In the days when I attended the church, Baptists seldom mentioned abortion. That may have been because then there was little public discussion of it, although I have learned since that there were many private discussions of the practice as many people sought one. The lack of a Baptist discussion, however, may also have been due to Baptists’ reverence for the Bible and for liberty of conscience. The last time I checked a biblical concordance—admittedly quite some time ago, but surely this has not changed—“abortion” was not in it. One has to interpret or extrapolate from verses and contexts to conclude that the Bible condemns abortion. Biblical passages can be construed to say that life begins at conception, but what “conception” meant in biblical times is not clear. I doubt to ancient Israelites it meant a sperm fertilizing an egg. Other biblical passages, however, indicate life begins with the first breath. But even though the Bible does not explicitly, and may not implicitly, condemn abortion, it is hard to suggest that it supports the view that abortion should be the choice of the woman and her doctor.

A Baptist, however, might extrapolate from Baptist principles and conclude that because there are ambiguities in the Bible on the matter, whether an abortion is sinful must remain a matter of conscience. The opinion would hold that the state cannot dictate what is sinful and should not dictate that a woman cannot have an abortion. In fact, when a number of states began to change their absolute proscriptions of abortion, many Southern Baptist leaders held quite liberal views on the subject. For example, a poll in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, found that 70% of Southern Baptist ministers supported abortion to protect the mental or physical health of the pregnant woman; 64% supported abortion in cases of fetal deformity; and 71% supported abortion in cases of rape. The next year the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution stating, “We call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such circumstances as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

This liberal viewpoint, however, soon vanished. Since Roe v. Wade, the Southern Baptist Convention has passed many resolutions about abortion that are much different from the 1971 pronouncement. On the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Convention stated that that Supreme Court “decision was an act of injustice against unborn children as well as against vulnerable women in crisis pregnancy situations. . . . We lament and renounce statements and actions by previous conventions and previous denominational leadership that offered support to the abortion culture. . . . We pray and work for the repeal of the Roe v. Wade decision and for the day when the action of abortion will be not only illegal but unthinkable.”

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, then, Southern Baptist shifted away from dogmatic opposition to school prayer and aid to religious school and towards dogmatic opposition to abortion. These moves have had more than a religious impact because they are all opinions that affect how people vote. Southern Baptists, for example, now want their elected officials to be strongly against abortion and generally friendly, at least, to religion, or at least some forms of religion. This certainly has had importance for the country since the Southern Baptists are the country’s largest Protestant denomination.

Over the last generation or two Southern Baptists seem to have moved even further to the political right than they were before. Perhaps people who are better historians, sociologists, or theologians than I can explain why, but I do point out that the Southern Baptists were not alone in the rightward lurch during this period. Something similar also occurred with the National Rifle Association, which had been largely an apolitical group interested mainly in marksmanship and gun safety, but was captured by an element that began the NRA’s move to become one of the most important conservative organizations in the country. Both Baptists and the NRA moved to the right at the same time. Is there a connection? Are they in essence joined—Christ with a gun?

Some Baptists have drifted–or sprinted–away from the principles that defined Baptism. Nevertheless, when I see one of those white frame Baptist churches, part of me still thinks that could be my home. But I also wonder why. I felt Baptism was right because it depended not on ritual or coercion or enforced rules. It was founded on the consciences of individuals, persuasion, and reason. Yet I don’t remember, and certainly do not miss, the sermons I heard when I went to church–the stuff that was meant to appeal to my reason. Instead, I miss communion, a responsive reading, and, most of all, the hymns. I sing to myself often “Stand up, Stand up for Jesus.” It turns out I miss the ritualistic aspects of what I experienced. Go figure.

When I was young American Baptists opposed aid to parochial schools on the grounds that it forced people, through taxes, to support religious practices, and no one should be forced to support religion. Worship should be free and voluntary and arise from the person’s conscience otherwise it is not meaningful and sincere, and insincere religious practices are sinful.

Southern Baptists also opposed government aid to religious schools. Thus, in 1971, when a voucher system was proposed to allow public money to go to parochial schools, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that said, “We reaffirm our belief that the use of public funds for education in church-controlled schools, regardless of the manner in which these funds are channeled to church schools, is contrary to the principle of religious liberty.” The Convention went on to “reaffirm its commitment to our system of public education.”

