Church & State

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Podcast: What will Queen Elizabeth II tell the world about her faith with her funeral liturgy?

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Podcast: What will Queen Elizabeth II tell the world about her faith with her funeral liturgy?

This week something unexpected happened after I filed my national “On Religion” column, something that I have never seen before in my decades of religion-news work.

What? A retired literature professor responded to my column with a poem.

The topic was easy to predict. Like millions of other people around the world, but especially in Great Britain and the Commonwealth, I have spent many hours watching (primarily on British television) the rites and public drama surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

I will post the column at GetReligion at the usual time this weekend, after it has run in most newspapers linked to the Universal syndicate. But the podcast team decided to go ahead and use it as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” (CLICK HERE to tune that in), since so many people are talking about the death of the queen. Here is a short clip from that column:

Throughout her life, Queen Elizabeth II understood the symbolic importance of kneeling, according to former Durham Bishop N.T. Wright. After one Church of England synod, she privately expressed surprise — disappointment, even — that worshippers in Westminster Abbey simply lined up to receive Holy Communion, instead of kneeling.

“Kneeling was important to her,” said the popular author, in a “Premier Christianity” tribute. In his encounters with her, Wright found the queen “very friendly and clearly a very devout, what we would consider ‘old fashioned’ Church of England Christian. I remember thinking during more than one Christmas broadcast, she has just preached the Gospel to the nation in a way that perhaps nobody else could have done.”

In response to the column, a reader raised in Canada — but best known for his work at Baylor University in Texas and at Peking University — wrote a poem and sent it to me.

David Lyle Jeffrey, now a distinguished senior fellow at Baylor’s Institute for Studies in Religion, noted that he has never considered himself a “royalist,” but the queen’s death is certainly a time to explore the “essence of her admirable Christian character and gracious reign.” The former Baylor provost and literature professor entitled the poem “Regina Exemplaris (An exemplary queen).” Here is how it ends:


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Bonus podcast: Clemente Lisi on news about 'good' Catholics, as opposed to 'bad' ones

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Bonus podcast: Clemente Lisi on news about 'good' Catholics, as opposed to 'bad' ones

Here is a question from the news, sort of, that cuts to the heart of this bonus GetReligion podcast by Clemente Lisi, taken from his on-air visit this week with Todd Wilken at Lutheran Public Radio (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

If Gov. Ron DeSantis started carrying a rosary, and talking about it quite a bit in the context of his Catholic faith (think President Joe Biden), would journalists in major newsrooms see this as a good thing or a bad thing? Possible answers: “Yes,” “No” and “You need to ask?”

Go ahead, if you want to, and think about it in the context of these recent posts: “Concerning the right-wing rosary attack — was that Atlantic feature really 'news'?” and “Tip for reporters — Don't assume what Catholics believe based on politics or Internet memes.”

In reality, the spark for this podcast came from Religion Dispatches piece the other day, by exevangelical trans scribe Chrissy Stroop, with this headline: “Media fail to acknowledge that 2024 hopeful Ron DeSantis is as Catholic as Biden.” Hold that thought.

The Religion Dispatches piece included commentary on a March 22 GetReligion post with this headline: “As Florida's DeSantis wages culture war, his Catholic faith isn't news — unless it's used to attack him.” By the way, editors there failed to note that Lisi is Catholic, as opposed to evangelical, which seems relevant.

Here is the key passage from the Lisi post:

The two things that lots of people don’t want to read about these days is the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump, part of a larger trend regarding news fatigue in this country. Unfortunately, this post will mention both and only because it is about Ron DeSantis.

The Florida governor has been in the news the past few years because of his connection to the former president and a virus that paralyzed the planet for two years. A hero to the right and bogeyman to the left, DeSantis has received plenty of mainstream news coverage — much of it one-sided — because of his use of so-called culture war issues to push legislation.

DeSantis, who is running for re-election and among the favorites to run for the White House in 2024, has been a lightning rod for Democrats and a focus of criticism from the mainstream press. … While the coverage has predictably focused on politics, the religion-news hooks in these stories have largely been ignored — unless they were highlighted to be used against him.


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Podcast: Journalists should ask if faith-based schools clearly state their doctrines on sexuality

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Podcast: Journalists should ask if faith-based schools clearly state their doctrines on sexuality

I forget who originally came up with the term “Romeaphobia.”

