LGBTQ

Podcast: WPost finds a 'good' religion vs. 'bad' religion sermon in small-town Georgia

Podcast: WPost finds a 'good' religion vs. 'bad' religion sermon in small-town Georgia

If you grew up in the Bible Belt or in the heavily churched Midwest, you know that a good sermon is supposed to contain (all together now) “three points and a poem.”

This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on a Washington Post sermon that ran with this headline: “A small-town Georgia preacher fills pews by leaving no one out.

It’s possible that the author of this highly doctrinal news story understood the basics of Southern preaching. Hold that thought, because we will return to it. But first: The Big Idea of this sermon is stated in absolute terms — there is “good” religion and there is “bad” religion. Let they who have ears, let them hear (or whatever the new language is in this case).

I. It is always appropriate to open a sermon with a conversion story that illustrates the preacher’s Big Idea. This grab-a-tissue Washington Post feature could not be more explicit about that:

HARTWELL, Ga. — At night, the worn sign looks like a beacon in the darkness out front of the modest, red-brick Mt. Hebron Baptist Church.

The tired, it reads. The poor. And huddled masses. Welcome home.

In this small town in the rural northeast corner of Georgia, it’s the kind of message that assures Teri Massey she is loved for being who she is — a message 180 degrees from the one she heard in the Baptist church where she spent her teens into her 40s, where her grandfather, father and brother all held leadership positions.

When Massey came out in 2004, shortly after meeting the woman she later would marry, the congregation in that other small Georgia town responded by campaigning to send her to conversion therapy and holding prayer vigils outside her home.

She found Mt. Hebron a few years ago through a friend. Pastor Grant Myerholtz, whose usual preaching attire is T-shirt and jeans, met her and her wife at the door. They listened carefully as he stood in the pulpit and proclaimed: All are welcome.

“It was like this load was off of me,” Massey, 63, recalled last week.

There are good churches and there are bad churches. Got that.

II. This is an age in which churches need to change their doctrines if they want to, well, grow (or at the very least get good coverage from blue-zip-code elite newsrooms).

Thus, this Post story offers a very clear thesis statement as Point II.


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A nuanced look at Portland Archbishop Sample? Journalists aren't coming up with it

A nuanced look at Portland Archbishop Sample? Journalists aren't coming up with it

It must be a trend: Catholic bishops are laying down the law these days on the use of preferred pronouns, cross-dressing and other accoutrements of transgender individuals on their property – and they’re not getting a lot of love from the media over it.

The latest fight is within the Archdiocese of Portland (Ore.), but the dioceses of Des Moines, St. Paul and Minneapolis and Springfield, Ill. have taken similar stands. So I am curious a decision by the Catholic archbishop of Portland has created such a ruckus. Could it be because of the ultra gay-friendly ethos of the area? The Oregonian’s headline made it clear where it stood: “Portland-area Catholic schools are at a crossroads over transgender, nonbinary student rights.”

Hundreds of Portland area families whose children attend Catholic schools are protesting western Oregon Archbishop Alexander Sample’s guidance that schools under the church’s umbrella not recognize transgender and nonbinary students’ pronouns and identities.

Sample quietly released the 17-page document in January, when it was billed as a “teaching and formation resource” and not a mandate for the 41 archdiocesan schools, which stretch from Portland to Medford and include Central Catholic High School and 15 K-8 schools in Portland.

Nowhere in the rest of the piece is the statistic of “hundreds” of families supported although I read elsewhere that more than 1,000 people signed a petition opposing the archbishop.

The news of Catholic resistance to Sample was broken in the middle of Pride Month, a true insult in left-left Portland. (Note: I attended college there, had my first newspaper job in the Portland suburbs, have friends and family there, and I swoop through town at least once or twice a year, so I have more than a glancing knowledge of the place).


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A journalism question that suggests an answer: 'Who's Afraid of Moms for Liberty?'

A journalism question that suggests an answer: 'Who's Afraid of Moms for Liberty?'

For nearly 20 years now, GetReligion has focused on discussions of religion content in what used to be called “hard news,” as in old-school journalism that attempted to do accurate, fair-minded coverage of public events, debates, trends, etc.

