Academia

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Weekend thinking about this complex reality: More and more Americans hate each other

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It’s impossible, at the moment, to follow political and religious threads on social media without running into lots and lots of hate. This is not something that started in the past two weeks or even during the 2016 race for the White House.

With that sobering thought in mind, I offer a Damon Linker essay at The Week as our weekend think piece. The headline: “Don't willfully ignore the complexity of what's happening in America right now.”

However, before we go there, let me share some sobering observations from an “On Religion” column I wrote in 2004 about the work of political scientists Gerald De Maio, a Catholic, and Louis Bolce, an Episcopalian, who teach at Baruch College in the City University of New York. The headline: “Stalking the anti-fundamentalist voter.”

This was one of the first times when I realized that “hate” was becoming a strong factor in public life — especially when driven by a loaded religious term like “fundamentalist.”

First we need some background. Bolce and De Maio:

… have focused much of their work on the "thermometer scale" used in the 2000 American National Election Study and those that preceded it. Low temperatures indicate distrust or hatred while high numbers show trust and respect. Thus, "anti-fundamentalist voters" are those who gave fundamentalists a rating of 25 degrees or colder. By contrast, the rating that "strong liberals" gave to "strong conservatives" was a moderate 47 degrees.

Yet 89 percent of white delegates to the 1992 Democratic National Convention qualified as "anti-fundamentalist voters," along with 57 percent of Jewish voters, 51 percent of "moral liberals," 48 percent of school-prayer opponents, 44 percent of secularists and 31 percent of "pro-choice" voters. In 1992, 53 percent of those white Democratic delegates gave Christian fundamentalists a thermometer rating of zero.

"Anti-fundamentalist voter" patterns are not seen among black voters, noted De Maio. Researchers are now paying closer attention to trends among Hispanics.

What about the prejudices of the fundamentalists? Their average thermometer rating toward Catholics was a friendly 62 degrees, toward blacks 66 degrees and Jews 68 degrees.

This brings us to a complex set of remarks by Linker. Here is the overture:


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Got news? Some members of Class Of COVID-19 heard faith talk at commencement

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The late spring is typically marked by graduation ceremonies, with schools across North America handing out their undergraduate degrees to students after four years of college. Like everything else in society that involves large gatherings, the global pandemic has forced many schools to either hold their ceremonies online or postpone them to a future date.

For the colleges and universities that did decide to hold ceremonies this month, the topic of God wasn’t far from the minds of some commencement speakers. It’s not surprising given how the contagion has led to the death of thousands of people around the world, forcing stores to shutter and in the process destroying economies.

Many institutions of higher education — especially Protestant and Catholic ones — have decided to postpone in-person graduation ceremonies to later this year in the hopes that coronavirus infections have either subsided or that a vaccine makes social distancing measures obsolete. Like classes that went online this spring, so did many commencement exercises. While it wasn’t the graduation ceremony many had expected, these remote ceremonies to honor seniors were seen as a necessary sendoff.

God and graduation isn’t a new thing, a topic highlighted by several speakers last year.

The son of a Pentecostal minister, Hollywood superstar Denzel Washington — speaking at Dillard University’s commencement in New Orleans in 2015 — famously said: “Number one: Put. God. First. Put God first in everything you do. Everything that you think you see in me. Everything that I’ve accomplished, everything that you think I have — and I have a few things. Everything that I have is by the grace of God. Understand that. It’s a gift.”

Below is a roundup of notable virtual commencement addresses that featured faith:

TOM HANKS (WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY)

Hollywood star Tom Hanks delivered a virtual commencement speech on May 2 during a surprise message to graduates of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

The actor, who famously played the iconic Mister Rogers in the movie A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, was raised in Roman Catholic and Mormon household, and described himself as a “Bible-toting evangelical” during his teen-age years. Hanks, who became Greek Orthodox as an adult and attends church regularly, wasn’t afraid to use religious language in his message.