But times change, and, apparently, so do religious principles. That adamant opposition to state support for parochial schools has shifted. Thus, the Convention passed a resolution in 2014 entitled “On the Importance of Christ-Centered Education.” The SBC now encourages lawmakers to enact policies and laws that maximize “parental choice.” It goes on to say, “We affirm and encourage support for existing Christ-centered K-12 schools as they engage in Kingdom work.”

What, you might ask, accounts for this change? Although religiously tolerant, Baptists were quite opposed to Roman Catholics, who were not seen as real followers of Christ. (A Sunday School teacher of mine once announced that the United States had three major religions: Christians, Jews, and Catholics.) A generation or two ago, “parochial schools” was seen as a coded term for “Catholic schools,” even though other denominations also had religious schools. (My father and a nephew went to Lutheran schools.) The adamant opposition for aid to parochial schools that then existed could have sprung from opposition to Catholicism, but, in fact, the position was consistent with long-held Baptist views that go back to Roger Williams.

So, why the changes? A generation or two ago, Baptists had few K-12 schools. (A fair number of colleges and universities have Baptist roots, including, for example, Wake Forest and the University of Chicago.) However, then came the school desegregation movement. Even though the Supreme Court outlawed segregated public schools in 1954, it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that meaningful desegregation got underway. And, surprise, surprise, Christian Academies started springing up in places–coincidentally, I am sure—where opposition to desegregation was strongin places where many were fighting desegregation. Non-Catholic Christian Schools doubled their enrollment between 1961 and 1971. And while there were few Baptist K-12 schools before Brown v. Board of Education, they became more numerous just at the time when public schools were being desegregated.

Many of the Christian Academies were originally unabashedly segregated We tend to forget all the preaching that said the separation of the races was commanded by the Bible, and Brown did not apply to private schools These schools, however, could get back door government help. In the 1960s, donations to the schools were tax-exempt, but that changed through a series of Supreme Court decisions into the 1970s that declared racially discriminatory private schools ineligible for the tax break.

After these legal decisions, most, if not all, of the schools no longer claimed to be all-white, but not many then became truly integrated. The schools increasingly said they existed to fight secular humanism and to oppose liberalism. That message and the costs of the schools attracted few non-whites. The schools no longer touted segregation, but that remained the implicit message of many of them.

Funding of a Christian Academy education, however, is difficult for many who desire it no matter what their reasons. Therefore, many of those seeking a religious education support school vouchers. These vouchers are public moneys given to the parents for the education of their schoolchildren. Thus, parents, not the state, decide which school will get the government money. Conservative economists promoted the vouchers in the 1950s as a way to improve education. The claim was that allowing free market principles, under the slogan “school choice,” would work wonders for educational quality. Today, however, many who want to send their kids to parochial schools support vouchers. And this raises a question of the separation of church and state.

Because the voucher can be used at any private school including parochial ones, public money is used for religious purposes. The Supreme Court had earlier made it clear that governments could not directly aid religious schools, but vouchers, by giving parents control over the state money, is an indirect aid to religious schools. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court in 2002 held that a school voucher did not violate the federal Constitution.

In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention had taken a strong stand against vouchers as an improper state aid of religion. The Supreme Court, of course, cannot change the religious principles of Baptist, but since that strong stand against vouchers, many Baptist schools have been created, and, for whatever the reason, that adamant opposition by Southern Baptists has disappeared. Apparently, dogmatic opposition to public moneys for religious schools starts to waver when those schools might be Baptist schools. (to be continued.)

When I attended the Baptist church, the views of separation of church and state, liberty of conscience, equality, and religious toleration espoused by Roger Williams were strong. Tolerant Baptists may not have been publicly militant about much, but they were militant about the separation of church and state. On occasion, however, I recognized a bit of Baptist backsliding. I was home from college or law school during the Vietnam War and went to church. The minister’s sermon gave support for that war. I was offended for two reasons: (1) He was wrong about the war. (2) He was wrong as a Baptist. The church should not give or wiithhold support for the government. It cheapened the worship of God to bring the state into it. Church and state. Separate.

