Godbeat

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Journalism tips on: (1) Evangelical crack-ups, (2) campus faith fights, (3) COVID exemptions

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Journalism tips on: (1) Evangelical crack-ups, (2) campus faith fights, (3) COVID exemptions

A potential U.S. evangelical crack-up continues as a lively story topic since Guy Memos here since these two Memos here at GetReligion, “Are we finally witnessing the long-anticipated (by journalists) evangelical crack-up?” and also “Concerning evangelical elites, Donald Trump and the press: The great crack-up continues.” In USA Today, Daniel Darling, for one, sought hope despite his recent victimhood in these tensions.

Media professionals considering work on this theme should note a lament at book length coming next week: "Struggling with Evangelicalism: Why I Want to Leave and What It Takes to Stay" by Dan Stringer. The author is a lifelong evangelical, Wheaton College (Illinois) and Fuller Theological Seminary alum, leader of InterVarsity's graduate student and faculty ministries in Hawaii and Evangelical Covenant Church minister. This book comes from InterVarsity Press.

The Guy has yet to read this book, but it looks to be a must-read for reporters covering American evangelicals in the Bible-Belt and elsewhere. Stringer ponders how evangelicalism can move beyond too-familiar sexual scandals, racial and gender conflicts, and Trump Era political rancor -- what a blurb by retired Fuller President Richard Mouw calls "blind spots, toxic brokenness and complicity with injustice."

Regarding the Donald Trump factor, the evangelical elite was largely silent, with one faction openly opposed, while certain outspoken evangelicals backed the problematic populist.

As The Guy has observed, recent politics exposed the already existing gap between institutional officials and the Trumpified evangelical rank and file. Problem is, to thrive any religious or cultural movement needs intelligent leaders united with a substantial grass-roots constituency to build long-term strategy.

Evangelicalism has always combined basic unity in belief with a wide variety of differences. Think denominational vs. independent, Arminian vs. Calvinist, gender "complementarian" vs. "egalitarian," Pentecostal-Charismatic vs. others and a racial divide so wide that many Black evangelicals shun the e-word alltogether.

In an October 21 Patheos article, historian Daniel K. Williams at the University of West Georgia added North vs. South to those internal divisions. He recounts that the Southern Baptist Convention remained mostly apart when northerners began to supplant "fundamentalism" with "evangelicalism" in the World War II era. Eventually, he says, this movement formed a North-South alliance but it's now eroding.


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Religious liberty at SCOTUS, again: Touch, comfort and the prayers of clergy at executions

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Religious liberty at SCOTUS, again: Touch, comfort and the prayers of clergy at executions

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear religious freedom arguments Tuesday in the case of a Texas death-row inmate named John Henry Ramirez.

Ramirez, 37, wants his Southern Baptist pastor to lay hands on him and pray before and during his execution. The state of Texas won’t allow it.

Time magazine’s Madeleine Carlisle provides a nice overview of the case.

“The job of a minister is not to stand still and be quiet,” Dana Moore, the inmate’s pastor, tells Time. “Prayer is very important. And the power of touch is real. It’s encouraging. It brings peace. It’s significant… Why can’t I hold his hand?”

In an August interview with New York Times religion writer Ruth Graham, Ramirez took responsibility for killing Corpus Christi convenience store clerk Pablo Castro, calling Castro’s 2004 death a “heinous murder.” (As noted by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Ramirez “beat and kicked Castro and stabbed him 29 times with a 6-inch serrated knife.” He and two female accomplices left the scene with $1.25.)

“It would just be comforting,” Ramirez said of wanting Moore by his side at the time of his lethal injection.

At The Associated Press, religion writer David Crary explains that the “ACLU has a long history of opposing the death penalty and also says that condemned prisoners, even at the moment of execution, have religious rights.”

Conservative church-state activists have been involved in this case, and others like it, since Day 1.

