understand that Apple and many other digital trailblazers have evolved into corporate giants guided by lawyers and public-affairs consultants armed with opinion polls and market surveys, said George Gilder, author of digital-culture works such as "Telecosm: The World After Bandwidth Abundance" and "The Silicon Eye: Microchip Swashbucklers and the Future of High-Tech Innovation."

"All such institutions respond abjectly to intimidation" and that is especially true when they encounter issues as politically volatile as homosexuality and radicalized forms of Islam, he said. Also, when it comes to offending elite digital executives, some voices are more offensive than others.

Thus, the "wimps in Silicon Valley" are often quick to pull religious material that will cause controversy in their own cultural circles, he said.

"It's pretty pathetic but it is just the way it is," said Gilder. "It's good news for smaller companies, though."

NEXT WEEK: Are religious debates being driven from the digital mainstream?

Baptists rethinking the use of catechisms (plural)?

This joke may be the most famous in all of Baptist humor. While crossing a high bridge, a traveler encounters a distressed man who is poised to jump. The first man asks the second if he is religious and a Christian. The suicidal man answers, "yes," to both. Catholic or Protestant? The jumper says, "Protestant." And, as it turns out, both men are Baptists.

"Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?" The second man, in a classic version of this joke found at the "Ship of Fools" website, replies: "Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?" Second man: "Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?" Second man: "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915."

So the first Baptist pushes the second to his death, shouting: "Die, heretic scum!"

The amazing thing is that they didn't even get to fight about biblical inerrancy, the first chapter of Genesis or the precise details of the Second Coming of Christ.

For centuries, Baptists have had their share of arguments about doctrine and church life and they cherish their approach to the "priesthood of all believers" and the authority of every local congregation.

As the old saying goes, put two Baptists on an island and you will soon have the First Baptist Church of the Deserted Island and the Second Baptist Church of the Deserted Island.

Thus, it's interesting that some educators, on the Baptist left and right, now believe that it's time for modern Baptists to use an ancient tool – the catechism – in their struggles against rising levels of biblical and doctrinal illiteracy. Catechisms are short documents written in a simple, question-and-answer format to help children and new believers learn the basics of the faith.

"This used to be Sunday school for Baptists and the way that they taught and handed down doctrines from generation to generation," said Thomas Nettles, who teaches historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Catechisms "showed you what you believed, in common with other Christians, but they also told you what you believed, as a Baptist, that was different from other Christians."

For many Baptists today, proposing a Baptist catechism may sound as strange as talking about a Baptist creed or even a Baptist pope. The key, explained Nettles, is that while Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and others can rally around a common catechism that expresses their tradition's authoritative stance on doctrine, Baptists through history have freely chosen different catechisms at the local, congregational level.

For example, while early versions of the Sunday School Board – back in1863 and 1891 – published catechisms for Southern Baptists, some churches used them while others did not. The final doctrinal authority remained in local pews and pulpits. Some congregational leaders even wrote their own catechisms.

Tradition says there can be one Catholic catechism. By definition, Baptists have always needed multiple catechisms.

"Still, the reality was that there was more of a sense of shared faith and practice back then, compared with Baptist life today, which has been shaped by decades of conflict and arguments," said Nettles. "We can't go back to where we were. ... Right now, I don't think Baptists could even agree on what it would mean for us to try to hold doctrines in common. Too many things have happened to push us apart."

Ironically, he said, some of the modern forces behind the creation of many Baptist niche groups – the Internet, parachurch ministry conferences and megachurches with superstar pastors – are now inspiring people to rally around documents that resemble catechisms. For example, some Baptists have begun to rebel against a kind of doctrinal "libertarianism" that denies the need for doctrinal specifics, period.

"You go online and this is what you see," said Nettles. "People are speaking out and then other people will rally around that persuasive voice. Before you know it, a network has formed around a set of common beliefs and people start sharing what they know and what they believe.

"Then they start writing things down. Pretty soon they're sharing books and educational materials. They even end up with things that look a lot like catechisms."

Duck! Elderly patriarchs discussing doctrine!

This elderly patriarch's image is certainly striking, with his stern face and a gray beard that flows over his chest, contrasting with the colorful clothing typical of his flock and his unique line of work. Just before Christmas, he raised eyebrows with a blunt statement on one of today's most controversial issues.

No, this wasn't the Duck Commander in Louisiana. This patriarch resides in the city his followers formally refer to as Constantinople-New Rome.

"The Lord appointed the marriage of male and female in the blessed family," proclaimed Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, while discussing Mary, Joseph and the newborn Jesus. He is the first among equals of the patriarchs who lead the world's 250 million Eastern Orthodox Christians (the church in which I am a member).

Patriarch Bartholomew claimed the "manifold support of the institution of the family comprises the obligation of the Church and responsibility of leadership in every country." Thus, he argued that "in order for a child to be raised in a healthy and natural way, there needs to be a family where man and woman live in harmony as one body, one flesh, and one soul, submitting to one another. ...

"We must all encourage the creation and function of natural families, which can produce citizens that are spiritually healthy and joyful."

Soon after that, a Catholic bishop delivered a Christmas sermon in which he addressed a related topic – the adoption of children by same-sex couples. Then, to make matters even more newsworthy, he claimed that he spoke with the encouragement of his own patriarch, the pope of Rome.

Auxiliary Bishop Charles J. Scicluna told journalists in Malta, a Mediterranean island, that Pope Francis was shocked to learn, in a Dec. 12 meeting, that a civil unions bill would allow gay couples to adopt children in that predominately Catholic country.

The pope, he claimed, urged him to speak out boldly. The bishop also said that Pope Francis – declared 2013 Person of the Year by The Advocate, a major gay magazine – had repeated the views he expressed in 2010 as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, when he called same-sex marriage an "anti-value and an anthropological regression" for humanity. In 2009, Bergoglio had written to Catholic leaders in Buenos Aires stressing: "We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God."

However, Pope Francis also – in November remarks to the Catholic Union of Superiors General – suggested that church leaders must find new ways to show mercy and understanding to the children of same-sex couples and divorced parents, so as not to be guilty of "administering a vaccine against faith" among the young.

Clearly, it is becoming more difficult for traditional religious believers to publicly voice, let alone to boldly defend, the doctrines of their faith. That is certainly what "Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson learned when he spoke his mind in an infamous GQ magazine interview, which briefly got him exiled from his family's popular series on the A&E Television Network.

"Everything is blurred on what's right and what's wrong. Sin becomes fine," he said. "Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men. Don't be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers – they won't inherit the kingdom of God."

Anyone familiar with scripture knew that this was a near verbatim quotation from St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, noted Janet E. Smith, who teaches Catholic moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. It also helped that, while he used some swamp-level language that offended millions of Americans, Robertson stressed that he was just a repentant sinner who, when it came to sex, booze and the nasty ways of the flesh, had been there and done that – many times.

This is what church leaders must carefully communicate, said Smith, in an online commentary. They must demonstrate that they realize many ordinary people spend their lives engaged in a "very wrenching struggle with powerful appetites, deep wounds and habits that at least to some extent balm those wounds. We must realize what we are asking of people and help them with our prayers, sacrifices, understanding and friendship."