Kellerism

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Thinking with Ryan Burge and Damon Linker: Blessed be the ties that used to bind America?

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A friend of mine who was a data journalist long before that was normal — Anthony DeBarros — used to tell my Washington Journalism Center students the following: A good reporter can look at almost any solid set of survey statistics and see potential news stories.

So here we go again. When the Pew Research Center released its epic “Nones on the Rise” study in 2012, all kinds of reporters studied the details and saw all kinds of stories. The updates on those numbers keep producing headlines, with good cause.

But if was veteran scholar John C. Green — yes, I quote him a lot — who saw, even before the public release of those numbers (click here and then here for GetReligion reminders), a very important politics-and-religion story. Here is the crucial info, as he stated it on the record in 2012:

The unaffiliated overwhelmingly reject ancient doctrines on sexuality with 73 percent backing same-sex marriage and 72 percent saying abortion should be legal in all, or most, cases. Thus, the “Nones” skew heavily Democratic as voters — with 75 percent supporting Barack Obama in 2008. The unaffiliated are now a stronger presence in the Democratic Party than African-American Protestants, white mainline Protestants or white Catholics.

“It may very well be that in the future the unaffiliated vote will be as important to the Democrats as the traditionally religious are to the Republican Party,” said Green, addressing the religion reporters. “If these trends continue, we are likely to see even sharper divisions between the political parties.”

Of course, the modern Democratic Party also includes one of America’s most fervently religious camps, as well — African-American churchgoers.

Many have predicted the obvious: At some point, there will be tensions there. Woke Democrats are, for example, on the rise and grabbing lots of headlines. But who saved Joe Biden’s political neck in the South Carolina primary? How does he please the woke choir and the black church?

With that in mind, let’s look at two must-file charts that political scientist Ryan Burge circulated the other day via his must-follow Twitter account. And keep in mind that we are building toward a new Damon Linker essay with this blunt headline: “Could America split up?”


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Podcast: What did those Big Tech hearings have to do with religious life in America?

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There have been some wild clashes between religious groups and the czars of the Big Tech institutions that have tremendous power in American public discourse. Certainly there have been more important skirmishes than Twitter shutting down that inspirational Tim Tebow mini-sermon the other day.

Many of my friends — as an Orthodox Christian layman — started paying close attention to this issue back in 2015 when a strategic set of cyber-lords informed these believers’ priests, all of a sudden, that they couldn’t put “Father” in front of their names on their Facebook pages.

This was part of a general policy about honorary titles of all kinds. But the title “Father” plays a different role in the lives of people in ancient Christian flocks. It’s not a professional title, it’s a sacramental title.

My own Orthodox godfather — the popular online scribe Father Stephen Freeman — responded by putting “(Father Stephen Freeman)” after his name. Other priests found clever ways to add their identity to the top of their Facebook pages. That, of course, doesn’t help people find their sites with searches for their actual names, including the word “Father.”

Like I said, there have been more consequential clashes between the Big Tech czars and religious believers, but that one was symbolic.

The key is that faith is part of daily life, for millions of folks. These days, social media software has a massive impact on how people live their lives. Thus, Big Tech is a powerful force in the lives of believers and their families. That’s why “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I talked about this week’s Big Tech Congressional hearings, during this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in).

So what were these hearings all about? Apparently, the answer to that question depended on one’s political ties. As I wrote the other day:

Democrats have their own reasons to be concerned about Big Tech, whose clout in the lives of modern Americans make the railroad tycoons of the Gilded Age look like minor-league players. These companies, after all, resemble digital public utilities more than mere Fortune 500 powerhouses.

Meanwhile, you know that — at some point — Republicans are going to roll out a long list of cases of viewpoint discrimination against cultural, moral, religious and — oh yeah — political conservatives.

So what happened, when the mainstream press covered the Hill showdown with the glowing digital images of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos of Amazon and The Washington Post?