I voiced my displeasure to the minister after the service, and he invited me to visit him during the week, which I did. We discussed the war. I knew that as Baptists he could not speak to me from a position of authority where he could attempt to dictate what my views should be. He, using either reason or the Bible or both, had to persuade me that his sermon was correct. He did not do so.

This interjection of politics into church was rare, however. Church and state were kept separate, and it was easy to predict how American Baptists would react in those days to some prominent church-state issues: prayers in public schools and government aid to parochial schools. For American Baptists the answers were a simple no and no.

The public prayers profaned God. If one prayed because the state required it, then the prayer came not out of devotion to God, but because of devotion or fear of the state. This made such a prayer unholy and defiled true religion. If the prayer was uttered, not out of devotion and faith, but merely out of a habit, like saying “Good morning, Miss Ketter” to the teacher each morning, the prayer was still sinful.

We American Baptists thought that the United States Supreme Court got it right when it held in 1962 that a recitation of a state-written prayer in the public schools violated the First Amendment, which prohibits an establishment of religion. Furor around the country, however, resulted. Godlessness would prevail. Communists would ascend. I found this panic amusing. My public school did not have prayers. I believe they were outlawed in Wisconsin, as they were in many–perhaps most–other states. I listened to the rants about the Court’s decision, and looked about me and could not figure out what they were going on about. Wisconsin, to my keen eye that was on a vigilant lookout for such things and disappointed when I could not find them, did not seem to be more a hotbed of iniquity than places that required the public prayers. It was clear to me that here was no connection between morality or godly behavior and the recitation of prayers in public schools.

American Baptists were not alone in accepting the Supreme Court ruling about school prayers. Southern Baptists agreed. The Southern Baptists came into being in the1840s when they segregated themselves from other Baptists. It should come as no great surprise that race was the dividing factor. The specific issue, as I understand it, was whether slave holders could be missionaries.

But even with the split, Southern Baptists maintained the same doctrinal positions as other Baptists. They maintained that the Bible only authorized two sacraments—adult baptism by immersion and the Lord’s Supper. They also were without a hierarchy. There was a Southern Baptist Convention to which churches sent “messengers,” but the pronouncements of the SBC did not bind anyone; they were just recommendations or urgings or food for thought. As with American Baptists, the church was congregation-based with the congregants selecting a minister. And Southern Baptists also believed in the strict separation of church and state. Thus, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention said shortly after the Supreme Court decision finding public school prayers unconstitutional that the decision was “one of the most powerful blows in our lifetime, maybe since the Constitution was adopted, for the freedom of religion in our lifetime.”

Soon thereafter, however, Southern Baptists started changing their positions. In 1982, the SBC supported a constitutional amendment that would have allowed individual or group prayer in public schools as long as the government did not require participation in the prayer. (This was a curious proposal. Individual prayer was never outlawed, and of course, a silent prayer could not be. Surely, I am not the only one who reached out to the Almighty before a calculus exam. A spoken prayer might run into troubles with school authorities, not because it was a prayer, but because any vocalization might have been disruptive to school order. Part of the power of prayer, it seems to me, is that at least silent ones can be said anywhere, including in government facilities.) (To be continued.)

American Baptists did not have saints, but there was a theological progenitor—Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island after he was “asked” to leave Puritan Massachusetts. He established the first American Baptist church in Providence. Williams should be considered one of our most important Founding Fathers, but he seems to be almost unknown today. When I used to walk by the Roger Williams Hotel on Madison and 31^st Street in Manhattan, I wondered how many of my fellow passersby had any idea who Roger Williams was. The hotel was built on land leased from the neighboring Baptist church, and, I once heard, was owned by the American Baptist Church. Times change. The hotel was sold, and now has what seems like a brand-tested name, The Roger.

Williams was a remarkable man. Unlike many of his American contemporaries of the early seventeenth century, he treated the Indians with respect and produced a primer of the complex Algonquian language. (Bill Bryson in Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language states that this work “is a feat of scholarship deserving of far wider fame, incidentally.”) But Williams should be better known because so much of his thought, expressed in his voluminous writings, broke from conventional thinking and was the foundation for many of the bedrock principles of this country—sovereignty in the people, equality of people, liberty of individual conscience, and separation of church and state.