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The Quran, round 2: Publishing commentary based on Christian perspectives makes news

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The Quran, round 2: Publishing commentary based on Christian perspectives makes news

Only a month ago, The Religion Guy proposed that people with COVID-imposed time on their hands take this opportunity to study Islam’s holy book, the Quran, which is so vital for 21st Century faith and also for national security and politics in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries.

The Guy Memo especially recommended “The Study Quran” (HarperOne), with its fresh new translation and elaborate commentary. This work was produced by a team of North American Muslim scholars led by Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University.

Now, by coincidence, The Guy alerts fellow writers to the release of an equally path-breaking publication: “The Quran with Christian Commentary” (from the Zondervan line at HarperCollins). The Guy believes this is a first for a Christian publisher, and quite a bold innovation.

The extensive verse-by-verse commentary is by Mennonite Brethren scholar Gordon D. Nickel (Ph.D., Calgary), who directs the Islam program at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies in India and he formerly taught in Pakistan. His chief consultant was J. Dudley Woodberry (Ph.D., Harvard), an Islamic studies professor and former dean at Fuller Theological Seminary with research experience in 35 Muslim countries.

This work arrives with fond blurbs from experts at universities in Birmingham (U.K.), Bonn, Brussels and Oxford. Nickel’s commentary, and topical articles from a dozen other specialists on Islam, accompany the well-regarded English translation of the Quran by A. J. Droge of the University of Toronto at Scarborough (Equinox Publishing, 2012).

Obvious news angles abound.

The commentary explains and responds to Islam’s viewpoints on Jesus (yes a prophet and messiah, but neither crucified nor divine) and on Jews and Christians, and attacks upon the Bible’s veracity. There’s important discussion of interpretations in Islam’s minority Shi’a branch and of the complex history of Quran texts, which were standardized at a crucial 1924 conference in Cairo.

From the standpoint of religious knowledge, those are central questions. Nickel’s tone seeks to be friendly and respectful but — important for journalism and for cultural awareness otherwise — he clearly defines the substantial differences in belief between the world’s two dominant religions.


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Who knew? Who cares? Well, there is no such thing as the 'Catholic Church of Illinois'

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Week after week, I get emails from ticked-off readers who have seen run-of-the-mill mistakes in stories about religion. A few times a year I write posts about these cries for help.

The typical writer tries to imagine, to cite one example, a newspaper publishing a story containing a reference to the St. Louis Cardinals playing in the American League, as opposed to being one of the most famous franchises in the National League. Or how about a story that said the Illinois State Capitol was located in Chicago, instead of Springfield.

Now, let’s say that there was a story containing an inaccurate statement about a major religious group and it was published by the “daily paper of a town that's just *slightly* Roman Catholic — St. Louis, Missouri,” noted reader Michael Mohr.

That story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch would have a headline stating: “Catholic Church of Illinois releases phased plan to reopen churches.” Then the overture, containing the same mistake, would look like this:

CHICAGO — The Catholic Church of Illinois … published a plan to begin reopening its churches later this month. The church reached an agreement with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, according to a letter from the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Catholic churches in Illinois have been closed since mid-March amid the coronavirus pandemic. …

The two-phased plan delegates many decisions for how to reopen to individual churches once they complete various training and certifications, and the Catholic Church will continue to work with the state government, according to the news release. After training during the week of May 18, all parishes across the state could open by May 23, but only to offer baptisms, weddings and funerals limited to 10 people.

What’s the problem?

Mohr (this guy sounds like a professional editor to me) put it this way:


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Faith-based colleges face waves of red ink: Thinking about a news story that won't go away

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The headline on this Inside Higher Education piece seemed prophetic: “What Led Concordia Portland to Close?”

The date, however, was the Feb. 14, 2020. In other words, this story broke just ahead of the national wave of headlines about colleges and universities struggling to deal with scary economic realities linked to the coronavirus crisis.

This story was linked to the OTHER life-and-death crisis facing higher education — especially private schools and, to be even more specific, faith-based private schools. I’m talking about the demographic cliff that looms just down the road when the massive millennial generation has moved past its college years.