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Old 'liberal' views of the New York Times news bubble -- one from left, one from right

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It’s been awhile since Bari Weiss of The New York Times wrote That. Resignation. Letter. to publisher A.G. Sulzberger, but I am still thinking about what she wrote and some of the published reactions.

Yes, I wish someone would leak some Times newsroom Slack discussions about the aftermath. As always, I am more interested in what is happening in the newsroom, as opposed to the offices of the editorial-page staff (click here for the GetReligion podcast post on that subject).

Two commentary pieces jumped out of the swirling online mix, for me, in the days after that firestorm. I often read lots of material on the cultural left and then on the cultural right and look for thoughts that overlap.

With that in mind, let me recommend this piece by Jodi Rudoren, who is editor in chief of The Forward, a progressive Jewish publication. Rudoren spent more than two decades at the Times.

It’s safe to say that she worked there during — to frame this in terms of the Weiss letter — the era of the “old orthodoxy,” which was basically old liberalism, to one degree or another. The Times was a culturally liberal workplace, but it was not — at least not deliberately — trying to preach its gospel to readers. Now there is a “new orthodoxy” on the rise in America’s most influential newsroom.

Thus, the headline for Rudoren’s piece: “I don’t recognize the NYT that Bari Weiss quit.”

By all means, read all of that piece. But here is a crucial chunk of that, which starts with a discussion of the forced resignation of editorial page editor James Bennet after the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s essay calling for the use of U.S. military troops to quell violent protests. Rudoren writes:

I found the argument that publishing the OpEd endangered anyone’s life to be specious, though it was repeated by many of my former colleagues on Twitter; I thought that organized, open revolt violated every code of collegiality; and I worried that the paper was cowering from its historic role as the host of raucous but respectful debate.


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RNS finds trans clergy struggle for support, after leaving liberal seminaries (#WhyIsThat)

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Back in my Colorado days, I spent lots of time covering the Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary that was and is known as a hub for liberal Christian theology. A student — in the late 1980s — estimated that the student body was close to 50% gay and lesbian.

The problem, of course, was that there weren’t enough “urban” churches in Denver to handle all the students who needed to work part-time, serve in parish residency programs or be placed in their first pastoral positions (if they wanted to say in that regional conference). I once heard a feminist lesbian student, near tears, describing her attempts to preach to a small-town congregation out on the high plains of eastern Colorado. Some people even believed in hell.

What I realized was that this was not a story with two sides — liberal clergy vs. old-school locals. It was a story with, at least, three sides — liberal clergy, conservative laity and seminary/denominational officials caught in the middle. The liberal powers that be, you see, wanted to help the graduates, but they couldn’t afford to run off legions of ordinary church members. They had to be careful, for reasons linked to institutional survival.

I thought of those stand-offs while reading the recent Religion News Service feature — I am not sure that it is a “news” story — that ran with this headline: “As seminaries welcome openly transgender students, church lags behind.” Here is the overture:

When Austen Hartke arrived at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, he knew it was the only Lutheran seminary that didn't participate in his denomination's LGBTQ+ welcoming program. But as his awareness grew that he was transgender, so did his conviction that Luther was the right place for him.

Hartke, who had come out as bisexual years before applying to seminary, had specifically picked the school, he said in a recent interview, so he would learn to navigate his identity and ministry while being exposed to “the Midwestern attitudes I lived with every day.”

Still, said Hartke, who today runs the Transmission Ministry Collective, a community that supports transgender and other nonbinary Christians, “I didn’t come out as trans until I was holding my diploma, because I didn’t know what would happen.”


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Sports Illustrated gets theological in its slam-job on Giants pitcher who would not kneel

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As a rule, editors and writers at major sports publications rarely make spiritual judgements about the actions of professional athletes.

This are not, however, ordinary times in America and, apparently, journalists have decided all bets are off when it comes to damning those who are not woke.