Williams made the radical argument for his time that governments were not divinely inspired. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus pick a government or endow rulers with authority. Instead, Williams contended, sovereignty is with the people. Just as people come together and join with God to form a church and then pick its ministers, the people come together to form a government and grant authority to the rulers.

This led Williams to reject the common notion of his time that the state must enforce God’s laws in order to prevent religious errors. Instead, since the state gets its powers from the people, government is invested with all the errors of the people. Any attempt to enforce religion by the state will always be error-filled and will, in essence, be an attempt for people to have sovereignty over God. Thus, long before Jefferson, Williams called for a “wall of separation” between church and state, a wall he called for to protect not the state, but religion. He believed that religion always suffered when it was protected or required by the state. For Williams, the church is protected by spiritual weapons and harmed by government efforts to enforce religion. God makes Christians; not a government. When religion and politics are mixed, the result is not true religion, but politics.

For Williams, religion was a personal thing. For Williams, personal conscience is God’s line of communication to an individual. Humans being imperfect, they might be wrong about conscience’s demands, but since the conscience comes from God, it is a sin for a person to act contrary to her conscience, even a mistaken one. If I (or the state or a religious leader) forces you to act in opposition to your conscience, I am forcing you to sin, and by forcing you to sin, I am sinning.

In other words, everyone must be allowed to worship as their conscience dictates, and no one should be required to worship against his conscience or to support religious practices that are against his conscience. Jesus did not force or coerce anyone to God. Man, then, can’t force anyone to faith.

A mistaken conscience can be corrected only by persuasion, not by force or coercion. An appeal to conscience, for Williams, required the related God-given ability of reasoning. Conscience demands proof, and proof comes from intellectual rigor. Proof has to satisfy reason or be from the Bible or from a writing that convinces an individual that it was divinely inspired. Williams rejected the Quakers who were led to Christ by a movement of an ill-defined spirit within the person. Such movement did not, could not, satisfy reason.

These views did not just lead to the separation of church and state but to the corollary precept of religious toleration. They led not just to liberty of conscience on religious matters, but on all matters. And since Jesus did not indicate that one soul mattered more than another and all individual consciences should be respected, it meant that society should treat all equally.

(I have refreshed my understanding of Williams’s life and teachings primarily from Roger Williams: The Church and the State by Edmund S. Morgan and Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty by John M. Barry.)

These Baptist precepts have led me both to my religious sensibilities as a youth and to my political thinking as an adult. The religious and the American neatly coincided. Just as people come together with God to form a church, the people of America came together to form a country—“We the People . . .” Sovereignty does not belong to the authorities, but starts with ordinary individuals. Both the church and America are founded on freedom of conscience. Religion cannot be imposed, forced, or coerced; it is the result of individual reason and persuasion. In America, a political view cannot be imposed, forced, or coerced; it is the result of an individual decision. (To be continued.)

What most people know about Baptists is that they practice adult, not infantile (ok, infant), baptism, and baptism not by merely sprinkling of water but by full immersion of the believer into water. The definition of an adult for baptism, it turns out, may be a bit loose. I was baptized when I was twelve or fourteen. But apparently old enough to profess that I was willing to accept Jesus as my savior.

Our church, as with many if not all Baptist churches, had a place near the pulpit for the baptisms, but it was different from what others may consider a baptismal. It had to hold enough water to dunk a six-footer. Ours was about the size of a hot tub, but without the heaters or the air of decadence. It, of course, was plumbed so it could be filled with water and then drained. Those of us being baptized changed out of our Sunday finery into something that could survive being soaked. When my time came, I got into the water that came up to my waist. I was surprised by the minister, who was wearing fishing waders that were not visible to the congregation. He supported my back and head. I leaned backwards until I was under the water, and then he lifted my sputtering body upright and said that this symbolized death and resurrection and a new life in God. And, so, at least for those moments, I was saved.

Baptists practice adult baptism by immersion because of the Bible. The Bible is divinely inspired, Baptists believe, and the ultimate authority for leading a Christian life. Baptists find no scriptural support for infant Baptism. The specifically-mentioned baptisms in the Bible, for example, of Jesus by John the Baptist and one done by Phillip, were of adults, and there is nothing to indicate that John the Baptist’s other baptisms were not of adults.