“Intriguingly, the ACLU’s position in the Ramirez case is echoed by some conservative religious groups which support the death penalty and are often at odds with the ACLU on other issues,” Crary reports.


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While most media ignore religious persecution, Al Jazeera devotes space and time to it

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While most media ignore religious persecution, Al Jazeera devotes space and time to it

I remember when Al Jazeera was looking to hire folks in Washington, D.C., about the time they launched Al Jazeera English in 2006.

Some journalists about town weren’t sure about applying there, even though the money was said to be good and its connections within the Arabic-speaking world were light years better than any other news operation.

It was, of course, the whiff of Arab nationalism and Islamism that scared a lot of folks off. (Then again, in 2018, it was officially banned from more than one-third of all Arabic-speaking countries, so sometimes those connections exact a high price.)

Anyway, that was then. In 2008, it launched a human-rights desk in its newsrooms and began doing stories where such rights were violated. Being that religious groups were often the first targeted, Al Jazeera got into some serious religion reporting — covering all kinds of issues, often with a striking effort to be balanced, fair and accurate.

Fast forward to 2021, where they just won first place in the Excellence in Television News Magazine Religion Reporting category for the Religion News Writers annual contest. I am not sure what specific story won them that award but in recent years, they’ve done some quality religion pieces. Now they’re at the point where folks are writing academic papers based on their religion coverage.

I am not going to go into their reporting on Islam, which is a whole other topic. This post concerns their human rights-religious minorities coverage. One of their latest examples details how Myanmar has become “a living hell” for Christians — a story very few secular media are covering. Let’s start here:

Last month, Myanmar soldiers gunned down Cung Biak Hum, a 31-year-old Baptist pastor, while he rushed to help put out a fire caused by military shelling. As his town of Thantlang in Myanmar’s northwestern Chin State went up in flames, soldiers sawed off the pastor’s finger and stole his wedding ring.


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Many media pros have missed a mega-money source backing some big Christian causes

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Many media pros have missed a mega-money source backing some big Christian causes

Follow the money.

Those three little words guide journalists and prosecutors alike. And that explains the news potential of the Georgia-based National Christian Foundation (NCF), www.ncfgiving.com/ which to date has quietly given $14 billion to 71,000 non-profit groups, $1.3 billion of that last year, in both tiny and huge grants. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece recently noted that "mysterious" operation is "one of the most influential charities you've never heard of."

Writing last week for Ministry Watch (a news website that reporters should follow), GetReligion alumnus Steve Rabey reports that NCF became "the world's largest Christian foundation" largely through word-of-mouth referrals rather than promotional efforts. The Chronicle of Philanthropy, which posted antagonistic coverage in February, ranks NCF as the nation's eighth-largest charity.

NCF calls itself a "ministry," and though it aids a wide range of secular non-profit charities it's a particularly important vehicle for religious donations from wealthy conservative Protestants who share its belief that "the entire Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God." The foundation's 26 offices around the U.S. handle donations -- contact info posted here -- so local angles for the media abound. (At national headquarters, Dan Stroud is C.E.O and Steve Chapman the media contact via info@ncfgiving.com or 404-252-0100.)

Rabey's piece includes a helpful link to the Guidestar.org posting of NCF's 593-page IRS Form 990 filed for 2019, with a listing of grant recipients that reporters will want to eyeball. The largest categories of donations ranged from local churches ($215 million) on down to medical care ($21 million). Major causes included evangelism, relief, education, children and youth work, museums, spiritual and community development, media and publishing, orphan care, Bible translation and ministry to the homeless.

NCF typifies the rising importance of "donor-advised funds" in U.S. philanthropy. The basic idea has existed for a century and was devised as a vehicle for Christian donors in 1982 by pioneering Atlanta tax attorney Terry Parker, still a board member, along with evangelical financial gurus Ron Blue and Larry Burkett.


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Is this statement accurate? All true evangelicals wanted to vote for Donald Trump -- period

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Is this statement accurate? All true evangelicals wanted to vote for Donald Trump -- period

As a rule, your GetReligionistas strive to avoid writing about analysis features that are published in magazines such as The Atlantic.

