Part II: A journalistic blind spot

The U.S. State Department churns out many newsworthy reports, a few of which make news while the rest vanish into circular files.

In July, the state department finally released its first report on religious persecution in 78 nations. A spokesperson reminded reporters that it was Congress that mandated the 56- page document's emphasis on the persecution of Christians. The state department, stressed John Shattuck, doesn't view this "as more important than other topics involving religious freedom."

On Capitol Hill, critics noted that the report was six months overdue and came weeks after pivotal congressional votes on Most Favored Nation status for China. It created a few media ripples, then vanished. The Religion Newswriters Association did name the state department report as its eighth most important news story of 1997.

On Nov. 16, there was another newsworthy event – a global day of prayer on behalf of the persecuted church. About 8 million Americans in 50,000 Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations took part, pledging themselves to keep praying and to seek changes that would help persecuted believers.

This event received even less news coverage than the state department report. The end-of-the-year ballot mailed to religion-news specialists didn't even mention it.

"That's astonishing. It's quite depressing, actually," said retired New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal. "That state department report was nothing – it was a non-story. It was patched together out of old information and then they delayed it as long as possible to minimize its impact. The only reason that report even existed was because of the movement against religious persecution and all of the pressure it has been putting on Congress. That's the story."

The day of prayer was even perfectly timed to justify major news coverage. It fell shortly after Chinese President Jiang Zemin's controversial U.S. visit and, that very weekend, the press gave major coverage to Beijing's release of Wei Jingsheng.

"The release of one famous political dissident should have heightened, not blacked out, the news value of a story that millions of Americans were paying devoted attention to other dissidents still imprisoned," wrote Rosenthal, in a recent New York Times column. "The stories might have mentioned Peter Xu, the Protestant leader recently sentenced to 10 years – or the Roman Catholic Bishops Su Zhemin, An Shuxin and Zeng Jingmu, in their cells, somewhere."

There is more to this glitch than the usual journalistic bias of listening to beltway bureaucrats more than to people in pews.

Human-rights activist Stephen Rickard is convinced that many journalists are suffering "cognitive dissonance" when faced with Amnesty International and Christian Coalition leaders sitting side by side on Capitol Hill. Others seem to think it's wrong for Christians to rally on behalf of their own sisters and brothers.

"People laboring in the human rights vineyard know that this argument is both wrong and self-defeating," argued the director of Amnesty International's Washington, D.C., office, writing in the Washington Times. "It seems obvious to me that someone who has been touched by the suffering of one victim is forever more sensitive to the suffering of all victims. Do I hope that the communities now galvanized on religious persecution will stay engaged and fight for other victims with equal fervor? You bet. Do I think their current efforts deserve to be mocked or denigrated? No way."

Clearly, political prejudices have something to do with all of this, said Rosenthal. Yet, for journalists, this should not cancel out the fact that the movement against religious persecution is based on events and facts that are worthy of coverage.

"You don't need to be a rabbi or a minister to get this story. You just need to be a journalist. You just have to be able to look at the numbers of people involved and then look at all the other stories that were linked to it," he said. "So why are journalists missing this?... I am inclined to believe that they just can't grasp the concept of a movement that includes conservatives, middle-of-the-road people and even some liberals. Their distrust of religious people – especially conservatives – is simply too strong for them to see what is happening."

Religion news '97 – celebrity trumps saintliness

After the shock, came grief and after the grief, came waves of praise and admiration that raised Princess Diana from superstar, loving mother and humanitarian to mass-media sainthood.

It didn't take long for a few commentators to ask a blunt, but obvious question: Would the death of a living saint such as Mother Teresa produce anywhere near the same outpouring of emotion around the world?

Then Mother Teresa died. It was impossible for editors and producers to avoid comparisons between their handling of the deaths of these two remarkable women who were both on a first- name basis with the world. What to do? If they gave Diana's funeral more coverage than Mother Teresa's death, this would only prove that celebrity trumps saintliness. Yet decreasing Diana coverage might prove financially catastrophic. Even playing the stories side-by-side awkwardly implied equal status.

The Religion Newswriters Association's ballot to determine the year's top 10 religion stories began with a simple reference to the "life and death of Mother Teresa" and didn't include a clear reference to Princess Diana. The passing of Mother Teresa was voted as the top story on the religion beat and she also was named religion newsmaker of the year.

