Church & State

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Notable omission among liberal religious voices in phase 2 of Supreme Court abortion case

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Notable omission among liberal religious voices in phase 2 of Supreme Court abortion case

The media are prepping for the U.S. Supreme Court's December 1 hearing on the strict Mississippi abortion law and the subsequent ruling.

In a prior Guy Memo on religious "friend of the court" briefs filed on the pro-life side, I promised a second rundown when pro-abortion-rights activists weighed in with their views. Now that second wave of religious arguments has landed — with a notable omission in those ranks that journalists will want to pursue.

To explain, we'll need some religion-beat history on this issue.

In 1967, two years before NARAL Pro-Choice America was founded, the 1,400-member Clergy Consultation Service formed to help women obtain abortions and fight legal barriers. After the high court legalized U.S. abortions in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision currently at issue, the related Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights was founded to campaign for moral acceptance. (In 1994 it dropped the A-word and was renamed the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice or RCRC).

Founders included a significant chunk of "mainline" and liberal Protestantism, including the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Mission Agency, United Church of Christ and several independent Protestant caucuses. The United Methodists' General Board of Church and Society hosted the founding, and the Methodist women's division also joined, but both later backed away. The Coalition also included major non-Orthodox Jewish organizations and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).

In the new Court filings, abortion-rights law gets continued support from RCRC, UUA and Jewish organizations. But no Protestant denomination that favors abortion choice has joined to support Roe. Reporters should find out why they sidestepped this historic showdown. For example, have complex schism talks led to silence on the United Methodist left, as opposed to earlier debates (see YouTube video at the top of this post)?

The silence from "mainline" churches deprives the high court of in-depth moral thinking from pro-choice Christians that answers conservatives on issues that make abortion unusually difficult for public policy, among them: Does a genetically unique and developing human embryo or fetus have value? Why, or why not?


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Thinking about prayers at executions: These stories offer glimpses of an old church-state unity

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Thinking about prayers at executions: These stories offer glimpses of an old church-state unity

This is a “feeling guilty” post. For quite some time now, I have been planning to examine the coverage of some important religious-liberty cases that have been unfolding in the death-row units of prisons.

The decisions are worthy of coverage, in and of themselves. At the same time, these cases have demonstrated that it is still possible, in this day and age, for church-state activists on the left and right to agree on something. Maybe I should have put a TRIGGER WARNING notice at the start of that sentence.

Like I said the other day in this podcast and post — “Covering a so-called 'religious liberty' story? Dig into religious liberty history” — this kind of unity in defending religious freedom has become tragically rare (from my point of view as an old-guard First Amendment liberal). Indeed, to repeat myself, “America has come a long way since that 97-3 U.S. Senate vote to approve the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.”

The problem is that you rarely, if ever, see reporters catch this church-state angle in these decisions. The key is to look at who filed legal briefs in support of the religious liberty rights of the prisoners.

This brings me to an important Elizabeth Bruenig essay that ran the other day at The Atlantic, under this dramatic double-decker headline:

The State of Texas v. Jesus Christ

Texas’s refusal to allow a pastor to pray while holding a dying man’s hand is an offense to basic Christian values.

Here is the meaty overture:

Devotees to the cause of religious liberty may be startled to discover during the Supreme Court’s upcoming term that the latest legal-theological dispute finds the state of Texas locked in conflict with traditional Christian practice, where rites for the sick, condemned, and dying disrupt the preferences of executioners.


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New podcast: Covering a so-called 'religious liberty' story? Dig into religious liberty history

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New podcast: Covering a so-called 'religious liberty' story? Dig into religious liberty history

Believe it or not, America’s commitment to the First Amendment and religious liberty wasn’t dreamed up by the Religious Right.

However, at some point — mainly during press coverage of clashes between the Sexual Revolution and traditional forms of religion — religious liberty turned into “religious liberty” or even “so called ‘religious liberty’ ” and other language to that effect. America has come a long way since that 97-3 U.S. Senate vote to approve the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

Now we are seeing waves of valid news coverage of religious liberty disputes linked to people seeking exemptions from mandates requiring COVID-19 vaccines. During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) I suggested that it would help for journalists to dig into the details of how courts have handled earlier religious liberty cases.

Consider this recent Washington Post headline, involving a White evangelical leader in Oklahoma: “This pastor will sign a religious exemption for vaccines if you donate to his church.” Here’s the overture:

A pastor is encouraging people to donate to his Tulsa church so they can become an online member and get his signature on a religious exemption from coronavirus vaccine mandates. The pastor, Jackson Lahmeyer, is a 29-year-old small-business owner running in the Republican primary challenge to Sen. James Lankford in 2022.

Lahmeyer, who leads Sheridan Church with his wife, Kendra, said Tuesday that in the past two days, about 30,000 people have downloaded the religious exemption form he created.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “My phone and my emails have blown up.”

This minister isn’t alone in thinking this way. Here is a New York Daily News story about an African-American Pentecostal leader: “A Brooklyn preacher’s blessing is a pox upon his flock.”


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Francis tacks again: Did press catch pope's whole message on abortion and Eucharist?

