SDG here.
For years we’ve known that The Press Doesn’t Get Religion. And, usually, when the press doesn’t get religion, Get Religion gets the press. Get Religion is a group blog of religious religion journalists covering religion journalism, and in general they do an excellent job.
I was disappointed, therefore, by a recent blog post from Get Religionista Mollie Zielger Hemingway — who says she “loves analyzing media coverage of the liturgical calendar” — offering kudos to the “reporters” who “found the story” on what she describes as “rebranding Lent as Ramadan” in the Netherlands. She even praises “most reporters” covering this alleged “rebranding” for having “put the story in context.” She also adds that this “rebranding” is “a symptom of a larger condition” that “could use some sensible reporting.”
That’s one thing Mollie and I agree on: Sensible reporting is definitely needed. That’s why God created Get Religion. So where is their “sensible reporting” when it comes to a “story” almost totally devoid of facts — a story that even by usual media standards for religion reporting seems (at least to this non-religion journalist) breathtakingly irresponsible in the disconnect between the claims of the headline and lede and whatever facts appear to lie at the bottom of the stories?
Here’s the DutchNews piece that got Mollie’s kudos for breaking the story. (Actually, this may not be the piece that broke the story, since the first sentence credits another publication; my Dutch is a little rusty, but I think Volkskrant means something like People’s News or Popular News. However, perhaps it’s all the same outfit.) Here’s the headline and lede:
Lent must be as ‘cool’ as Ramadan
The Catholic tradition of fasting at Lent needs to become as ‘cool’ as the Muslim fasting peiod of Ramadan, say Dutch Catholics in today’s Volkskrant.
This year, the church is even promoting the 40-day fast as ‘the Christian Ramadan’. ‘We use the word Ramadan because it is a term young people are more likely to understand than Lent, the organisation Vastenaktie tells the paper.
Mollie also positively cites this follow-up piece in The Telegraph that goes further. Here’s the lede:
Lent fast re-branded as ‘Christian Ramadan’
Dutch Catholics have re-branded the Lent fast as the “Christian Ramadan” in an attempt to appeal to young people who are more likely to know about Islam than Christianity.
The Catholic charity Vastenaktie, which collects for the Third World across the Netherlands during the Lent period, is concerned that the Christian festival has become less important for the Dutch over the last generation.
“The image of the Catholic Lent must be polished. The fact that we use a Muslim term is related to the fact that Ramadan is a better-known concept among young people than Lent,” said Vastenaktie Director, Martin Van der Kuil.
For what it’s worth, the DutchNews piece doesn’t mention “rebranding,” although it does claim that “the church” is “promoting” the Lenten fast as “the Christian Ramadan.” What, exactly, does this mean?
In a Catholic context, when you say “the church” is doing X — at least if you know what you’re talking about — you mean that bishops are doing X, or at least sanctioning it. That is who speaks for the Church: the bishops. If, say, individual Catholics are doing X, you don’t say that “the church” is doing it, you say some Catholics are doing it.
In the case of the Dutch episcopacy, the prospect of someone proposing some sort of boneheaded Lent/Ramadan equivalency might not be entirely out of the question. A ways back Bishop “Tiny” Muskins made headlines by suggesting that Christians use the name Allah to refer to God, which makes a lot of sense — for Arabic-speaking Christians. It makes no sense at all for Christians whose primary language is Dutch or English. Whether this new flap represents similar episcopal thinking, though, remains to be seen.
The Telegraph piece offers the more startling headline — “Lent fast re-branded as ‘Christian Ramadan’” — written in the passive voice with no active subject, leaving it unclear who or what is responsible for this “re-branding.” To be fair, headlines are usually written by editors, not the reporters who are at least meant to be researching facts, but still it presents the alleged “rebranding” as a fait accompli.
At the very least, it suggests that someone with some sort of significant controlling stake in the Lenten “brand” — again, presumably the Dutch bishops, or at least a diocesan PR office or something — has embarked on a concerted campaign to get “Christian Ramadan” into the vernacular while consigning “Lent” to the scrap heap. (That’s what “rebranding” implies: deprecating an old, obsolete brand in favor of the new normative one.)
Then in the opening graf we learn that “Dutch Catholics” are responsible for this “rebranding.” Does this mean the Dutch Catholic bishops? Dutch Catholics in general? Is it a popular grassroots movement? Whatever the facts, these early cues strongly suggest a broad-based Ramadanizing or Islamification of a Christian penitential season.
