Methodists

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Atlantic feature on Francis Collins covers lots of COVID-19 territory, but gets the faith angle, too

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One of the most important religion stories in America right now are the tensions inside many religious organizations — usually between high-ranking clergy and laypeople in the pews — over the extreme forms of “social distancing” that are shutting down worship services or, at best, sending them online.

Ironically, these tensions would fade, to some degree, if American Christians were willing to listen to some of the coronavirus lessons learned by believers in other parts of the world, especially Asia. Click here for a recent GetReligion post on that topic.

Like it or not, these arguments are also being shaped by politics, more than theology, as political scientist and mainline Baptist pastor Ryan Burge has been demonstrating in some of his recent work dissecting some older poll information. See the recent post entitled, “Faith in quarantine: Why are some people praying at home while others flock to pews?”

At the same time, the pew-level arguments about COVID-19 and congregational life may contain themes that are common in many arguments about faith and science. One way to address that divide — as Clemente Lisi said the other day — is to focus on people of faith whose work in labs and hospitals is helping shape the global response to this crisis. See his GetReligion post: “The quest for religion and science coverage of COVID-19 — in the same news report.”

If GetReligion readers want a strong summary of some of this material — viewed through the lens of science — they can turn to a strong Peter Wehner feature at (#NoSurprise) The Atlantic. Here’s the double-decker headline:

NIH Director: ‘We’re on an Exponential Curve’

Francis Collins speaks about the coronavirus, his faith, and an unusual friendship.

This long, long interview is worth reading — top to bottom. It’s packed with newsy material and how Collins views what is going on. Note, in particular, the reference to remdesivir and the tests that are underway to see if this drug is as effective as it appears to be in fighting, even curing, COVID-19. Can you think of a bigger potential news story right now than that?


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Ryan Burge on unique coronavirus fears in pews of America's aging 'mainline' churches

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Anyone who has worked in a newsroom knows that journalists often have to study the equation 1+1+X=3 and then find the missing X factor that produces “what comes next.”

What am I talking about? Journalists look at one set of facts in the news. Then they study another set of facts that we tend to take for granted or that we have pushed onto the news back burner. When you pay attention to where the two sets of facts overlap — #BOOM — you can see potential headlines.

Right now, the coronavirus crisis is creating all kinds of overlapping sets of facts and many are life-and-death matters. This is shaping the headlines and this trend will only increase.

However, after all of the COVID-19 stories I’ve read in the past week (while 66-year-old me has faced my usual spring sinus woes), none has hit me harder than a Religion News Service essay — “Why mainline Protestants might fear COVID-19 the most” — by political scientist Ryan Burge (also a contributor here at GetReligion). It’s crucial that he is also the Rev. Ryan Burge. He teaches at Eastern Illinois University, but he also a minister in the American Baptist Churches USA. Here is the overture:

I walked through the doors of First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, Illinois, a congregation that I’ve pastored for the last 13 years, and shook hands with the 91-year-old greeter. Afterward, she said to me, “I didn’t know if we should shake hands today.”

I hadn’t even thought about it, but I know that she had.

COVID-19 has now infected more than 100,000 people, killing 4,000 of them across the globe. But, one of the real curiosities is that the mortality rate is dramatically different based on age. The disease takes the life of nearly 15% of the people that it infects over the age of 80.

I find that to be incredibly cruel, especially for my mainline church that has been dwindling in size and increasing in age at a stunning rate. Of our 20 or so active members, four of them are over the age of 90. Another 10 are in their 80s. If COVID-19 becomes a true global pandemic, my church would likely not fare well.


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Ryan Burge on nondenominationalism: This is a strategic piece in many news puzzles

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Since the opening of this site nearly 17 years ago, I have argued — over and over — that the demographic collapse of oldline Protestantism is one of the most important religion-beat stories of our age.

Why? Well, to cite only one factor out of many: It’s hard to imagine evangelicalism playing the huge role that it plays in today’s public square without the decline of the old mainline world’s power and even, to some degree, its prestige. I know that the old “Seven Sisters” of the mainline world still have cultural clout, especially in newsrooms. You can ask Mayor Pete Buttigieg about that.

GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge of Religion in Public has also done some fascinating work looking at data in the mainline world. But the goal of this post is to point journalists and readers to some of his emerging work on another complicated and powerful factor in the American religion marketplace — the swift rise of radically independent, nondenominational churches. Many of these churches are huge it would be totally wrong to believe that this is merely a white evangelical phenomenon.

In a way, the nondenominational churches play a key role in several major stories. One would be the small, but import, decline in Southern Baptist Convention membership totals. Consider this piece of a Religion in Public blog post on that topic:

Are there differences in theological orientation?

The General Social Survey asks respondents about their view of the Bible and offers three choices: the Bible is the word of God and should be taken literally, the Bible is the inspired word of God but should not be taken literally, and the Bible is an ancient book of fables recorded by men. It’s interesting to note that nondenominational Christians stand about halfway between evangelical and mainline Christianity on matters of the Bible. While 44% of nondenominationals think that the Bible is literally true, 16% more of Southern Baptists espouse literalism, while about 16% less of United Methodists are theologically conservative.


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Plug-In: Godtalk is on the rise, as the 2020 White House race sends Democrats to the South

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Americans don’t consider Democratic presidential candidates to be particularly religious, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. But at the end of Tuesday night’s two-hour debate in Charleston, S.C., guess what?

Faith took center stage.

When CBS News co-moderator Gayle King asked each candidate to offer a personal motto, belief or favorite quote, at least three of the seven made specific religious references.

“Every day, I write a cross on my hand to remind myself to tell the truth and do what’s right, no matter what,” said Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmentalist who touts “creation care.” An Episcopalian, he previously has explained his motivation for the daily drawing of the Jerusalem cross.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren tied her motto directly to the New Testament, quoting from the King James Version: “It's Mathew 25, and that is, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these, the least of thy brethren, ye have done it unto me.’

“For me, this is about how we treat other people and how we lift them up,” added the Massachusetts senator, who was raised Methodist.

As reported by Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins, Warren told a group of faith leaders Wednesday morning: “I will let you in on a little secret: If you think I do all right in the debates, it’s because Rev. Culpepper prays over me before I go out.” She was referring to the Rev. Miniard Culpepper, her pastor at Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Boston.

Back at the debate, Pete Buttigieg said that while he’d never impose his religion on anybody (like Steyer, he’s an Episcopalian), scripture guides him.

“I seek to live by the teachings that say if you would be a leader, you must first be a servant,” said Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind. “And, of course, the teaching, not unique to the Christian tradition, but a big part of it, that holds that we are to treat others as we would be treated.”

Buttigieg, who is married to a man, faces a challenge in South Carolina’s Saturday primary: black Christians who may be wary of a gay candidate.


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Members, money and math: Are sex-abuse lawsuits the only cause of Scouting woes?

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When it comes to the ongoing crisis facing Scouting — previously the Boy Scouts of America — it’s obvious that the big headline right now is the decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

I get that. However, I would like to ask a question once again about this complex story about an organization that, for decades, was a powerful sign of unity in mainstream American culture.

Has this bankruptcy been caused by waves of child-abuse allegations, alone? See the wording in the headline atop a massive USA Today feature the other day: “Boy Scouts files Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of thousands of child abuse allegations.”

Here’s another basic question: Would Scouting leaders be in better financial shape if their membership totals were way up above 4 million, where they were in the 1970s, as opposed to just under 2 million participants today? Would Scouting be better off if supporters in many large conservative religious groups — think the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and many Southern Baptist congregations — hadn’t hit the exit doors in the past decade or so? Do the math?

Yes, note that there is a religion-news component to this missing part of the story. If Scouting is going to survive, who will host these activities and provide the volunteers (and children) they need to thrive?

There is next to nothing about this side of the story in that long USA Today feature. Here is the overture:

Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy protection … amid declining membership and a drumbeat of child sexual abuse allegations that have illuminated the depth of the problem within the organization and Scouts’ failure to get a handle on it.

After months of speculation and mounting civil litigation, the Chapter 11 filing by the scouting organization's national body was unprecedented in both scope and complexity. It was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware overnight.

The exact effects on Boy Scouts' future operations are unknown, leading to speculation about the organization's odds for survival, the impact on local troops and how bankruptcy could change the dynamic for abuse survivors who have yet to come forward.

The story never focuses on membership trends and some of the changes in Scouting that critics link to the falling numbers.


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Plug-In: How the SBC sex abuse scandal turned a city hall reporter into a religion writer

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Robert Downen almost burned out on newspapers and went into the insurance business.

Instead, the talented journalist, now 28, stuck it out and spearheaded what the Religion News Association chose as the No. 1 religion story of 2019.

I’m talking about the Houston Chronicle’s bombshell investigation that revealed more than 700 victims of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention and spurred reforms by the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Come April, Downen’s work on the “Abuse of Faith” project could earn him and his colleagues a Pulitzer Prize. For now, it has resulted in a new gig for the former City Hall reporter. As of last week, he’s covering religion full time for the Houston newspaper. This is wonderful news for Downen and Chronicle readers.

“Mr. Downen has already demonstrated the importance of the beat with his impactful investigative work,” said Peter Smith, the RNA’s president and the veteran religion writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Houston will benefit from his attention to the religiously diverse population of this major American city.”

Texas’s largest daily newspapers — including the Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram — all used to have full-time Godbeat pros.

But no more. At the Chronicle, Downen steps into an important role that has been unfilled for a while. (Here’s hoping those other papers decide to keep up with the competition.)


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Big news decades in the making: Why are United Methodists finally going to divorce?

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THE QUESTION:

Why is the large United Methodist Church preparing to split in May?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

One of 2020’s major news events occurs May 5-15 when delegates in Minneapolis decide whether and how to break up the large United Methodist Church (UMC). The simple answer to why is that long-running conservative-vs.-liberal differences proved irreconcilable when it comes to sexual morality in general, and homosexuality in particular.  But there’s much more to be said.

The stakes are high, since the UMC is America’s second-largest Protestant denomination and biggest of the so-called “mainline” groups, which are long-established, predominantly white, active in ecumenical organizations, and allow more flexibility on belief than conservative “evangelicals.” The UMC has dealt with the gay issue for 48 years, during which membership slid from 10.3 million to 7 million. Continual and enervating haggles doubtless contributed to membership shrinkage in all of “mainline” Protestantism, even as U.S. culture and politics shifted toward gay toleration following the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

The UMC’s debate began soon after it was founded in a 1968 merger between the Methodist Church and the smaller Evangelical United Brethren Church. An official commission was appointed to collate the uniting groups’ teachings on a range of topics and report to the new denomination’s first General Conference in 1972. (The Guy covered this Atlanta event for Time magazine).

The commission proposed approval of the statement that “homosexuals no less than heterosexuals are persons of sacred worth, who need the ministry and guidance of the church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship which enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. Further, we insist that all persons are entitled to have their human and civil rights ensured.”

Conservatives did not dispute those concepts but were wary, and seemed befuddled during floor debate. Then Texas lawyer Donald Hand jotted down wording, ran it past a state Supreme Court justice, and offered this amendment: “we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian doctrine.” The spur-of-the-moment insert passed, and remains on the books to this day.


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This week's podcast: They shoot (or shun) old United Methodists, don't they?

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Before we get to the story (AP headline: “Struggling Minnesota church asks older members to go away”) behind this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), I would like to share a parable.

It’s about some elderly Lutherans and an old hymnal.

In the early 1980s, while working for The Charlotte News (RIP), I wrote a feature story about the last congregation in town that was resisting the use of a new hymnal prepared for the churches that merged to form the progressive Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Everyone called the “Service Book and Hymnal” the “red book,” and emerging ELCA elites thought it was old fashioned. Thus, the modernized “Lutheran Book of Worship” came out in 1978. It was the “green book.”

At this Charlotte church, I met with an older man who led the fight to retain the “red book.” He had a long list of reasons — historical and theological — for why the old hymnal and prayer book was superior to the new. A teacher by trade, he was very articulate and calm.

When the interview was over, we walked the center aisle toward the foyer and main exit. At the last pew, he stopped and picked up a battered red hymnal. Tears began running down his cheeks.

“I married my wife with this book,” he said. “Our children were baptized with this book. I buried my wife with this book. … They are not going to take it away from me.”

Forget his long list of defenses for the “red book.” What I was hearing was a cry from his heart, as well as his head. Church officials had ruled that his faith — his life — was out of date and he was hurting.

With that in mind, think about the press coverage that grew out of a Twin Cities Pioneer Press story that ran with this headline: “Cottage Grove church to usher out gray-haired members in effort to attract more young parishioners.” Here’s a key passage that captures the tone:


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Tips for mainstream journalists as they grapple with America's growing religious complexity

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Last month, the Pew Research Center issued an innovative analysis of 49,719  sermons delivered between last April 7 and June 1 in 6,431 U.S. congregations that were posted online. This report made a bit of news and is worth perusing if you missed it (click here).

 This Guy Memo recommends to fellow writers that a useful appendix to that document (click here for .pdf) deserves more than a glance. It details Pew’s standard system for “classifying congregations by religious tradition,” with 244 specific identities cited in interviewing, grouped into 19 categories.

Pew makes a major contribution to analysis of American religion with its frequent polling practice of pushing to get respondents'  specific identities and affiliations beyond the usually unhelpful “Protestant” vs. “Catholic” approach of old-fashioned polling.

What kind of Protestant?

For that matter, what kind of, say, Presbyterian (tmatt shows a blitz of options here)?

Are you an active or nominal churchgoer?

With the media frenzy over religion and politics, polls nowadays at least usually ask Protestants whether they self-identify as “evangelical” or not, whatever that word means.

When Pew asks poll respondents about the specific congregation they affiliate with, it then helpfully lumps the Protestants into the three main categories of “Evangelical,” “Mainline” and “Historically Black.” These three groups are distinct not only on religion but in social and political terms. Writers are likely to be less perplexed by Pew’s other categories of Catholic, Orthodox Christian, “other Christian,”  “Mormon” (there’s that controversial word again!), Jehovah’s Witness, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, “other faiths,” "miscellaneous" and “unclassifiable.”   

The following examples from Pew’s Protestant taxonomy will indicate some of the difficulties with America’s astonishing religious variety, particularly for those new to religion writing.


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