The Concordia Portland story had it all. Administrators had tried to grow their way out of the crisis, adding on degree programs and remote campuses that were not linked to their original mission. There was a strange deal with a third-party recruiting agency. Finally, there were theological tensions with the school’s doctrinally conservative denomination — the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. This chunk of the story begins during an era when enrollments were headed up:

By all accounts, Concordia was massively successful. … Total enrollment more than doubled from over 3,000 students in 2012 to more than 7,400 in 2014, according to federal data. Much of that growth was among graduate students, where enrollment spiked from about 1,700 students to more than 6,000. Enrollment of adults aged 25 to 64 went from about 1,100 in 2011 to 3,697 in 2014.

Fast-forward several years to this week, and Concordia shocked the Portland area and many of its own students by announcing that it will close at the end of the spring semester. A statement from the institution said the university’s board decided to close after “years of mounting financial challenges” and a changing landscape for education.

Hold that thought. I am headed toward this weekend’s think piece from a former GetReligionista, Steve Rabey, writing at MinistryWatch.com.

Now, I took on some of these themes in an “On Religion” column the other day entitled “Concerning the coronavirus crisis and these Darwinian days in faith-based higher education.”


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Catholic media highlights trend in young people gravitating towards faith during pandemic

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The ever-evolving coronavirus pandemic has upended our world in ways no one could have ever expected. Journalists still don’t know where this story is going.

But one thing is clear. While death tolls climb and fall depending on which countries are effectively flattening the curve, the vast majority of those of us who are healthy and staying at home still have to deal with loneliness.

How does faith play a part in mitigating isolation? A survey released four weeks ago by Springtide Research Institute, which studies trends of those ages 13 to 25. What did they find? The survey revealed the following regarding young people, faith and the novel coronavirus. The following summary is long, but essential, especially for religion-beat professionals:

… For many young adults, shelter in place and social distancing provokes fear and uncertainty, leading to increased levels of isolation, loneliness, and anxiety. The survey found that the single most important way to mitigate loneliness is for trusted adults to reach out and connect with young adults.

* The survey consisted of a national panel of 508 respondents ages 18–25, with a margin of error of +/- 4% at a 95% confidence level, administered between March 24 and March 31, 2020.

* One in three respondents are sheltering in place alone.

* 63% of all respondents say that they do not feel as alone or isolated when people reach out to them.

* Among young adults who are sheltering in place with others, half still say that they feel alone, and nearly eight out of ten report feeling less lonely when a trusted adult from outside their household checks in on them.

* About 58% say they feel scared and uncertain, and 66% of those who feel this way say they don’t have anyone to talk to about their emotions. Thus, they feel isolated because no one is reaching out to them.

* Respondents are not experiencing a decrease in their faith; in fact, 35% increased their faith and 47% stayed the same.

* Nearly 46% have started new religious practices, and 43% have participated in at least one religious service online.


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Dawn of the dead: Faith-based colleges face challenges even bigger than coronavirus

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Dawn of the dead: Faith-based colleges face challenges even bigger than coronavirus

Every week or so, John Mark Reynolds does something that presidents of academic institutions rarely do -- he cleans his office at Saint Constantine School.

This isn't a symbolic gesture in an age of ominous trends, and now a global pandemic, that threaten private education. Reynolds always takes his turn -- with other members of his team -- cleaning administration offices at this classical school in Houston.

"We have no administrators who are just administrators. Everyone teaches. Everyone shares many of the jobs that need to get done," said Reynolds, reached at his "sheltering in place" home office. "We have a maintenance team, but we all help out. The first lady and I plan to water some plants later today. …

"We call this the economy of small."

Saint Constantine is a K-16 Orthodox Christian school, which means it offers four years of college credits. College tuition is $9,000 per year.

"Our whole model was created to survive the collapse of liberal arts education, while striving to preserve the core of liberal arts education through an Oxford-style tutorial system," said Reynolds. "This pandemic is only exposing the weaknesses of what was already a business model fraught with peril."

