Podcasts

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Tick, tick, tick: Days leading up to Jan. 1 (and beyond) will be extra strange for GetReligion

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The Christmas and New Year’s season is always a bit of a strange time here at GetReligion, with people coming and going and getting their work done when they can. We do strive to take a few days off, of course. Sort of.

Frankly, this year is going to be extra strange.

Regular readers may have noticed the recent post in which I explained that, as of Jan. 1, GetReligion will have a new home base. Let me repeat some of that information, in case some people missed it. This will help explain some of the extra strangeness in the next few weeks:

For several years now, I have known that I would retire from full-time work here at GetReligion when the clock struck midnight and we reached Jan. 1, 2020. The question — logically enough — was whether this weblog would shut down or evolve back into something that I could do part-time, which was how things started out long ago.

The good news is that, well, we ain’t dead yet. The bad news is that we will have to do some major downsizing. … Readers will not be surprised to know that — a sign of the times in which we live — the work we will be doing here in the future will require some fundraising. …

But the big news today is that GetReligion will soon have a new home base, one linked directly to First Amendment studies, which means work tied to freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

As of Jan. 1, we will be based at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics, which is next door to the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. The chairman of the center is Charles L. Overby, for 22 years the CEO of the Freedom Forum, a non-partisan foundation focusing on the press, religious freedom and the First Amendment.

Or, as I summed things up at the end, we are talking “journalism, the First Amendment, good friends and barbecue.”

However, a big question remains — because of the role that fundraising now plays in our future. That question: What will GetReligion look like after Jan. 1?


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Final 2019 podcast: Oh-so familiar Top 10 religion stories list (with a few exceptions)

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Near the end of every year, the Religion News Association (the flock previously known as the Religion Newswriters Association) posts its list of the year’s Top 10 religion-beat stories.

It’s tough work, but somebody has to do it. I don’t envy the scribes who have to create the list of events that go on the ballot.

The archive on the RNA website only goes back to 2002, but I have been writing annual columns on this topic since forever, or close to it (click here for my Internet-era archive). As you would expect, this was the top of the final “Crossroads” podcast for 2019 (click here to tune that in).

When you’ve been studying lists of this kind for four decades, it’s easy to spot patterns. The RNA list will almost always contain:

* Some event or trend linked to politics and this often has something to with evangelicals posing a threat to American life.

* Mainline Protestants gathered somewhere to fight over attempts to modernize doctrines linked to sex and marriage.

* The pope said something headline-worthy about some issue linked to politics or sexuality.

* Someone somewhere attacked lots of someones in the name of God.

* There may or may not be a story about Southern Baptists waging war on one another for some reason linked to biblical authority.

This year’s RNA Top 10 was way more predictable than usual, in terms of offering sort-of-trend updates on old news. The No. 1 story, however, was truly big news:


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Podcast: Why does GetReligion want to keep doing that journalism thing that we do?

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I have never really enjoyed listening to infomercials, to tell you the truth. But, like it or not, creating one of those was a small part of the agenda in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

Yes, host Todd Wilken and I talked about GetReligion’s upcoming move to the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi, where I will also be a senior fellow linked to events focusing on religion, news and politics. I announced that in a post the other day with this headline: “Religion news, the First Amendment and BBQ: GetReligion will soon have a new home base.” And, yes, we talked about the fact that GetReligion needs to raise some money in order to do what we do in the future.

However, I think it’s significant how we got to that topic. We started off talking about the doctrinal wars over LGBTQ rights at George Fox University, which was addressed in this post: “Here we go again (again): RNS/AP offers doctrine-free take on George Fox LGBTQ battles.”

Readers can tell, just from that headline, that this story linked into many familiar GetReligion themes, including the crucial role that doctrine — whether academics call it “doctrine” or not — plays in defining life on private-school campuses, both on the left and the right. All to often (think “Kellerism”), journalists report and edit these stories as if journalists are in charge of determining what is “good” doctrine and what is “bad” doctrine.

There’s no need for an accurate, fair-minded debate when you already know who is right and who is wrong. Here’s a bit of that George Fox post:


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This week's podcast: Why it matters that Canadian Anglicans are having a near-death experience

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Years ago, while I was still an Episcopalian, I tried to get a circle of clergy and journalists to collaborate on what I thought would be a classic work of religion-marketplace humor.

