Jots & Tittles

012

Religion in the News

You were twice as likely to find a religion story in the news in the ’90s than you were in the ’70s and ’80s. And the stories in the ’90s were longer, too, according to a recent study of the media’s coverage of religion in America.

In all, about 23,500 stories appeared in the major news media over the past three decades. This translates into 285,000 column inches in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report combined, and more than 80 hours of air time during the evening newscasts prepared by ABC, CBS and NBC. And just about half of those inches and hours date to the ’90s, according to a random sampling of 2,365 stories conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, in Washington, D.C.

What are journalists writing about? Most of the stories written between 1969 and 1998 were uncontroversial: Twenty-three percent offered accounts of routine church/synagogue events, such as religious observances or the promotion of clergy. Seven percent reported on the activities of laypeople and included profiles of church members or reports on how ordinary people express their faith in the course of their everyday life. Six percent of the reports dealt with sexual conduct, whether homosexuality, adultery, extramarital affairs (coverage of which saw a boom during the Clinton-Lewinsky saga), divorce or clerical celibacy. Three percent were concerned with abortion and birth control.

Crime and sex scandals involving religious figures and institutions made up 5 percent of the stories. These included accounts of financial improprieties, child abuse and parents who refused medical treatment for their children because of their religious beliefs. Another 10 percent of the stories dealt with the roles of women and minorities within particular religious faiths.

Over the past three decades, 38 percent of religious news stories were related to Protestantism, 27 percent to Catholicism and 12 percent to Judaism. Islam and new religious movements each received 3 percent of the coverage, eastern religions 2 percent. The proportion of coverage of Protestants and Catholics has declined slightly over the past 30 years, in favor of Eastern religions and new movements.

Coverage of religion and crime has nearly quadrupled since the ’70s. The number of stories relating to religion and politics has tripled. In the same period, stories about church governance and women and minorities have sharply declined.

But despite the recent increase in religious news, very little coverage (only about 7 percent of all the stories on religious life in America) actually deals with religious doctrine or theology. “If there is a single leitmotif in religious news, it is the media’s tendency to emphasize the political elements of religious ideas and institutions,” conclude researchers S. Robert Lichter, Linda Lichter and Daniel Amundson. “Theological and spiritual questions are rarely presented as newsworthy.” The report quotes Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who recently reported that while covering the Pope, a frustrated colleague looking through a packet of papal addresses complained: “There’s nothing but religion here.”

When beliefs are discussed by the major news media, it is usually to explain the practices of a religious group with few adherents in the United States. The authors of the study note: “Such explanations may be deemed unnecessary for the mainstream Christian faiths that claim the great majority of Americans as members. Yet this presumes that people are aware of how different Christian traditions influence the positions taken by their churches on various issues.” Despite the increased awareness of religion in the news media, they warn, “the absence of references to spirituality in news coverage may marginalize the role of faith, both individual and institutional, in the public sphere of debate.”

The full report, “Media Coverage of Religion in America 1969–1998,” is available on-line at www.cmpa.com/archive/Relig2000.htm or by calling the Center for Media and Public Affairs at 202–223-2942.

013

The Many Faces of Mary: An Exhibit

Mary the mother of Jesus is mentioned five times in the Gospel of Matthew, once in Mark and twice in John. In Luke, however, she receives a slightly fuller treatment. She appears frequently in the first two chapters, which are devoted to the birth and childhood of Jesus and John the Baptist, but then only once more in this gospel and once in Acts. But from these few brief passages has emerged the most important woman in Christianity, a woman honored as the mother of God, queen of heaven and intercessor for the faithful.

The upcoming show Queen of Angels, at the J. Paul Getty Museum from August 15 through November 5, 2000, explores how these roles were depicted in medieval art. The intimate exhibit features 19 works, mostly illuminations from illustrated prayer books, religious service books, history books and lives of the saints.

“The Virgin held a central place in the religious life and thinking of medieval Christians, and at times her importance rivaled that of her son, Jesus Christ,” notes curator Thomas Krens. “Images of the Virgin permeated nearly all aspects of medieval art, from small devotional objects and tiny prayer books to monumental sculpture and painting.”

A related exhibit, The Making of the Medieval Book, will also be at the museum through November 5, 2000. On view are the tools and materials used to make illuminated manuscripts.

For more information, contact the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, phone: 310–440-7300; Web site: www.getty.edu/museum/.

014

Jesus on Trial at Harvard

A Harvard Divinity School classroom was transformed into a courtroom last spring as professors and students conducted a mock trial of Jesus. Professor Harvey Cox, chair of the school’s Department of Religion and Society, presided as Justice Pontius Pilate; his colleague, New Testament scholar Allen Callahan, prosecuted the case. Boston lawyer and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz—better known for his defenses of O.J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow and Leona Helmsley—acted as Jesus’ pro bono lawyer.

