Pentecostal-Charismatics

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Covering Mark Driscoll and life after Mars Hill: Why isn't this a mainstream news story?

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Covering Mark Driscoll and life after Mars Hill: Why isn't this a mainstream news story?

It’s been nearly seven years since Mars Hill Church, the fabulously successful multi-campus evangelical flock in Seattle, imploded when its pastor, Mark Driscoll, resigned. The church’s nearly 13,000-person Sunday attendance totals quickly dissolved, its headquarters and branch campuses were closed or sold.

I moved to the Seattle suburbs the following summer and had a long conversation with one of the church’s leaders. I’ve rarely turned down a chance to do a story, but it was clear that covering this mess would take up more time and emotional energy than I had time for.

Dodging a lawsuit that accused him of misappropriating $30 million worth of members’ tithes, Driscoll ended up moving to Scottsdale, Ariz., (whose sunny clime is like Shangri-la to many rain-drenched Seattleites) and starting a new church plant in 2016 called Trinity Church.

Recently, a number of stories have come out about Driscoll’s heavy-handed leadership and dysfunctional pastoring at Trinity that sounded all too similar to what went down in Seattle. The latest just came out Monday in Christianity Today:

Nearly 40 elders who served with Mark Driscoll during the final years of Mars Hill Church are publicly calling for him to step down from his current pastoral position and seek reconciliation with those he has hurt.

“We are troubled that he continues to be unrepentant despite the fact that these sins have been previously investigated, verified, and brought to his attention by his fellow Elders, prior to his abrupt resignation” from Mars Hill, they wrote in a statement released today to CT. “Accordingly, we believe that Mark is presently unfit for serving the church in the office of pastor.”

Christianity Today is one of two outlets that have been following the Mars Hill story a lot recently and I’ll get to CT’s podcast series in a moment.

But first I should first mention investigative journalist Julie Roys’ two podcasts. She’s been following the Mars-Hill-in-Arizona beat for some time, but her latest is an act of war. From the transcript of Inside the Driscoll Cult Part 1:

The cultic activities of Mark Driscoll and The Trinity Church have escalated to a whole new level. As Julie’s guests describe on this edition of The Roys Report, Driscoll is now sending cease and desist letters, threatening to sue whistleblowers.


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Did January 6 attack on Capitol highlight 'D.I.Y. Christianity' as decade's next big thing? 

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Did January 6 attack on Capitol highlight 'D.I.Y. Christianity' as decade's next big thing? 

As investigations of the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot proceed, there's an intriguing religion angle for the media to explore. Welcome to the emerging prominence of "D.I.Y. Christianity" (that is, Do It Yourself).

After some of the Capitol rioters uttered odd prayers and waved religious placards, The New York Times reported that they demonstrated "some parts of white evangelical power." GetReligion boss tmatt then asked whether the mob included any representatives of actual "power" seen in the denominations, megachurches, parachurch ministries, schools or even the flocks of well-publicized Trumpite preachers.

(Despite the absence of evangelical leaders, freelancer Steve Rabey reports that several obscure Protestant pastors do face charges over January 6.)

Washington Post stalwart Michelle Boorstein revisited January 6 as a religious phenomenon and caught the moment by applying the D.I.Y. label not just for certain Capitol rioters but a broader trend emphasized by Adam Greenway, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The D.I.Y. phenomenon could become the decade's next big thing in religion, a sizable groundswell of extremely individualistic or eccentric Americans who identify as Christians but are disconnected from conventional churches or even any definable religious fellowship or tradition.

Such radical individualism follows, of course, years of significant growth for non-denominational local congregations that are rigidly independent and lack ties or accountability with other Christians. This growing segment of U.S. evangelical Protestantism is nearly impossible to count accurately and thus its significance has often been neglected by journalists and scholars. GetReligion has been underlining the importance of this trend for years.

The Post cited analysts who believe one element on January 6 was that "institutional religion is breaking apart, becoming more individualized and more disconnected from denominations, theological credentials and oversight."


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Hot Takes: Ryan Burge on return of debates about evangelicals and QAnon (etc.)

