SUMMARY: On our Bookshelf tonight, the dramatic struggles to turn an ancient faith into an American religion. Judy Woodruff speaks with longtime journalist Steven Weisman, author of “The Chosen Wars,” about why he decided to examine the evolution of Judaism in the United States, the religion’s “history of conflict” and the great personalities that created a story worth telling.
SUMMARY: During the rule of Saddam Hussein, few Iranians dared to make the religious pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala in Iraq. But the toppling of Saddam has drawn millions of worshippers back, revealing Iran's powerful influence there. In the first of three reports, special correspondent Reza Sayah explores the scope of and limits on that influence, in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
SUMMARY: In 2014, when most U.S. ground forces were gone and Iraqi forces were too weak, the threat of ISIS in Iraq spawned the PMF, a government-sanctioned militia that was armed, funded and trained by Iran, America's long-time foe. In the second installment of our series “Iran Rising in Iraq,” special correspondent Reza Sayah reports in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
SUMMARY: In a 2016 offensive to take Mosul back from ISIS, the U.S. and Iran fought on the same side without ever publicly acknowledging it. The militant group defeated, both countries still have a stake in Iraq and tensions have been rising. Special correspondent Reza Sayah has the final installment of our series Iran Rising in Iraq, in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
SUMMARY: The new Russian identity is a combination of religion, old Russian traditions and rediscovered patriotism. It helps explain how today's Russians think, how President Putin acts and why he remains popular. As part of our week-long series Inside Putin's Russia, special correspondent Nick Schifrin and producer Zach Fannin report in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
SUMMARY: For years, the Kremlin and the media it controls have waged a multifaceted information (and disinformation) campaign inside Russia and pointed at its perceived adversaries, including the U.S. As part of our week-long series Inside Putin's Russia, special correspondent Nick Schifrin and producer Zach Fannin report on the information wars, in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
SUMMARY: In the republic of Dagestan, a brutal separatist insurgency has long fought against the Russian state. Now, as many as 5,000 Dagestanis have left to fight for the Islamic State. Why have so many answered the call? As part of our week-long series Inside Putin's Russia, special correspondent Nick Schifrin and producer Zach Fannin report, in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
SUMMARY: What can happen to you if you oppose the Kremlin? There is a high mortality rate among prominent critics of the Russian government, which some say is emblematic of how President Vladimir Putin runs the country. As part of our week-long series Inside Putin's Russia, special correspondent Nick Schifrin and producer Zach Fannin report in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
SUMMARY: There may be no more consequential relationship for the U.S. than with Russia. As part of our week-long series “Inside Putin's Russia,” special correspondent Nick Schifrin and producer Zach Fannin report in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on how Russians perceive the U.S. and how the relationship between the two world powers has evolved under Trump.
Some Christian groups have no problem protecting people from crimes driven by racial or religious hatred. They just draw the line at sexual orientation.
Last year, lawmakers in South Carolina introduced legislation that would have increased the standard penalties for anyone who assaults, intimidates or threatens another individual if they did so because of the victim's “race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, or sexual orientation.”
Drafted by Democratic legislators after white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine African-American parishioners at a church in Charleston, the bill never even came up for a vote. It was a familiar fate. In recent years, at least a half-dozen other hate crimes proposals have died in the South Carolina statehouse.
Much the same story played out in Indiana, where Republican state Sen. Susan Glick authored similar legislation in 2016; Glick's bill would have increased time behind bars for those convicted of harming or intimidating someone if the assailant's motivation was driven by the victim's gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion or immigration status.
The legislation passed in the Senate by a vote of 34-16 but died in the House without so much as a hearing.
Since the 1980s, nearly every state in the union has enacted some sort of hate crimes law, as have Washington, D.C., and the federal government. While the laws vary from state to state, they generally bolster penalties for those who commit crimes — assault, vandalism, credible threats of physical violence, among others — because of some sort of bias against the victim.
South Carolina and Indiana are among a small handful of states that have failed to pass such laws. Wyoming, Arkansas and Georgia are the other hold-outs.
Much of the opposition to creating hate-crime legislation in these states has come from well-organized groups of Christian fundamentalists who on religious grounds disapprove of any sort of legal protections for gays, lesbians and transgender people. For these critics, the primary concern is legal language stepping up punishment for crimes motivated by contempt for the LGBT populace, measures they view as a small but dangerous part of a broader “homosexual agenda.”
One of the Christian groups is the Family Research Council. Contacted by ProPublica, the FRC's national office directed questions about hate crimes to Ryan McCann, an Indiana activist and lobbyist who works with the organization.
McCann views hate crimes laws as a sort of Trojan Horse: If Indiana adopts such a law, McCann said, LGBT advocates will use the precedent to argue for further legal safeguards, including anti-discrimination statutes, which he opposes.
Christian conservatives such as McCann have become potent activists against hate-crime legislation — lobbying, organizing their followers to petition statehouse lawmakers, and providing many of the key arguments against the laws.
“Homophobia and resistance to providing protections for LGBT people obviously play a role in the push back,” said Robin Maril, associate legal director for Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT advocacy organization.
Statehouse experts are quick to point out that Christian conservatives aren't the only people who can be hostile to hate crimes laws.
Jeannine Bell, a law professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, said some legislators in that state believe the laws will create an inequitable justice system that “serves particular groups and not others.” (Bell, who has studied the laws, disagrees: “That is a misunderstanding. Everyone has a race.”)
Lynne Bowman of Human Rights Campaign noted that, in general, Republican-controlled legislatures have not been supportive of hate crimes bills regardless of the language.
