Church & State

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Mexico's high court backs abortion rights: Who did the Washington Post choose to interview?

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Mexico's high court backs abortion rights: Who did the Washington Post choose to interview?

The trend started a decade ago, or even earlier, about the time when social media took over and many elite newsrooms began caring less about seeking out qualified, informed voices on both sides of hot stories.

The result was a kind of fail-safe method for spotting media bias, especially with stories located at the intersection of politics, religion and the cultural changes, especially those linked to the Sexual Revolution.

First, readers can print a copy of the story in question and then, with a highlighter pen, mark quotes from people who appear to have been interviewed by the reporters — the sources whose voices provide the framing anecdotes and quotations that provide crucial facts and material that interpret the facts.

Then, with a second highlighter, mark the quotes from experts, activists and citizens on the other side of the issue. The key question: How many of these quotes came from actual interviews and how many were taken from online press releases and statements?

Compare and contrast. The big question: What sources were shown respect — with personal interviews — and which sources were demoted to PR release status? (Personal comment: As a columnist, I have found that quoting personal weblogs — Twitter as well — can offer a kind of neutral ground, with more information and authentic “voices” than mere press releases.)

In my experience, 99% of the time the people who are quoted from interviews represent the viewpoints that are favored and respected by the journalists who produced the story. With that in mind, let’s look at the sourcing in an international-desk story that ran in The Washington Post with this headline: “Mexico decriminalizes abortion, a dramatic step in world’s second-biggest Catholic country.”

The Catholic angle is crucial, of course. Who would be interviewed? Activists in ministries to pregnant women? Canon lawyers? Perhaps a Catholic priest or historian who knows why “life” issues are so crucial in the church’s theology? I will also ask: Was anyone from the religion-desk allowed input into the sourcing?

Let’s start with the overture:

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s supreme court voted Tuesday to decriminalize abortion, a striking step in a country with one of the world’s largest Catholic populations and a decision that contrasts with tighter restrictions introduced across the border in Texas.


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Thinking about fights over religious liberty and 'religious exemptions' from COVID vaccines

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Thinking about fights over religious liberty and 'religious exemptions' from COVID vaccines

The Delta variant story keeps getting bigger and bigger, which means that debates between anti-vaccine activists and mainstream science and government leaders are getting hotter and hotter.

There are plenty of religion-news angles there, of course. There are plenty of articles to read about COVID-19, vaccines and fights in pews.

With that in mind, let’s connect several dots while on our way to this weekend’s “think piece” — which is a David French essay with this double-decker headline:

It’s Time to Stop Rationalizing and Enabling Evangelical Vaccine Rejection

There is no religious liberty interest in refusing the COVID vaccine.

Start here, with this passage near the end of my GetReligion post earlier this week that ran with this headline: “Was this a story? Why? Mississippi governor talks about heaven and Southern anti-vax trends.”

When thinking about religious liberty and those seeking exemptions from vaccine mandates, remember that — for decades — the U.S. Supreme Court has said that government can ask tough questions about religious beliefs and actions when they involve fraud, profit and clear threats to life and health. Watch for discussions of that third factor in these public-policy debates. …

The fact that there are bitter debates on this topic in conservative pews is a sign of DIVISION on the topic, not that Black and White believers are UNITED against vaccines and masks. The press coverage keeps implying unity here and that is the opposite of what the facts show.

Now, it is becoming clear that some religious leaders are going to test these religious-liberty arguments with employers and then in courts.


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When pinning wild COVID-19 quotes on a cardinal, it helps to be precise about fine details

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When pinning wild COVID-19 quotes on a cardinal, it helps to be precise about fine details

If you’re the kind of person who likes to explore the wretched underbelly of Twitter, then you need to pay close attention to the waves of snarky messages that follow announcements that famous vaccine skeptics have been hospitalized with COVID-19.

Some of these skeptics are politicians, of course. Others are religious leaders.

That brings us to the Associated Press coverage of a prominent conservative Catholic who, for journalists, is best known as a frequent critic of liberal Catholic politicians and also of some — not all — actions taken by Pope Francis. Here is the overture on one of these updates:

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of the Catholic Church’s most outspoken conservatives and a vaccine skeptic, said he has COVID-19 and his staff said he is breathing through a ventilator.

Burke tweeted Aug. 10 that he had caught the virus, was resting comfortably and was receiving excellent medical care.

“Please pray for me as I begin my recovery,” the 73-year-old Burke said in the tweet. “Let us trust in Divine Providence. God bless you.”

As you would expect, the AP report — in addition to offering a litany of examples of Burke criticizing liberal Catholics — eventually provided some information about the cardinal’s views on the coronavirus pandemic. Here are the crucial paragraphs:

Burke … has criticized how governments have handled the pandemic, referring to the virus in a homily last December as the “Wuhan virus,” a derogatory term used by former President Donald Trump to describe the coronavirus and warning people that governments were manipulating them. In May 2020, he spoke out against mandatory vaccinations, saying some in society want to implant microchips in people.

