Religion Coverage
The New Christians
October 10, 2016
Rick Diamond used to be a Methodist pastor. Ordained in 1999 at Perkins Theological Seminary in Dallas, Diamond worked for a church in Tyler, Texas, until he completed a Doctor of Ministry degree in 2001. Then, he and his family moved to Austin, where he joined the staff of Riverbed Church. However, in three short years, Diamond found himself outside the Methodist church entirely.
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David Hollier used to be a Catholic priest. He studied and graduated from Saint Meinrad Archabbey in St. Meinrad, Indiana, joining the priesthood in 1983. Hollier moved back to his hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana, and began working for the diocese there. After only 12 years in the Catholic Church, though, Hollier filed his notice to officially leave the priesthood through a process called laicization.
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Hollier and Diamond’s personal exoduses reflect a national trend that has been growing steadily for decades. Pew Research Center’s study on America’s changing religious landscape published in 2015 shows a significant decline of mainline Protestants and Catholics, contributing to a generational drop in Christians in general. According to the study, more and more Christians are leaving traditional, conservative denominations for alternative communities.
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Diamond is one of those Christians. Clad in Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots, rocking a wrist tattoo that reads “now” and a sizable turquoise ring, Diamond cuts an unconventional figure for a man of the church. He now works for Journey Imperfect Faith Community, a Christian church that describes itself in its mission as “radically inclusive,” encouraging its patrons to “embrace imperfection.”
Journey Imperfect abides by only one creed, according to Diamond. “Jesus said: ‘Love the lord your god with all your heart, soul, mind and strength,’” Diamond says. “Love your neighbor as yourself, everything else is details. That’s it. That’s all we got.”
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Diamond is not worried about the declining Christian numbers. He argues that religious institutions and churches are “doing some really creative thinking about the fact that they’re ‘dying,’ and yet people in it are going: ‘or maybe we’re evolving, maybe we’re becoming.’”
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Diamond elected to leave the Methodist mega-church world because he realized that he had a problem. “I did not believe in the church as an institution,” he says, because his understanding of following Jesus did not line up with the traditional Methodist experience.
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Now, at Journey Imperfect, Diamond tries to make the same decisions that Jesus would have made. He focusses on scriptural aids and employs genuine empathy. For example, Diamond says that when a member of his community comes to him with a problem of sexuality, the pair of them “enter into a process of discernment.” They will consult scripture, discuss the member’s background, and then, ultimately, “meaning is arrived at through community, as opposed to simply what the bible tells you.”
The Pew Research Study also revealed another religious shift: the growing presence of those that identified as unaffiliated, commonly referred to as religious “nones.” According to Pew, there are “approximately 56 million religiously unaffiliated adults in the U.S.,” making them the second largest major religious group after Evangelical Protestantism.
Hollier is one of those “nones.” Now a professor at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, Hollier teaches in the education department. When Hollier joined the Catholic Church in Lafayette, it was on the cusp of a major sex scandal. Hollier was immediately made uneasy by the way that the diocese was “underhandedly trying to protect priests and the image of the church.”
“It was pretty clear to many of us at the time that it was being mishandled,” he says.
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His dedication to Catholicism was finally evaporated by a difficult and needlessly tedious laicization. He tried to leave the church in order to pursue a career in higher education and was met with much resistance from the diocese. Now, he doesn’t want much to do with the Catholic church.
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“Ick. Gross. Hate it. Cannot stand it”: these are Hollier’s thoughts on going to mass. “Been there done that, got the clergy shirt,” he says.
Hollier’s spirituality is much different today. His personal creed no longer confined by a religious vernacular. He instead describes his relationship with God with a more abstract lens. He says, “God is mystery. God is paradox. God is unexplained. God is other.” Hollier says that this perspective on the divine is “harder to define now, but easier to embrace.”
Muslims in the Media
October 26, 2016
John Esposito, a leading scholar on Islam, gave a lecture on Christian and Muslim interactions to a nearly full Carter Auditorium at St. Edwards University on Wednesday, Oct. 26. A part of the university’s Nostra Aetate series, which is a collection of talks presented by Campus Ministry in the interest of encouraging interfaith dialogues, Esposito’s lecture was titled: “Islam & Christianity in the 21st Century: Conflict or Coexistence?”
“An interesting phenomenon that’s emerged in the last 20 years is Islamophobia,” Esposito said. “Islamophobia means anti-Muslim or anti-Islam bias, discrimination, hate speech, hate action.” Esposito believes that this prejudice has seeped into the media.“9 out of 10 stories in the last year by European and American media are overwhelmingly negative, and just talk about Islamic extremism,” Esposito said. This is a shift in cultural awareness that Esposito has witnessed since he began working in Islamic studies, graduating in the 1970s.
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“In those days, Islam was invisible, generally,” he said.The main flaw today in media coverage, Esposito posits, is the lack of background information presented on normal, everyday Muslims. He cited a study that ran from 2001 to 2010 by Media Tenure. It found that only 0.1 percent of the articles published by mass media outlets in Europe and America were centered on mainstream Muslims or their national context.
This Western emphasis on negative press regarding Islam has impacted the way that Americans view the religion, Esposito argues.“In the last 10 years, nearly 200 million dollars, documented by IRS returns…has been put into groups that are anti-Muslim, anti-Islam,” Esposito said.For Muslims in America, this means that their faith is often misrepresented to the masses, and so, many everyday Muslims find themselves on the defensive.
Muna Hussaini, an Indian Muslim working and living in Austin, laments the extremist emphasis in the American media. Hussaini is the public relations representative for her mosque, North Austin Muslim Community Center, so when events like the shootings in San Bernardino and Orlando happen, she is tapped to give a statement.
“I feel like I make progress [about the perception of Islam] and then some other dipshit does something stupid and I’m back to square one,” Hussaini said. “I’m back in the ice ages of trying to tell people about who I am.” For Muslim immigrant, Zaina Abdalla, this Western focus is all the more saddening. Abdalla is a Palestinian St. Edward’s student who moved to America from the Middle East.
“I definitely think there is a bias in the media because I grew up in the Middle East and the news coverage I’d always see would always be news on the Middle East and news about the United States…But when I came here, it’s like they only tell one side of the story,” she said. Abdalla, like most Muslims in America, has grown tired of the constant tension stemming from the actions of a few extremist parties.
“We can’t be blamed for that for the rest of our lives,” she said. In the realm of terrorism, Esposito admits that there are violent passages in the Qu’ran, but he emphasizes that it is important to note “the bigger context is that is has to be self-defense.”
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“In fact, there are far more warlike passages in the Hebrew Bible and the Bible,” Esposito said, and that believers are required to “trust the context.” In order to fix the negative perception, Esposito argued for concerted interfaith efforts to discuss and respect other religions as well as fairer coverage in the stories that journalists choose to tell.
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“If the media doesn’t cover the mainstream, then we don’t know what most Muslims think,” he said. Hussaini and Abdalla are inclined to agree with him.
“It all comes down to responsible reporting,” Hussaini said. “Reporters are the gatekeepers of information.” Abdalla also wants fairer representation of the Muslim experience and the Qu’ran. She said,“Allah says in the Qu’ran, ‘Whoever kills an innocent human being, it shall be as if he has killed all mankind, and whoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he has saved the life of all mankind.’”