But wait. After telling us that “the church” was promoting Lent as “the Christian Ramadan,” DutchNews goes on to cite “the organisation Vastenaktie” as saying “We use the word Ramadan because it is a term young people are more likely to understand than Lent.”
Who or what is “the organization Vastenaktie”? DutchNews doesn’t say, possibly expecting Dutch readers to be in the know. It thus falls to the Telegraph to fill in readers outside the Netherlands that Vastenaktie is a Catholic charity. (Possibly with a special Lenten emphasis; “Vastenaktie” looks to mean something like “fasting and action.”)
So, okay, a Catholic charitable organization is concerned that the Lenten fast has lost cultural significance, and is trying to burnish its image among young people. That may be a significant story, particularly the cultural implication about young people being more familiar with Muslim cultural touchstones than Christian ones.
But it’s a far cry from the picture that you might get from the opening sentences of these stories of Lent being “rebranded” by “the church.” Even if Vastenaktie is an official arm of the Dutch church (and I have no idea whether it is or not), you still don’t say that “the church” is “rebranding” the Lenten fast because a Catholic charity has done…
Hm. Come to think of it, what exactly have they done? Exactly what form has this “rebranding” taken? What, specifically, has Vastenaktie done by way of “rebranding” the Lenten fast? Are there to be bulletins and other materials announcing the “Fourth Sunday in Christian Ramadan”? Will Catholics soon be asking each other what they’ve given up for Christian Ramadan?
Let’s see. Put together, both news stories give us a combined total of, um, zero facts in this regard. Zilch. Nada. Not a clue what “rebranding the Lenten fast” is supposed to entail. Just a quote from the organization’s director, talking about the need to “polish” the “image” of Lent and the observation that the Muslim penitential season is better known among young people. Later the Telegraph reporter vaguely mentions “linking” the Lenten fast to Ramadan, but again not a single specific as to what this means.
Perhaps at this point you’re wondering what Mollie was talking about when she praised reporters for putting “the story in context.” That was in reference to the relaxation of Lenten disciplines in the wake of Vatican II and the decline of Lenten observances among Mass-attending Catholics. I guess you could say that’s context. They just forgot to include the story. (Actually, according to comments at Get Religion, it looks like they got the context wrong too: Both stories erroneously claim that prior to Vatican II alcohol was prohibited during Lent.)
FWIW, I Googled Vastenaktie, went to their website, glanced over the homepage in Google translation, clicked on the first thing that mentioned fasting, and found a paragraph on “Christian Ramadan”. Below is an eclectic rendering in English based on a couple of online translation engines and my own ignorant judgment (my family is Dutch, but I learned almost nothing; I would welcome a more informed translation):
Christian Ramadan
A typical wordplay. In the Dutch media there is much attention for non-Christian religions and their practices. Each year Ramadan invariably pulls the front pages of newspapers in our country. By contrast, the Catholic fasting tradition is forgotten in oblivion. Young people especially know the Islamic fast, but not the Christian. The carnival obtains the news… The Catholic fasting tradition is valuable. And the interest grows.
Putting together this paragraph with every single fact from both news stories, as far as I can tell, it looks like a Catholic charity in the Netherlands may or may not be saying something like, “You know how Muslims have Ramadan? Well, Catholics have something like that too! Lent: It’s like Ramadan… except the press talks a lot about Ramadan and ignores Lent, so maybe if we point out the connection, we can get Lent some coverage as well.”
I’m not saying that is all that Vastenaktie has done. Nor am I saying that this much, as far as it goes, is necessarily a good idea in itself. I’m not arguing any of that. I’m not defending Vastenaktie in any way. I’m saying that (1) I have no idea what Vastenaktie has actually done; (2) neither, as far as I can tell, does anyone else; and (3) the way the story is being reported and perpetuated seems wildly incommensurate with the facts that have emerged to date.
Certainly if the paragraph above, and the “wordplay” it suggests, represents the extent of the “Christian Ramadan” business, I’d say we have an instance here, not merely of journalistic incompetence in religion reporting, but of sensational Islamo-controversy-mongering.
That’s the kind of thing I expect Get Religion to be all over, instead of perpetuating.
It isn’t only Get Religion. A number of Catholic and non-Catholic bloggers have blogged on the story, either not noticing the problems in reporting, or possibly figuring it sounded crazy enough to be true. And who knows, it could be. But “could be” is not a story. Maybe someday if someone does some sensible reporting, we might find out.
Mollie commented in her piece that “It’s easy to write the first story.” She might have underestimated the difficulty. Perhaps we’ll know when (or rather if) the first story emerges.