He said in March 2020 that the best weapon for battling “the evil of the coronavirus” is a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The most inflammatory material, of course, is the reference to implanting “microchips.” It would really help to know more about what Burke is alleged to have said and where and when he said it.


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Plug-In: From life issues to gov't mandates, religious reactions to vaccines have been complex

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Plug-In: From life issues to gov't mandates, religious reactions to vaccines have been complex

Want to be smart?

Then avoid simple narratives in news coverage. That’s especially true on the still-timely subject of religion and debates about the COVID-19 vaccines.

For evidence, check out these recent stories:

• “As vaccine mandates become a reality, politicians, pastors and even the pope are speaking out against faith-based exemptions,” the Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas reports.

But here’s the twist: “In many cases, those who claim a religious exemption are part of a denomination that doesn’t share their concerns, although many faith leaders do support making exemptions available.”

• “Does respect for human life mean vaccine mandates?” asks a story by the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein.

The answer? It’s complicated.

“In recent days, with a handful of organizations from Facebook and Google to the University of Virginia announcing vaccine mandates, religious leaders and organizations have considered their own teachings and values on the question of how to show respect for life,” Boorstein writes. “And their conclusions vary widely.”

• This news, via USA Today, jumps out at you: “Florida church vaccinates hundreds after 6 members die from COVID-19 in 10 days.”

"It's just been ripping our hearts apart,” the senior pastor says in the story by Marina Pitofsky.

It’s probably no surprise that social media pounced on the church for waiting until members died to promote vaccinations.

Except, as anyone reading the entire report learns, it didn’t: “The church vaccinated about 800 people in March at a similar event as COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in the U.S.”

While not religion related per se, Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal column this week makes some excellent points.


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Press braces for the Supreme Court's big one: Religion and abortion (phase I)

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Press braces for the Supreme Court's big one: Religion and abortion (phase I)

In late July the U.S. Supreme Court's in-box was clogged with dozens of secular and religious briefs that oppose its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established women's right to abortion, further defined in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey case.

Next up, watch for briefs that back the high Court's existing abortion-rights regime, which are due by mid-September. There should be keen journalistic interest in which religions decide to bless "pro-choice" policies and why, with likely contentions that 1st Amendment religious liberty requires legalized abortion even as other Christian and Jewish thinkers disagree.

The media are well aware that the Court's upcoming decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case (docket #19-1392) will be epochal, and the new briefs show the issue is as politically contentious as ever.

Dobbs involves rigid abortion limits even before fetal "viability" as legislated by Mississippi.

In response, fully 25 of the 50 states, all with Republican attorneys general, are asking the Court to scuttle Roe and Casey. Also, 87% of the Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate, from 40 states, want the two decisions overturned "where necessary" while lower courts clean up legal muddles. Also filing on this side are 396 legislators in 41 states.

Briefs also come from "pro-life" or religious physicians, nurses, and attorneys, "pro-family" organizations, and notable intellectuals like John Finnis of the University of Oxford, Robert George of Princeton University (click here for his recent tweetstorm), and Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School.

Also Dr. Ben Carson, the world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon and Donald Trump Cabinet member. He argues not from his Seventh-day Adventist faith but from embryology, saying the existence of a "new unique human life" at conception is "objective scientific fact. " He considers life to be a "natural right" that "does not depend on theology."

Writers will find a similar approach in the most important religious organization brief.


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Washington Post still thinks sin and repentance have nothing to do with Holy Communion

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Washington Post still thinks sin and repentance have nothing to do with Holy Communion

For years now, quite a few mainstream journalists have made it pretty obvious that they think the bishops of the Catholic church have a moral and perhaps even legal obligation to let Catholics do whatever they want to do in public life while continuing to take Holy Communion.

All that matters, according this newsroom version of the evolving spirit of Vatican II, is that these Catholic individuals believe — as a matter of conscience — that they are good to go. Catholics who are on the right side of history even have the right to openly state, in word and deed, that they believe Catholic doctrine is wrong and should be changed. This used to be called Protestantism, but nevermind.

This brings us to yet another Washington Post report about the life and times of a Michigan judge named Sara Smolenski, her same-sex wife Linda and the East Grand Rapids parish in which she is not allowed to take Holy Communion. (For a flashback to earlier coverage, please see this Julia Duin post: “Press doesn't get why a Catholic priest would withhold Communion from outspoken gay judge.”)

This story does a great job of proving that progressive Catholics have strong views on this issue. The story also offers small bites of material from Catholics stating the church’s doctrinal stance on this matter. If you are looking for any sense of fairness and balance — such as Catholics explaining or defending church doctrine — then you are not going to find it in the Post coverage. Again.

One other key point: This story contains zero references to the role that Confession — the Sacrament of Penance — plays in Catholic teachings on sin, repentance, forgiveness, salvation and, thus, Holy Communion. Hold that thought, because we will return to that point.

The Post headline, this time around, states: “Bishops’ debate over Communion sparked by Biden seeps into holiest sacrament for Catholics.” Here’s the overture:

St. Stephen Catholic Church is the parish and school where Sara Smolenski grew up with her nine siblings, where her parents were married, where she worshiped on Sundays and served as a volunteer distributing Communion. It was also the place where the priest called in late 2019 to tell her she should no longer come up during Mass to receive the holy sacrament.