Infant baptisms are a man-made ritual, according to Baptists, and it is not Christian to use man’s rituals over those of the Bible. And while it takes some extrapolation to conclude that immersion is required, the Bible says that Jesus and others came out of the water, and other passages do seem to support that the biblical baptism was by dunking, including the verse, I think it is in one of the Romans, that says baptism symbolizes life, death, and resurrection. Sprinkling or the thumb’s spreading of water on a forehead doesn’t really seem to be a good symbol of that. (I have wondered if we should draw different messages from some frequent consequences of the different kinds of baptism. Thus, a common result of infant baptism is a wailing baby. Do tears and caterwauling upon first encountering the Trinity mean something? With adult baptism, the first response is gasping for air as the person baptized emerges into the air. Is that somehow symbolic? The baptized baby is often dressed in a nice, sometimes expensive, gown often never worn again. Baptized adults might wear the equivalent of choir robes, but often wear old clothes, as I did, that will be worn again many times. Is there a symbolic meaning there?)

Baptists maintained that the only biblically-based rituals were adult baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  And on the first Sunday of every month we had communion. Little cubes of Wonder bread and shot glasses of Welch’s grape juice were passed around. (As frugal as the church and congregants were, it might not have been Welch’s, but an off brand.) I did like communion, but it brought some of my first doubts. I was told to take the Bible literally, but our church also commanded teetotaling. When I asked about why no wine, I was told that when the Bible said “wine,” it meant grape juice. Hmmm, I thought to myself.

Adult baptism and communion and the Bible. Any other ritual or source comes from man and not God. No genuflecting. No stations of the cross. No Book of Common Prayer. No required kneeling. No incense. No icons. No required head covering. No rosary. No “mandatory” church attendance. No prayers other than to the Trinity. No saints. (It still bothers me to hear “The Gospel According to St. Mark. No, it is the Gospel according to Mark.)

Baptists are not only separated from other denominations by the lack of much ritual but also by the absence of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. The only kind of churches Jesus and his apostles recognized were no larger than a congregation, and Baptists maintain that is what the Christian church should still be. Nothing is above an individual church. No one imposes a minister, priest, or vicar on a Baptist church; the congregation selects its leader. No bishops; no presbytery. Each congregation is supreme. (To be continued.)

I was raised in Wisconsin. I was raised a Baptist. To many these would seem incompatible statements because when they think of Baptists, they think of Georgia or Alabama or Texas. They think of Southern Baptists, but there are many varieties of Baptists in this country. Our church was part of the American Baptist Convention, which now has the name American Baptist Churches. (Earlier it was Northern Baptists.) Our affiliation came from my mother’s side of the family which had roots in upstate New York. If you drive through New York State or New England, you can see hundreds of little frame buildings, invariably white, neat, and small, at crossroads or byways that are American Baptist churches. These northeastern churches always remind me of my First Baptist Church in Wisconsin, which was also small and white. I don’t know about those other churches, but our church building did not have to be large because the congregation was not large. I doubt that the pews ever held anywhere near 100 people at a time.

I have not paid enough attention to the New York churches to know whether they invariably have a belfry, but to me our building seemed especially like a church because hanging in those upper reaches was a real bell. When a boy in my church got to be twelve or so, he would be put on the roster to ring the bell at the beginning of the services. (Back then, I never wondered why girls were not bell ringers.)

I loved ringing the bell. At the appointed time, I would walk upstairs at the rear of the church to the balcony. (With such a small congregation, I never once saw a parishioner up there during a service.) A ladder went from the balcony through a small opening to the belfry. A rope hung from the bell to the floor. We had been instructed on how to ring the bell. The first strike must not be tentative; it had to sound as full-throated as any of the other rings. This meant grabbing the rope as high as possible. I would get on my tiptoes and pull as hard as humanly possible to the floor so that the bell would swing as far is it could and the clapper would hit the bell firmly.