Long ago, I was taught that the more controversial and disputed the topic, the harder journalists should strive for “balance” in terms of content about participants on both sides, or all sides, of the debate.

Honest. People used to believe things like that.

Thus, your GetReligionistas have always tried to separate “hard news” from analysis, commentary and even outright public relations.

This brings me to a fascinating news feature in The Free Press, an important online news source that — from my point of view — grew out of the digital, social-media wars inside The New York Times. Founded by Bari Weiss, an old-school liberal, this new publication covers many controversial topics that have been overlooked, ignored or even cancelled in elite newsrooms.

Is The Free Press a “hard news” publication? It certainly publishes lots of new information, using sources that it quotes on the record. Much of the content is analysis, in the style of The Atlantic and similar publications.

In this case, we are talking about a Robert Pondiscio article with this double-decker headline:

Who’s Afraid of Moms for Liberty?

A growing cadre of angry mothers is taking over school boards and winning influence as GOP kingmakers. Why are they being called a ‘hate group’?

The overture makes it clear that, in this case, The Free Press team is interested in the lives and beliefs of the actual members (think “stakeholders”) of this organization, as opposed to the Republican candidates that court them. Ah, but do these groups overlap?

In a breakout session in a windowless conference room at last weekend’s Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warrior Summit” in Philadelphia, Christian Ziegler, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party and father of three school-aged daughters, is stiffening spines. Dozens of attendees, mostly women, are nodding and taking notes as Ziegler explains how to work with local news media. 

“Your product is parental rights. Your product is protecting children and eliminating indoctrination and the sexualization of children. You’re the grassroots. You’re on the ground. You’re the moms, the grandparents, the families that are impacted. The stories you tell help set a narrative,” Ziegler coaches them.


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Podcast: Culture Wars 2023 -- As it turns out, traditional Muslims have children too

Podcast: Culture Wars 2023 -- As it turns out, traditional Muslims have children too

Gentle readers, please allow me to start with a short anecdote from about 15 years ago, during the years when I was teaching journalism a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

I attended a typical off-the-record think tank forum in which lawyers from church-state groups were talking about rising tensions in public, taxpayer funded, institutions. At one point, someone asked a question that sounded something like this: What should public-schools leaders do when approached by parents who want opt-out choices for their children when faced with class activities that clash with the teachings of their faith?

The question, of course, was linked to tensions between public-school leaders and evangelicals, and maybe traditional Catholics (“traditional” in the FBI meaning of the word).

One lawyer gave an answer that was way ahead of its time: School administrators should look at these people and do everything they can to pretend that these parents are Muslims. In other words, pretend these parents are part of a minority faith that public officials respect (Muslims), as opposed to part of a larger faith group that administrators distrust, fear and possibly even loathe (evangelicals).

This was one of two Beltway anecdotes I shared during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focused on a Washington Post story that I have been thinking about during the past week or two. That headline: “Hundreds of Md. parents protest lessons they say offend their faiths.” The Post team appears to have worked hard to keep the main news hook out of that headline and even the lede.

Hundreds of parents demonstrated outside the Montgomery County Board of Education’s meeting … demanding that Maryland’s largest school district allow them to shield their children from books and lessons that contain LGBTQ+ characters.

Still in the dark, right? Keep reading:

The crowd was filled largely with Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox parents, who say the school system is violating their religious rights protected under the First Amendment by not providing an opt-out. Three families have filed a lawsuit against the school system.


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Still news? Media silent on pronouncements from World and National Councils of Churches

Still news? Media silent on pronouncements from World and National Councils of Churches

Who is listening?

Preachers face that question every weekend and it’s vital for strategizing by religious organizations -- or should be. The Religion Guy has lately been pondering a long-running religion-beat puzzle that possibly warrants some analytical articles, or at least reflection on the part of journalists.

Why do U.S. power-brokers, and journalists themselves, pay little or no heed to ardent pronouncements by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC)? After all, the WCC says it represents 352 church bodies in 120 countries that encompass 580 million Christians. The NCC reports its 37 American member bodies include more than 30 million members in 100,000 congregations.