This can be defined as the hatred or fear of all things that can be viewed as links to Roman Catholicism or the early church in general. Obviously, this affects issues linked to worship and church governance. However, in my experience (I grew up in Texas), many evangelicals (especially Baptists) have a fear of clear, authoritative doctrinal statements that, you know, might be interpreted as “Roman” creeds. All together now: We are “Bible Christians” and that’s that.

I am not saying this to take a shot at my heritage (I am very thankful for the deep faith and examples of my family and my father was a Southern Baptist pastor). The reason I mention this up is because, in my opinion, this anti-creedal Romeaphobia is playing a major role in an important news story all over America. This was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Does this USA Today headline sound familiar? It should, for readers from sea to shining sea: “Christian Florida school tells parents gay and transgender students must 'leave immediately'.”

My goal here is to offer advice to reporters who want to do accurate, fair-minded coverage of these church-state skirmishes (let’s hope there are some out there). I’m also offering press-relations advice to terrified leaders of Christian schools at all levels, from kindergartens to colleges. The Romeaphobia angle? That takes us into legal nuts-and-bolts questions about these conflicts.

Let’s start with the rather familiar USA Today overture:

A Florida-based Christian school sent out an email informing parents that LGBTQ-identifying students "will be asked to leave the school immediately."

According to the email obtained by NBC News, the top administrator of Grace Christian School in Valrico, Florida, Barry McKeen, sent the email to the families for the kindergarten-grade 12 school on June 6. He later confirmed and doubled down on the policy in an Aug. 18 video on the school's official Facebook page.

The June email read: "We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle, self-identification, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful in the sight of God and the church. Students who are found participating in these lifestyles will be asked to leave the school immediately."

For starters, private schools — liberal and conservative — have First Amendment rights, including the right to clearly state their foundational doctrines and, thus, disciplines that apply to staff, faculty and students. Tip No. 1 for reporters and church leaders: Get to know the details of the UNANIMOUS 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision commonly referred to as the Hosanna Tabor case.

But we need to figure out what actually happened in this Florida case.


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Tip for reporters: Don't assume what Catholics believe based on politics or Internet memes

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Tip for reporters: Don't assume what Catholics believe based on politics or Internet memes

There are moments in journalism that stand out more than others. One of those moments is when a certain piece — whether it’s a news story, analysis or opinion — gets a lot of attention by a large group of people for good and/or for bad reasons.

For a set of bad reasons, The Atlantic piece on the weaponization of the rosary was that piece for many Catholics and those who keep a watchful eye on media coverage of matters pertaining to the largest Christian denomination in the United States.

The piece — not necessarily a news story, but it was not labeled as commentary or even analysis — became a viral conversation topic among many family and friends over the last week. While the issue of Christian nationalism is important to understand, the bigger discussion — and questions I had to field — was more like this: What’s wrong with journalism these days?

That’s the central preoccupation of many — especially those of us who have been doing this for decades. (For more on that, please check out tmatt’s post and podcast from this past Friday. This view of what was going on in this piece may shock you.)

There were many lines from the Atlantic piece that stood out, but one that did most was this one:

The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church. These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks.

There’s the thesis of the piece, the connect-the-dots language linking strange behavior to current tensions in Catholic life in America.

There’s plenty to unpack here, but the reality is that citing a few political websites claiming to represent Catholic thought and then adding a smattering of social media memes is no way to gauge for what anyone really thinks and believes.


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Plug-In: Why my old school district pulled 41 books from libraries -- including the Bible

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Plug-In: Why my old school district pulled 41 books from libraries -- including the Bible

I don’t remember the Keller Independent School District making national headlines when I was a student here in the 1980s. Even back then, this North Texas community — which began with a railroad extension from Fort Worth in the 1850s — was growing.

But in my time at Keller High School, then the district’s only high school, Keller was still more farm town than burgeoning suburb. We had one grocery store along U.S. 377 and no McDonald’s — I drove to nearby North Richland Hills to flip Quarter Pounders my junior and senior years.

An old gray water tower that proclaimed “Keller: Home of the Indians” greeted visitors to our town, referring to the school mascot. I edited the student newspaper The Wigwam, played sousaphone in the marching band and graduated 23rd in a class of about 300 in 1986. The next year, our former drum major, Michelle Royer, won the Miss USA Pageant — the biggest news I recall from those days.

My parents still live in the area, so I visit frequently and have witnessed Keller’s explosive growth, including multiple exits along Interstate 35.

