Pentecostal-Charismatics

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NBC News is all over an icky COVID-19 cash scam linked to, well, some kind of 'pastor'

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NBC News is all over an icky COVID-19 cash scam linked to, well, some kind of 'pastor'

In the past decade of so, your GetReligionistas have written a steady stream of posts about how America’s rapidly growing flocks of nondenominational believers have made the vague and complicated world of evangelical/charismatic Christianity even harder for journalists to understand and, thus, cover with some degree of accuracy.

That was complicated, wasn’t it? For more info, surf this massive file of URLs linked to the work of chart-master Ryan Burge and then this recent Memo from religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling, “Story of the Year: Rise of the 'Nons' — put them alongside Nones, NIPs, Nonverts, etc.”

This trend has affected some incredibly important news stories, such as the Jan. 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol and attempts to find justice for victims of clergy sexual abuse.

This brings me to an email that I received the other day from a journalism professor friend that addressed an essential issue in this important NBC News report: “Florida pastor and his son are arrested in alleged $8 million Covid scam.”

This jprof asked this question: “What made him a pastor?” That isn’t an irrelevant question, since this man’s ministerial status is mentioned in the headline and the lede. Here’s the overture:

A Florida pastor and his son were arrested … on charges of fraudulently obtaining more than $8 million in federal Covid relief funds and attempting to use some of the money to buy a luxury home near Walt Disney World. 

Evan Edwards, 64, and his son, Josh, 30, were taken into custody five months after an NBC News report raised questions over why they hadn’t been charged in the alleged scam, which federal prosecutors first identified in court papers in December 2020. 

No one really knows the number of scams that were linked to the billions and billions of government dollars spent in COVID-19 relief programs. It’s a huge story with untold local, regional, state and national angles. International angles? Don’t go there.

Scams linked to religious ministries deserve coverage, obviously, in part because of the hypocrisy angle that reporters may not attach to similar scandals involving businesses and secular nonprofit groups. That word — “pastor” — is crucial.


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NPR comes to hills of Tennessee and sees exactly the religion trends that you would expect

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NPR comes to hills of Tennessee and sees exactly the religion trends that you would expect

What do you know: National Public Radio came to my backyard here in East Tennessee to cover an important religion-beat story. And, well, NPR saw exactly what you would expect NPR to notice, while ignoring all of the details and questions you would expect this deep-blue news organization to ignore.

Once again, we are talking about a story that is totally valid, but its producers avoided the kind of diversity in sourcing that would have made matters more complex. Here’s the headline for the online text version: “As attendance dips, churches change to stay relevant for a new wave of worshippers.”

What’s missing in this story? It’s absolutely true that there are declining churches here in the mountains of East Tennessee, especially during COVID-tide. That’s an important story. The problem is that there are also growing churches in the region (yes, including my own Orthodox parish, which has grown at least 25% in the past three years) and that’s a detail that makes this story more complex. Here is the overture:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — It's Sunday morning and a small group sits around a fire pit in a community garden under the limbs of an expansive box elder tree. Church is about to start. And it's cold.

"God our Father, we are just so thankful for this time that we have to share this morning," says Pastor Chris Battle, a big man with a pipe clenched in his generous smile. "And we really thank you for fire that keeps us warm even as we sit up under this tree. We just pray that you would bless our time together."

Three years ago, Battle walked away from more than three decades leading Black Baptist churches and turned his attention to Battlefield Farm & Gardens in Knoxville. They grow vegetables and sell them at a farmer's market. They also collect unsold produce from around the city and deliver it to people in public housing once a week.

Battle says he left because traditional church was not connecting with people. He felt they were turned off by the sermons, the pitches for money, the Sunday-morning formality of it all.

This brings us to the first of two thesis statements describing the big picture:

American Christianity is in the midst of an identity crisis. Attendance is in steep decline, especially among millennials and Gen Z who say traditional church doesn't speak to their realities.


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Celebrities rule: How should reporters assess the name fame game in religion?

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Celebrities rule: How should reporters assess the name fame game in religion?

As of the 2022 midterms, the United States had 49 million registered Democrats and 39 million registered Republicans, according to estimates from WorldPopulationReview.com.

Recent National Basketball Association and National Football League annual attendance combined came to 39 million. And last week, a religious leader named Timothy P. Broglio took charge of a U.S. organization with 67 million members.

Timothy who? That would be the archbishop who is the newly elected president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, who will lead the church in the U.S. through the 2024 election season and on the 2025. If you think his task is placid, note this liberal jeremiad — care of National Catholic Reporter — about his election.

Weeks before, Kristen Waggoner became a prime culture wars figure.