Last year, a Religion Guy Memo promoted media attention to the WCC’s upcoming global Assembly in Germany at the start of its 75th anniversary year. 

Journalists could not have asked for a stronger news peg. Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine was proceeding with hotly disputed blessings from the Moscow leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, by far the WCC’s largest member body, which created a vast humanitarian crisis for fellow Christians in Ukraine.

(That Memo put special focus on the plight facing Metropolitan Hilarion, the Moscow patriarchate’s well-known ecumenical officer and foreign envoy. There were signals that his views on the invasion were quite different than those of Patriarch Kirill, and was soon abruptly “released from his duties” and reassigned to Hungary. Follow-up, anyone?)

The September Assembly stated that it “denounces this illegal and unjustifiable war” and (without naming Russian Orthodoxy) that delegates “reject any misuse of religious language and authority to justify armed aggression.” The meeting also called for “an immediate ceasefire” and “negotiations to secure a sustainable peace” — though at the time some critics figured that stance would undercut Ukraine’s position.

The situation facing the WCC and its Orthodox members surely counts as news, and still does.


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Americans need moving vans? AP says it's politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, etc.

Americans need moving vans? AP says it's politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, etc.

No doubt about it: The rise of the divided states of America is one of the most important news stories of our time, and that has been obvious for several decades now (think red-blue JesusLand cartoons starting in 2000, or thereabouts).

The bottom line: If you don’t own a copy of David French’s 2020 book, “Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation,” then order one right now.

How many times have I quoted that volume’s tense, scary opening sentences? Here’s that passage, again, from my recent red journalism vs. blue journalism piece for the journal Religion & Liberty:

The bottom line: Americans are divided by their choices in news and popular culture, choosing to live in protective silos of digital content. America remains the developing world’s most religious nation, yet its secularized elites occupy one set of zip codes, while most religious believers live in another. These armies share no common standards about “facts,” “accuracy,” or “fairness.”

“It’s time for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality: the continued unity of the United States cannot be guaranteed,” wrote French. At this moment, “there is not a single important cultural, religious, political, or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pulling us apart.”           

The Los Angeles Times published the definitive “This is all about economics, stupid!” piece about this trend, which I discussed in this recent GetReligion post: “Yo, LA Times — Maybe, must maybe, issues of faith, family and culture matter in California?”

The Big Idea in that piece was the truth that, when striving to avoid covering issues of religion and culture, journalists have the option of stressing economic issues, as well as politics, politics, politics. Now, the Associated Press had produced a news feature with a variation on that theme. Headline: “Conservatives go to red states and liberals go to blue as the country grows more polarized.”

This time around, the story does include lots of commentary about “cultural” issues, but culture is defined — quite literally — as politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics, politics. Actually, I may have missed one or two variations on the word “politics” in this AP report.

References to “religion”? Zero. “Faith”? Zip. “Morality?” Nada.


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Podcast: Can journalists imagine 'mirror' cases in which 303 Creative protects liberals?

Podcast: Can journalists imagine 'mirror' cases in which 303 Creative protects liberals?

If you follow Robert P. George in social media, you probably know several things about this legal scholar.

(1) He is a political philosopher and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.

(2) George is a doctrinally conservative Roman Catholic.

(3) He is a skilled Americana musician (think folk, gospel and bluegrass) who plays the banjo and a 12-fret acoustic guitar (I’m a big fan of the latter).

(4) In the public square, he is relentlessly irenic, seeking ways to view issues through the lens of those with whom he disagrees. This approach has been demonstrated during years of joyful and informative pro-tolerance dialogues with his close friend Cornel West, a liberal’s liberal known for decades of provocative classroom work at Princeton, Harvard and Union Seminary.

From a GetReligion point of view, it’s also important that — based at Princeton — George lives right on the edge of what could be called the Archdiocese of The New York Times and he pays close attention to mainstream news coverage of religion and public life.

This is why George played a key role in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which was a follow-up to my recent post with this headline: “After 303 Creative: Can readers find Twitter voices (hello David French) that help us think?”

