Gallup, statistics and discipleship

George Gallup Jr. has been studying the numbers for a half century and nobody knows better than he does that they just don't add up.

Most of the familiar, comforting statistics that describe public religion remain remarkably stable from poll to poll. Somewhere around 86 percent of Americans say they believe in God and another 8 percent or so in a "higher power" of some kind. Sixty percent say faith is "very important" in daily life and another 15 percent say it's "fairly important."

In the typical poll, around 80 percent identify themselves as some brand of Christian and claim membership in a congregation. Somewhere between 41 and 46 percent of Americans say they attended church or synagogue in the previous week. Can religious faith answer all of today's problems? Six in 10 say "yes." Throughout the 1990s, nearly two in three affirmed that "God really exists and I have no doubt about it."

But there is another side of this religion equation, said Gallup, during a recent address at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary outside Boston.

"Sadly, our society continues to be wracked by domestic problems," he said. "Four in 10 American children go to bed without a father in the home. One-third of teens have been physically abused in the home. One-fourth of all Americans say that drinking is a problem in their home and half of all marriages this year will end in divorce.

"What lies ahead? Will democracy remain viable? ... How can our faith make a difference? How can it sustain us?"

That final leap of logic – linking morality, politics and faith – may seem strange to those who have followed his meticulous work as America's most trusted brand name in public information and the author of 16 books. But Gallup is convinced that most Americans believe that the state of the nation is closely tied to its spiritual health.

Now, the 74-year-old pollster has officially retired. But this doesn't mean Gallup will disappear. As a young man with a religion degree from Princeton University, he considered entering the Episcopal priesthood. No one expects him to stop asking questions about the role of faith in American life.

Truth is, Gallup has more questions than answers. But he said being retired will allow him even more time and freedom to discuss the strategies he thinks clergy should adopt if they want to help the faithful follow the doctrines they claim to believe.

"Surveys reveal an unprecedented desire for religious and spiritual growth among people in all walks of life and in every region of the nation," he said. "There is an intense searching for spiritual moorings, a hunger for God. It is for churches to seize the moment and to direct this often vague and free-floating spirituality into a solid and lived-out faith."

The key, he said, is that too many pastors naively assume that church members know and understand the core doctrines of their own faith.

"For example, half of all Protestants have no idea whatsoever what the word 'grace' means and what it has to do with their salvation," he said, in an interview not long after the Massachusetts address. "Now, that's pretty basic doctrine. Pastors today assume that their people know the basics. They don't."

Clergy assume that believers are familiar with the contents of those Bibles sitting on their bookshelves. They assume church members understand the teachings of other major religions and can hold thoughtful, respectful conversations about the differences between these faiths.

Many even assume their members sincerely want to repent of their sins, amend their lives and become serious Christians.

Gallup said he is constantly shocked to hear that few pastors ever ask members – person to person, face to face – about the status of their faith and personal lives. Many pastors no longer see the need to openly discuss the impact of sin.

"Someone has to challenge people to be true disciples of Christ," he said. "Someone has to ask the hard questions. If we don't talk about the whole dimension of sin, repentance, grace and forgiveness, what is the faith all about? What are we doing? ...

"Without true discipleship, the church can simply turn into a social services agency."

Beyond XXXChurch.com

PHOENIX – Anyone with the nerve to create XXXChurch.com is going to get attention, especially if they keep calling it "the No. 1 Christian Porn Site."

"We're No. 1 because there really isn't a No. 2, which is a good business plan if you think about it," said Craig Gross, co-founder of the ministry in Corona, Calif.

Two years ago, Gross and partner Mike Foster opened their first booth at the Adult Video News trade show in Las Vegas, handing out anti-porn brochures to hardcore consumers and sharing their faith with porn stars and producers. The youth pastors took their wives as chaperones and to take turns inside their church's full-body rabbit costume. The approach was goofy, but intrigued the Los Angeles Times, ABC, Playboy and others.

This year XXXChurch.com teamed up with veteran pornographer James DiGiorgio – producer of videos such as "The Sopornos #3" – to make a surreal public service announcement called "Pete the Porno Puppet" warning parents not to expose kids to explicit images. As it turns out, "Jimmy D" is also a parent who worries about porn.

Now comes the hard part. Yes, the online ministry offers anonymous education, counseling and prayer support. It has free X3Watch software to help porn users form accountability groups. It has hip media products for skeptics.