I am referring to that controversial — and quietly evolving — Sports Illustrated story that ran with the following headline (which needed three decks of type to pack everything in):

Giants’ Sam Coonrod Explains Not Kneeling for Moment of Unity: ‘I’m a Christian’

In Friday’s Hot Clicks: a Giants pitcher hides behind his religion. …

Taking a stand against inequality shouldn’t be controversial

First things first, let me note that — as an old-school First Amendment liberal — I have no problem with players kneeling whenever they want to kneel.

One could make a case that players who kneel during the national anthem are showing respect, which is one interpretation of kneeling in other circumstances. Some have said that they are praying, while they kneel. They could kneel and recite batting averages and I would back their right to do so. The same thing goes for players who choose not to kneel. I’m pro-free speech, including symbolic speech.

But back to the theological judgements woven into that SI piece about Coonrod, which was written by Dan Gartland — who is identified as a writer/editor on LinkedIn. I mention that because I could find no evidence that he is a columnist who is paid to make editorial comments about players and the games they play. Then again, that’s old-school journalism talk.

Doing a critique of this piece is complicated by the fact that there are two versions to discuss — the original and the edited version that has quietly take its place. There are screen shots and Twitter comments that capture some of the original wording.

However, the key phrase remains in the headline, at least the one I copied as I started work on this post. I’m referring to the “hides behind his religion” wisecrack.


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New podcast: New York Times lets Planned Parenthood spin bad news about Margaret Sanger?

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Soon after the founding of Amazon.com in 1995, I began offering the following research tip to my journalism students.

When reporting about a person or a topic, especially when the subject is controversial, go to Amazon.com and type in two or perhaps three search terms — including a proper name or the keyword linked to the topic you are researching.

Of course, reporters should do broader searches online and in professional-level periodical collections — looking for experts and activists on both sides of the story being covered. What an Amazon.com search gives you is a look at who has been doing, well, book-length studies of a person or a topic.

So let’s take a look at an Amazon.com search linked to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). Let’s search for “Margaret Sanger” and “eugenics.” We are looking for sources that could have been used in the New York Times piece that ran the other day with this sobering double-decker headline:

Planned Parenthood in N.Y. Disavows Margaret Sanger Over Eugenics

Ms. Sanger, a feminist icon and reproductive-rights pioneer, supported a discredited belief in improving the human race through selective breeding

That’s a very controversial topic and this Times piece, we shall see, includes some rather blunt information about this “icon” of the cultural left.

What the story does not contain, however, is a single quote from a scholar or activist who has done years of research to gather information critical of Sanger and her legacy in American life and culture.

Right at the top of that Amazon.com search are books by two experts who, to my eyes, look solid.

One book is entitled “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race.” The author is not a scribe at a right-wing think tank. Instead, Edwin Black — on his Amazon.com biography page — is described as:

Edwin Black is the award-winning, New York Times and international investigative author of 200 bestselling editions in 20 languages in more than 190 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel.


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Got bias? Pompeo gave a 'divisive' speech, which implies two kinds of insiders were divided

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Let’s just say that I saw — in social media and in personal emails — two very different kinds of comments about the recent speech that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered on the subject of human rights.

Quite a few people, as always, wanted to argue about the contents of the speech itself, especially its urgent emphasis on religious freedom. That’s understandable, in light of waves of images coming out of China of blindfolded Uighur Muslims being shipped off to training camps.

Others were upset about the nature of the relatively short New York Times report about the speech, which ran with this rather blunt lede:

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a divisive speech … calling for the United States to ground its human rights policy more prominently in religious liberty and property rights.

To cut to the chase, some folks were upset by the inclusion of the word “divisive,” saying that this was a loaded, biased word to use in a lede framing the contents of a hard-news story.

Meanwhile, I was actually intrigued by the word “divisive” for a rather different reason, one directly linked to debates about objectivity and fairness in journalism.