However, when I keep hearing people asking questions about one of these “think pieces,” it’s hard not to want to add a comment or two to the discussion.

So first, let’s start with something that GetReligion team members have been saying for nearly two decades, as a reminder to readers who have never worked in mainstream newsrooms: Reporters/writers rarely write the headlines that dominate the layouts at the top of their pieces.

Case in point: The double-decker headline on that buzz-worthy Peter Wehner commentary piece at The Atlantic:

The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart

Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church.

Yes, I know. There is no such thing as “the evangelical church.”

Do basic facts matter? There are, of course, denominations that are predominantly evangelical. Some of them disagree on all kinds of things — such as baptism or the ordination of women. There are Pentecostal denominations that share many, but not all, doctrines with flocks that are connected with the evangelical movement. There are lots of evangelicals who still sit — though many are quite unhappy — in liberal Protestant pews.

We won’t even talk about that second line: “Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church.”

You can get to the heart of this confusion by — if you are reading the Wehner piece online — glancing at the tagline that appears in the subject line in your computer browser. That semi-headline reads: “Trump is Tearing Apart the Evangelical Church.”

Ah, that’s the heart of this matter.


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Define 'evangelical,' please. Alas, many Americans don't think that this is a religious term

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Define 'evangelical,' please. Alas, many Americans don't think that this is a religious term

Here’s a scary thought: Who wants to dress up as an evangelical for Halloween?

Except, exactly what would that look like?

Would it involve wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat? Does the term still have any religious and/or theological meaning left?

Those questions came to mind as I perused some of the week’s big religion stories — both news reports and major analytical takes. Here are five such headlines that caught my attention:

(1) Why ‘evangelical’ is becoming another word for Republican: “Instead of theological affinity for Jesus Christ, millions of Americans are being drawn to the evangelical label because of its association with the G.O.P.,” Ryan Burge, a frequent contributor to ReligionUnplugged.com, writes in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

(2) In a post-Donald Trump world, these pastors are ditching the evangelical label for something new: “They looked to each other to ask, What could it look like to organize as ‘post-evangelicals?’” religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey reports for the Washington Post. “They had at least one thing in common: They were all on some journey of deconstruction, the process of reexamining their long-held beliefs, and they wanted to participate in reconstruction and the building up of something new.”

(3) The evangelical divide: “Political and social issues are splintering American Christians. Can the Church find unity?” asks part one of a three-part series by World magazine senior reporter Sophia Lee.

(4) The evangelical church is breaking apart: “As a person of the Christian faith who has spent most of my adult life attending evangelical churches, I wanted to understand the splintering of churches, communities, and relationships,” contributing writer Peter Wehner explains in The Atlantic. “I reached out to dozens of pastors, theologians, academics, and historians, as well as a seminary president and people involved in campus ministry. All voiced concern.”


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Looking for signs of life? Study the birth rates among religious faiths in America

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Looking for signs of life? Study the birth rates among religious faiths in America

A team of economists from Wellesley College and the University of Maryland recently published a working paper that focused on a peculiar puzzle facing the United States: declining birth rates.

More particularly, the team of researchers was trying to understand why birth rates continued to fall even after the economy was recovering from the Great Recession of 2007. Those economists concluded that one of the biggest factors was shifting priorities among younger Americans — away from raising children and toward career and travel aspirations.

But fertility is obviously incredibly multifaceted. The decision to become a parent is often one that is made with a number of factors in mind. Young adults have to consider their educational plans, the amount of income they would have available to pay for a child and how to handle childcare responsibilities once they become parents.

One factor that can have a tremendous impact on this decision is religion.

Every major religious tradition on Earth encourages reproduction, and thus there can be a theological nudge for people to have children. But a local religious community can also make the decision easier for potential parents by offering up a safety net that can provide financial support or easy access to caregivers for babies and children in the congregation.