The basic idea: The creation of the definitive collection of jokes about Episcopalians and their unique approach to Christian life and culture. As one priest put it, the Episcopal Church is “NPR at prayer.”

The book never happened, but I learned lots of jokes that I didn’t know in all of the basic categories, from “how many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb” quips to jokes featuring “Episcopalians at the gates of heaven and/or hell.” But here was my favorite joke, as I heard it in 1993 (but with a few updates):

The year is 2030 … and two Anglo-Catholic priests in the back of National Cathedral are watching the Episcopal presiding bishop and her incense-bearing wife, an archdeacon, process down the aisle behind a statue of the Buddha, while the faithful sing a hymn to Mother Earth.

"You know," one traditionalist whispers, "ONE more thing and I'm out the door."

The whole point was that it’s hard for religious communions to die. In the end, there are always reasons for true insiders to hang on and hope the pendulum swings back their way.

But I remember that someone else had a joke — I don’t remember how it went — that centered on the idea that, after a few more decades of declining statistics, Anglican churches would be empty, except for elderly clergy at the altars whose salaries would be paid with endowment funds.

That joke cuts to the heart of the news story discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

As background, here is the top of the Religion News Service story I critiqued in an post with this headline: “Canada's Anglicans are vanishing and RNS can't find any conservatives to debate the reasons why.”

(RNS) — A “wake-up call.”

That’s what Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, called a new report showing there may be no members left in the mainline Canadian denomination in 20 years.


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Podcast thinking: Fred Rogers, Tom Hanks, the Good Samaritan and the ties that bind

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Anyone who wanted to know why the Rev. Fred Rogers did what he did needed to pause and think about two of the central facts in his career.

First, there was the name of the show that made him a television legend: “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Then there was the rite that opened every episode — the transition into the trademark sweater and comfy shoes — and the song that went with it. The crucial line was the thesis statement at the end: “Please, won’t you be my neighbor?”

That was a strange question to ask children. Why not ask them to be friends? Isn’t “friend” a more common word among kids than “neighbor”? In this day and age, many adults are struggling to be “neighbors,” a term with all kinds of implications linked to helping people simply because they are nearby and need help.

But Rogers had very specific reasons for doing what he did. His goal was was to deal with the kinds of big questions that sent him to seminary in the first place, before he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, serving in a public ministry expressed in television broadcasting. He wanted to handle the kinds of subjects that trouble, and even frighten, children (and honest adults). We are talking about death, divorce, war, racism and, over and over, questions about why bad things happen to good people. The theological term is, of course, “theodicy.”

During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, host Todd Wilken and I talked about the convictions that powered the work of Mister Rogers. Click here to tune that in.


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Friday Five: Trump impeachment, Catholic doctrine, Paige Patterson, faith in Sin City, Chick-fil-A (yum)

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Greetings from one of my favorite places in the world!

I’m kidding (a little), but I’m typing this post in a Chick-fil-A parking lot near Dallas Love Field. In case you’re curious, yes, I enjoyed a delicious chicken biscuit for breakfast.

I’m in the Big D on reporting assignment for The Christian Chronicle and putting Friday Five together quickly before picking up a colleague at the airport.

Let’s dive right in:

1. Religion story of the week: In my hurry to post, I hope I’m not missing a major story that should go in this space.

But for me personally, the story of the week has to be Emma Green’s piece for The Atlantic on Iowa voters who both support President Donald Trump’s policies and — get this — wouldn’t mind seeing him impeached.

Yes, there’s a strong religion angle, as I explained in a post earlier this week. Check it out.


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Podcast thinking: Are mainstream reporters who ask doctrinal questions aiding Catholic right?

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If you have been reading GetReligion for a decade or so, you have probably seen references to the “tmatt trio,” a set of short questions I have long used to probe the doctrinal fault lines inside Christian hierarchies, institutions and flocks.

A dozen years ago or so, a website called “Religious Left Online” — it appears that site is now dead — even offered up a fun GetReligion drinking game that suggested that these topics, and others, could win readers a shot class of adult substances:

• Terry Mattingly mentioning his TMatt trio

• Someone taking a shot at contemporary Christian music, while also trying to defend it.

• Criticizing the evil, liberal agenda of the NYT and WP, while promoting the LAT.

Isn’t that wild? That was so long ago that The Los Angeles Times was an elite source for religion-beat news.