The range of concerns can include worries about limiting free speech or doubts that police and prosecutors can truly know a perpetrator's state of mind or motivations at any given moment. There have even been some expressions of misgiving among civil rights advocates that the legal hurdles created by hate-crime laws — establishing with certainty, for instance, someone's specific motivations — can be counter-productive.
Decades ago, in a landmark 1993 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court examined the fundamental fairness of hate-crime legislation. The court held that carefully crafted hate crimes laws do not infringe on the free exercise of speech, a finding that resolved the major constitutional questions on the matter. The case centered on a racially motivated incident in Wisconsin in which an African-American man assaulted a white teen, leaving the victim in a coma.
In the five states without hate-crime laws, however, there is little question that Christian activists have had an impact.
Bowman, a senior field director with Human Rights Campaign, said “homophobia” gives lawmakers “an easy excuse to stand up against these bills.”
For the past two decades, much of the resistance to hate crimes legislation has been orchestrated by a trio of intertwined conservative Christian groups.
The oldest and most prominent is Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based ministry founded by James Dobson. The sprawling organization, which produces a vast array of media on biblical topics and funds anti-abortion counseling centers for pregnant women, operated on a budget of nearly $90 million in 2013, the last year for which full tax records are available.
Focus on the Family portrays hate crimes laws as part of a plot to marginalize Christians and ban them “from the public arena.”
Dobson's ministry helped to spawn the Alliance Defending Freedom, a network of fundamentalist Christian lawyers who have argued that the laws infringe on religion while “creating additional legal protections for those engaged in homosexual behavior that are not available to everyone else.”
But it is the FRC, a third offshoot based in Washington, D.C., that has emerged as perhaps the most effective foe of hate crimes legislation.
When Congress took up the issue in 1999, an FRC leader told the Senate Judiciary Committee that revising the federal code to cover hate crimes could lead to the prosecution of “people who merely oppose homosexual activism.” Ten years later, as Congress debated the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the FRC decried the act as a “thought crimes” bill.
Since then, the “thought crime” claim has become a common talking point in conservative Christian circles and the FRC's regional chapters have sought to halt hate crimes legislation at the state level.
In 2007, the FRC chapter in Arkansas urged lawmakers there to vote against hate crimes legislation authored by a veteran Democratic legislator. The bill failed. In a blog post, chapter leader Jerry Cox proudly touted the group's accomplishments, saying it had spent years fighting “to make sure Arkansas' civil rights and hate-crimes laws are not used to promote a homosexual agenda.”
McCann of the FRC is straightforwardly explicit about the group's thinking.
“The gay-rights groups and the folks on the left only want to get the terms ‘sexual orientation' and ‘gender identity' into the law,” said McCann. “Unfortunately, that's all they care about — their agenda.”
In Indiana, groups affiliated with the FRC have enjoyed great success in killing hate crimes bills over the past decade. The Republican Party currently enjoys a super-majority in the state, controlling both legislative chambers and the governor's office. But “even under Democrat rule these hate crimes bills didn't get a hearing,” said McCann, who helps to lead the Indiana Family Institute, a group associated with the FRC and Focus on the Family.
Currently McCann is pushing legislators to stop five different hate crimes bills pending in the statehouse.
Though the FRC describes its mission as the advancement of “faith, family and freedom in public policy,” critics take a very different view: The Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed it an anti-gay “hate group.”
The FRC has vigorously denied the characterization. The allegations are “an attempt to discredit FRC's work and cut us out of public policy debates and media coverage over homosexuality and same-sex ‘marriage,'” the organization said in a 2010 statement.
The FRC has cultivated powerful allies, some of them in the White House. As Wired recently reported, both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence appeared at the organization's “Values Voter Summit,” while a range of current or pending administration officials — Reince Priebus, Mike Pompeo, Tom Price, Jeff Sessions — have all spoken at FRC events. Ed Prince, the father of Betsy DeVos, provided millions of dollars in funding to the FRC in the group's early days. DeVos, a Michigan billionaire, has been tapped by the Trump administration to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education.
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While 45 states have enacted hate crimes laws, the statutes vary dramatically around the country. In 15 of those states, the laws do not cover gays and lesbians; in 28 they don't cover gender identity or transgender individuals.
In Georgia, state Sen. Vincent Fort, a Democrat, said he has sponsored at least five bills that have been defeated largely because they covered sexual orientation. “Some people have said, ‘If you don't include gay people, it might pass,'” he recalled. Still, he insists he'll never support “any bill that excludes gay people. I'm not going to have anything to do with a hate crimes law that, in effect, is discriminatory. Wouldn't that be ironic?”
Wendell Gilliard of South Carolina tells a similar tale. A Democrat from Charleston, Gilliard has introduced “four or five hate crimes bills” in the state House of Representatives — and all of them have come to nothing. The lawmaker, who is African-American, said he's been barraged with angry emails and phone calls about his bills — not about race but from people “quoting biblical verses about homosexuality.”
Opponents of the bills under consideration in Indiana claim the legislation, if passed, could be used to prosecute preachers who portray homosexuality as a sin. “Let's pray that silencing speech is not the next step in the ‘gay' agenda that the media embraces and pushes in the statehouse,” wrote Micah Clarke, an Indiana lobbyist and leader of an FRC chapter, in a newsletter sent to his group's members.
Clarke declined to be interviewed.
“There are gay-rights activists all over the country who are trying to silence those who don't agree with them,” said McCann, the Indiana lobbyist. As far as he's concerned, the bills provide special treatment to members of “favored political classes” and are likely to muzzle fundamentalist Christians.
“Those are ‘alternative facts,'” said one clearly frustrated lawmaker, Greg Taylor, a Democrat from Indianapolis who has authored two hate crimes bills currently pending in the state Senate. “It's mind-boggling.”