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Hot Takes: Ryan Burge on return of debates about evangelicals and QAnon (etc.)

Well, Bobby Ross, Jr., is taking the week off.

Thus, I went looking for another list of religion-news material featuring short punchy takes on lots and lots of different topics.

I settled on this VICE News chat with GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge — that must-follow guy on Twitter who is also well known for his work at the Religion in Public weblog.

To say that this punchy little video report includes some Hot Takes is an understatement. Yes, there is a flashback to the whole QAnon and evangelicalism wars.

However, let me stress that there are some producers at VICE News who are sincerely interested in the complex world of American evangelicalism and they are doing their homework. I know this because I sent about three hours with one of their production teams several months ago and I know the wide range of materials that we covered.

That video is still in a vault somewhere. It would be interesting if they turned bites of it into a bullet-list collection of takes similar to this one with the always quotable Burge.

So what shows up in this Burge blast? He put this list out on social media:

Things I discuss in this Vice News video:

QAnon

John Darby

Dispensationalism

Thomas Jefferson as the anti-Christ


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Independent, charismatic churches getting new scrutiny, but do reporters get why people choose them?

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Independent, charismatic churches getting new scrutiny, but do reporters get why people choose them?

It wasn’t that long ago that I was trying to get reporters to wake up to a whole new world of charismatic/Pentecostal churches that are networked into a movement led by modern-day apostles and prophets.

I chaired a panel at a 2017 gathering of religion reporters in Nashville that had two representatives of this movement plus a third person who opposed it. But very few writers caught on. One reason is because it’s so tough to define. Observers and participants can’t even agree on a name. Some call the movement the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and others call it the apostolic/prophetic movement.

Then Jan. 6 happened at the US Capitol. Now it seems as though reporters can’t get enough of asking: Who were these people? Every week now seems to be something new about this movement, like this piece in Christianity Today, which is a fairly decent overview of what’s happened since last fall. The reporter wrung some quotes out of reclusive former prophet Jeremiah Johnson, which is a first.

My one plaint is that the CT piece is several months late, as some of us were reporting on this in April. Plus, given the extra time the reporter had, I would have liked to have seen fresher material. And California evangelist Shawn Bolz should have been dinged for wrongly prophesying the end of the coronavirus back in April 2020. The up note the article ends on doesn’t reflect the reality that the majority of the false prophets out there have not repented nor apologized.

On the other side of the spectrum, the Washington Post has come out with two pieces, one including the “cowboy shaman” so visible in the attack on the Capitol and the other an account of a visit to Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth.

The first piece was an attempt to explain just what these Capitol invaders believe.

Many forces contributed to the attack on the Capitol, including Trump’s false claims of electoral victory and American anger with institutions. But part of the mix, say experts on American religion, is the fact that the country is in a period when institutional religion is breaking apart, becoming more individualized and more disconnected from denominations, theological credentials and oversight.

That has created room for what Yale University sociologist Phil Gorski calls a religious “melee, a free for all.”

I’d definitely agree that it’s everyone for him or herself out there. However, non-denominational churches have been on the scene since the late 1970s. It just took scholars several decades to start tracking them. And do you think the typical church member really cares what the theologians are saying?


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How will this Supreme Court decide, or sidestep, pivotal religious liberty questions?

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How will this Supreme Court decide, or sidestep, pivotal religious liberty questions?

The major U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Fulton v. Philadelphia (.pdf here) allows a Catholic agency to avoid placing foster-care children with same-sex couples. Importantly, the Catholics will place gay children and will place children with gay singles since there's no conscience crisis over defying the church's doctrines on marriage.

For decades there's been confusion and acrimony over the court's applications of the Constitution's ban on government "establishment of religion," but now disputes over the religious "free exercise" clause grab the spotlight. The Fulton ruling sidestepped the heart of this generation's conflagration between religious rights and LGBTQ+ rights and, thus, may even have added logs to the fire.