This week, I’ve watched with interest as the Keller school district’s decision to remove 41 books from its libraries, including the Bible and an illustrated version of “Anne Frank’s Diary,” has made headlines everywhere from the Texas Tribune to the New York Times. What in the world is happening?

Basically this: The national culture wars have come to the local school board. And not just in Keller.

A previous Plug-in highlighted stories by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Emily Brindley and The Tennessean’s Liam Adams on school board candidates campaigning on Christianity and conservatism.

Each of the books pulled in Keller — including the Bible — was challenged by a parent, lawmaker or other community member in the last year, USA Today’s Jeanine Santucci reports.

The Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner points out:

“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” is an illustrated version of the bestselling classic written by a young Jewish girl in the Netherlands as she and her family hid from Nazi occupation forces. The story ended when the Franks were captured and sent to concentration camps; Anne and her sister Margot died, most likely of typhus, in the Bergen-Belsen camp. Her father Otto survived and published the diary, which had been hidden by his secretary, after the war.


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ProPublica punts when digging into why the Family Research Council calls itself a church

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ProPublica punts when digging into why the Family Research Council calls itself a church

Sadly, ProPublica, the independent journalism organization that does a ton of investigative work, has no designated religion beat professional. But occasionally they do cover religion, including this recent piece on the Washington, D.C., based Family Research Council (FRC).

Sadly, the piece doesn’t come near the level of other ProPublica investigative works, for the reasons I’ll describe below.

The issue at hand is the FRC’s designation of itself as a church, a move that nonprofits sometimes make to evade IRS reporting requirements on how contributions are spent. For those of us who’ve spent any time in Washington, the idea of the FRC being a church is somewhat amusing, as everyone knows it operates more like an issues-driven think tank.

The question of what does or does not constitute a church has bubbled for years, including when the IRS resisted calling Scientology a church. It finally did so in 1993.

During the Obama administration from 2008-2011, Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, investigated six televangelists who weren’t making their financial records public. It was after this time that religious activist groups began reconstituting themselves as churches.

When the chief executive of Mozilla resigned in 2014 following release of donor records showing he had contributed toward banning same-sex marriage, more groups decided that becoming a “church” was the only way to insure their donor records remained secret. Other groups made the jump in anticipation of government interference in the hiring and firing of employees, when decisions are based on disagreements about doctrinal and lifestyle covenants.

The Family Research Council’s multimillion-dollar headquarters sit on G Street in Washington, D.C., just steps from the U.S. Capitol and the White House, a spot ideally situated for its work as a right-wing policy think tank and political pressure group.

From its perch at the heart of the nation’s capital, the FRC has pushed for legislation banning gender-affirming surgery; filed amicus briefs supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade; and advocated for religious exemptions to civil rights laws. Its longtime head, a former state lawmaker and ordained minister named Tony Perkins, claims credit for pushing the Republican platform rightward over the past two decades.

With whom or what denomination is Perkins ordained?


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Podcast: What's up with this Gray Lady 'mind meld' with readers worried about Biden's faith?

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Podcast: What's up with this Gray Lady 'mind meld' with readers worried about Biden's faith?

Popes rarely, in my experience, produce the kinds of five-star news soundbites that go viral.

However, Pope Francis has used striking language when addressing one of the hot-button issues of this or any other age — abortion. That was one of several topics woven into this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on another elite-media political feature about President Joe Biden’s “devout” approach to practicing the Catholic faith.

Here is that New York Times headline: “Biden Is an Uneasy Champion on Abortion. Can He Lead the Fight in Post-Roe America?” The sub-head is just as provocative: “A practicing Catholic, President Biden has long sought a middle ground on abortion. But activists see the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as a sign that Democrats have tiptoed too carefully around the issue.”

Back to Pope Francis. Some of his abortion bytes have even made it into news reports. Does anyone remember this one, offering “hitman” imagery he has used many times (even adding Mafia imagery):

Abortion is more than an issue. Abortion is murder. Abortion, without hinting: whoever performs an abortion kills. … It’s a human life, period. This human life must be respected. This principle is so clear. And to those who can’t understand it I would ask two questions: Is it right, is it fair, to kill a human life to solve a problem? Scientifically it is a human life. Second question: Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem?

How about this one?