Robin Maril of Human Rights Campaign describes the rhetoric coming from her political foes in Indiana as “irresponsible” fear-mongering.
“It's absolutely not true. But it sounds scary and it plays into people's fears,” Maril told us. “None of this legislation would ever impede an individual's ability to speak out. ... We are not policing ministers' ability to give sermons.”
Led by Sen. Ted Cruz, Republicans will be wasting no time in their efforts to roll back civil rights for LGBT Americans.
[The First Amendment Defense Act] would prohibit the federal government from taking "discriminatory action" against any business or person that discriminates against LGBTQ people. The act distinctly aims to protect the right of all entities to refuse service to LGBTQ people based on two sets of beliefs: "(1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage."
The intentionally broadly-written law would, in other words, enshrine the "right" of any private business to deny service to gay Americans outright if they are personally opposed to marriage equality. It would not merely allow businesses to deny their services in same-sex marriage ceremonies themselves: it would allow any business to discriminate against any customer, gay or straight, for any service, whether it be selling them gasoline or a hamburger, if a pseudo-religious reason can be attached to it.
The customer likely doesn't even have to be gay. The business can simply declare that they believe that customer might be an unmarried fornicator or a single parent, or perhaps declare that serving a particular customer might nebulously benefit some gay American later on. The law makes no mention of religious beliefs that are not hostile to LGBT Americans or equality; the religious belief declaring LGBT equality to be sinful is elevated as the only government-protected religious belief on the subject that will be tolerated.
It is an un-American and deeply anti-First-Amendment bill, which is of course why Sen. Ted Cruz and team are quite certain they will be able to gain the support of their Republican colleagues and their new anti-civil rights President.
It is roughly equivalent to efforts sponsored in Republican-led states like North Carolina and Mike Pence's Indiana, all of which have been tied up in courts or resulted in gargantuan corporate and private boycotts of those states.
It's stupid as hell, and a reminder that Ted Freaking Cruz is a rancid little un-American grub of a man who was foisted onto the nation by a Republican base so riddled with paranoia that they are willing to support any malevolent act or actor if they think doing so will cause harm to Americans they don't like.
As usual.
SUMMARY: She was never verbally or physically threatened or restrained. But at age 19, Nina Van Harn felt like she couldn't say no when she was expected to marry a man chosen by her family. And she is not alone in her experience. In a two-year period, it's estimated that there were 3,000 such forced marriage cases in the United States. Special correspondent Gayle Tzemach Lemmon reports.
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON, special correspondent : For Nina Van Harn, raising her children today is a radical departure from her own upbringing.
NINA VAN HARN, Married at 19: My childhood was part magical, and part complicated.
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: She was raised in rural Michigan on a 40-acre farm in a tight-knit community that practiced a conservative form of evangelical Christianity. Its members largely kept to themselves, more “Little House on the Prairie” than modern-day America.
Growing up, she always knew one day was coming. She recorded its arrival in her diary.
NINA VAN HARN: “Dear Kit (ph)” — that was the name of the girl in the journal — “You will never guess what happened today. This morning after breakfast, papa sat Naomi (ph) and I down at the kitchen table and nailed us both with a load of bricks. He believes he found husbands for both of us.”
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Van Harn had turned 19. She was legally an adult. There was no gun to her head, no chains around her wrists. But because of lifelong pressures from her family and her upbringing, she considers herself one of thousands of American women and girls forced into marriage each year.
NINA VAN HARN: I knew that I wasn't going to say no. This was God's will. God had spoken. And it was just not even an option. I didn't think consciously in my head 'I'm being forced.'
SUMMARY: International officials are convinced that Bosnia's brand of Westernized, moderate Islam is the best possible bulwark against radicalization. The nation's official Islamic Community is cracking down on rural mosques that it says are too in line with Islamists — but some say the true extremist threat lies in the heart of the capital itself. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.
MALCOLM BRABANT (NewsHour): I'm in Central Bosnia, about 100 miles from the capital, Sarajevo.
I'm heading up to a remote mountain village called Osve, which is a place where, supposedly, there are some supporters of the so-called Islamic State. There have been people who've gone from this village to fight in Syria. Some have reportedly been killed. And we're going to meet somebody who used to play rock ‘n' roll, but is now labeled by the head of the Islamic community in Bosnia as someone who is a terrorist.
Izet Hadzic used to be lead guitarist in a band called Black Lady. After fighting in the Bosnian War, he abandoned what he thought was a decadent lifestyle and sought peace in religion. He leads one of these so-called radical mosques. While he's in dispute with the Islamic establishment, he insists he's no terrorist.
IZET HADZIC, Mosque Leader (through interpreter): Where does it come from to call us terrorists? It is because that people who look like us, have these beards, are doing such acts in the world, specifically ISIS and this cretin Baghdadi.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Two doors away from Hadzic's small holding is the father of a young man killed in Syria. Next door is a family Hadzic regards as extreme. Bosnian intelligence officers are frequent visitors.
Hadzic unequivocally condemns Islamic State.
IZET HADZIC (through interpreter): You can't call this jihad. To take a gun while someone is walking down the street with his family and begin to shoot? Can you imagine soldier doing this? These people are equal to cowards.
MALCOLM BRABANT: We had a polite, but frosty reception in Bocinje, a nearby village that was a stronghold of foreign mujahideen during the Bosnian War. We hoped to interview a man who returned from Syria in 2014, but he didn't want to be filmed because of an impending court case. His name is Ibrahim Delic.
Dozens of other Bosnians now in Syria are said to want to return because they are horrified by ISIS atrocities. Crippled and radicalized during the Bosnian War, Delic recently talked to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. Significantly, he criticized the Free Syrian Army, who are enemies of ISIS.