To me it was always a thrilling sound to hear that first strike correctly executed. And just as that first strike had to be full on, the last strike had to be as firm as any other and then silence. We were not to allow any ding, ding, ding trailing off. This required halting the bell’s swinging by getting an extra firm grip on the rope and then holding the rope at the floor as the last striking occurred. And thus the first prayer of the day: “Don’t let the rope slip out of my hand. Don’t let the bell pull me off the floor. Don’t let the bell pull my shoulders out of joint. Don’t let my feet slip.”

With the bell successfully stopped, it had to be carefully returned, through good rope management, to its neutral position where it stayed for another week. Job done. Having felt as if I had called the service to order, I descended the ladder and the stairs to take a seat in a pew. Sometimes as I got to a seat, an adult, almost always a man, would give me a nod, which I took to mean, “Well done.”

That ringing bell was the most flamboyant part of the service. Think about all those jokes you might have heard about the taciturnity of a New England farmer. Our church descended from those roots.  We had a simple service with little ceremony or pomp. Yes, there was hymn singing, a responsive reading, readings from the Bible, and a sermon. I wouldn’t say that it was joyless, but it was staid. I was surprised when I went to church with a high school girlfriend. (Ok, not the hottest date of my life.) The Methodist minister said something that was meant to be amusing during his sermon (it was mildly amusing at best in any other context than a sermon), and some congregants sort of laughed. I realized that in my church, I had never heard a chuckle during the service, much less a laugh. (To be continued.)

The few reporters who did seem to care about the content of what I was saying were often well-known national network correspondents. These interviews were taped, not live or live on tape. The interview was going to be edited, and only a small segment of it would be aired. That portion would be selected by the correspondent. In these situation, I found the reporter pushing me to say a particular thing. I began to realize that when this happened the reporter already knew the story he or she wanted to present and wanted me to say something that would fit this preconception. I might have said many things in the five or ten minutes, but the snippet that would be aired invariably conformed to what I had discerned to be the reporter’s viewpoint.

This began my withdrawal from at least some of the media business. I decided I would not do radio or TV when I could be edited. Soon thereafter, I tried to avoid all broadcast media. I considered myself a scholar and educator, but I seldom felt that I was educating anyone when doing broadcast appearances. A sound bite, even though I took some pride in producing them, was a trifle, a bon-bon, a chocolate truffle, and not much else. Moreover, an edited interview seldom, if ever, captured what I wanted to impart.

I continued, however, to try to accommodate print reporters. Sometimes a newspaper reporter wanted only the equivalent of a sound bite—something pithy that could be quoted to round out a story. But often the reporter was trying to learn something about the subject at hand. As I have learned from my own writing, a writer generally must have some mastery of the subject matter to write cogently. I often had a dialog with print reporters as they sought to understand the difference between murder and manslaughter or how immunity is granted. When this happened, I felt I was doing a public service by being an educator.

Most of the reporters I talked with were on short deadlines and there was little time for more than one conversation, but when they had a longer lead time, they or someone else at the publication would call back to make sure that they had correctly recorded what I had said. They were checking their facts, something that did not happen with broadcast media and does not seem to happen much with certain politicians today. At least one time, this produced an ethical dilemma for me. A magazine’s fact checker read back a quote and asked if I had said it. I knew that I had, but hearing it read back, I knew that it was going to be misconstrued by some readers. Should I deny making it, even though I had? Should I change the words, even though the quote was accurate? I owned up to it, and it was misconstrued, making me look rather heartless. I am still not sure that I did the right thing.

Even though I got used to some fact-checking, I was surprised by one effort. That was when I got a call from someone who worked with Gail Collins, the columnist at The New York Times. I had not been interviewed for what she was writing, but she was asserting something reasonably arcane for a Sunday column, and Collins was not entirely sure that the statement was correct. Her fact checker’s research came across something I had written that indicated that I might know about her assertion’s accuracy, and thus the call to me. Imagine that! Before going public, she was reaching out and taking steps to make sure she had her facts right. And you can make your own sarcastic comments about the fact-checking prowess of at least one person who regularly criticizes the press.