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Francis tacks again: Did press catch pope's whole message on abortion and Eucharist?

How does a ship’s captain sail against a headwind?

The maneuver is called “tacking” and it consists of steering the ship back and forth, at roughly 45 degree angles across the chosen course. The question — with all the left and right turns — is this: What is the course that runs through the middle? Where is the captain trying to go?

It’s impossible to figure that out by studying only the turns to the left or to the right. Dare I say that this task is even more difficult if the captain of the ship is a modern Jesuit?

So what was the course Pope Francis was trying to sail the other day during his in-flight Shepherd One press conference about abortion, Communion and the pastoral needs of Catholics (including, perhaps, powerful politicians)? In the mainstream press, the big turns were all to the left, with the pope warning U.S. bishops not to meddle in the state of President Joe Biden’s soul. Readers had to turn to Catholic publications to find any hint that Pope Francis was, perhaps, seeking a middle course.

This was best seen in the piece that ran in the “Politics Section” (#DUH) of the New York Times. The headline stated the basics:

Pope Weighs In on Calls to Deny Communion to Biden Over Abortion

“What must the pastor do?” Francis said when a reporter asked him about the subject. “Be a pastor, don’t go condemning.”

Everything readers needed to know, from the doctrinal point of view of the Times, was right up top:

ROME — Pope Francis weighed in on Wednesday on a debate roiling the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, where conservative bishops are pushing for guidelines that would deny communion to politicians, like President Biden, who support abortion rights.

“I have never refused the eucharist to anyone,” Francis said, though he added that he did not know of any instance when such a politician had come to him for communion.

Later, there was this:

“What must the pastor do?” he asked. “Be a pastor, don’t go condemning. Be a pastor, because he is a pastor also for the excommunicated.”


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Plug-In: As COVID-19 vaccine wars rage, press focuses on religious-exemption claims

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Plug-In: As COVID-19 vaccine wars rage, press focuses on religious-exemption claims

Back in March, I wrote a column about the joy and hope the COVID-19 vaccines had brought my family after more than a year of pandemic disruption.

I prayed that those skeptical of the vaccines eventually would recognize the benefits of protecting themselves — and their loved ones — from potential serious illness and death.

Yet here we are six months later, with coronavirus infections and deaths at “levels not seen since last winter” and religion often at the center of the vaccine war.

Colleen Long and Andrew DeMillo of The Associated Press report:

An estimated 2,600 Los Angeles Police Department employees are citing religious objections to try to get out of the required COVID-19 vaccination. In Washington state, thousands of state workers are seeking similar exemptions.

And in Arkansas, a hospital has been swamped with so many such requests from employees that it is apparently calling their bluff.

Religious objections, once used sparingly around the country to get exempted from various required vaccines, are becoming a much more widely used loophole against the COVID-19 shot.

And it is only likely to grow following President Joe Biden’s sweeping new vaccine mandates covering more than 100 million Americans, including executive branch employees and workers at businesses with more than 100 people on the payroll.

In a front-page report, New York Times religion writer Ruth Graham notes:

Major religious traditions, denominations and institutions are essentially unanimous in their support of the vaccines against Covid-19. But as more employers across the country begin requiring Covid vaccinations for workers, they are butting up against the nation’s sizable population of vaccine holdouts who nonetheless see their resistance in religious terms — or at least see an opportunity.


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Thinking with Ryan Burge (and one of his critics) about abortion and evangelical voting

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Thinking with Ryan Burge (and one of his critics) about abortion and evangelical voting

If you follow political scientist Ryan Burge on Twitter (which you should do, of course), then you know that he sends out waves of poll information, creatively sifted, in the form of charts.

From time to time, people have been known to bounce questions back to him, seeking clarification or more specific numbers on some strange angle of the topic at hand. I confess that I have been known to do that.

Burge is relentlessly helpful in that online setting. However — imagine this — there are people who argue with him? On Twitter, of all places! Some disagree with his interpretations. On Twitter!

I’m being sarcastic, to make a point linked to this weekend’s pair of “think pieces.” I’m one of those guys who disagrees with Burge from time to time. That happens, when someone is delivering and then interpretting lots of information in a public forum. The difference with Burge is that he is relentlessly candid, even when dealing with numbers and trends that challenge lots of common news templates.

Recently, Burge wrote a commentary piece — backed with some of his charts — for Religion News Service, flashing back to some polling from 2018. The piece ran with this double-decker headline:

Abortion just isn’t the motivating issue for evangelicals it once was

Studies show white evangelicals, by and large, do not have a hard-line approach to abortion — other issues like immigration and race are taking priority over advocating for the unborn.

Whatever your stance on “life” issues, don’t you want to read more about that claim? Here is a key (and quite long) section of that:


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Are we finally witnessing the long-anticipated (by journalists) evangelical crack-up? 

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Are we finally witnessing the long-anticipated (by journalists) evangelical crack-up? 

Those impossible-to-ignore and hard-to-define white " evangelicals" have, for decades, been the largest and most dynamic sector in U.S. religion. Are we finally witnessing an evangelical crack-up as so long anticipated -- and desired -- by liberal critics?

That's a big theme for the media to affirm or deny.