SUMMARY: In a landmark manifesto on family life, Pope Francis called for Catholics to put conscience over dogma on critical moral issues. His statement also suggested a possible relaxing of the ban on divorced Catholics taking communion. Judy Woodruff gets reactions from Gloria Purvis of Global Catholic Network, Amanda June Gargus of Georgetown University and Marianne Duddy-Burke of DignityUSA.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Today's pronouncement from the Pope on family life was two years in the making. Pope Francis explicitly called for the church to be less judgmental.
Instead, he said more support is needed for single and unmarried parents, as well as same-sex couples. Divorced or remarried Catholics shouldn't be judged or discriminated against in church life. Priests can be merciful when it comes to delivering communion. But he didn't change doctrine on same-sex marriage or on the role of contraception.
We sample some of the reaction now with Amanda June Gargus. She is the student administrator at campus ministry at Georgetown University's Law Center. Gloria Purvis is the host of a radio show on the EWTN's Catholic Television Network called “Morning Glory.” And Marianne Duddy-Burke is the executive director of Dignity USA, which works on support changes for the LGBT community in the Catholic Church.
And we welcome all three of you to the program.
So, let's begin by — I just want to ask each one of you, what do you think of this latest statement by Pope Francis?
Let me start with you, Ms. Gargus.
AMANDA JUNE GARGUS, Georgetown University: I think it's a great thing.
I think it falls well within what the Pope has been saying all year in this year of mercy of being in love with our neighbors and how we show mercy towards the people around us, so, the saints and the sinners, those that conform with how we see God's love and those who may not necessarily be acting in the way that maybe traditional Catholics tend to think of the church acting.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Gloria Purvis, what about you? What was your reaction?
GLORIA PURVIS, Global Catholic Network: My reaction was, this is quite a merciful message. It had a lot for everyone.
I think it was a challenge for everyone. He clearly speaks within the confines of the church's understanding of marriage, faithful, fruitful, faithful forever, and yet, at the same time, he says we need to be merciful to everyone, walk with them.
And one of favorite lines in the exhortation is where he says love coexists with imperfection. And so I think there is a hopeful message for all of us. We all fall short of perfection. But if we're willing to listen and think with the mind of the church and try to form our consciences properly, the church is there with us.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Marianne Duddy-Burke, what about you? What did you think when you read this?
MARIANNE DUDDY-BURKE, DignityUSA: Yes, I find it to be a very uneven document. There are certainly places where it soars. I love the emphasis on respecting the formed consciences of so many of us and pastoral care, starting from the needs of the person.
I think those are fantastic and really consistent with a lot of what Pope Francis has been about. And then there are areas where it really falls short of what I think people were hoping for, and that's certainly true on the issue of LGBT people, where there really isn't a lot of progress in this piece.
SUMMARY: Zakia and Ali are Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet -- with all the heartache that description implies. Separated by religion, ethnicity and their own families, the young couple defied them all by eloping. Rod Nordland of the New York Times chronicles their remarkable odyssey in his book, “The Lovers,” and joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the intersection of romance and religion in the Muslim world.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Zakia and Ali first came to the world’s attention in the pages of The New York Times in 2014. Later, the paper would capture their story on video.
They had grown up on adjacent potato farms in Afghanistan’s remote mountain province of Bamiyan, playing together as children, and, as teenagers, falling in love.
ZAKIA (through interpreter): At first, I wasn’t aware of my feelings, because I didn’t know him. I was very young and didn’t understand these things. When I was out in the farm fields, he wrote his cell phone number and gave it to me. Then we talked on the phone and he said, “I love you,” and we got to know each other and started to love each other.
ALI (through interpreter): It looked to me that it wasn’t possible for us to get together.
JEFFREY BROWN: Indeed, it was prohibited because of the Afghan custom of arranged marriages and by Islamic law. The two were separated by religion and ethnicity, she a Sunni and Tajik, he a Shiite and Hazara.
When their love became known, the couple, especially Zakia, faced condemnation, beatings and later the threat of death from her family.
ROD NORDLAND, Author, “The Lovers”: Her family were not wealthy, but they were big and they were numerous. And they — on their side, in their quest to kill her, they had a very powerful weapon, and that was the knowledge that nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted for an honor killing in Afghanistan.
JEFFREY BROWN: A new book tells the story.
It’s called “The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet,” by New York Times Kabul bureau chief Rod Nordland. Nordland wrote the original article and a number of follow-ups.
We met recently at the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., as a new exhibition on Afghanistan art, Turquoise Mountain, was being installed.
Nordland told me he'd been looking for a way to report on so-called honor killings, the murder of young women by their own families for causing them shame.
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ROD NORDLAND: When it comes to a lot of these abusive customary practices, that’s right. They’re still as prevalent as they once were.
Honor killing, child brides, the practice of baad, when a little girl is sold to pay a family debt, often a debt for some moral crime that a male relative has carried out. It would be unfair to say there hasn’t been improvement, because there are millions of girls in schools that didn’t exist during the Taliban time.
Still, when you look at the metrics, Afghanistan still remains the worst place in the world to be born a woman, in life expectancy, maternal mortality, anything. And you look at it, and that’s pretty shocking, considering the investment that we have tried to make in bettering women’s lives.