The justices backed the Catholic claim with what The Economist's headline correctly labeled "The 3-3-3 Court." The narrow technical grounds for the decision enabled the three liberals (Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Maria Sotomayor) to make the ruling unanimous. The conservatives were split between three demanding a thorough overhaul of "free exercise" law (Justice Samuel Alito, in a vigorous 77 pages, joined by Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas) and three unwilling to take the plunge at this time (Chief Justice John Roberts and the two newest members, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett).

Similar caution apparently underlies the court's majority decision this week not to review transgender student Gavin Grimm's victory against his Virginia school over bathroom access.

Journalists should prepare for more years of extensive -- and expensive -- politicking and litigation before the Supreme Court defines -- or decides not to define -- how First Amendment guarantees apply in 21st Century culture.

For those on the religion beat, it is easy to see that this case has hardened the related conflict among major denominations.


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ESPN's paean to Layshia Clarendon offers few details about basketball star's faith claims

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ESPN's paean to Layshia Clarendon offers few details about basketball star's faith claims

Several years ago, I was hiking in the woods on a mountain just outside of Seattle when I ran into two women hiking with an infant. The child was dressed in such a way that you couldn't tell whether it was a boy or girl and when I commented on the cuteness of the child, the women addressed the child as “they.”

Apparently, they’ll let their kid decide on its own which gender it is, an idea that struck me as harmful to the child. A kid needs to know who they are. That’s where I stand on that issue.

But this is, of course, one of the hottest topics in American journalism, and, thus, American life, today. Is gender simply a matter of choice, not DNA or destiny? Could you decide to be male or female simply by lopping off a few body parts or adding them?

Such thoughts came up when I read ESPN’s profile of transgender activist Layshia Clarendon, written by an ESPN staff writer who has posted “they/them” pronouns. As the writer enthused on Twitter: “I've never had the opportunity to write a story about an athlete with whom I share so many identities.” Um, OK. I’m trying to imagine a similar statement from an ESPN reporter covering a traditional religious believer.

I usually don’t go after the motivations of the reporter, but this story went beyond respect and dignity to pure advocacy and the non-subtle hint that those who question this woman’s journey are transphobic haters.

Here is the key for GetReligion readers. This feature also made a real effort to work Clarendon’s faith into the mix, including captions that referred to the basketball player’s belief in God, which is not something you find in most ESPN cover stories.

What exactly is that faith? The story tries to shed some light on that, while skipping over many details.

Getting through this feature is quite convoluted part because the writer’s determination to mix gender pronouns so thoroughly that the reader often could not determine to whom the reporter was referring. I know the article was trying to be sensitive to how Clarendon talks about herself, but what resulted was a jumble. The confusion was, we can assume, part of the message in this sermon.


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Lighthouse parable again: Faith-shaped hole in report on Donald Trump's brush with death

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Lighthouse parable again: Faith-shaped hole in report on Donald Trump's brush with death

Something is missing from that riveting Washington Post report by Damian Paletta and Yasmeen Abutaleb about Donald Trump’s battle with the coronavirus that may have been much more dangerous than the White House team let on.

The headline: “Inside the extraordinary effort to save Trump from covid-19.” This long feature was adapted from the upcoming book “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History.”

This is a story about Trump’s hubris that is, for a change, packed with on-the-record material. Thus, I kept waiting for a specific name to show up — but it never did. I was thinking, of course, about the “lighthouse parable” that I have shared many times here at GetReligion. If you prefer the Sherlock Holmes story about the dog that didn't bark, that will work, too. Here is a flashback to that lighthouse tale:

Once there was a man who lived in a lighthouse on the foggy Atlantic. This lighthouse had a gun that sounded a warning every hour. The keeper tended the beacon and kept enough shells in the gun so it could keep firing. After decades, he could sleep right through the now-routine blasts.

Then the inevitable happened. He forgot to load extra shells and, in the dead of night, the gun did not fire.

This rare silence awoke the keeper, who lept from bed shouting, "What was that?"

Now, in my experience, when religious believers get really sick — especially if they are close to the “critical” stage — they will almost always send for their pastor. In a life-and-death situation ministers are a source of prayer, comfort and, often, sound advice (my late father spent the final decade of his ministry working as a hospital chaplain).

