I am sorry for the delay on this think piece from The Forward, since really should have run during the impeachment proceedings. However, I never thought of this as a piece about Donald Trump or any of his pack.
No, I thought GetReligion readers would want to see this because it was written by Mark Pinsky, the veteran religion-beat pro best known for his work in the heavily evangelical world that surrounds Orlando.
Pinsky is also the author of a book that I recommend when asked one of the questions that I hear all the time. That question: What is the best book to use in a college or university level course about covering religion news?
Well, of course I am going to recommend this project from my friends and former colleagues linked to The Media Project: “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion.” It includes my essay on religion-beat strategies for editors and publishers, “Getting Religion in the Newsroom.”
But there really isn’t a religion-beat 101 book, a kind of manual for professionals who are starting the process of reading themselves up to speed on the myriad subjects, movements and vocabularies needed to cover this complex subject.
But there is a book that I recommend that does a great job of explaining WHY reporters need to take the challenges of this beat seriously and why they should strive to get inside the beliefs and worldviews of the believers they need to cover. That book is Mark Pinksy’s small volume entitled, “A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.”
This brings us to the weekend think piece, that recent Forward feature that ran with this headline: “Trump Impeachment lawyer Jay Sekulow says ‘I’ve never felt not Jewish.’ “
Why did Pinsky land this exclusive interview?
Sekulow said the interview with the Forward was the only one he planned to do ahead of the impeachment trial, and that he agreed to do it because I have been writing about him on and off for more than a quarter century — and because his great-uncle, Sonya Sekular, worked for the Forward in the 1940s, Sekulow said.
I first interviewed Sekulow in 1993, when he was a pudgy young lawyer with a mustache and thick glasses, and I was investigating a Christian ministry called Trinity Broadcasting Network for the Los Angeles Times. Sekulow had impressed the network’s founders, Jan and Paul Crouch, with a string of Supreme Court victories starting with a 9-0 decision in 1987 that allowed Jews for Jesus to distribute literature at Los Angeles International Airport.
So what you are looking for in this think piece is all of the DNA from this reporter’s many contacts with this controversial figure. It would be impossible, I think, to fund two guys whose take on religion and politics were more different.
But what you come away with are moments like this:
In the interview with the Forward on Monday, Sekulow dismissed as “nonsensical” the notion, popular in some right-wing circles, that the impeachment is some kind of Jewish plot because many of the key House Democrats involved, including Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, happen to be Jewish. Born in Brooklyn and Bar Mitzvahed at Temple Or Elohim in Jericho, N.Y., Sekulow said that despite his long-ago conversion and belief in Jesus Christ, he “never felt not Jewish.”
“I always considered myself Jewish,” he told me. “My heritage and my upbringing and my family’s faith, all of that plays a role in my view of justice.”
There’s more. Lots more.
Consider this highly relevant passage, in an age when many liberals are struggling with the First Amendment and its implications for life in a complex and shattered public square:
In part because his zeal was not doctrinaire, Sekulow was also refreshing. During our interviews decades ago, he downplayed — but never denied — his early acceptance of the label “First Amendment absolutist.” Occasionally, as if to poke his base, he would put lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union on his Trinity Broadcasting program.
He acknowledged that some of his views on free speech — like supporting adult-bookstore and theater operators — had caused him blowback from some conservative groups including Concerned Women of America. He also irked some allies with his opposition to official prayers, and proselytizing, in public elementary and middle schools; he said it was potentially coercive.
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