College educators have long known that painful challenges were coming in 2025, due to falling birth rates and the end of high millennial-generation enrollments.

Now, the coronavirus crisis is forcing students and parents to face troubling realities. A study by McKinsey & Company researchers noted: "Hunkering down at home with a laptop … is a world away from the rich on-campus life that existed in February."

What happens next? The study noted: "In the virus-recurrence and pandemic-escalation scenarios, higher-education institutions could see much less predictable yield rates (the percentage of those admitted who attend) if would-be first-year students decide to take a gap year or attend somewhere closer to home (and less costly) because of the expectation of longer-term financial challenges for their families."


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Reading between lines of recent surveys: Is the worst of the Sexual Revolution over?

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THE QUESTION:

“Is the Worst of the Sexual Revolution Over?”

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The New York Times ran a feature last month about teens wearing shirts that proclaim “Virginity Rocks.” This fad did not originate with those Christian “True Love Waits” crusaders but a YouTube personality who professed a “tongue in cheek” attitude but said he’s happy if teens advocate abstinence, and some actually do take the slogan seriously.

A dog-eared maxim in our business says “dog bites man” isn’t news but “man bites dog” is. Likewise, this fashion curiosity is newsworthy because so many young Americans think the opposite. And yet we encounter the question above, which was the headline of a recent article for thedispatch.com by David French, who has emerged as among the more interesting weekly commentators on modern morals and religion.

French’s article sidesteps two major aspects of the “sexual revolution,” legalized same-sex relationships, which are broadly accepted but remain central to unresolved religious-liberty disputes, and transgender or “non-binary” causes that are more contested.

His focus instead is on heterosexual principles in the heritage of all great world religions that have been challenged in the U.S. by easy divorce, rising promiscuity and cohabitation, and resulting single motherhood. Hefty majorities found those practices “morally acceptable” in Gallup’s annual values survey for 2019. (Adultery, by contrast, was still judged to be immoral by 89 percent of Americans.)

The headline’s use of “worst” conveys French’s view that the revolution has been unfortunate, and we’ll see more about that below.


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Podcast: Faith-based colleges face coronavirus crisis (and hard identity questions, too)

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What is going to happen on college and university campuses this fall?

That’s a huge question, right now, and nobody knows the answer yet. Parents and students want to know. Football fans want to know. Trustees want to know since, in the end, they’re the people who will end up trying to handle the financial fallout of the coronavirus crisis (including predictions of a second wave hitting with the flu-season in November).

But there is more to this story than COVID-19, if you have been paying close attention to higher-education trends in recent years. Leaders in higher-ed were already bracing for the year 2025 — when the enrollment surge linked to the massive millennial generation would be coming to an end.

Now, look past all of those state-funded schools — big and small. How will these trends hit private schools, including faith-based private schools. Many have been facing rising tides of red ink, and that was before the arrival of the coronavirus.

“Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I talked about all of these issues, and more, during this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in). The hook for this discussion was my “On Religion” column for this week, which included this crucial passage:

… The coronavirus crisis is forcing students and parents to face troubling realities. A study by McKinsey & Company researchers noted: "Hunkering down at home with a laptop … is a world away from the rich on-campus life that existed in February."

What happens next? The study noted: "In the virus-recurrence and pandemic-escalation scenarios, higher-education institutions could see much less predictable yield rates (the percentage of those admitted who attend) if would-be first-year students decide to take a gap year or attend somewhere closer to home (and less costly) because of the expectation of longer-term financial challenges for their families."

This could crush some schools. In a report entitled "Dawn of the Dead," Forbes found 675 private colleges it labeled "so-called tuition-dependent schools -- meaning they squeak by year-after-year, often losing money or eating into their dwindling endowments." While it's hard to probe private-school finances, Forbes said a "significant number" of weaker schools are "nearly insolvent."

How many of America’s truly faith-defined private colleges are in that “Dawn of the Dead” list?


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