But a website is not enough, said Gross, speaking at the annual North American Christian Convention. Sooner or later, church people will have to talk about pornography.

Sadly, it's easer to discuss God with porn stars than pornography with many pastors.

Why? A poll by Leadership magazine found that four in 10 pastors with Internet access had visited a porn site and more than a third had done so in the previous year. Many skeptical pastors said those numbers were too low.

"If 37 percent of our pastors are looking at this," said Gross, "then this is not a subject they're going to feel comfortable with in the pulpit. ... Think about it. What is going through a pastor's mind if he wants to look at online porn before he preaches on Sunday morning? What's that all about?"

Many believers prefer to ignore such questions. Faced with a minister who gets caught with porn, the typical church board will send the offender packing – quickly. Yet this kind of zero tolerance policy will drive other addicts deeper into fear and denial, said Gross.

"What the church keeps saying is, 'Get out! We have no sin here,' " he said.

The goal is to take this secret sin seriously, while still offering hope to broken people in pews and pulpits, said the Rev. Gary Rowe, minister of pastoral care at the East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis. Nevertheless, churches that create ministries for those struggling with pornography and other sexual sins will face unique challenges.

For example, it's hard to promote small-group sessions for porn abusers without listing the times and locations in the weekly church bulletin or on a web site, he noted, during another session at the convention in Phoenix. This sensitive issue must be openly discussed in the pulpit and in church education efforts, yet without violating the privacy of those involved.

It's also important to learn that the most effective ministry may not begin with the men.

"We had eight guys come forward when we started this work," said Rowe. "But we immediately had calls from 100 women, looking for help with a husband or a child who was involved with pornography. That really impressed us."

Gross agreed that wives almost always cry out for help before husbands. It is also important for church leaders to ask questions about pornography in premarital counseling and in parenting classes. Youth pastors have to realize that the teen years are crucial, since that is when most boys first come into contact with sexually explicit media.

The trick is to pull this subject out into the open with little or no warning.

"You can't come right out and say, 'We're having a men's breakfast and we're going to talk about pornography," said Gross. "Guess what? If you do that, nobody's going to be there. You are going to have lots of pancakes left over. ...

"We're at the stage where you're going to have to ambush people."

'Ghosts' on the God beat

Day after day, millions of Americans who frequent pews see ghosts when they pick up their newspapers or turn on television news.

They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. There seem to be other ideas or influences hiding there.

One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels. Something is missing in the basic facts or perhaps most of the key facts are there, yet some are twisted. Perhaps there are sins of omission, rather than commission.

A lot of these ghosts are, well, holy ghosts. They are facts and stories and faces linked to the power of religious faith. Now you see them. Now you don't. In fact, a whole lot of the time you don't get to see them. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.

I want to show you an an example – a case study, if you will – of what I am talking about, a ghost in a set of stories that is related to this blog – www.GetReligion.org.

But first let me introduce myself. My name is Terry Mattingly and I am journalist who covers religion news. For the past 15 years I have written the national "On Religion" column each week for the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C. I also teach at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Palm Beach County, Fla., where my title is Associate Professor of Mass Media & Religion.

I will be writing for this blog pretty much every day. The actual editor of the site is my colleague Douglas LeBlanc, another veteran journalist who has covered religion in the mainstream and religious press. In recent years, he has been best known as an associate editor of the respected evangelical news magazine Christianity Today.

Between the two of us, we have been covering religion news in secular and sacred media – or trying to convince editors to pay us to do so – for almost 50 years.

We write religion stories and we read religion stories. Lots of them. That's how we start our days and often that's how we finish them. We see all kinds of things and so do our many friends out there in the blogosphere.

Here's that example I was going to tell you about from a few months ago.

Like many people who live far from New York City, my morning email includes the digital newletter version of The New York Times. So I was scrolling along and ran into this.

***

November 12, 2003

Survivors of Riyadh Bombing Pick Up Pieces

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 11 They were neighbors and newlyweds, and late on Saturday night they bumped into each other by chance outside the obstetrician's office.

That is how Dany Ibrahim and Houry Haytayan found out that the blushing couple who lived next door were also expecting their first child.

***

It was your basic, solid symbolic person story, a snapshot from the age of terror. I was especially interested in finding out who the authorities thought planned and executed this bombing and why.

The details were, of course, sketchy. But the newspaper of record had to find the pattern that would help readers make sense of this.