SUMMARY: In the first meeting between leaders of Christianity’s largest churches since the Great Schism of 1054, Pope Francis met with Patriarch Kirill of the Eastern Orthodox Church Friday afternoon in Havana. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington, and the Most Blessed Tikhon, primate of the Orthodox Church in America, for more on the historic moment.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): This afternoon in Havana, at Jose Marti Airport, a meeting 1,000 years in the making. Pope Francis met with Patriarch Kirill of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the first meeting between the leaders of Christianity’s two largest churches since 1054, when a schism split the ancient church.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The meeting on neutral ground was decades in the planning. The leaders met for two hours behind closed doors, and later signed a joint declaration decrying persecution of Christians around the world.
We explore this historic moment, and its impact going forward, with His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon. He is the Orthodox archbishop of Washington, D.C., and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America, its senior-most leader in the U.S. and Canada. And His Eminence Theodore Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Roman Catholic archbishop emeritus of Washington, D.C.
First, for someone who hasn’t been following the 1,000-year-long rift between these two branches, why is this so important, and why did it happen now?
THE MOST BLESSED TIKHON, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America: There’s been attempts to bridge that gap over the years, none of which have really been successful.
But, in the last, you know, number of years, the last few decades, the groundwork for such a possible discussion has been taking place. So, while this meeting may seem like a somewhat new or surprising event, it has been discussed with both Pope Francis’ predecessors and patriarchals, but somehow the particular meeting that is happening today in Cuba didn’t take place.
But it’s — there have certainly been relations between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches during the past 1,000 years, but there has been a lot of both theological and ecclesiastical differences that need to be worked out, as well as just the simple physical separation that has sort of contributed to sort of a great divide.
So, a great opportunity now in this time of strife in the world to see two great world leaders come together and begin more — perhaps more formally, a dialogue.
SUMMARY: The Islamic State militant group is taking advantage of chaos and upheaval in the Middle East to recruit fighters by prophesying the end of days, says William McCants, an early Islam historian. McCants joins chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner to discuss his new book “The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State.”
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Now another addition to the NewsHour Bookshelf.
As the U.S. steps up military efforts against the Islamic State in Syria, a question persists: How did this extremely brutal group emerge so rapidly? A new book offers one answer, “The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State.” Its author is early Islam historian William McCants, senior fellow and project director at the Brookings Institution.
He spoke recently with chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner.
MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour): Will McCants, welcome.
You suggest right at the beginning of the book that it was triggered in a way by a question your father asked, which is, why do they do that? Is that what this book is, an answer for that?
WILLIAM MCCANTS, Author, The ISIS Apocalypse: That’s right.
My dad is 85 years old. And like most Americans, he watches the news and he can’t understand why a group like the Islamic State is so brutal to people and why they would be so extreme in their actions. So, it’s for him that I — and people like him that I wrote this book.
MARGARET WARNER: So, you, as your title says, chalk that up to its apocalyptic vision. What is that vision?
WILLIAM MCCANTS: That’s right.
The Islamic State believes that the end of the world is approaching and it believes that it has also reestablished God’s kingdom on Earth. And that kingdom is going to wage an epic battle against the infidels before it all comes tumbling down.
MARGARET WARNER: And that drives them, what, with a special sense of urgency?
WILLIAM MCCANTS: Gives them a special sense of urgency, but also has been terrific for recruiting.
They have been able to attract a lot of foreigners to their cause and many of the foreigners, based on interviews with journalists, say that the main reason they’re there is because they believe that the world is coming to an end and the Islamic State is a fulfillment of prophecy. So, they’re traveling there to do their bit.
SUMMARY: How do you explain religion to your kids when you don't follow a specific faith? Author, journalist and NewsHour online parenting columnist Wendy Thomas Russell sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss her new book, "Relax, It's Just God."
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now the latest addition to the “NewsHour Bookshelf.”
Raising children is a journey generously sprinkled with what many view as teachable moments, perhaps none as challenging as those surrounding faith and religion.
Author, journalist and NewsHour online parenting columnist Wendy Thomas Russell comes at this from a different angle in her new book, “Relax, It’s Just God: How and Why to Talk to Your Kids About Religion When You’re Not Religious.”
She recently talked with Jeffrey Brown and explained how the book came to be.
WENDY THOMAS RUSSELL, Author, “Relax, It’s Just God: How and Why to Talk to Your Kids About Religion When You’re Not Religious”: I was in the car, and my daughter announced to me that God had made her and that God had, in fact, made all children and all people. And…
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): And you thought?
WENDY THOMAS RUSSELL: And I was so — you know, she was so incredulous because she just thought, this seems like really big news, and how you don’t know it, mommy, is really beyond me.
So — but it did. It struck me. I was really caught off guard by it. And it…
JEFFREY BROWN: And what did you say to her?
WENDY THOMAS RUSSELL: I didn’t say much at the time. I sort of stumbled through the conversation, oh, who is God? And I sort of stumbled through the conversation, and then later went home and talked to my husband.
And he said, you know, it’s not what Maxine believes, but what she does in life that matters. And it was a turning point for me, this idea that, if we raise kids to be moral and ethical and kind and generous, then what they believe is secondary. And it was — it’s been a guiding force to the book.
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JEFFREY BROWN: This word indoctrinating is an important one, because it comes up time and time again here. What’s the difference between indoctrinating and guiding children, right?
WENDY THOMAS RUSSELL: Right.
Indoctrination, I see, as almost the antithesis of critical thinking. Of course it’s fine to guide your children, but I see indoctrination as sort of this middle ground between full-on brainwashing and guidance. it’s stronger than — it’s stronger than just merely guidance.
I see indoctrination as telling children that there is only one way to believe, and that all other ways and people who believe all other things are less worthy of our respect, less intelligent, less moral. It’s that — that’s the crucial issue, because I think that, when you do that, you set up your child to be bigoted against those who don’t believe the way that you do. You know, we are — it’s not a black-and-white world.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, so give me an example of the most basic question of — your child says, mommy, does God exist and what is God or who is God?