I am content with the career I have had, but sometimes I think back to before I had embarked on it. A couple times I was offered jobs on newspapers, and I wonder what would have happened if I had accepted one of them. As with many of you, I have liked and disliked many of the news sources I have encountered in my life. I wish that I could trust their every word, but that has never been and will never be. I have been part of or witnessed events that have been later reported by news outlets. Almost always, I have found some flaw in the resulting story while, at the same time, usually finding much that was accurate. I have learned what Kevin Young in his important book Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News states, “Daily news changes, evolves; it is truth, on a deadline.”

Of course, journalism has flaws. I have learned that from my readings through the years as well as from my direct, but limited, experiences with the media. But even so, I know that journalism is still one of the most important careers anyone can have.

Once or twice, a reporter came to my home for an interview. One of them was a huge disappointment. A powerful French citizen had been arrested in New York, and I was contacted by the French media as they tried to understand American, and more particularly, New York criminal procedure. After a week or so of this, I was contacted by a reporter from a French radio network, and I definitely perked up. The timbre of her voice was perfect, and ooh la la, that French accent! This was as sexy a voice as I had ever heard. I tried to explain to her what a grand jury was and how a trial jury was selected and the point to our adversary system—concepts not engrained in the French soul. After we had talked for a while, she asked if she could come to my home to interview me in person. Trying to hide my eagerness, I consented; I longed to see this vision. I was at least half-way in love already.

She came the next day. At the front door, she started chattering. To my surprise, she was nervous, but then the cause became obvious. The Brooklyn neighborhood was scaring her, and pointing to a taxi across from the house, said that she was relieved because the cabdriver who had brought her had agreed to remain until she went back to her midtown Manhattan office. The voice was still French-accented and throaty, but lacked that attractive, self-assured, worldly tone from the day before. As I guided her to the living room for the interview, I stole a look at her. Homely might have been a generous description. My thoughts that I might have been starting a Truffaut movie with Catherine Deneuve were shattered. I know that looks can be deceiving, but voices can be, too. On the other hand, she did a thorough, professional interviewing job asking me good questions about how a criminal case proceeded in New York City. She was trying to learn so that she could educate her audience, and I felt I was doing my role as an educator by helping her.

All the interviews for radio and TV were not done in my home or office; instead I was often asked to come to a studio, and I felt as if I were truly important when a network would send a car for me. (This taught me what I already knew: the subway is often a better way to get around Manhattan than an auto, even if someone else is driving.)

The studio interviews were different from the ones in my office because makeup was often applied. I did wonder why if my unvarnished visage was good enough for a camera in my office, it was not good enough in a studio, but I figured the TV people knew best, and I’d sit through a makeup session, which took only a few minutes.

The studio interviews made me more nervous than the office ones. The chance for a second opportunity often disappeared in the studio. In my office, if I mispronounced a word or screwed up in another way, I could say, “Hold it. I messed up there. Ask me that again so I can give a clearer answer.” This seldom happened, but I was relaxed knowing of that possibility. In the studio, it was often live or “live on tape” and that removed any chance for “Let’s do it again.” But while makeup and the elimination of any extra takes made the studio appearance different, it was generally similar to an office interview in that the reporter seemed to be more interested in the prescribed length of the interview rather than the need to inform either the reporter or the audience. (To be continued.)

The President’s approval ratings are low, perhaps historically low, or at least they are if you look at the average of all the respectable polls and don’t cherry-pick the one that is an outlier, as the President will do. The approval rate for Congress is even lower. This skepticism is not limited to the government, but also affects another important institution. Distrust of the media is rampant.

Poll results depend on how a question is framed. Asked generally about Congress, only a small number of respondents approve, but people reply much more favorably when asked about their specific representatives and senators. Something like this may also be true for polls about “the media.” That broad category may get more negatives than questions about the media’s specific subgroups.

Those who regularly watch an evening network news show probably think it does an acceptable job. The same may be true for the Sunday morning news shows or “60 Minutes.” A question that asked about the trustworthiness of cable news networks as a group would not be very useful; the “Fox News” devotee is not likely to think any other cable news source is reliable. Similarly, a broad question about newspapers may elicit much different responses from questions about a local newspaper or about national newspapers, such as The Washington Post or The New York Times. And, of course, a general question about internet news sites seems meaningless as would broad question about social media, YouTube channels, and chain emails.