“He says: ‘I’m going to have to ask you not to take Communion because you’re married to Linda in the state of Michigan. He just kept saying: ‘Respect the church,’” said Smolenski, 63, a longtime District Court judge.


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Spot the religion test (again): What's at stake when politicos ask if nominees believe in God?

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Spot the religion test (again): What's at stake when politicos ask if nominees believe in God?

This is one of those GetReligion topics that — alas — keep popping up every year or two. Here is the Deseret New headline on the latest case study for journalists to file in the growing “Spot the religion test” file: “Is it legal to ask nominees to federal office if they believe in God?”

There’s a reason that this keeps happening. Church-state conflicts, especially those involving Sexual Revolution doctrines, are among the hottest of America’s hot-button political issues. The First Amendment is, for different reasons, under assault from some camps on the political right and also from many illiberal voices on the left.

In terms of raw statistics, Democrats rely on a grassroots base that, with the exception of the Black Church, is increasingly made up of Nones, agnostics, atheists and religious liberals. Republicans seeking office cannot afford to ignore people in pews — period.

All of this leads us back to these words in Article 6 in the U.S. Constitution:

The Senators and Representatives … and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The headline on the Deseret News piece reads like an opinion essay, but this is actually a solid news feature that quotes a variety of voices active in debates about this church-state issue. Here is the overture:

The Constitution states that the government can’t create a religious test for public office. But does that mean confirmation hearings should include no mention of faith?

There are at least a few members of each party who think some religion questions are fair game.


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Future scenarios emerge as the media debate the health of U.S. Mainline Protestantism 

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Future scenarios emerge as the media debate the health of U.S. Mainline Protestantism 

What has long been called “Mainline” Protestantism suffered inexorable shrinkage this past generation, eroding so much of its once-potent U.S. cultural impact that the news media tend to neglect these moderate-to-liberal churches. Yet a new Public Religion Research Institute poll reported what it argues is a sudden comeback and indicates Mainliners even outnumber the rival conservative "evangelicals" widely thought to dominate Protestantism.

True? The Religion Guy assembled devastating statistics that raise questions about that claim.

U.S. religion's hot number-cruncher Ryan Burge is even more doubtful and notes the Harvard-based Cooperative Election Study found a recent rise in Americans who self-identify as "evangelical."

As reporters ponder that debate, they should also play out longer-term Mainline scenarios, for instance for the Episcopal Church and United Methodist Church.

The hed on another Burge article proclaimed that "The Death of the Episcopal Church is Near."

"I don't think it's an exaggeration at all to believe that Episcopalians will no longer exist by 2040," he contended.

His gloomy forecast relied partly on a stark, candid piece from the blog of the Living Church magazine. It reasoned that annual marriages and baptisms foretell how the denomination will fare. If trends continue, the former would fall from 39,000 in 1980 to 750 as of 2050, and the latter from 56,000 to 2,500, over decades when average worship attendance would plummet from 857,000 to 150,000.

Similarly, in 2019 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's research agency projected that this now-sizable denomination would dip below 67,000 members by 2050 and average Sunday attendance would hit 16,000 by 2041. Two years before that, Wheaton College's Ed Stetzer notably warned that Mainline Protestantism has "23 Easters left."


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Did January 6 attack on Capitol highlight 'D.I.Y. Christianity' as decade's next big thing? 

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Did January 6 attack on Capitol highlight 'D.I.Y. Christianity' as decade's next big thing? 

As investigations of the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot proceed, there's an intriguing religion angle for the media to explore. Welcome to the emerging prominence of "D.I.Y. Christianity" (that is, Do It Yourself).

After some of the Capitol rioters uttered odd prayers and waved religious placards, The New York Times reported that they demonstrated "some parts of white evangelical power." GetReligion boss tmatt then asked whether the mob included any representatives of actual "power" seen in the denominations, megachurches, parachurch ministries, schools or even the flocks of well-publicized Trumpite preachers.

(Despite the absence of evangelical leaders, freelancer Steve Rabey reports that several obscure Protestant pastors do face charges over January 6.)

Washington Post stalwart Michelle Boorstein revisited January 6 as a religious phenomenon and caught the moment by applying the D.I.Y. label not just for certain Capitol rioters but a broader trend emphasized by Adam Greenway, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The D.I.Y. phenomenon could become the decade's next big thing in religion, a sizable groundswell of extremely individualistic or eccentric Americans who identify as Christians but are disconnected from conventional churches or even any definable religious fellowship or tradition.

Such radical individualism follows, of course, years of significant growth for non-denominational local congregations that are rigidly independent and lack ties or accountability with other Christians. This growing segment of U.S. evangelical Protestantism is nearly impossible to count accurately and thus its significance has often been neglected by journalists and scholars. GetReligion has been underlining the importance of this trend for years.

The Post cited analysts who believe one element on January 6 was that "institutional religion is breaking apart, becoming more individualized and more disconnected from denominations, theological credentials and oversight."


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