To begin, The Religion Guy is well aware that millions of these conservative Protestants quietly attend weekly worship, join Bible and prayer groups, try to help those in need, fund national and foreign missions and are oblivious to discussions of this sort on the national level.

For years we've seen a telltale slide of membership and baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention, that massive and stereotypical evangelical denomination. At the same time, it’s clear (follow the work of Ryan Burge for background) that many of those Southern Baptists have simply moved to independent, nondenominational evangelical megachurches of various kinds.

But more than numbers, analysts are pondering insults to cultural stature, which greatly affect any movement's legitimacy, respect, impact and appeal to potential converts, especially with younger adults.

The Scopes Trial to forbid teaching of Darwinian evolution nearly a century ago continues to shape perceptions of evangelicalism and its fundamentalist wing, especially due to the fictionalized 1955 play and 1960 movie "Inherit the Wind." No doubt ongoing evangelical enthusiasm for Donald Trump has a similar negative impact among his critics, but this is not merely a political story but involves evangelicalism's internal dynamics. The Trump era exacerbates divisions that already existed despite unity in belief.

Turn to former GetReligion writer Mark Kellner, who is already making his mark (pun intended) as the new "faith and family" reporter for the Washington Times. Here is an essential recent read: “After scandals, is evangelical Christianity's image damaged?"

The immediate cause behind the question was an odd little incident that spoke volumes, the sacking of Daniel Darling as spokesman for National Religious Broadcasters (NRB).


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This story has been hot for about 50 years: Religion do's and don'ts in public schools

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This story has been hot for about 50 years: Religion do's and don'ts in public schools

THE QUESTION:

What are the do's and don'ts on religion in U.S. public schools?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

As U.S. public schools cope with in-person learning in the midst of another COVID-19 upsurge and argue about "critical race theory," let's remember some good news. Divisive past disputes about how schools handle religion have been substantially settled. Debates continue on certain church-and-state issues but most deal with religious schools and taxpayer funding, not public education.

There's widespread agreement on what federal court rulings require, and on what common sense commends in light of today's pluralistic student bodies. A remarkably broad alliance of groups has joined in a series of policy statements brokered by Senior Fellow Charles Haynes at the First Amendment Center. Click here to read the full texts for yourself or print them out.

The lists of those endorsing the policies vary somewhat but typically they involve all the relevant public school associations alongside major "mainline" and "evangelical" Protestant organizations; Reform, Orthodox and "communal" Jewish groups; religious liberty advocates; and the Council on Islamic Education. Though most lack official backing from the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference, no conflicts with church thinking have been raised.

Especially significant is "A Teacher’s Guide to Religion in Public Schools," issued in 2004. Others are "A Parent's Guide to Religion in the Public Schools," "The Equal Access Act: Questions and Answers," "Religion in the Public School Curriculum: Questions and Answers," "Religious Holidays in the Public Schools: Questions and Answers," "The Bible and Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide" and "Public Schools and Religious Communities: A First Amendment Guide."

The overriding agreed principle: "The First Amendment prohibits public-school teachers from either inculcating or inhibiting religion. Teachers must remain neutral concerning religion, neutral among religions and neutral between religion and non-religion."

Thus, schools are neither "religion-free zones" nor platforms for worship or evangelism.


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New podcast: Where is the elite news coverage of tensions between Pelosi and her bishop?

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New podcast: Where is the elite news coverage of tensions between Pelosi and her bishop?

Here is a political science question for you, but it’s relevant to an important religion-beat story.

The vice president of the United States is No. 2, in terms of the presidential line of succession, just ahead of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. But in terms of real, day-by-day power, who has more clout in America’s system of government, the vice president or the speaker?

If you have lived and worked on Capitol Hill (as I did for a decade or more), I think you would agree the speaker has more dollars-and-cents clout, as opposed to the largely symbolic “one heartbeat away” status given to the vice president.

With that in mind, let’s turn to an important news story that ran in July at Crux, under this headline: “SF Archbishop says Pelosi can’t call herself a ‘devout Catholic’.” This story was at the heart of the discussion during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). Here is the overture of that piece:

NEW YORK – Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, the home archdiocese of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has insisted that “devout Catholics” can’t support abortion, just after Pelosi had described herself in precisely those terms.

“Let me repeat: No one can claim to be a devout Catholic and condone the killing of innocent human life, let alone have the government pay for it,” Cordileone said in a statement. “The right to life is a fundamental — the most fundamental ­— human right, and Catholics do not oppose fundamental human rights.”

Hours earlier, at her weekly press conference, Pelosi stated her support for repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortion, “because it’s an issue of health for many women in America,” and she also emphasized her Catholic faith.

“As a devout Catholic and mother of five in six years, I feel that God has blessed my husband and me with our beautiful family,” Pelosi said. “But it’s not up to me to dictate that’s what other people should do, and it’s an issue of fairness and justice for poor women in our country.”

This leads us to that op-ed by Cordileone that ran the other day at The Washington Post, with this headline: “Our duty to challenge Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.”

Here is the top of that piece. Read carefully and look for an important term that is showing up in more and more statements by some, repeat “some,” U.S. Catholic bishops:


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