WENDY THOMAS RUSSELL: The way that I go about it is to say, that’s a great question, and I’m glad you’re thinking about it, that there are a lot of different ways that people describe God and describe what God is.
And this is what some people believe, and this is what other people believe. And this is — and I don’t believe in God, but that’s OK. It’s all OK. And you get to make up your own mind about what to believe.
SUMMARY: In Hungary, government leaders say they can't cope with the flood of migrants entering their country: 80,000 so far this year. So the government is racing to complete a 110 mile-long fence -- what opponents are calling a “new Iron Curtain” -- along its border with Serbia. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.
MALCOLM BRABANT (NewsHour): This family is more than 3,000 miles away from home in Congo. After months on the road, they have just slipped across the frontier from Serbia and have been stopped by the Hungarian police.
The adults don’t want to be filmed, for fear of jeopardizing their chances of reaching France another thousand miles away. In this porous border region, the country lane is teeming with migrants on a relentless march to Northern Europe.
You’re in Hungary.
MAN: No, you are in Hungary.
MALCOLM BRABANT: You are in Hungary.
Where have you come from?
MAN: I’m from Serbia. OK. Enough.
MALCOLM BRABANT: Nearby, a member of a right-wing vigilante group which claims to protect a local village stands guard over a group of Pakistanis who also just entered Hungary. Some fled for economic reasons, others because of persecution.
MAN: I wanted to marry some girl. The Muslim religion, we don’t have permission for it, so they kill her. So they don’t — they want to kill me, and now I’m running. Even my family want to kill me, my relatives, everybody, because we cross a religion. So, this is me running from there.
MALCOLM BRABANT: The migrants fear a repeat of violence they say was inflicted by police in Bulgaria.
MAN: They hit us here and here, here. And they take all money, SIM cards, mobile. Everything, they take from us.
MALCOLM BRABANT: But the vigilante lets them go. The authorities estimate as many as 2,000 people are crossing illegally into Hungary every day. Although most have no intention of remaining in the country, their sheer numbers intimidate some on isolated farms.
In one simple quote, Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B. sums up the hypocrisy in the 'pro-life' movement:
I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
This quote applies well to many Republican lawmakers and anti-choice extremists who continue to introduce/pass misogynist laws restricting a woman's reproductive rights. At the same time, the GOP works to shut down women's health clinics, with a special vengeance towards Planned Parenthood (#StandWithPP). You don't hear of these Right Wing anti-choice extremists adopting children from unplanned pregnancies. But you do hear of them cutting government programs like school lunches for children, cutting government financial and heath care aid to families who are homeless and/or in need, and blocking free college education. No, the goals of these hypocrites seem to be more about controlling women's bodies and women's futures. It's good to hear Sister Chittister, a Benedictine nun, define the GOP double talk so well.
An outspoken advocate for women, Sister Joan Chittister is an author of 50 books and a lecturer. Holding a Ph.D. from Penn State University, she is also a research associate in a division of Cambridge University. Other subjects of her writing includes women in the church and society, human rights, peace and justice, religious life and spirituality. She has appeared in the media on numerous shows including Meet the Press, 60 Minutes, Bill Moyers, BBC, NPR, and Oprah Winfrey. You can visit Joan Chittister's website (here).
Pope Francis has approved the creation of a Vatican tribunal for judging bishops accused of covering up or failing to act in cases of child sexual abuse by priests, an unprecedented step long demanded by victims in the more than three decades that the Roman Catholic Church has publicly dealt with the abuse scandal.
Bishops, regarded as “princes of the church” and sovereign in their dioceses, until now could be disciplined only directly by the pope, but until Francis, no pope had publicly confronted or demoted even those bishops accused of gross negligence. Under Francis’ predecessors — Pope Benedict XVI and, before him, John Paul II — the Vatican defrocked about 850 priests for sexual abuse and penalized about 2,500 more, but there was no similar judicial mechanism for bishops.
Advocates for abuse victims had a range of reactions, from skepticism to watchful optimism.
Francis’ move could affect bishops around the world as awareness of sexual abuse and calls for accountability spread, even to the church in Latin America, Asia and Africa, where the topic is still largely taboo.
It will also bring new scrutiny to a number of bishops currently under investigation over accusations that they covered up abuse by priests. They include Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of Minneapolis and St. Paul, whose archdiocese was indicted last week; Cardinal George Pell of Australia, the head of the Vatican’s finances, who was recently called to testify by a government commission in Australia; and Bishop Robert W. Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri, who was convicted on a misdemeanor charge for negligently handling a case involving a pedophile priest. He resigned his post recently but remains a bishop.
A mechanism for holding bishops accountable has been a high priority of the 17-member papal commission on abuse that was also created by Francis. That commission includes two abuse survivors and many laypeople, and it is headed by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, who was sent to Boston at the height of the abuse scandal there, and to two other dioceses before that, to clean up scandals left behind by previous bishops.
There are many unanswered questions as to how the tribunal will conduct its inquiries and proceedings, including what punishments it would impose on bishops found guilty.
Peter Saunders, one of the two abuse survivors on the commission, said he was pleased that Francis seemed to be listening to their recommendations but said, “When allegations against senior clergy are brought to the tribunal, we’ll see whether it’s working.”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in St. Louis for their semiannual meeting, said they had no advance knowledge of the creation of a new tribunal. (Among those attending the meeting was Archbishop Nienstedt.) In interviews, bishops said that they welcomed the step as a move toward transparency and would cooperate fully.