Thus, I kept waiting to see a reference to the Rev. Paula White, the charismatic megachurch leader who Trump supporters frequently called his spiritual advisors (click here for a Julia Duin post on White). There were other clergy who, in this case, were candidates to get a call from the White House, like the Rev. Franklin Graham, perhaps.


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First Baptist in Dallas works to promote COVID-19 vaccines: Was this a big news story?

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First Baptist in Dallas works to promote COVID-19 vaccines: Was this a big news story?

If you have followed news coverage of debates about COVID-19 vaccines, you know that the leaders of churches and major religious denominations — Black and White — have been walking a tightrope on this issue.

Once this subject became politicized — like everything else in American life — there was almost no way to tackle it without causing more tension in their flocks.

Nevertheless, the vast majority of major religious leaders have been doing everything they can to make it possible for more people to safely return to the pews. These efforts have received quite a bit coverage at the local level.

Take, for example, this recent headline in The Dallas Morning News: “Robert Jeffress hopes to combat vaccine fears with First Baptist Dallas’ COVID-19 vaccination effort.” Here is the overture:

To combat vaccine hesitancy among Christian evangelicals, First Baptist Church in Dallas will have a COVID-19 vaccination clinic. …

Senior pastor Robert Jeffress said he hopes the move will encourage people to get shots so more of his 14,000 congregants can come and worship in person.

“Our church will never be what it needs to be until you’re back. The greater risk is the spiritual danger of staying isolated,” Jeffress said in a recent sermon. “I’m not forcing anybody to get the vaccine. That’s your choice. But what I am saying is if you are not back yet, and would like to come back, one option is to take the vaccine, and therefore you don’t have to worry about what other people do or don’t do here in the church.”

Like I said, this was a totally normal local story on this issue.

However, stop and think about this question: Would this have been a bigger story — attracting coverage from TV networks and elite newsrooms such as The New York Times — if Jeffress had taken a stance against the vaccines?

You know it would have been a national story, in part because of this preacher’s past support for former President Donald Trump.


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Movie mogul Tyler Perry preaches tolerance to the woke flock at Oscars 2021

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Movie mogul Tyler Perry preaches tolerance to the woke flock at Oscars 2021

It was just like one of those inspiring Tyler Perry movie scenes when a believer does the right thing and helps a struggler have a come-to-Jesus epiphany.

Perry was walking to his car after some Los Angeles production work when he was approached by homeless woman.

"I wish I had time to talk about judgment," said Tyler, after receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award during the 93rd Academy Awards. "Anyway, I reach in my pocket and I'm about to give her the money and she says: 'Excuse me sir, do you have any shoes?'

"It stopped me cold because I remember being homeless and having one pair of shoes," he added. "So, I took her into the studio. … We're standing there [in] wardrobe and we find her these shoes and I help her put them on. I'm waiting for her to look up and all this time she's looking down. She finally looks up and she's got tears in her eyes. She says: 'Thank you Jesus. My feet are off the ground.' "

Perry, of course, is a movie mogul who has built a 330-acre studio facility in Atlanta used for all kinds of work, including parts of the Marvel epic "The Black Panther." He has created many profitable films of this own, such as "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," "The Family that Preys" and "Madea's Family Reunion," part of a series in which Perry, in drag, plays a pistol-packing, Bible-quoting matriarch at the heart of Black-family melodramas.

It was logical for Perry to receive the Jean Hersholt award, in part because of his rags-to-riches life and his efforts to help churches and nonprofits help the needy. At the same time, it's unlikely that he could ever win a regular Oscar statue since critics and Hollywood elites have long mocked his movies as soapy parables crafted to appeal to ordinary church folks -- Black and White. It isn't unusual, in the final act of Perry movies, for weeping sinners to pull their lives together during Gospel-music altar calls.

Thus, Perry's sermonette was an unusual twist in an Oscar rite packed with political messages and wins by films that few American moviegoers saw or even knew existed.


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