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University of North Carolina sociologist Christian Smith recently complained in Books & Culture (a CT sister publication) about "religiously ignorant journalists." Among his complaints of reporters' phone calls: "Other journalists simply cannot pronounce evangelicals at all. They get confused and flustered, and after a few uncomfortable tries at 'evangelics' and 'evangelicalists' they give up and resort to referring to evangelicals simply as 'them.'"

Ah, but Dr. Smith, "how can they hear, unless someone tells them?" Without guidance, you end up with stories such as Rachel Uranga's in the Los Angeles Daily News this week.

"After centuries of devotion to the Catholic faith, nearly 20 percent of U.S. Latinos have converted to evangelism over the last 10 years," she writes. "Drawn to the no-nonsense sermons on pious, drug- and alcohol-free living, many Latinos say evangelism is a powerful antidote to everyday troubles plaguing their communities. … The shift among many Latino Catholics to evangelism, which started in Central America in the 1960s, is well under way in the San Fernando Valley."

Now here's the problem: Uranga actually has an interesting story here that may or may not be wholly accurate. The thesis is that Latinos, at least those in the Valley, are leaving Roman Catholicism for evangelical Protestant churches (largely of the independent and Pentecostal variety) because they sense that those churches have stronger moral teachings. If true, that's an angle that's gone largely unexplored in these stories.

And Uranga is no slouch: She was informed enough to contact DePaul University's Arlene Sanchez-Walsh, one of the best scholars on Latino evangelicals.

But confusing the universal Christian action of evangelism with the mostly Protestant movement called evangelicalism (here's a good definition of the latter) means that this story simply won't (can't) be taken seriously. And Daily News readers who know the difference—and that will include most Catholics—are going to be more likely dismiss future religion stories in the paper. And since the New York Times News Service picked up this story and it ran in other papers with the evangelism/evangelicalism problem in tact, the credibility problem may not be limited to the Daily News.

Regent College bookstore bans The Glorious Appearing
That's the Canadian home of J.I. Packer, John Stackhouse, Gordon Fee, and Eugene Peterson, not the Pat Robertson school in Virginia Beach.

Bookstore manager Ian Panth says the latest Left Behind book mixes "dangerous theology with politics" and (in the words of U.K.-based Ekklesia), "promoted an American-centric view that suggests that the US is beyond criticism."

That shouldn't keep the book from hitting the bestseller lists this week. And for precisely that reason, the many bookstores around Regent (except for that odd nautical bookstore) will likely carry the title anyway.

Bioethics council releases report:

• Reproduction and responsibility| The regulation of new biotechnologies (The President's Council on Bioethics)
  
  
• America's Catholic bishops respond | Today the President's Council on Bioethics released a report on reproductive technologies that deserves attention from all concerned about technological abuse of human life. Unfortunately, two Council recommendations raise serious questions (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
  
  
• The bishops err | There have always been pro-lifers in the all-or-nothing camp: people who object to our trying to ban partial-birth abortions when all the other abortions are just as bad. The bishops' conference has thankfully not been among their number. Until now (Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review Online)
  
  

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March (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48