HerbEly

Ghosts in Environmental Discourse

In the GetReligion Blog Terry Mattingly writes about ghosts– religious images that hide behind the pixels and in between the lines of mainstream news reporting. These images and ideas are present, but not adequately reported because the press just doesn’t “Get Religion.” Environmental reporting is haunted by “ghosts” as well. For a view of some of the hidden religions terms in the environmental discourse see Environmentalism: Death and Resurrection by Mark Sagoff. (Sagof is director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy and the University of Maryland.) Here is an extract:

An editorial in The Economist magazine quipped that the modern environmental movement borrows its underlying narrative from Christian thought. “There is a Garden of Eden (unspoiled nature), a fall (economic development), the usual moral degeneracy (it’s all man’s fault), and the pressing sense that the world is enjoying its final days (time is running out: please donate now!).” The global economy, at least in comparison to the past, however, seems to be booming. Environmentalism may be in its Last Days. As one commentator put it, “Secular apocalypticism appears devoid of an underlying redemptive meaning and is thus characterized by a sense of hopelessness and despair.” The “Death of Environmentalism” is much discussed. Why has the environmental movement, which waxed as a political force in the 1970s, waned today?

In recent years, however, ecologists have come to question these assumptions. Ecologists are no longer sure that nature has a mathematical organization above the level of the organism or the population. Many ecologists wonder if human beings can be excluded from the idea of the ecosystem. Ecological science has moved away from the foundational beliefs that nature possesses a hidden order—that there are ecological “systems” or “communities” the “structure” of which “naturally” or by definition excludes human
influence. The environmental movement nevertheless continues to look to science to support its faith that there is a hidden order in nature which human beings disrupt because of our “wrongness”—notably our greed or ignorance or intransigence. Environmentalists invoke science to defend traditional religious views

Read Sagoff's discussion of the development of the environmental creed. Much to ponder here.

Systemic Error in Washington Post's Use of Links

The Washington Post has adopted a practice of inserting links to Google whenever a story mentions a major person, place or topic. For example, if I were following this practice, I would insert this link every time I mentioned that I live in Charlottesville. While the practice doubtlessly increases the number of hits on Google's website - good news for Google stock owners - it does little to add context to a story.

I noticed that this story on the most recent Republican presidential debate completely missed the meaning of the phrase "road to Damascus." As a regular reader Terry Mattingly's (and friend's) weblog on how the press just doesn't GetReligion, I suggested the practice as a topic for their website. This posting on Oh, that Damascus road! is the result.

Thanks, Terry. We can only hope that our combined influence (yours is far greater) will improve the coverage at the Post. As you said:

But reader Herb Ely sent the GetReligionistas a note this morning that, if you stop and think about it, seems to break totally new territory. What if the computers at a major newspaper have been programmed in such a way that they don’t “get” religion? How’s that for confusing?

The World IsN'T Becoming More Violent Every Year

Steven Pinker writes in the The New Republic (subscription required)

In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion.
...

Maggie Gallagher on the "Christmas Wars"

For some time, I've suspected that the so-called "Christmas wars", i.e. public fights over whether or not religious symbols can be displayed, are fueled by journalists, who are looking for examples of outrageous behavior. Their stories scare public officials who then behave outrageously giving the journalists more stories. Here is townhall columnist Maggie Gallagher on How the Grinch stole Hanukkah 

Frank Greenhall, the superintendent of the Warwick (NJ) public schools, is not feeling the joy yet. Parents are grumbling that his new winter wonderland strategy of inclusion is "anti-Santa": "Maybe the Gingerbread Man is insulting to someone. Then you have to say Gingerbread Person. If you don't like the Gingerbread Person in the picture, get a picture with the winter scene. I'm not pushing any one agenda," an exasperated Greenhall sputtered, "I just look forward to when this is over." In Yorktown, interim superintendent Vincent Ziccolella is singing the same tune: "I would really like to get busy and do some education issues instead of ... creches," he told a local reporter.

The Christmas wars are not about ideology, in other words, but bureaucracy: Busy officials have better things to do than negotiate the hurt feelings of an increasingly fired-up (also lawyered-up) public. It would be easier to just ban everything.

You can't help but sympathize. You also can't help but pause and give thanks to God that we share a country where religious wars consist of fights about what Breakfast With Santa will be called this year.

Exactly.

Newsweek Misses a Religion Story

Newsweek starts its story on Baby boomers and religion this way:

How different would the world be today if George Harrison, the introspective Beatle, hadn't chanced to pick up a sitar during the filming of "Help!" and start plinking away at it? Well, maybe not all that different. But it might have made a difference in the life of Janet Hoffman, who was a college sophomore in 1968 and, while visiting a friend at Berkeley, got dragged to a course in Transcendental Meditation.

The story by Jerry Adler and Julie Scelfo then covers several of the major spiritual movements during the last few decades: Jesus Freaks, The Unification Church, Marharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Mediation, Scientology, the Promise Keepers, Werner Erhard’s est (now Landmark), and Hare Krishna.

They missed a major story: the Institutional Church’s response. The Trappist monks at St. Joseph’s monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts responded to this widespread spiritual seeking by retrieving Christian practices of contemplation and formulating a method known as Centering Prayer.

Centering Prayer is a method of prayer, which prepares us to receive the gift of God's presence, traditionally called contemplative prayer. It consists of responding to the Spirit of Christ by consenting to God’s presence and action within. It furthers the development of contemplative prayer by quieting our faculties to cooperate with the gift of God’s presence.