Yet it's impossible to discuss the public impact of the tiny nun's death without mentioning Diana. The juxtaposition was simply too ironic. This was, as Time magazine put it, "The Year Emotions Ruled," and the emotions generated by Diana's photogenic life simply had more mass appeal than those inspired by Mother Teresa's.

The Evangelical newsmagazine World bluntly decreed that the "conjunction of Mother Teresa's death with that of Princess Diana shows once again the instructiveness of God's providence. The two women were both media sensations, but they were poles apart in terms of the world's values. One enjoyed the highest social status of all; the other identified herself with the lowest of the low. One helped the unfortunate by sponsoring fundraisers; the other by washing the sores of lepers and ministering to the dying. One was the height of fashion, wealth, and glamour; the other wore a white and blue sari, but exuded a far different kind of beauty."

But perhaps it was a caller named Terry who, during the Rush Limbaugh radio show, best expressed the tensions many felt while watching Diana's media star outshine that of Calcutta's saint of the gutters.

"We wanted to be like Diana and not many of us wanted to be like Mother Teresa. And that's sad," she said.

The other nine events in the RNA's 1997 list were:

* The Promise Keepers movement draws a million or so men to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in an emotional display of repentance and commitment to marriage, family life and racial reconciliation. Then a coalition of religious and secular groups rallies hundreds of thousands of black women in the streets of Philadelphia.

* Shortly after posting mysterious revelations in cyberspace, guru Marshall Applewhite and 38 members of his high- tech Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide – claiming that the Hale-Bopp comet would carry them to a higher spiritual level.

* Scottish scientists clone Dolly the sheep, raising myriad questions about what happens when researchers begin playing with the building blocks of creation.

* After 32 years of talks, four old-line denominations – the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ – agree to full communion, including the recognition of each other's ministries and sacraments.

* Led by the Southern Baptist Convention, a coalition of conservative Protestants and Catholics attempts to boycott the Walt Disney empire.

* Shaken by reports of scandals, National Baptists vote to retain the embattled leader of the nation's largest black church.

* The U.S. State Department releases a long-awaited report on religious persecution, shortly before 8 million Americans in about 50,000 Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations take part in prayer services for persecuted Christians around the world.

* Facing an invasion of alternative religions and other Christian churches, Russian lawmakers pass a strict law to protect the favored status of Russian Orthodoxy.

* Oregon voters reaffirm the status of physician-assisted suicide.

Is Christmas funny, or what?

Some of the rhythms are ragged, but it doesn't take a doctorate in musicology to figure out what melody fits these lyrics.

"On the 12th day of the Eurocentrically imposed midwinter festival, my significant other in a consenting adult relationship gave to me, 12 males reclaiming their inner warrior through ritual drumming, 11 pipers piping (plus the 18-member pit orchestra of members in good standing of the Musicians Equity Union...), 10 melanin-deprived testosterone-poisoned scions of the patriarchal ruling class system leaping, nine persons engaged in rhythmic self-expression, eight economically disadvantaged female persons stealing milk products from enslaved Bovine-Americans. ..."

It happens every year on the Internet, about the time TV networks start serving up holiday specials and newspapers uncover new stories about battles over crhches, candles and concerts in the public square. Something snaps out there in cyberspace and armies of anonymous scribes begin churning out holiday satires.

"Everybody has an opinion on what's happening to Christmas, and I mean everybody," said Chris Fabry, a radio humorist with the Chicago-based Moody Broadcasting Network. He is the author of the satirical "Away With The Manger: A Spiritually Correct Christmas Story."

"If you're a strong Christian, then you really care about what Christmas is supposed to mean. If you're a secularist, who only cares about the orgy of gift giving, then you're still going to get caught up in the crush at the mall. Even if you are a rabid atheist and you don't buy any of this, then Christmas still matters to you because you're surrounded by all kinds of things that push your buttons. Everybody reacts."