“It’s something new and necessary in the church because it does provide a standard and a policy that holds bishops accountable in the way we’ve held our clergy accountable,” said Bishop Christopher J. Coyne of Burlington, Vt., who was a spokesman in the archdiocese of Boston at the height of the scandals there in the early to mid-2000s.
The five-point plan announced on Wednesday says the tribunal will be housed in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that polices adherence to church doctrine and that already handles the cases of priests accused of abuse.
Francis will choose a secretary, and additional permanent staff members will be hired for the tribunal, said the Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. The procedures will be re-evaluated in five years, he said.
Father Lombardi said the tribunal would also examine some of the abuse cases perpetrated by clergy members that were “still pending” at the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. “They are still very numerous and have accumulated,” he said. The tribunal will “accelerate” matters, he said, noting that money had been set aside to bolster the new section.
Father Lombardi said that the tribunal’s responsibility for judging bishops would include questions of omission: “what one should have done and didn’t do,” he said. “This is another kind of responsibility and shortcoming, and has to be judged in an appropriate way with appropriate rules.”
Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a support and advocacy group for victims, said in a statement that she suspected that the new panel “won’t make a difference” because it relies on church officials to judge other church officials. She said that a more effective move would be for the church to support the reform of secular laws to strengthen the prosecution of those responsible for abuse.
Voice of the Faithful, a church reform movement first created to respond to the abuse scandal, said, “These steps are the most promising the Vatican has yet taken.” Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a Boston-based group that documents cases of sexual abuse by priests, called the development encouraging because it “provides a structure, personnel, a budget and a brief for actually acting.”
In the United States, where the church has been struggling with the question of sexual abuse by members of the clergy since the first case of serial abuse became public in Louisiana in the 1980s, the problem remains far from resolved.
Last year, there were 37 allegations of sexual abuse made to the church by those who were currently minors, and another 600 “historical allegations” made by those who are older, said Francesco C. Cesareo, chairman of the United States bishops conference’s National Review Board on sexual abuse, in his report to the bishops on Wednesday. Six of the current allegations made last year were substantiated, and other cases were still open, he said.
Given that, he said, “it should not be concluded that the sexual abuse of minors is a problem of the past that has already been addressed.”
“This is the missing link in the church’s response to the abuse crisis,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of the Jesuit weekly magazine America. “It is a long overdue and delayed response to this problem, but it’s an absolutely indispensable step. This is what everyone was waiting for and all were calling for in all quarters of the church.”
Father Martin suggested that action had been slow to come because there was a “lingering reluctance to hold bishops accountable if they themselves had not committed the abuse” and because, after the Second Vatican Council shifted greater power from Rome to the bishops, of “the traditional authority of bishops over their dioceses.”
SUMMARY: More than 800 priests have been defrocked over the years in connection to sexual abuse scandals, and 2,500 have been penalized. Now a Vatican tribunal is being established to publicly judge and discipline bishops accused of covering up or failing to act on reports of child sex abuse. John Allen of The Boston Globe joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the historic move.
SUMMARY: While the U.S. is still an overwhelmingly Christian country, since 2007 there has been a notable drop in the number of Americans who call themselves such, and the number of people who don’t identify as any religion has risen dramatically. Jeffrey Brown talks to Alan Cooperman of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the latest survey, and Rev. Serene Jones of the Union Theological Seminary.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): The U.S. remains an overwhelmingly Christian country. That hasn’t changed, but a new survey shows a significant drop in the number of Americans who identify as Christian.
The survey was done by the Pew Research Center. It showed that, in 2007, 78 percent of Americans identified as Christian. By last year, the percentage had dropped to under 71 percent. Those years have seen a dramatic rise in the number of Americans who say they are religiously unaffiliated, from 16 to nearly 23 percent.
The largest drop was in mainline Protestant denominations, but the number of Catholics also fell. Several non-Christian religions, Islam and Hinduism, saw modest gains.
Alan Cooperman is here. She’s the director of religious research at Pew. Also with us is Reverend Serene Jones, president of the Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
And welcome to both of you.
And, Alan Cooperman, let me start with you.
One aspect of this that might surprise people is just how widespread this drop is. Did that strike you?
ALAN COOPERMAN, Pew Research Center: Absolutely, Jeff.
I mean, I think the important thing for people the realize is, this is really widespread, broad-based social change. It’s taking place not just in the big cities or in the Northeast. It’s taking place in every region of the country, including in the Bible Belt, among men and women, among blacks, Latinos and whites, among older people and younger people, and among people with college degrees and those with only high school degrees.
JEFFREY BROWN: And, Dr. Jones, what — does it jibe with what you see happening around you? Are you surprised at all?
REV. SERENE JONES, President, Union Theological Seminary: Yes, it’s surprising to see the statistics lay it out so clearly, but, on another level, it’s not surprising at all. It’s exactly what we all look around when what we see in New York City or — I’m from Oklahoma — when I walk through the fields of the small town I grew up in. It’s the reality of the U.S. we live in today.
SUMMARY: A Muslim academic recently opened a gay- and women-friendly mosque in Cape Town, South Africa, which was largely regarded as a response to the culture of exclusion and conservatism in the Muslim faith. And despite receiving death threats and fierce criticism, experts say the house of worship's policies represent an adaptation of centuries-old traditions. Martin Seemungal reports.
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL (NewsHour): The call to prayer at Cape Towns newest mosque, which advertises itself as one of a kind in South Africa.
TAJ HARGEY: We are the only mosque by the way in the whole country that has the words all welcome. We chose the name open mosque to really identify what the mosque was about—it was open to all.
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Sixty-year-old Taj Hargey is the man behind this new mosque– a mosque he sees worthy of being replicated in other parts of the world.