Centering prayer groups are found in mainstream churches throughout the country.

I'm tempted to put Adler and Scelfo's oversight down to journalisms general ignorance of mainstream religion. In fairness, they were writing a story about alternative spiritual movements in popular culture. Maybe they will do another story on mainstream religion's response, or lack thereof.

Pay Attention

During the cold war intelligence analysts paid close attention to Soviet ideology and rhetoric, attempting to view the West through Soviet eyes. We were helped by Soviet studies in the universities and by journalists.

    Today it seems that the journalistic community, fearing political incorrectness, is unwilling to report the militant Islamic point of view as it really is. For example, check this posting from GetReligion:

I have not read a full translation of the 48-minute video, but apparently it’s a long encouragement — aided by the threat of force, sure — for Americans to renounce Christianity and convert to Islam. It’s almost as if al-Qaeda is trying to tell Americans something. It’s almost like they think this a religious war. It’s almost like the pattern of forced conversions or threats of violence add up to something.

Let’s see what the mainstream media do in the wake of this latest religious missive. Hmm, that’s a curious headline from the Associated Press’ Salah Nasrawi — “Latest al-Qaida message seen as PR bid”:

The new al-Qaida video featuring an American calling for his countrymen to convert to Islam raised fears it signaled an imminent attack, but experts in the region said Sunday it is more likely a bid to soften the terror group’s image.

Toward the end of the cold war we had two generations of scholars, journalists, intelligence analysts and a few politicians who understood the Soviet point of view. As Mollie, at GetReligion, points out, we’re not getting much help from the MSM. This is one of my reasons for reading GetReligion faithfully. The MSM, not understanding religion, mis-reports much of the news.

Katrina: Post-Traumatic Personal Growth

There are some ghosts in today’s stories about recovery by the victims of Katrina. The GetReligion Blog defines "ghosts."

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

Here are two news stories about an ongoing study of the mental health and recovery of victims of Katrina. See if you can spot the ghosts in this story by AP writer Jeff Donn:

In a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, a new survey reveals that the traumatized survivors of Hurricane Katrina forged a surprisingly powerful inner strength that steeled them against suicidal despair.

Greg Easterbrook on Global Warming

Atlantic Monthly is on of the few dead tree publications worth the subscription.  Here is a short extract from Greg Easterbrook’s Some Convenient Truths  article on Global Warming. (subscription required).

One reason the global-warming problem seems so daunting is that the success of previous antipollution efforts remains something of a secret. Polls show that Americans think the air is getting dirtier, not cleaner, perhaps because media coverage of the environment rarely if ever mentions improvements. For instance, did you know that smog and acid rain have continued to diminish throughout George W. Bush’s presidency?

One might expect Democrats to trumpet the decline of air pollution, which stands as one of government’s leading postwar achievements. But just as Republicans have found they can bash Democrats by falsely accusing them of being soft on defense, Democrats have found they can bash Republicans by falsely accusing them of destroying the environment. If that’s your argument, you might skip over the evidence that many environmental trends are positive. One might also expect Republicans to trumpet the reduction of air pollution, since it signifies responsible behavior by industry. But to acknowledge that air pollution has declined would require Republicans to say the words, “The regulations worked.”

I've categorized this under journalism. This is because the journalists are always looking for stories that proove that the world is getting worse. One has to read very carefully to discover such convenient truths as the fact that Clinton's welfare reforms have succeeded in reducing poverty; warfare is declining; life expectancy at birth has increased dramatically over the past 100 years; and gasoline is less expensive now than 30 years ago when measured in constant dollars.

Remedial Reading for CNN and the Boston Globe

For further evidence that niether CNN, NPR nor the Boston Globe know the basic facts about the birth of Jesus, go here. Any other journalist trying to get this story straight could start here. Or maybe just go to church on Christmas day and actually listen.

Latino Immigration: Removing Stereotypes and Journalistic Ghosts

In today’s WaPo Tyler Cowen and Daniel M. Rothschild provide data showing that Latino immigrants are assimilating:

Beneath the surface of the immigration debate is a debate about shared values. If we look at just three of those values -- the English language, family and hard work -- we see a higher level of Latino assimilation than is often presumed.
…
The family has long been the core social unit in America, and immigrants share that value. Census data show that 62 percent of immigrants over age 15 are married, compared to 52 percent of natives. Only 6 percent of Latino adults are divorced, compared with 10 percent of whites and 12 percent of African Americans. Latino immigrants are more likely to live in multigenerational households rather than just visiting grandparents a couple of times a year.
…
Immigrants from Central and South America share the American predilection for hard work and economic advancement. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that Hispanic men are more likely than white men to be in the labor force. While immigrant Latinas initially lag behind native women, Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn of the National Bureau of Economic Research have shown that, despite initial inclinations to be stay-at-home moms, immigrant women quickly assimilate into the American workforce.

Cowen and Rothschild make no mention of another significant variable – rates of church attendance. My parish now has a well-attended mass in Spanish. I’m often impressed by the numbers of young Latin males walking to church, even for Ash Wednesday mass on a cold rainy night. My guess is that Latinos attend Mass at an above average rate and that the rate for men is also higher.

There is a good story here. Would some journalist care to explore the relationships among church attendance, work ethic and assimilation? How does this compare to previous immigrant populations? As the folks over at GetReligion would say: there is a ghost here – a religious image lurking behind the story. Properly reported, it could add real depth to questions of assimilation and the role of local churches in ministering to this population.