“Jesus is the one client I’ve always wished I could have represented,” Dershowitz told the Boston Globe.

When Callahan reminded the jury of students that Jesus reportedly told one Mathias, “I have not come to bring peace but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), Dershowitz responded with charges of hearsay: “No one has even seen Jesus with a sword.” And he requested that Mathias (that is, Matthew) be called as a hostile witness.

Dershowitz also complained that the Romans questioned Jesus after his arrest—without his lawyer being present.

As Callahan told BR, the trial format was, of course, “a fiction.” In Jesus’ time, “the Roman governor was prosecutor, judge and jury in the provincial administration of the Empire.” Nevertheless, the format allowed the teachers to present the evidence on both sides in a way that “a contemporary audience is more likely to understand.”

The trial was not simply a gimmick to keep students awake but a serious presentation of recent scholarly understandings of the reasons why Jesus was crucified. Pilate (a.k.a. Cox) told the jury that the “rabble-rousing rabbi from Galilee” was threatening the peace. Callahan went even further, complaining that Jesus’ claims of kingship posed a threat to the power of the Roman emperor Tiberius. “[Jesus’] popular following made him a security risk. The Roman prescription for such nuisances was the cross,” said Callahan.

According to Callahan, the Romans used crucifixion and other forms of imperial violence “to terrorize and pacify the native populace of Palestine.” Crucifixion was used to execute “criminals convicted of crimes against the Roman state, that is, criminals like Jesus.”

But when class was dismissed, the jury remained divided.

Nevertheless, Dershowitz quipped: “Just think of all the trouble the world would have been spared if Jesus had had a good Jewish lawyer.”

George Segal, 1924–2000

Leading American sculptor George Segal died of cancer on June 9 at his home in New Jersey. He was 75.

A key figure in the New York art scene of the ’50s and ’60s, Segal helped usher in the Pop movement with his famous plaster casts of real people in real-life settings, such as a lunch counter (The Diner, 1964–66) or a subway car (The Subway, 1968). But, as BR readers know, Segal also sculpted a much less famous but equally compelling series of works based on biblical themes, including The Expulsion (1986–87) and The Legend of Lot (1958) (see Jack Miles, “Casting Genesis,” BR 16:02).

Segal turned to these biblical subjects despite discouragement from his art school teachers, who urged him to adopt a more abstract style. As Segal recalled in a 1996 interview with Nancy Berman, of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles: “They [teachers Tony Smith and William Baziotes] urged me to jump on the bandwagon of the history of art with them, but I found myself incapable of painting in pure abstraction divorced from my idea of reality, which included narrative history psychology, etc. I was tempted to use Greek myth, but the biblical stories from Genesis were far more known to me as themes from which to take off.”

Born in the Bronx, Segal moved with his family to a chicken farm in South Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1940, when he was 15. Although he began his career as a painter, by the late ’50s Segal had shifted to creating life-size figures out of the plaster, burlap and chicken wire he was familiar with from the farm; within a few years he began casting live models, whom he wrapped in plaster-soaked medical bandages. In 1999, President Clinton awarded Segal the National Medal of the Arts.

013

BR or Bible Review?

Just what is the title of this magazine? When this journal was launched 15 years ago, the name Bible Review appeared prominently on the cover. But when the magazine underwent a redesign in 1992, we opted for BR—an elegant yet enigmatic title, meaningful only to insiders.

Once again, we’re ready for a redesign, or at least a refreshening, of the magazine. Should we put the full name Bible Review back on the cover? Let us know what you think by writing to Bible Review (or BR), What’s in a Name?, 4710 41st St., NW, Washington, DC 20016; e-mail: bas@bib-arch.org.

While you’re at it, let us know what kinds of articles or columns or news stories or photographs you’d like to see more (or less) of in the magazine. Is there anything we’re not covering that we should cover? Is there anything you’d prefer not to find in the pages of BR—or Bible Review?

013

We’re Not the Only Ones…

The portrait of Adam and Eve on the cover of a new self-help book titled Holy Sex, by Terry Wier (Whitaker House), is causing a stir in Christian bookstores. Some stores are refusing to carry the book, and some customers are reportedly concealing the book in plain wrappers, just so they don’t have to look at Michelangelo’s Creation and Fall, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. (When BR published a detail of the same painting in August 1999, we received several “cancel my subscription” letters.)

The publisher has complained that the controversy seems to be hurting book sales. Holy Sex, which aims to end “the awkward silence of churches on sexual matters” by “reestablishing the holiness of sex,” has sold only about 10,000 copies.

Religion in the News

You were twice as likely to find a religion story in the news in the ’90s than you were in the ’70s and ’80s. And the stories in the ’90s were longer, too, according to a recent study of the media’s coverage of religion in America.