Kristen who? This evangelical attorney is the new president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal non-profit that represents religious conservatives in matters like LGBTQ disputes, as in this critique of the Democrats’ marriage act. Her ADF is branded a “hate group” by the equally controversial Southern Poverty Law Center.

Point being that important leaders within segments of American religion are generally far less prominent than athletes, entertainers, politicians or tech billionaires. Publicity usually falls to clergy who run purchased-time broadcasts, utter political sound bites or are trapped in scandals.

Think Pat Robertson.

Things were different not so long ago when Billy Graham, and Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders, were titanic cultural and media personalities. In an earlier time (so to speak), Time magazine would devote a cover story to Christian thinkers C.S. Lewis (1947) or Reinhold Niebuhr (1948, written by Whittaker Chambers). Presbyterian bureaucrat Eugene Carson Blake (“Can Protestants Unite?”, 1961) or U.S. Catholic Cardinals Spellman (1946) or Cushing (1964).

Since the media and the Internet are meshuga over lists (is this David Letterman’s doing?), how about a well-reported article, not about our American era’s Top 10 religious celebrities, but which ones exercise the most influence, seen or unseen?


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Who is covering this big story? The exodus of the Donald Trump faith advisors

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Who is covering this big story? The exodus of the Donald Trump faith advisors

An interesting wrinkle in religion news came up the other day when a bunch of news organizations did some digging and found out that former President Trump’s once loyal religious base had evaporated.

Perhaps one of the most shattering admissions of this loss came from one of his advisors who called the former president a “little elementary school child.”

Clearly a lot has changed on the Trump train faith-team front. Let’s start with this Religion News Service story:

WASHINGTON (RNS) — When Donald Trump launched his 2020 reelection bid in Orlando, Florida, three years ago, the event was riddled with faith-speak. Both Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly referenced God, arguing the Almighty had blessed America. Trump’s closest evangelical adviser, Florida pastor Paula White-Cain, opened up the event with a passionate invocation in which she insisted the “hand of God” would work for Trump.

But when Trump announced yet another White House bid from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday (Nov. 15), he did so with a speech devoid of overt religious references. It was unclear if the event included an invocation, and while some of Trump’s stalwart evangelical supporters were seen milling about the resort’s carpeted floors Tuesday evening — namely, conservative commentator Eric Metaxas, pastor Mark Burns and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — many of the former president’s longtime religious defenders were nowhere to be seen.

Which brings up a question I’ve been wondering for some months: Where is the Rev. Paula White and was she at this Mar-a-Lago gathering? If not, why not?

Why ask? She has turned over the reins of her Orlando-area church to her son, so she’s not tied down with ecclesiastical responsibilities.

Instead, most have remained silent about his new campaign, while others have hinted at allegiances to other potential 2024 presidential contenders such as Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.


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A reporting nightmare: Hellish tragedy linked to one of those 'nondenominational' flocks

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A reporting nightmare: Hellish tragedy linked to one of those 'nondenominational' flocks

If you have followed GetReligion for nearly two decades and, of course, the omnipresent Ryan Burge’s Twitter feed, you know the rise of nondenominational Christianity is one of the most important trends in the religion marketplace — in America and around the world.

Ancient churches and Protestant denominations are very, very complicated and require journalists to sweat lots of details about doctrine, traditions, polity, etc. But, with a nod to Gertrude Stein, we can note that there IS a there there when journalists dig into “organized religion.”

With nondenominational flocks, it is often impossible to find the kinds of structures and shared, on-the-record beliefs, policies and laws that bring some coherence to the wild world of religion news.

With that in mind, let’s look at a tragic USA TODAY story — “California megachurch leader, grandparents charged with murder, torture in death of 11-year-old daughter” — that demonstrates some of these challenges. Let me stress that I am not trying to poke holes in it. After all, reporter Natalie Neysa Alund was one of my Milligan College reporting students in the late 1990s. I’m trying to note some of the challenges in this kind of short story about life in nondenominational churches.

Note, for example, the problematic word “leader” in that headline. I kept looking for some specifics there and I have NO IDEA what short, accurate, “better” word I would have used to improve that headline or the lede. Hold that thought.

The bottom line: At some point, editors need to give reporters a few extra inches of space to include the kinds of details that help readers understand just how independent most of these churches are, in terms of supervision and accountability. Here is the overture:

A California megachurch leader and her parents have been arrested on charges including murder and torture in the death of the woman's 11-year-old daughter.

Leticia McCormack, a leader at Rock Church in San Diego, founded and led by former NFL player Miles McPherson, was booked in jail … on a charge of murder, three counts of torture, and three counts of willful cruelty to a child in the death of Arabella McCormack, the San Diego County Sheriff's Office reported.