"Of the 17 dead, 13 have been identified. A Saudi police investigator at the scene on Tuesday said one of the four unidentified bodies might have been that of a suicide bomber inside the sport utility vehicle.

"Mr. Ibrahim, the young Lebanese husband, lived in Beirut through the 1970's and 1980's when it was racked by civil war. Somehow this is different. He specifically picked this compound to move into six months ago, after the suicide bombings in May against Western compounds, because he thought it would be safer to live in a place that was almost entirely Arab and Muslim.

It was safer to live in a neighborhood that was almost entirely Arab and Muslim. But it was not safe."

Note: Arab and Muslim.

This is one of those strange combinations of words. Not all Arabs are Muslims and many Muslims are not Arabs. This strange combination of ethnic and religious identifications puzzled me.

After all, the terrorists themselves keep saying that these bombings target "infidels." There are, in fact, "infidels" who are Arab. There are even "infidels" who are Muslims. What exactly were we dealing with in this case? Who are the "infidels" and where are they in this story?

So I kept reading and, latter, I found this.

***

Christian Arabs possible attack targets

By ESTANISLAO OZIEWICZ

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

POSTED AT 5:40 AM EST Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2003

Nina Jibran had everything to live for. The Lebanese school teacher was recently married, pregnant and living in a comfortable compound in Riyadh.

There was even talk of her moving to Canada with her husband, an engineer who worked for a multinational advertising agency.

But then, shortly after the couple returned home from an obstetrician's appointment last Saturday, a suicide bomber ripped through the gates of their residential area, shredding their lives and sparking outrage in Saudi Arabia. Ms. Jibran was among the 17 dead, and her husband, Eliyas, among the more than 120 injured.

***

Scanning down, I found this newspaper's version of the crucial, defining paragraphs:

"As details emerge about the victims of last weekend's bombing, many observers believe their profile made them targets for the suspected al-Qaeda attack. Ms. Jibran, like her husband whom she married in July of 2002, was Christian. According to Arabic-language news reports, they had also received documentation to move to Canada.

"Elias Bijjani, a Toronto-based member of the Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council, said many of the couple's neighbours were also Lebanese Christians. He speculated al-Qaeda was targeting Christian Arabs, rather than Muslims."

In fact, the evidence seemed to be that the victims were Arabs, but they were Arab Christians.

The wording in the New York Times story did not eliminate that possibility, but it also did not provide that specific information. In fact, it would turn out that it was hard to explain the location of the attack in any terms other than an attempt to kill a specific form of "infidels" – Arab Christians.

Why was that information missing? What was the origin of this ghost?

I immediately did what I do several times a day. I sent pieces of these stories and the URLs around to a circle of friends – journalists, human rights activists, politicos, etc. You know, the usual cyberspace circles. We all have these private circles, right? Mine just happen to care a great deal about religion and the news.

Before long, an interesting thing happened. One of these cyber-colleagues – Dr. Paul Marshall of Freedom House, which studies religious liberty issues – took an interest in these two stories. Then he took this case study to another level.

The result was this essay for The Weekly Standard.

***

Misunderstanding al Qaeda

What you weren't told about their targets in Saudi Arabia.

by Paul Marshall

12/01/2003, Volume 009, Issue 12

AMERICAN REACTIONS to the recent bombing of a foreign workers' compound in Riyadh reveal multiple misreadings of the Arab world and – more dangerously – of both al Qaeda and the Saudis.

The media seem to equate Arab with Muslim and, along with some in the administration, think that al Qaeda's war is against Americans and Westerners per se, rather than against all "infidels," a group al Qaeda defines idiosyncratically and expansively as anyone who is not a strictly observant Muslim. Both mistakes are compounded by reliance on the Saudis' distorted account of the attack.

The November 8 bombing took place in a Lebanese Christian neighborhood of Riyadh, and of the seven publicly identified Lebanese victims, six were Christian. Lebanon's newspapers are replete with photographs of Maronite Catholic and Greek Orthodox victims. Daleel al Mojahid, an al Qaeda-linked webpage, praised the killing of "non-Muslims." The Middle East Media Research Institute quotes Abu Salma al Hijazi, reputed to be an al Qaeda commander, as saying that Saudi characterizations of the victims as Muslims were "merely media deceit."

If so, the media fell for it.

***

Marshall and I had seen the same ghost. He chased it down and captured it in print.

And that is what we hope to do with this blog. It is an experiment by Doug LeBlanc and myself and, we hope, our friends and new readers. We want to slow down and try to pinpoint and name some of these ghosts.