You see, if a speech is “divisive” that would imply that people who heard the speech were divided, in terms of their views of its contents. It’s hard to cover a “divisive” speech without presenting accurate, fair-minded content about the views of people on both sides of that divide. Does that make sense?

The problem with the Times peace — #DUH — is that it contains zero input from people who support the views presented by Pompeo and, thus, would be willing to provide information and input that would explain the speech from their point of view.

Maybe this is one of those cases in which there was only one point of view worth quoting, in terms of reacting to Sec. Pompeo’s words?


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This week's podcast: Bari Weiss and the influence of woke orthodoxy at the New York Times

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When I read the Bari Weiss resignation letter, I knew (#DUH) that it represented an important development at The New York Times and, thus, in American journalism.

I thought that for legal reasons linked to the omnipresent newsroom reality called Slack — the software program that businesses use for in-house discussions, memos and chatter.

Please read the following comments from Weiss — in a letter to the publisher of the Times — and pretend that you are a lawyer who specializes in civil lawsuits claiming workplace discrimination and verbal violence.

My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public.

If Weiss sues the Times, will her legal team — during the discovery process — be able to access those Slack files? How many posts did she save to back her case? Could Times leaders claim a right to privacy there, after years of doing coverage based on internal communications in other offices?

Big questions, but are they linked to religion — other than the Weiss claims that some of her colleagues kept asking why she was “writing about the Jews again”? Was there material here for a “Crossroads” podcast?

As it turned out, there was lots to talk about (click here to tune that in). The key word in the discussion? That would be “orthodoxy.”


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Talkin' Charlie Daniels 2.0: Country music is a mix of Sunday morning and Saturday night

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There’s this old saying here in Tennessee: When you’re talking about country music, you have to deal with stuff that happens on Saturday night and on Sunday morning.

The first person I heard say that was Naomi Judd and, well, she would know a thing or two about that. However, I don’t think that soundbite of wisdom originated with her. That would, for example, help explain the music of Hank Williams. Ditto for Willie Nelson. How about Dolly Parton?

You can put Charlie Daniels in there, as well. This leads me to the podcast conversation I had this week with Eric Metaxas, who has been a friend for 20 years or so. Please note that this goes way back before Donald Trump decided to enter politics.

Metaxas and I agree on many things and we disagree on a few things, too. But we care deeply about what happens when religious issues collide with the news. Eric tends to focus on the end product, while — as someone who has worked in newsrooms — tend to focus on the process.

You see, in the newsrooms I have worked in there have been lots of people who “get” Saturday night, by which I mean the rough-and-tumble topics (including politics) that folks hash out in honky-tonks. There are also a few newsroom pros who “get” what happens on Sunday morning, as in the world of religion.

When it comes time to write about the life of a person like country-rock superstar Charlie Daniels, what ends up in print largely depends on who is assigned to cover the story. That usually offers a window into the worldview of newsroom managers, just as much as it does reporters.

I was stunned when the Nashville Tennessean obit for Daniels viewed his life through the lens of politics and the Trump era (oh, and music). This affected what many news consumers read all over Tennessee, since Gannett now runs this state’s dominant newspapers (including my local paper in Knoxville).

My concern about that obit led to this post: “There was more to Charlie Daniels than politics and even his music (hint: 'I'll Fly Away').” This part of the piece jumped out at me:

… Daniels undoubtedly had many other passions. A staunch supporter of U.S. troops and veterans, he spent much of his career traveling overseas to play for service members in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. …

For the last four years, hardly a day went by without Daniels sharing this message on his Twitter account: “22 VETERANS COMMIT SUICIDE EVERY DAY!!”

On the platform, the man who sang 1980's confrontational "In America" solidified his reputation as one of the most outspoken figures in country music. In daily posts, he would decry abortion as “murder,” ask fans to “pray for the blue,” and declare that “Benghazi ain’t going away.”


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