Here's what it looks like on the Internet. First, someone writes something funny - like a scientific analysis of why sleighs can't fly, a lawyer's analysis of the Nativity story, a detailed corporate plan to downsize Santa's workshop or a news report about Microsoft's takeover of Christmas '97, which will be delayed until mid-1998. Then the wag sends it to a list of e- mail friends. Then people start adding variations of their own. Then someone posts it on the World Wide Web, where others copy it and pass it on. Then it ends up in church bulletins. I get stacks of this stuff, since I write about religion.

One newspaper copyeditor sent a set of punchy headlines - one word per line in massive type – that journalists might write for news reports during that first Christmas season. The list included: "Angel accosts woman," "Peace offer told," "Baby called 'savior'," "Kings recant pledge" and "Mary mulls events." I offered one with a feature-story spin: "Sheep home alone."

Another winner was a version of "A Visit From St. Nicholas," as written for an academic journal. It ended with the narrator proclaiming: "But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility; 'Ecstatic yuletides to the planetary constituency, and to that self-same assemblage my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."

Christmas is getting funnier and sadder. Fabry writes large doses of this brand of humor, from "Silent night, Solstice night, all is calm, all half price" to "Good liberal men, with zest, hire lawyers to protest. ... File a suit today, file a suit today." In his novelette, Christians led by an ex- Marine march on city hall chanting: "You can't take our holiday! It's in our heart and here to stay! Sound off! JESUS! Sound off! HE'S BORN!"

But he also raises serious questions about what happens when so many believers let a cynical tone slip into their celebrations. It's one thing to criticize Christmas, American Style. It's something else to become so fatalistic, and spend so much time mocking "The Holidays," that Christmas is dead on arrival.

"We can laugh, to keep from crying, along with everybody else at Christmas," said Fabry. "But we have to laugh at ourselves, too, and realize that we're part of the problem. ... If I don't see something wrong with the way that I am, if I only see myself as better than everybody else, then I've missed the point."

A Traditional Christmas – Not

JONESBOROUGH, Tenn. - History is serious business in this picturesque town that once served as the doorway to the wilds beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Civic leaders constantly call their town "Historic Jonesborough" and note its birth in 1779. This time of year, they strive to turn their brick sidewalks, street lamps, churches, shops and inns into a living Victorian postcard. This year's theme is the "Twelve Days of Christmas" and the calendar is packed with exhibits, concerts, dinners and storytelling events.

But the actual 12-day Christian festival called Christmas - which begins Dec. 25th - is totally empty on the calendar. The second day of Christmas is Dec. 26th, and it's empty. The third day of Christmas is Dec. 27th, and it's empty. And so forth and so on until the Jan. 6th Feast of the Epiphany, and that's empty, too.

Don't mutter "Bah! Humbug!" Even Ebenezer Scrooge was granted a vision of the entire season - from the holy rites of Christmas Day to the parties of the Twelfth Night.

"Oh, we're just using the 'Twelve Days of Christmas' as a kind of umbrella theme for all kinds of activities that everybody wanted to do at Christmas," said Steve Nelson, in the town's tourism office. "We kind of kicked things around for a while and that's what we came up with. We're just using the images of the song. We know that all of this isn't historically accurate."

So while the publicity proclaims that this is a "traditional," "Victorian" Christmas, it really isn't, said Nelson, who has been a church choir director for 41 years and understands the details of the Christian calendar. But the month of December is simply too packed to worry about all of that.

Of course, the irony is that the actual days of the Christmas season are wide open. No one would have trouble fitting in concerts, parties, sales and services between Dec. 26th and Jan. 5th.

"Sure, you could go ahead and do your parties then, but everyone would think that you've lost your blooming mind," noted Linda Measner, a hostess at the Historic Jonesborough Visitors Center. "If you went caroling after Christmas Day, people might throw things at you."

Everyone knows that the cultural tide called "The Holidays" begins soon after Labor Day and has swamped the World Series, Halloween, Thanksgiving and the Dec. 6 feast day of St. Nicholas. The main casualty has been the reverent four-week Christian season known as Advent, which leads up to Christmas. After Dec. 25th, America slides into a season of bowl games and the National Football League playoffs.

It's a corporate thing. As the old saying goes: America's economy is powered by two giants - Uncle Sam and Santa Claus.

Nelson noted that Jonesborough is managing to hold a community-wide service of Bible lessons and carols, a traditional rite in which the 12-day season begins with the glow of candlelight late on Christmas Eve. Of course, the community's service of lessons and carols will have to be on Dec. 17th.