After the latest wave of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, George posted a Mirror of Justice commentary in which he noted that Times editors seemed remarkable unaware of the actual contents of the majority opinions. The headline on the Gray Lady’s initial 303 Creative story was, in GetReligion terms, a classic: “Web Designer Wins Right to Turn Away Gay People.

The problem was that Justice Neil Gorsuch — author of the court’s landmark Bostock decision (.pdf here) backing trans rights — said the opposite of that in his 303 Creative majority opinion (.pdf here).


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Covering the 303 Creative decision: Why do reporters keep ignoring the fine print?

Covering the 303 Creative decision: Why do reporters keep ignoring the fine print?

Judging from the recent coverage on the US Supreme Court’s decision on 303 Creative v. Elenis, you’d think that a pogrom against LGBTQ Americans is in process.

Many of the headlines came out and said that SCOTUS was allowing businesses to turn away gay customers, period. That’s false and that’s clear in the majority opinion. The truth was that you cannot compel people to create and deliver a message demanded by these customers if you don’t agree with that message (in this case for reasons of religious doctrine and practice).

I’ll start with the Denver Post, in whose backyard the whole case developed.

First, a note to the Post editors: Underneath the headline (“Colorado wedding website designer can refuse gay customers, U.S. Supreme Court rules”) the subhead spells Justice Neil Gorsuch’s name wrong. Being that Gorsuch, the writer of the opinion, is very well known by locals — as he was a longtime Colorado resident before ascending to the high court — the Post might want to correct that.

The First Amendment allows a Colorado graphic designer to refuse to make wedding websites for same-sex couples, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday in a decision that could have a sweeping nationwide impact.

The high court ruled for Littleton graphic artist Lorie Smith, who said her Christian faith prevents her from creating wedding websites for same-sex couples. Smith, who runs the business 303 Creative, wanted to make wedding websites only for straight couples.

I skimmed the article and didn’t see anything about religious beliefs being the reason behind Smith’s decision until well into the piece.

Also, note that — once again, we’re talking about the printed content of the majority decision — declining to do same-sex wedding content is not the same thing as the ability to refuse customers, period.

She challenged Colorado’s public accommodation law, which says that if she offers wedding websites to the public, she must provide them to all customers. Businesses that violate the law can be fined, among other penalties.


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After 303 Creative: Can readers find Twitter voices (hello David French) that help us think?

After 303 Creative: Can readers find Twitter voices (hello David French) that help us think?

It’s been a scary couple of days for post-liberals in America, with two major Supreme Court decisions (one of them unanimous) defending old-liberal concepts of religious liberty and free speech.

When the 303 Creative LLC decision hit the headlines (click here to read the majority opinion), I did something that’s quite rare in my household — I turned on the television and tried to watch mainstream cable-TV news.

Let’s face it: I struggle to understand why we have journalists who want the state to have the power to compel speech (intellectual content in general) in the work of writers, artists, video professionals, etc. But this post isn’t about the content of the news coverage of these decisions.

No, this is a post that I was requested to write after a recent luncheon with clergy, students, faculty and others at the Overby Center at Ole Miss. We kept coming back to a crucial question for news consumers: How do we find a compelling mix of news and commentary — representing different points of view — in an age in which most newsrooms embrace business models in which they tell paying customers exactly what they want to hear?

Here is another way of stating that: How do we find news and commentary that helps us understand the views of people what we need to respect (or at the very least truly tolerate), even when we disagree with them?

This led me to Twitter. I told folks that, when the 303 Creative decision was released, they needed to read whatever First Amendment specialist David French wrote about it. Why? Because I was convinced that he would find a way to parse the opinions and offer insights that made people on both sides of the decision very uncomfortable.

This is, frankly, why I have followed his work for several decades. This is why he is on a short list of people that I follow on Twitter when digging into major news trends and events. Hold that thought, because I will share my current version of that list at the end of this post.

But back to French and the headline on his New York Times column about this SCOTUS decision: “How Christians and Drag Queens Are Defending the First Amendment.”

Told ya.


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