What do we know about this church?


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Plug-In: Who were the religion-politics winners and who were the losers in '22 midterms?

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Plug-In: Who were the religion-politics winners and who were the losers in '22 midterms?

America voted.

But you knew that already, so we’ll make this quick.

Big winners included abortion rights proponents and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 GOP presidential contender.

Among the notable losers: a predicted red wave and former President Donald Trump. Alas, Trump is not one to acknowledge electoral defeat. The question becomes: Will the Republicans who’ve enabled him finally do so and move on?

Still to be decided: Georgia’s crucial U.S. Senate race, which is headed to a Dec. 6 runoff between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker. In the general election campaign, the two offered clashing religious messages, as noted by The Associated Press’ Bill Barrow.

For more insight on Tuesday’s voting, check out these religion stories:

• Abortion rights scored the biggest midterm victory (by Yonat Shimron and Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service)

• Republicans win on inflation but lose on abortion (by Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today)

• After wins at the ballot, abortion rights groups want to ‘put this to the people’ (by Sarah McCammon, NPR)

• Catholic leaders say abortion referendum results ‘does not bode well for the future’ (by John Lavenburg, Crux)


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Parental rights: What's up with the Christian school that baptized kids without permission?

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Parental rights: What's up with the Christian school that baptized kids without permission?

Readers who have been paying attention to the news know that parental rights is a hot-button topic these days in battles over education, especially with mandatory programs about sexual morality and marriage.

In some cases, public-school leaders have attempted to keep parents in the dark about what their children were reading and studying (and whether parents have supervision options in these matters). The brave new world in these disputes — see this case in Canada — is when school leaders attempt to hide student gender-change decisions from parents.

A reader recently sent me a story from The Hill that opened up a completely different kind of parental-rights case. Here is the headline: “More than 100 students baptized without parents’ permission at North Carolina school.”

The note that came with that URL pointed to an issue near the end of this news report:

Religion Ghosts? I think so. It would have been nice to know why the parents thought the 2nd baptism would undo the first — what sect of Christianity, how that would actually happen.

Let’s get into this. The key, in this story is that we are dealing with a private school, as opposed to a taxpayer-funded public school.

In other words, (a) parents have chosen to send their children to this school, but (b) it’s still crucial to ask if school leaders have kept in-print promises (if any were made) to parents about the nature of religious programs and even rites (sacraments for many, but not all Christians) that might take place in worship.

Thus, here is the overture, and the word “private” is used early on. (Note that I am using The Hill piece, rather than the local paper, for paywall reasons.)

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WGHP) — A North Carolina school apologized after baptizing more than 100 children without their parent’s permission, according to the Fayetteville Observer.


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Gazing into a niche-media future: How politicized might evangelical radio become?

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Gazing into a niche-media future: How politicized might evangelical radio become?

During the heat of the election campaign, the Salem Media Group staged an 11-day “Battleground Talkers” tour that covered politically potent Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Purpose: To boost conservative voter turnout and nudge undecided voters on what “may be the most important election in the history of our country. … The war for America’s soul is on the line.” The rallies’ Republican and conservative flavor was no surprise, since they featured Salem radio personalities Mike Gallagher, Sebastian Gorka, Hugh Hewitt, Charlie Kirk, Eric Metaxas, Dennis Prager and Brandon Tatum, among others.

Salem Media, a publicly traded firm founded and chaired by Edward G. Atsinger III (469-586-0080), is based in Irving, Texas. It boasts of being “America’s leading Christian media company” — in this context “Christian” means pretty much evangelical Protestant — with radio networks, local stations, syndicated programs, websites, podcasts, marketing services, event planning and Regnery, a major conservative book house.

The “Battleground” personalities appear on the company’s Salem Radio Network, which employs a “conservative news talk” format. Salem says market research indicates such programming “is highly complementary to our core format of Christian Teaching and Talk” heard on other Salem outlets because “both formats express conservative views and family values.”

A thoroughly-reported, 70-inch New York Times examination of the politics of the Salem “juggernaut” October 18 (paywalled here) said, among many other things, that the company consistently promotes “ballot fraud conspiracy theories.”

Such a mix of the sacred and the profane would have astonished the 20th Century founding preachers of conservative Protestant radio such as William Ward Ayer, Donald Grey Barnhouse, Percy Crawford, M.R. DeHaan, Charles Fuller, Aimee Semple MacPherson, Walter Maier or Paul Rader.

Though TV gets the glamour, radio has arguably been more important in building the U.S. evangelical subculture and shaping its substance since World War II.


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