When I was a boy, the teacher was teaching us history and told us what the Spartans did when a baby was born with deformities: they carried it up the mountain and cast it down, to maintain “the purity of the race.” … Today we do the same thing. Have you ever wondered why you do not see many dwarfs on the streets? Because the protocol of many doctors — many, not all — is to ask the question: “Will it have problems?” It pains me to say this. In the last century the entire world was scandalized over what the Nazis were doing to maintain the purity of the race. Today we do the same thing, but with white gloves.

“White gloves.” Yes, there are many other Francis quotes along these lines. Of course, the pope has also angered Catholic conservatives with words and deeds that seem to downplay church teachings on abortion, especially in high-profile contacts with powerful Catholic politicians.

In other words — President Biden. This brings us to the content of that Times political-desk feature.


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Religious Left returns to RFRA: Washington Post explores a crucial Florida abortion showdown

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Religious Left returns to RFRA: Washington Post explores a crucial Florida abortion showdown

For 18 years, GetReligion has argued that mainstream news organizations need to pay more attention to the Religious Left. Yes, I capitalized those words, just like the more familiar Religious Right.

The Religious Right has been at the heart of millions news stories (2,350,000 or so Google hits right now, with about 61,600 in current news). The Religious Left doesn’t get that much ink (322,000 in Google and 2,350 or so in Google News), in part — my theory — because most journalists prefer the word “moderate” when talking about believers in the small, but still media-powerful world of “mainline” religion.

But there is a church-state legal story unfolding in Florida that cries out for coverage of liberal believers — with an emphasis on the details of their doctrines and traditions, as opposed to politics. Doctrines are at the heart of a story that many journalists will be tempted to cover as more post-Roe v. Wade politics.

I suspect, if and when this story hits courts (even the U.S. Supreme Court), journalists will need to do their homework (#FINALLY) on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. The big question: What does religious liberty (no “scare quotes”) look like from a Unitarian point of view? Hold that thought.

First, here is the headline on a long Washington Post feature: “Clerics sue over Florida abortion law, saying it violates religious freedom.” Here is the overture:

When the Rev. Laurie Hafner ministers to her Florida congregants about abortion, she looks to the founding values of the United Church of Christ, her lifelong denomination: religious freedom and freedom of thought. She taps into her reading of Genesis, which says “man became a living being” when God breathed “the breath of life” into Adam. She thinks of Jesus promising believers full and abundant life.

“I am pro-choice not in spite of my faith, but because of my faith,” Hafner says.

She is among seven Florida clergy members — two Christians, three Jews, one Unitarian Universalist and a Buddhist — who argue in separate lawsuits … that their ability to live and practice their religious faith is being violated by the state’s new, post-Roe abortion law. The law, which is one of the strictest in the country, making no exceptions for rape or incest, was signed in April by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), in a Pentecostal church alongside antiabortion lawmakers such as the House speaker, who called life “a gift from God.”

The lawsuits are at the vanguard of a novel legal strategy arguing that new abortion restrictions violate Americans’ religious freedom, including that of clerics who advise pregnant people.


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Plug-In: Five news takeaways as Kansas keeps abortion rights In its constitution

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Plug-In: Five news takeaways as Kansas keeps abortion rights In its constitution

Catholic churches and dioceses in Kansas spent millions of dollars in support of a referendum to remove the right to abortion from the state’s constitution.

But in America’s first big post-Roe test, this ballot measure failed — and by a wide margin — with nearly three in five voters opposing it.

Given the Sunflower State’s solid conservative credentials, the referendum’s defeat might qualify as Kansas’ second-biggest upset in recent memory (college football fans won’t soon forget No. 1).

What exactly happened? Here are five takeaways:

1. Yes, Kansas has a history of voting for conservative Republicans, particularly for president. But its political leanings are more complicated.

On the one hand, the New York Times’ Mitch Smith and Katie Glueck note:

While Kansas has a history of voting for governors of both parties, the state almost always backs Republicans for president — Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 was a notable exception. It is a largely white state and many Kansans identify as Christians, with a sizable evangelical constituency. Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., has long been a hero to many conservative Catholics for his ardent opposition to abortion, contraception and gay marriage.

But on the other hand, Kansas State University political scientist Brianne Heidbreder points to Kansas’ political unpredictably dating back to 1861, when it became the 34th state.

Heidbreder spoke to the New York Times’ Maggie Astor:

“While it is a very conservative state, there is a large proportion of the electorate that really considers itself moderate,” Dr. Heidbreder added.

Patrick Miller, an associate professor of political science at the University of Kansas, pointed to a crucial distinction: “We’re more Republican than we are conservative.”


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