"We just had to get done what we could get done," he said. "Most of our churches have even moved their Christmas cantatas up to Dec. 21st this year. I think the important thing is that the whole community is involved."

Meanwhile, down on East Main Street, the owner of the Old Towne Christmas Shoppe sat surrounded by hand-made decorations and twinkling lights. For most people, this season has turned into an obstacle course of commercial and cultural obligations that has little or nothing to do with faith and family, said Joanna Anderson. It's getting to the point that many people don't even mind admitting it.

"I really wish there was some way we could get people to go back to the old ways. I know that everybody is supposed to say that, but I really, really believe it," she said. "Things are out of control. People wouldn't want to spend 12 days lingering over Christmas and having a good time or thinking about what it means. Everybody has to rush off and do a bunch of other stuff."

Spirit filled or Spirit fooled?

Saving souls rarely makes news, unless somebody starts saving lots of souls in a bizarre way that looks really spooky on videotape.

The mass-media sawdust trail has, in the 1990s, led to the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship and to the Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Fla. So far, several million people have attended well-documented rites in which worshippers collapse in tears or laughter or say that they have found healing for various addictions or diseases. Meanwhile, critics keep sounding warnings about fraud and heresy.

It would be easy to dismiss this as merely another mating dance between camera-friendly Charismatics and jaded journalists who love a wild story. But one outspoken evangelical is convinced something else is going on - another clash between faith rooted in human emotion and faith built on centuries of scripture and tradition. The new super-preachers may look and sound like conservative Christians. But radio commentator Hank Hanegraaff is shouting what many are saying quietly: some of these super preachers are New Age prophets in Christian clothing.

"What was once relegated to the ashrams of occultists, you can now experience at the altars of many huge churches," said Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute in Southern California. "This is all about human experience overwhelming biblical truth. ... When people start saying that doctrine is a bad word - look out. When people start talking about the mind being the obstacle to enlightenment - look out."

Hanegraaff's recent book, "Counterfeit Revival," attacked the very foundations of the modern Pentecostal revival that has touched much of Protestant Christianity, and even Roman Catholicism. He is in the thick of a new media storm swirling around the preachers in Brownsville. Yet note this paradox: Hanegraaff and his family attend a Charismatic church, the Pacific Hills congregation in the Calvary Chapel movement.

The bottom line: miracles are always controversial. Yet the churches that are growing – worldwide – are those that preach a supernatural faith. There are, of course, skeptics who believe that biblical accounts of supernatural events are merely tales of ancient frauds. Others, often liberal Christians, say the Bible is full of myths written before science explained many mysteries. On the other side are many conservative Christians who argue that the biblical accounts are true, and that God still performs miracles, but that believers stopped receiving miraculous "gifts of the Holy Spirit" soon after the birth of the early church. Others say modern believers may be able to perform some miracles, but not others. The arguments go on and on.

On top of that, there are splits in the Pentecostal camp centering on clashing views of "speaking in tongues," an ecstatic experience in which believers are said to speak in a "heavenly" language. Some Charismatics say this occurs to some, but not all, "Spirit-filled" people. Others insist that anyone who has not done this is somehow "less mature." Some ultra-traditional Pentecostal believers go much further and argue that someone cannot go to heaven unless they have received the true "baptism of the Holy Spirit" and spoken in tongues.

Thus, many people engaged in bitter fights over events in Toronto and Pensacola have totally different understandings of how God works through the church and scripture. These debates have been raging for a generation and there is no sign they will end anytime soon.

Nevertheless, many who fiercely disagree with some of Hanegraaff's pronouncements will agree with one major theme: some Charismatics are spewing joyful revelations about life and faith that threaten the authority of scripture and centuries of sobering church teachings. Above all, their emphasis on everyday miracles tends to deny the reality of sin and human suffering. It makes healing and happiness more important than repentance and salvation.

"It doesn't matter if the people who are having all these highly personal experiences are liberals or New Agers or whatever," said Hanegraaff. "Pure personal experience has a very, very, very bad track record when it comes to providing truths on which people can base their lives. ... What we're seeing is more people moving from faith to feeling and from facts to fantasy."