Hargey says his mosque is open to non-muslims, homosexuals—women are allowed to preach from the pulpit—they pray side by side with the men.
Tanweer is one of the few who prays here regularly ever since the Mosque opened last September.
TANWEER: I come to this mosque every week because this is the only mosque that I know of where there’s equality in the genders, where females sit and can actually view the sermon from the front and we’re considered equals to men.
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: A counter, he says, to the daily stream of news and images that portray Islam as extremist and violent.
In fact, Hargey has been challenging Muslim orthodoxy for years.
Born and raised in Cape Town Hargey went abroad and studied at Oxford-he has a PHD in Religious studies.
He made headlines in Britain last year because of his ‘ban the burqa’ campaign.
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TAJ HARGEY: This idea of face masking (burqa), if its an Islamic practice. Why is it banned in mecca? No woman which goes to mecca the holiest mosque in Islam is allowed to cover her face—so this notion that is an Islamic practice with due respect is nonsense..it may be a cultural expression..fine..it may be a personal wish..fine—If I want to put a bone through my nose—I have a right..but then do I have a right to say a bone through my nose is an Islamic thing?
SUMMARY: In San Francisco, a woman is suing the Jehovah's Witnesses for failing to protect her from a known child abuser when she was a child. The Center for Investigative Reporting has shed light on accusations that religious leaders led a cover-up of child sex abuse. Special correspondent Trey Bundy of the CIR’s Reveal reports on how the organization is using the first amendment to fight these charges.
Editor’s Note: The graphic appearing in the introduction of this report mistakenly contains an image of a cross. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not use the image of a cross as a symbol for Christianity. We regret the error.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Next, an investigation into child sexual abuse among Jehovah’s Witness and accusations that religious leaders led a cover-up within inside some of the group’s 14,000 U.S. congregations.
Our colleagues from the Center for Investigative Reporting obtained confidential memos shedding new light on the revelations.
Special correspondent Trey Bundy has the story from Reveal, a new Web site, radio show, and podcast run by the center.
TREY BUNDY (NewsHour): At a convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in California, new members are taking the plunge.
MAN: At your baptism, you said yes.
TREY BUNDY: They’re joining more than eight million members worldwide.
Believers are taught to renounce secular society because it’s controlled by Satan, and not to socialize too much with outsiders. But charges of sexual abuse have brought this insular community under greater scrutiny. And now, in this San Francisco courtroom, the first child abuse case against the Jehovah’s Witnesses to go to trial is under way.
Candace Conti is suing the organization for failing to protect her from a known child abuser when she was 9 years old.
CANDACE CONTI, Plaintiff: If I were to sum up our goals in this case, it was to attack the policies and procedures that where in place that let a serial molester continue to molest children.
TREY BUNDY: Conti’s lawyer says instructions from Jehovah’s Witness leaders have enabled child molesters.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the latest acts of terror by Islamic State, a speech by President Obama on the way religion, including Christianity, has been used to justify violence, and why some Republican politicians spoke against mandating vaccination in the wake of a measles outbreak.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): I want to ask quickly both of you about what the president said at this prayer breakfast yesterday, got a lot of attention. He was attempting to talk about — saying that terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity, in the name of all religions, including Christianity, David.
And he talked about the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, slavery. Republicans jumped on this and said false equivalency, you should be focusing on what extreme Muslims are doing today, and not talking about Christianity.
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist: I think, if the President had come as an atheist to attack religion and to attack Christianity, the Republicans would have a point. That’s not what a president should be doing.
But that’s not how he came. He has used that prayer breakfast year after year to talk about his own faith, his own faith journey, his own struggles. He’s used it — he has come as a Christian. And the things he said were things — I have never met a Christian who disagreed with what he issued, that the religion has been perverted, that we have to walk humbly before the face of the lord, that God’s purposes are mysterious to us.
This is not like some tangential, weird belief. This is at the core of every Christian’s faith and every Jew’s faith. And so what he said was utterly normal and admirable and a recognition of historical fact and an urge towards some humility. And so I thought the protests were manufactured and falsely manufactured.
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: The Bible says, slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling. That was used by slaveholders and by the defenders of slavery in this country. They quoted the Bible, and that terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity.
The Crusades are hardly one of the proudest chapters of Christianity. But I think what the President said is accurate. I do think that he’s been somewhat reluctant to acknowledge and admit and confront that this is an Islamic terrorist, that it is a perversion and to address that.
But I thought the response — I mean, these are the same people who are constantly criticizing the Islamic State people for not joining in the coalition, and saying you have got to condemn them. I just thought that it was over the top and undeserved.
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MARK SHIELDS: Judy, there’s a rhetoric in this country. It’s been on the ascent for almost a generation or more. And that is individual freedom, government interference, stay out of our lives, leave us alone, anything from Washington, you have to oppose, a federal mandate.
And, you know, that has become the rhetoric. And that was their response. The reality is quite simple. Americans do feel that the government is a pain in the neck and too much red tape and keep them out of their lives. But a trace of botulism found in one can of tuna fish outside of Pocatello, Idaho, and the universal American reaction is, where the hell is the federal government? I want a report in my office in 24 hours, or heads will roll.
We want a small, effective, efficient federal government on our side 24 hours a day, cheap. In 1988, there were 350,000 cases of polio in this world. In 2012, there were 213. That’s because of vaccination. That’s because of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin and the federal government and the public — public effort in health.
And that to me is — this is the reality. It’s beyond ideology. They were slaves to ideology. And Christie hasn’t — just doesn’t have his footing. With Paul, it’s sort of an excess of where he comes from and where he treads and what he believes. But I think Christie comes off even worse than Paul or anybody else.