Why bring up the “trio” right now? Well, for starters because it was discussed during this week’s Crossroads podcast (click here to tune that in). But here’s the news: Our discussion of the recent Amazonian Synod in Rome worked through the “trio” and then added a fourth doctrinal issue.

First things first: What are the “trio” questions? Let me stress that these are doctrinal, not political, questions that I have discussed over the years with many researchers, including the late George Gallup, Jr. The goal is not to hear sources provide specific answers, but to pay close attention to the content of their answers or non-answers. Here are the three questions, once again:

(1) Are biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Was this a real – even if mysterious – event in real time? Did it really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Is Jesus the Way or a way?

(3) Is sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage a sin? The key word is sin.

Now, there came a time — in the age of Gaia environmental theology — that I needed to turn the “trio” into a “quadrilateral.”


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Centuries of blood and faith: Why many Christians in Middle East look to Russia for help

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Centuries of blood and faith: Why many Christians in Middle East look to Russia for help

Whenever I travel overseas, I am always humbled by how much news consumers in other lands know about what is happening in America and around the world.

This sadness is linked to one of the saddest realities — for decades — in American journalism: American readers don’t seem to care much about international trends and news. Thus, far too many American newspapers dedicate little or no space to international news.

Now, combine that with the reality that has driven GetReligion for 17 years, which is the sad state of accurate, informed, fair-minded religion-news coverage in many, maybe most, American newsrooms (especially in television news).

So what happens when you put those two sad trends together? If way too many journalists don’t “get” religion and way too many news consumers don’t care much about international news, what do you think happens to coverage of complicated religion-news trends and issues on the other side of the planet?

That was the subject of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Click here to tune that in.

In particular, host Todd Wilken and I focused on the media’s struggles to cover the complicated religious realities in the Middle East — such as Russia’s role in Syria, in the wake of Donald’s Trump’s decision to abandon Kurdish forces in the northern rim of that troubled land, leading to a Turkish invasion that threatened many religious minorities.

The big idea: Of course Russia has economic and political interests in Syria, ties that have been there for many years. It would be stupid to ignore those realities. But what about the religious ties between Orthodoxy in Russia and the ancient Orthodox Church of Antioch, for centuries based on the Street Called Straight in Damascus? How do you cover Russia’s interests in Syria without even mentioning that?

Come to think of it: How can reporters (even in elite newsrooms like The New York Times) cover almost anything that happens in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and elsewhere without taking in account religious trends and history?


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Big news stories lurk on both sides of shrinking middle ground in American religion

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Big news stories lurk on both sides of shrinking middle ground in American religion

Religion and politics. Religion and politics. Religion and politics.

Or, sometimes it’s politics and religion.

Either way, we all know what factor — more often than not — turns a religion-news story into a big news story in the eyes of most newsroom managers. Well, sex scandals are good, too.

Normally, this politics-and-religion reality bugs me, because there is so much more to the religion beat than whatever content happens to overlap with the current political headlines.

But, right now, I think it’s obvious that the biggest news story in American politics is directly linked to the biggest story in American religion. I am talking about a trend that has been discussed in several 2019 Crossroads podcasts — including this week’s edition (click here to tune that in).

It’s the growing polarization between the world of traditional religious believers (defined primarily in terms of the PRACTICE of their faith) and the growing flock of open atheists-agnostics and the spiritual-but-not-religious phenomenon that overlaps with the growth of the religiously unaffiliated. It lines up with the hotter-than-hades rift in American culture and politics.

There are so many stories linked to this. We’re talking about the demographic implosion of the old liberal Protestant mainline. Then there’s the surging number of independent churches and nondenominational believers. There’s a growing number of Americans — small, but important — in other world religions. There are people (like me) who grew up in one tradition (Southern Baptist, in this case) and converted to another (Eastern Orthodoxy).

There are so many numbers, so many polls. The Pew Research Center, LifeWay Research, Barna and others keep cracking out fascinating numbers.

In the podcast, I mentioned — once again — Donald Trump and the infamous “81% of white evangelicals just love Donald” theme that can be found in news coverage on a daily basis (or so it seems). Yes, about half of those white evangelicals wanted to vote to some other GOP candidate. And about 40% of evangelicals appear to have stayed home or some voted third party.

Out of all of the topics that floated into this week’s podcast, let me stress one — the changing religious world of Latino Americans. Consider this lede atop a recent Crux report:


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