But I don't want to sound like we see this as a strictly negative operation. There are many fine writers out there – some believe the number is rising – who are doing an amazing job of taking religion news into the mainstream pages of news, entertainment, business and even sports. We want to highlight the good as well as raise some questions about coverage that we believe has some holes in it.

Most of all, we want to try to create a clearning house of information and opinion on this topic. This is what blogs do best.

So this is why Doug and I are starting this experimental blog. We hope it grows. We hope it forms links with other sites that are digging into the same issues, each with their unique viewpoints and resources. We will point some of those out as well and include them in our links page.

Let's begin.

NOTE FROM TERRY MATTINGLY: This item ran at www.GetReligion.org on Feb. 1, 2004. I am adding it to the www.Tmatt.net site for a simple reason. Due to a technical error, the copy desk at the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C., did not receive my column this week. Thus, it will run a week late. Rather than leave a gap here at the Gospel Communications Network site, I am sharing this opening essay from another web project. I hope you enjoy it.

Good news for Orthodox in Turkey?

ISTANBUL – There are two front gates into the walled compound that protects the home of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Visitors enter through a door secured by a guardhouse, locks and a metal-screening device. They cannot enter the Phanar's main gate because it was welded shut in 1821 after the Ottoman Turks hanged Patriarch Gregory V from its lintel. The black doors have remained sealed ever since.

A decade ago, bombers who tried to open this gate left a note: "We will fight until the Chief Devil and all the occupiers are chased off; until this place, which for years has contrived Byzantine intrigues against the Muslim people of the East is exterminated. ... Patriarch you will perish!"

The capital of Byzantium fell to the Turks in 1453. Yet 400,000 Orthodox Christians remained in greater Istanbul early in the 20th century. That number fell to 150,000 in 1960. Today fewer than 2,000 remain, the most symbolic minority in a land that is 99 percent Turkish. They worship in 86 churches served by 32 priests and deacons, most 60 or older.

What the Orthodox urgently need is an active seminary and patriarchate officials are convinced the European Union will help them get one, as Turkey races to begin the formal application process. At the top of the list of reforms sought by the EU are improved rights for non-Muslims.

Thus, during the recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization Summit, President George W. Bush held a strategic meeting with Istanbul Mufti Mustafa Cagrici, Armenian Patriarch Meshrob Mutafyan, Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yusuf Cetin and Patriarch Bartholomew.

"The European Union here is not focused so much on religion as it is on basic human rights," said Phanar spokesman Father Dositheos, through an interpreter. "For us this means hope. Any attention to the rights of minorities has to be good for us in the long run. Here, a little bit of religious freedom would go a long way."

But hard questions remain, as terrorists compete with Turkish reformers for headlines.

Western politicos are anxious for Turkey to serve as a bridge between East and West, between secularized Europe and the Muslim world. But others worry that decades of work by Turkey to mandate secularism on its people will have the opposite effect – creating fertile soil for the growth of radical forms of Islam.

The Greek government now backs the entry of its once bitter rival into the European Union. But one of the most outspoken critics of this move is the Orthodox archbishop of Greece.

"Turkey is not a European country and, while its culture is worthy of our respect, it is not compatible with our European culture," said Archbishop Christodoulos, during an interview in Athens. "This is not a matter of prejudice. ... Our European culture has a sense of unity that comes from the spiritual traditions and the common spiritual roots of these countries."

But officials at the Phanar disagree and hope to verify reports that Turkey will take concrete steps to demonstrate its acceptance of some Western values – such as religious liberty. The Orthodox and other religious minorities are anxious to have more control over their finances, to be able to grant work permits to foreign clergy, to freely elect their own leaders and to build and rebuild sanctuaries.

During his visit, Bush said he was satisfied that Turkey will soon let the Orthodox reopen the Halki seminary on Heybeliada Island, which was closed in 1971 under laws strictly controlling all religious education. In addition to training new clergy, this might strengthen two surviving monasteries. This is crucial since, under Turkish law, any monk who is elected Orthodox patriarch must be a Turkish citizen.

But change is slow and uncertain in this ancient city. The gate to the Phanar was been sealed for many generations.

"We hear rumors. The government officials say Turkey will allow us to reopen the seminary if the church will reopen the gate," said a church official who asked not to named. "The church says it may reopen the gate if the Turks allow the seminary to be opened. The government says it will allow us to reopen the seminary if we open the gate. We are used to this."