After a week of incredible, humbling work, the 77th General Convention of The Episcopal Church closed last week with a flurry of activity. A week of prayer, worship, discernment, and decision found the church wrestling with serious and substantive questions. More importantly, it appears, finding its voice. A new group of people I deeply respect have gathered under the name Acts 8 Moment, which gives me hope for the direction and future of the church. The Rev. Canon Frank Logue has put together some great videos describing what this means.

You wouldn’t know this if you read two of our most prominent papers of record. In the religion section of the Wall Street Journal and the opinion page of the New York Times, journalists with little familiarity with the governance of The Episcopal Church, and armed only with the political baggage of “the culture war” penned thinly-veiled screeds about the direction of The Episcopal Church. The first, written by Jay Akasie, was so full of errors and outside speculation, that it is nearly impossible to find any element of truth within it. Its premise was so deeply dependent on false and easily refuted claims, that none of his conclusions carry any weight. It is deeply disturbing to see such filth in such a formerly august newspaper as the WSJ.

The second, and much more clever of the two, was written by Ross Douthat, and published in the Sunday Review, the opinion page of the New York Times. This one, more “think piece” than straight editorial, failed the basic sniff test because everything about it sounded familiar. So familiar, in fact, that Diana Butler Bass was easily able to diagnose its problem: he was simply restating ideas from the 1970s about the decline of the mainline. The pernicious problem with his piece is that he hides the similar issues conservative Christians have had over the same time while falsely attributing current trends with past statistics. Then he makes the gravest sin of all in suggesting The Episcopal Church is operating without theological foundation: a charge so clearly mistaken and demonstrates an incredible level of ignorance of his subject.

I have chosen not to link to these pieces directly, but encourage you to read these two thoughtful responses from people with much greater knowledge of the subject matter, Scott Gunn and Diana Butler Bass. I also encourage you to read this one, written by a known conservative who finds the former article as hackish as the rest of us.

All of this reminded me of a report I heard about five or six years ago. I was listening to NPR’s On the Media and they interviewed two researchers who looked at how the media used “the religious perspective” on a topic. I went searching for the study online, but couldn’t find it. The two researchers looked at who was invited to speak on behalf of Christianity on TV with regards to big issues like war, sex, and the like.

I was floored at the time by two shocking measurements. The first found that more than 60% of the time, conservative evangelicals were invited to speak for all Christians, followed by Roman Catholics at >20%, and the remaining 10-20% was everybody else. As conservative evangelicals make up about 1/4 of all Christians, this was a shocking overrepresentation and a criminal under-representation of all other denominational groups.

The second thing they found was that the most commonly invited conservative evangelicals were big names, drawn from a small pool, with the same few high-profile pastors invited well more than anyone else. Those speaking for the many non-conservative evangelical positions were spread out with few prominent representatives of any one group getting much consistent TV time.

I did come across a much more recent study of how the media covers homosexuality which produces an example of a similar bias in the news for antagonism on the subject, but not to the level we saw back in 2006 of the much wider research group of all ethical subjects.

Much has been written already by my colleagues in response to these two mean-spirited pieces, and I certainly encourage you to read them, particularly Diana Butler Bass’s. Personally, my question is why did these two men write these pieces in the first place? And why did these two newspapers with lofty reputations print them, particularly as they are examples of poor journalism and are so deeply flawed?

Or to ask a different question. Why have they published such a nakedly partisan response to the General Convention? Are they implying a) that the results of Convention are inherently liberal and b) they can speak for themselves? If this is the case, then why has the beauty, theological adventure, and harmony of this Convention not been reported, so that the Convention can actually speak for itself? And isn’t it poor journalism to make such presuppositions to begin with?

Perhaps the biggest problem for the news media in understanding what has been happening at General Convention this decade is that The Episcopal Church is becoming driven less by secular notions and impositions and more by Biblical and theological ones. That the nature of a Convention in which both clergy and laity have a voice, that business is not done until all of the proposals have been prayed over and a way forward has been thoroughly discerned by broad groups of diverse people. That nothing is done by fiat or from a top-down, authoritarian model. That little is done in secret, back rooms by the Illuminati. They literally do not understand what we are doing. Or why. Especially the why. How this structure embodies the Baptismal Covenant and is focused on representing Jesus’s call to total ministry of the people.

This is why we don’t get called to talk about our own church. We are living a rebelious notion that the governing order of Western Democracy has as much to lose from a full-throated Gospel of Jesus as anyone else. That the intensity of the bright light of scrutiny shined on our own institutions in the U.S. might reveal that so many of them run counter to our Biblical, theological, and even traditional mandate to follow Jesus as Messiah. That our common, simplistic understanding of GOD’s blessing has no real relation to the Gospel. That the gospel is much more than belief and much more than adherence, but about practicing love in a way that makes the powerful uncomfortable.

So appropriate, then, that the late Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday came upon us. He preached a dangerous message of unity and rebellion so very much like Jesus’s. As he wrote:

ALL YOU FASCISTS

I’m gonna tell you fascists
You may be surprised
The people in this world
Are getting organized
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose

Race hatred cannot stop us
This one thing we know
Your poll tax and Jim Crow
And greed has got to go
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose.

All of you fascists bound to lose:
I said, all of you fascists bound to lose:
Yes sir, all of you fascists bound to lose:
You’re bound to lose! You fascists:
Bound to lose!

People of every color
Marching side to side
Marching ‘cross these fields
Where a million fascists dies
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose!

I’m going into this battle
And take my union gun
We’ll end this world of slavery
Before this battle’s won
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose!