Pentecostal-Charismatics

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Jericho march in DC: Coming-out party for a movement journalists haven't really covered

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There is a massive cat fight going on right now among evangelical and Pentecostal Christians that mainstream religion reporters have all but ignored.

Other than one story by Religion News Service — that ran mainly because famed Southern Baptist Bible teacher Beth Moore has gotten involved — there’s been little coverage on the schism between two evangelical camps as to whether President Donald Trump won or lost last month’s election.

Wait, you say. The electoral college voted Monday that Trump decisively lost, right? And all evangelicals love Trump. Right?

Not so fast.

Turn your attention to the folks attending a “Jericho march” in Washington DC last Saturday where a mix of evangelical Protestants, Catholics and Messianic Jews claimed that President Trump had indeed won the election (but it was stolen) and that somehow, miraculously, God would see to it that he, not Joe Biden, will be inaugurated next month. This might require use of military force or militias.

Every religion reporter should have watched this rally; if not all of it, at least in part to see the most poisonous marriage of religion and politics I’ve seen in 40-plus years on the beat.

I don’t usually lead with an opinion piece, but veteran religious-liberty activist David French, a #NeverTrump evangelical, sums it up best here at The Dispatch:

This is a grievous and dangerous time for American Christianity. The frenzy and the fury of the post-election period has laid bare the sheer idolatry and fanaticism of Christian Trumpism.

A significant segment of the Christian public has fallen for conspiracy theories, has mixed nationalism with the Christian gospel, has substituted a bizarre mysticism for reason and evidence, and rages in fear and anger against their political opponents — all in the name of preserving Donald Trump’s power.

I’ll explain the “bizarre mysticism” part in a moment. It has to do with the Pentecostals and charismatics, starting with the president’s pastor, the Rev. Paula White, who have prophesied Trump’s victory in 2020. I wrote about this trend a few weeks ago here and it’s basic reading for anyone trying to understand this movement.

Back to the French essay:


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New podcast: What's God got to do with it? There's more to Hillsong drama than celebrities

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Nearly 40 years ago, I wrote a story for The Charlotte Observer about a rapidly growing megachurch on the south side of town. Yes, there were megachurches back then. In fact, there were already academics studying the factors that turned ordinary churches into megachurches.

Hang in there with me, because I’m working my way to the topic at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focuses on the New York Times coverage of the fall of that hip Hillsong preacher in New York City.

Anyway, this Charlotte church was fascinating because it had strong Presbyterian roots and its creation was linked to splits that were already taking place in the world of mainline Protestantism. This was not a rock-band-and-lasers church. It was offering conservative Reformed-Calvinist thought with a style that a bit more suburban than your ordinary Presbyterian congregation.

It was clear, at least to me, that the preaching was the key to this story. This was a mainline-esque church where they were still talking about salvation, sin, heaven and hell — all in a dramatic, but intelligent way. So I ended my long feature story with a big chunk of a sermon, built on images of heaven and the end of all things. This led into an altar call and more people streaming forward to join the church.

That works, when you’re in Billy Graham’s hometown. Bit didn’t work for a key editor. One newsroom wit once said that this particular journalist “grew up Unitarian, but then he backslid.” He wanted that ending removed. I stood my ground and — here’s the point — argued that what this church was proclaiming, in terms of doctrine and faith, was a crucial element in its success. This wasn’t just a story about politics, real estate and zoning laws. The editor just couldn’t GET IT. A short version of the ending made it into print.

So back to Hillsong. During the five years that I did some part-time teaching in New York City (on the ground there eight weeks or so, each year), I had lots of students who went to Hillsong. They talked about the music. They talked a lot about the preaching. Yes, they talked about the excitement of being in that crowd and feeling like they were part of all that.

It was clear to me that this Hillsong operation — in the world’s Alpha City — was a big story.

The journalism question is this: To what degree should the faith content at Hillsong, and even the DNA of sermons by the Rev. Carl Lentz, play a significant part of a story about Hillsong NYC and the scandal that took down its leader?


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Old questions about megachurch authority: New York Times dips into Hillsong sins

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What brand of Christianity is offered at Hillsong Church? Does that matter?

Basically, it’s a slightly tamed version of evangelical Christianity, blended with Gen X pop-rock music, delivered by talented preachers with tattoos and ripped jeans. And then there are the celebrities who show up from time to time — which really helps create viral social-media stuff.

That’s the formula readers encounter in a must-read New York Times feature that ran the other day, when what was already an important story about evangelicals in the Big Apple gained the kind of editorial punch provided by sex, scandal and ties to Justin Bieber. Here’s the double-decker headline on this latest story by religion-beat pro Ruth Graham:

The Rise and Fall of Carl Lentz, the Celebrity Pastor of Hillsong Church

A charismatic pastor helped build a megachurch favored by star athletes and entertainers — until some temptations became too much to resist.

All of the glamour and celebrity details are important and valid. However, there is another angle of this story that is totally missing. The words “Assemblies of God” do not appear anywhere in this lengthy Times feature.

Truth is, Hillsong grew out of the Assemblies of God, an important Pentecostal and charismatic Christian flock with about 70 million members around the world. And why did Hillsong cut its ties to the Assemblies, other than a yearning for independence from denominational authorities and perhaps to erase a some bad memories?

Hold that thought, because we will come back to it. Here is a crucial chunk of summary material containing the important themes that provide the structure for this Times piece:

Even in the contemporary era of megachurches, Hillsong stands apart. Founded in Australia under a different name in the 1980s, its great innovation was to offer urban Christians a religious environment that did not clash with the rest of their lives.

At a time when many Americans have abandoned regular churchgoing, Hillsong attracts thousands of young churchgoers through soaring music and upbeat preaching. If anything, it is cooler than everyday life, with celebrities like the actor and singer Selena Gomez and the N.B.A. star Kevin Durant showing up at Sunday services.

By now, Hillsong is not just a church, but a brand.


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Good grief! Why won't Hispanics vote like they're supposed to? (With Axios think piece)

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All together now: Good grief!

The other day I shared my frustration with readers, after enduring another elite newsroom story about the “shocking” trends among Hispanic voters in the 2020 elections. It turned out that quite a few Hispanics didn’t vote for Democrats the way that they were supposed to and it wasn’t just Cubans in Miami.

Of course there were economic issues involved. Of course there were efforts to paint Democrats as “socialists” or worse, using labels that really scare lots of voters in conservative Hispanic households (including Cubans, of course).

Of course, there are “religion ghosts” lurking in many of those memories of life in the old country.

Anyway, I wrote a post with this headline: “One more time — Why can't Democrats count on Hispanics, etc., to vote the way they should?” I noted that GetReligion has been running posts on this topic ever since the 2016 campaign in Florida, when there was evidence that evangelical Latinos helped make Donald Trump a winner there. As I said earlier this week:

There’s more to this story than Cubans in Miami. Reporters need to visit megachurches in and around Orlando. Also, if you have ever lived in Texas, you know that the political lives of third- and fourth-generation Hispanics is rather different than those of more recent arrivals. And, again, look for church ties. …

Now the editors need to ponder this truth: Political labels are not enough.

That post was about a New York Times political-desk story that was completely tone deaf to the religion angles in this important topic.

Now, low and behold, that Times team has gone and done it again — this time looking at Miami and its powerful Cuban community, in particular. The double-decker headline states:

How Hispanic Voters Swung Miami Right

Many expected that liberal young Hispanic voters would propel a Democratic wave. But Miami, a city where Hispanics hold the levers of power, confounded expectations.

It was more of the same, of course.


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One more time: Why can't Democrats count on Hispanics, etc., to vote the way they should?

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It’s one of the questions that I have heard the most from readers during the 17 years that GetReligion has been open for business: Why do you write so many posts — over and over — about the same errors and blind spots in mainstream news coverage of religion?”

Come to think of it, I have heard that question more than a few times from GetReligion writers.

Well, there are several reasons for this. We tend to write posts over and over when:

(1) The subject of these stories is really important in national or international news.

(2) The error, or the religion-news “ghost” we see, is really obvious and important.

(3) These errors are being made by journalists who are not religion-beat pros (think political-desk folks covering stories linked to religion). This points to the need for newsroom managers to hire more religion-news pros or to allow a religion-beat specialist to assist in reporting on topics of this kind.

So here we go again. The double-decker headline in The New York Times proclaimed:

Liberals Envisioned a Multiracial Coalition. Voters of Color Had Other Ideas.

Democrats may need to rethink their strategy as the class complexities and competing desires of Latino and Asian-American demographic groups become clear.

If you have followed GetReligion for the past four years, you know that we have noted — many times — the rising importance of Hispanic evangelicals, including what appeared to be a strategic role in the 2016 election in Florida. There’s more to this story than Cubans in Miami. Reporters need to visit megachurches in and around Orlando.

Also, if you have ever lived in Texas, you know that the political lives of third- and fourth-generation Hispanics is rather different than those of more recent arrivals. And, again, look for church ties.

Anyway, this latest Times story does deserve some praise for an accurate, and rare, use of “liberal” in a headline. Now the editors need to ponder this truth: Political labels are not enough. Here is an early summary of the facts in this totally faith-free feature, which focus on the failure of a pro-affirmative action push in California:


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Even in 2020, Bobby Ross, Jr., has a reason to give thanks (plus week's top religion reads)

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For decades, my mother, Judy Ross, has made the best Thanksgiving feast on the planet.

I’m talking about a mammoth spread of turkey, chicken and dressing, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, green beans, cranberry sauce and steaming hot rolls — plus carrot cake, chocolate pie and other homemade desserts that fill an entire table.

Amazingly, this big meal comes only a few hours after a “light” holiday breakfast that always includes fried and scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy, sausage, bacon and pancakes with chocolate syrup.

What am I thankful for? Well, for one thing, that I’ve never suffered a heart attack after all that I eat on this particular day. But seriously, I’m grateful for Mom — a kind, loving Christian woman who has spent her entire life serving other people.

Even before a recent mishap, Thanksgiving was shaping up to be a different experience for the extended Ross family in this crazy year. With concerns about big indoor gatherings contributing to the spread of COVID-19, crowding all the brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandbabies and great-grandbabies into Mom and Dad’s home seemed unwise.

But then my iPhone buzzed on a recent Monday morning, and my sister Christy Fichter’s face flashed on the screen. Read the full story.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Madison Cawthorn arrives in Washington: This is a fascinating interview with a controversial 25-year-old Republican congressman-elect from western North Carolina.

The piece by the Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel contains a whole lot of juicy religious details, such as Cawthorn — a nondenominational Christian who comes from a family of “true frickin’ believers” — talking about his desire to convert Muslims and Jews.

Read more on that angle from GetReligion’s Terry Mattingly.

2. The evangelical reckoning begins: As the Election 2020 post-op continues, The Atlantic’s Emma Green ponders with megachurch pastor Andy Stanley how to pursue faith over politics.


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2020 vote again: Various religion factors still baffle news-media pros and the Democrats

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Against all odds -- and against the information in polls -- Donald Trump-era Republicans had a pretty good year in ballot boxes.

A norm-bashing president won 47.6% of the popular vote, came fairly close in the Electoral College, and apparently carried 24 of the 50 states. The GOP has a good shot at a Senate majority, with the two Georgia runoffs on Jan. 5. Gains in the U.S. House give it 48% of the seats. The party added to its majority among governors and its crucial grass-roots advantage in chambers and seats in state legislatures.

Pondering such results, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni confessed that mainstream media colleagues "keep being blinded by our own arrogance" while "extrapolating from our own perceptions."

You think? Among the varied factors shaping U.S. politics, Democrats and the media often muff religion's influence in the flyover turf between the Delaware River and Sierra Nevada mountains and reaching south to the border.

Job One for pundits and political consultants will be figuring why Joe Biden carried 63% of Hispanics as a whole, but Trumpublicans ate into their Democratic margins in Florida and Texas.

A Washington Post 1,800-worder depicted the remarkable red shift along the Texas border with Mexico — but merely hinted at the impact of religious networking and such issues as abortion, including Protestants as well as Catholics. GetReligion has been covering that trend for four years of more. Here’s two sample posts: “Concerning Hispanic evangelicals, secret Trump voters and white evangelical women in Georgia” and “New podcast: Whoa! An old religion-beat story heated up the politics of Florida in 2020.”

One MSM figure who gets it is Richard Just, editor of the Washington Post Magazine, who has been exploring his Reform Judaism more seriously in recent years. He wrote Oct. 28 that "religion is fundamentally a mystery" and a profound source of "existential uncertainty" that can "value, even celebrate, contradictions" and thereby overcome the nasty divisiveness that imperils American democracy.


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Who's covering this? Are charismatics and Pentecostals behind Trump's refusal to concede?

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On Saturday night, while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were acknowledging the cheers of a nation, a spiritual battle was going on in Apopka, Fla.

The crowd gathered at Paula White-Cain’s City of Destiny Church was clearly dispirited at the events of the day; a day that various segments of the Pentecostal/charismatic world had declared would never happen because God would make sure that His chosen instrument, President Donald Trump, would get a second term.

“Keep on believing,” White told the crowd. “There are processes at work. …Don’t get distracted by the voices of the media. Prayer brings the will of God to pass. This is a day of rejoicing. Whenever God is moving, it’s a day of rejoicing.

“We break every spirit of mockery right now. What matters is not what man says, but what God says.”

It was her fourth day of prayer meetings since Election Day to “decree” Trump’s coming victory. At one point, her son, Bradley Knight, said he will quit the ministry if Trump is not elected.

White, as many of you know, is Trump’s highest profile pastor, so we’re not talking about a minor personality here. She is arguably America’s most powerful female religious figure. She is — acting as the spiritual force behind Trump — a key figure who is refusing to concede the election to Biden.

In social media, people are talking about this like crazy. In the news?

Her first stab at praying Trump into a second term got treated as a joke by media who hadn’t a clue of what she was trying to do. They did listen to her words, which is why she’s quoted as accusing demons of rigging the election.

Yep, she did say that.

It all started when RightWingWatch posted a video of White shouting “the Lord says it is done” on Nov. 5 about Trump’s reelection. A sample of her prayers, which read like battle orders asking God to take down Biden votes, are as follows. She prayed that:

“… every demonic confederacy against the election…against who You have declared to be in the White House … we come against people working in high levels right now.

Let your hand establish the outcome of this income … for I hear the sound of victory, I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory.


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Podcast: Whoa! An old religion-beat story heated up the politics of Florida in 2020

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If you have followed the religion beat for several decades, you know that one of the most important trends has been the rising numbers of Hispanics — in Latin America and in the United States — who have converted to various forms of Protestantism. Check out this huge study by the Pew Research Center on the Pentecostal side of that trend.

But that’s just, you know, religion stuff. That kind of information isn’t really real until it affects something important — like politics. Right?

That brings us, once again, to the closer-than-expected 2020 showdown between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And, no doubt about it, the Washington Post political desk was impressed with the many hooks that GOP leaders used to reel in lots of Hispanic voters in Florida, which is supposed to be the ultimate multicultural swing state in American politics.

The story considered many different angles, from the usual stress on Cuban conservatism to talk of how immigrants from troubled lands in South America may have been swayed by warnings about “socialism” and images of mobs in major-city streets crashing into businesses and public buildings. The headline focused on one location: “Miami-Dade Hispanics helped sink Biden in Florida.”

There was, however, an important topic missing in this story. Want to guess what that was? This was — no surprise — one topic discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Click here to tune that in.

This political trend in Florida was so important that the Post produced another story about it: “Democrats lose ground with Latino voters in Florida and Texas, underscoring outreach missteps.” Readers who dug deep into this piece finally hit the following:

The Democratic Party’s failure in Florida to build a permanent campaign infrastructure to target Latinos left the Biden campaign at an early disadvantage, said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster and strategist in the state. Amandi said he has warned Democratic leaders about this election cycle after election cycle, but has seen little change.

Although Cuban Americans, who tend to live in Miami-Dade County, have historically been Republican-leaning voters, their commitment to the GOP is not monolithic. Meanwhile, Puerto Ricans, whose numbers have grown in the state in recent years, are often assumed to be Democrats. That is not always the case among many evangelical Protestants and those who have recently moved from Puerto Rico.

If you missed that three-word phrase — “many evangelical Protestants” — there was this sentence later:


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