A question about “mainstream media” also doesn’t make much sense because the meaning of “mainstream” is never clear except it seems to exclude Fox News. I am surprised by that because Fox News regularly touts how much it is watched and often stresses that Fox is watched more than any other cable news networks. Aren’t you, by definition, “mainstream” if you are viewed by so many people? (I recently learned that Fox’s slogan of “fair and balanced” refers to its content. I had assumed that when it said “fair,” it was referring to the hair and skin tones of so many of the women who regularly appear on it. And by “balanced,” I thought it meant something like a teeter totter that always swung down on anything to do with Obama and now is permanently up with Trump.)

The media is not a monolith. If I had not known it before, I certainly learned it in the days when representatives of the media asked me for comments on criminal trials, forensic science, or the jury system. I soon realized that local television or radio was merely looking for a sound bite. The reporter did not really care about the content of what I said, only that it was short and pithy. The reporter’s major goal seemed to be to get something on the air; actually informing the public was a much lesser concern. (A well-known local reporter called me late in the afternoon to ask if I would comment on a trial that had just concluded. As I was about to reply, I could hear her talk to what I assumed was her boss in the newsroom. She was asking to be allowed to send a crew to my office, and he was saying there was not time to do that before the evening news. She insisted she could make it and then said, “He always gives me great quotes.” I had talked with her but one other time.)

A few times I was interviewed at home. Most often this was by telephone for a radio. If it was for a radio network, the reporter often was not looking for a sound bite, but for extended comments, and I felt more comfortable when I thought that I might have the chance to educate listeners about the topic. That was true for a BBC interview on the use of DNA in criminal cases. This particular interview, however, had an unusual twist. I had just finished exercising and was sweaty when the home phone rang. It was a producer from a BBC show who asked if they could interview me live. I said ok, and the producer said that they would call back in a half hour–more than long enough to get the shower I needed. As I stepped out of the spray ten minutes later, the phone rang. I gave the live interview wet and naked—the only time I assure you. (Try not to visualize this—you might not sleep for weeks.) (To be continued.)

“Julien ordered more wine when the first bottle disappeared and was pleased to see that Charlotte drank what he considered to be the correct amount for a woman: less than half but not less than a third of each bottle.” Sebastian Faulks, Charlotte Gray.

One of the few reasons to play golf is to pretend it is ok to buy and wear one of those white, plastic-looking belts.

The brother of a former colleague made and sold pornographic pictures. This bothered the ex-colleague some, but he still stayed in touch with his sibling. One holiday season he gave his brother a beautiful ceramic pot. A few years later he visited his brother, who had some of his pictures hanging in his study. The ex-colleague spied his brother’s girlfriend and his gifted pottery in a photograph. This bothered the ex-colleague, but when he told me the story, he concluded with, “Well, at least she’s got a pot to piss in.”

“Despite the extraordinary intelligence of dogs, cats, seals, dolphins, elephants and chimpanzees, there exists not one among them that a human could train to keep an appointment to meet at a particular location two weeks hence.” Leonard Shlain, Leonardo’s Brain: Understanding da Vinci’s Creative Genius.

You take a picture on your phone. You immediately look at it. You might then send it to someone or post it on Facebook or Instagram. But after that initial concern about the photograph, how often do you ever look at any of the pictures you take?

On the Fourth of July, I asked the Australian couple who are on the path to American citizenship if Australia Day was celebrated in a fashion similar to our Independence Day. She said “Yes,” that it came in mid-February and family picnics were often held. I was confused, but was quiet, about the date because I thought I remembered seeing flyovers during the Australian Open and knew that the tennis tournament was over by then. She continued that Australians often heard their National Anthem on that day. I said that I would not recognize that anthem, and she replied that many Aussies did not learn the words when it was changed from God Save the Queen. I looked over at the husband, and he looked lost or as if he were not paying attention. Then he quietly said, “I am pretty sure that it is on January 26.” I had seldom witnessed a husband more gently correct his wife. My admiration for him increased.

“He would ponder all the various forms of laughter there could be. So far, he had only categorized four: laughter at your own expense, laugher at the expense of others, laughter at the human predicament, and laughter at small animals falling off tables.” Jonathan Goldstein, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!