Clearly, it’s in the best interest of religious groups to encourage their young families to have children if they want to ensure the long-term viability of their traditions. It’s no secret that families with children are the easiest pathway to ensure that a church, mosque or synagogue will be able to sustain itself for decades to come. But which traditions are doing a good job of having children, and which ones aren’t? And what does that tell us about the future of American religion?


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Familiar, but newsworthy, trends: Catholicism grows in Africa and Asia, while Europe fades

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Familiar, but newsworthy, trends: Catholicism grows in Africa and Asia, while Europe fades

The number of Roman Catholics across Africa and Asia continues to grow, according to a new report highlighted by the Vatican.

That’s one news hook for coverage. Here is another: the number of Catholic believers in Europe continues to implode.

“If we keep the faith to ourselves, we will become weak, and if we keep the faith to a small group, it might become an elite group,” Cardinal Luis Tagle of the Philippines warned on Oct. 21 during a news conference held at the Vatican.

This new report, compiled by Fides News Service, serves as a statistical snapshot of the church’s global population and institutions. It compared 2019 with the prior year and was based on the latest available statistics.

The findings, akin to a Vatican census, did not take into account the pandemic and the impact COVID-19 had on faith and church attendance as a result of shutdown orders across much of the world. The report was released to coincide with World Mission Day, which is celebrated on the third Sunday of October each year.

Pope Francis, in a message posted to the Holy See’s official website, highlighted the day’s purpose.

“We recall with gratitude all those men and women who by their testimony of life help us to renew our baptismal commitment to be generous and joyful apostles of the gospel,” he wrote. “Let us remember especially all those who resolutely set out, leaving home and family behind, to bring the gospel to all those places and people athirst for its saving message.”

Overall, the total number of Catholics throughout the world grew by 15.4 million people.


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Don't neglect the Supreme Court's potentially weighty case on religious schools funding

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Don't neglect the Supreme Court's potentially weighty case on religious schools funding

Media eyes are trained on the U.S. Supreme Court's December 1 argument on Mississippi's abortion restrictions, preceded by a fast-tracked November 1 hearing about the stricter law in Texas. But don't neglect the Court's December 8 hearing and subsequent decision on tax funding of religious schools in the potentially weighty Carson v. Makin case (docket #20-1088).

University of Baltimore law Professor Kimberly Wehle certainly wants us to pay heed, warning October 14 via TheAtlantic.com that this is a "sleeper" appeal that "threatens the separation of church and state." In her view, the high court faces not just the perennial problem of public funding for religious campuses. She believes the justices could decide "religious freedom supersedes the public good" by aiding conservative Christian schools that, based on centuries of doctrine, discriminate against non-Christian and LGBTQ students and teachers.

Journalistic backgrounding: Thinly-populated Maine provides an unusual context for this story because the majority of its 260 school districts do not operate full K-12 systems and instead pay tuition for public or private schools that families choose for upper grades. Religiously-affiliated schools are included, but not if Maine deems them "sectarian."

Notably, the parents' plea for tuition is backed by major institutions of the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and other evangelical Protestants, the Church of God in Christ (the nation's largest African-American denomination), Latter-day Saints (formerly called "Mormons") and Orthodox Judaism, alongside the 63-campus Council of Islamic Schools. A reporter's question: Has such a religious coalition ever formed in any prior Supreme Court case?

Of further interest, the case engages a major religious-liberty theorist, Michael W. McConnell, director of Stanford University's Constitutional Law Center and former federal judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. He wrote that circuit's 2008 opinion in Colorado Christian University v Weaver (.pdf here), which tossed out a law that barred "pervasively sectarian" colleges from a state scholarship program.

In Carson, McConnell filed a personal brief September 8 that hands the Supreme Court a history lesson (.pdf here) on religious freedom as conceived when the Constitution's First Amendment was framed. He has explored this ground since a significant Harvard Law Review article in 1989.


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