Religious Liberty

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Surprise! Speaker of the House is pro religious liberty, which means he's ultra-conservative

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Surprise! Speaker of the House is pro religious liberty, which means he's ultra-conservative

Before diving into the valid religion-angle hooks in the life and career of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, please allow me to address that “election denier” thing, since I am a pedigreed (nod to Religion News Service editors) #NeverTrump, #NeverClintonBiden voter.

Yes, I have closely followed election-denial issues from 2016, when the deniers were elite Democrats haunted by Russia ghosts. Ditto for 2020, when the deniers were Republicans, who kept losing court cases — even when the judges were selected by Donald Trump. I do think Big Tech efforts to cancel hot news stories affected the election (but maybe not, since the nation seems frozen 50-50 in red/blue concrete).

Truth is, I am more interested in Johnson’s First Amendment activism than I am in Trump stuff. “First Amendment,” of course, means religious liberty, free speech and freedom of association. Is Johnson concerned about religious liberty for all or for some? His legal career should include on-paper info on that.

Meanwhile, the mainstream coverage of his surprise election stressed his “anti-gay” work and related religious convictions. On X, I tweeted a question: “Does anti-gay rights mean pro-First Amendment?”

Everything you need to know on press views of that can be found in this double-decker headline at the New York Times, serving as a kind of editorial memo to the news industry as a whole:

For Mike Johnson, Religion Is at the Forefront of Politics and Policy

The new House speaker has put his faith at the center of his political career, and aligned himself with a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that some describe as Christian nationalism.

Obviously, “Christian nationalism” is currently one of the hot terms in journalism. Also, it’s clear that many journalists are concerned about the success that Alliance Defending Freedom lawyers are having at the U.S. Supreme Court and elsewhere. Again, there is a crucial question there: Is this First Amendment group winning victories for a variety of religious minorities?

The Times editors simply went with this, stating that Johnson spent time as a “lawyer and spokesman for the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights group Alliance Defense Fund.” Of course, that puts him in interesting company — with Times columnist David French (whose First Amendment work I have admired for two decades).

It’s important to know that Johnson declined a Times interview request. I think that he should have done that interview, with an agreement that he could post a transcript online. Would the Times have agreed? The speaker should test that.


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Thinking about Hamas and its doctrines? It helps to have a document to quote

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Thinking about Hamas and its doctrines? It helps to have a document to quote

One of my journalism mentors once said something that turned out to be very wise.

That gem: The more controversial the story, the more a reporter should search for a document (on letterhead, even) that backs you up.

This is especially important, in my experience, when selling a controversial story to an editor.

At the moment, I cannot think of a topic that is more controversial than Hamas — specifically, whether Hamas is, at its heart, a terrorist group.

Thus, I would like to offer a rather unusual “think piece” this week. This is an actual document that, I believe, should be in the news, as in a source for questions and content in stories linked to the hellish Oct. 7 Hamas raid into Israel.

The document in question is the 1988 Hamas covenant explaining the organization’s doctrines and goals. As I will mention later, there is a revised 2017 Hamas charter that is more political and, frankly, less doctrinal. The key is that the 1988 covenant has never been disavowed. Thus, it remains must reading.

Will it be controversial to quote this covenant? Probably. But it’s real, it’s important and it is a valid launching point for questions about present realities. If you want a journalism report linked to this covenant, then check out this new piece at The Atlantic: “Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology — A close read of Hamas’s founding documents clearly shows its intentions.”

Once again, note that this headline uses “ideology,” when the accurate term for the most controversial passages in this covenant would be “theology.” You know the drill: Politics is real. Religion? Not so much.

You can find the 1988 Hamas covenant in quite a few places, often with commentary. But let’s seek a basic academic source for the document itself, care of Yale Law School.

I have chosen, for this post, a few quotations that are directly linked to questions I have seen addressed in some of the mainstream news coverage of the Oct. 7 blitz. For starters, this is from the preamble:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).


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Familiar byline, new location and a complicated Hindu-temple-and-state puzzle

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Familiar byline, new location and a complicated Hindu-temple-and-state puzzle

Under normal circumstances, readers of The New York Times can click on a byline and learn more about the reporter behind a story.

At the moment, there is no URL embedded with the Times byline “Sarah Pulliam Bailey.”

However, faithful religion-news readers will recognize that byline after years of seeing it in The Washington Post (and several other familiar locations before that). Is this step one in a contributing writer role? Readers can only hope.

Now, what about the story under the byline? The double-decker headline is certainly dramatic and readers will discover, in this complicated feature, a story with some familiar church-state law overtones. How does one handle a Hindu-Temple-and-state reference in Associated Press Style? Oh, that headline:

A $96 Million Hindu Temple Opens Amid Accusations of Forced Labor

The temple in Robbinsville, N.J., about 15 years in the making, is believed to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere. But its construction has also been clouded in controversy.

This is a read-it-all story, for several reasons. It’s clear that this story is a door into more coverage of the legal and financial wrangling that are ahead.

Readers can see the essential DNA in this summary material near the top:

The recent opening of Akshardham Mahamandir in Robbinsville, N.J., was a historic moment for Hindus in New Jersey and beyond. The temple, about 15 years in the making, is believed to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere and is expected to draw religious pilgrims and tourists from all over the world.

It has also been clouded in controversy.

Federal law enforcement agents raided the temple construction site in 2021 after workers accused the builders, a prominent Hindu sect with ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and his ruling party, of forced labor, low wages and poor working conditions.


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Upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case could be a huge religion-beat sleeper story

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Upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case could be a huge religion-beat sleeper story

The agenda for the U.S. Supreme Court term that began this month has zero cases involving the two religion clauses of the First Amendment.

That’s quite the change after the important religion rulings the past two years, not to mention religious conservatives’ and liberals’ agitation after the 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe , which had legalized abortion nationwide.

So religion-watchers may not be aware that the court soon takes up two potentially tectonic cases involving — would you believe it — small businesses that fish for herring off the New England coast and say they shouldn’t have to pay their federal monitors. The cases are Loper Bright v. Raimondo (docket # 22-451), newly combined Oct. 13 with Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce (docket #22-1219). Oral arguments could come as soon as January.

This gets into the weeds of administrative law, an area that normally does not set pulses pounding but here involves the hot political dispute over powers exercised by federal agencies. Conservatives assert that agencies have long been interpreting and enforcing laws in ways that Congress never intended or has never defined, thus usurping legislative prerogatives and violating the Constitution’s “separation of powers.”

Background: The two fishing companies seek relief by overturning the Court’s highly influential 1984 precedent in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. This unanimous decision granted wide deference to federal agencies in “reasonable” interpretations, applications and enforcement of ambiguous laws passed by Congress.

The list of Loper briefs posted by the invaluable SCOTUSBlog.com shows the variety of interests that include 48 of the 50 states lined up on the two sides and the Republican U.S. House of Representatives, along with e.g. the AFL-CIO, American Cancer Society, Environmental Defense Fund, Gun Owners of America and e-cigarette industry.

You are waiting for the religion-beat angle?


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Thinking about the complicated puzzle that is Orthodox Christianity these days

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Thinking about the complicated puzzle that is Orthodox Christianity these days

If you look up the word “Byzantine” in an online dictionary you will find two definitions — one quite literal and the second rather abstract.

The first definition isn’t all that hard to grasp: “relating to Byzantium (now Istanbul), the Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Orthodox Church.”

The second definition is the one that best applies to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast and post, the one with this headline: “Eastern Orthodox converts, Russian spies, the FBI and the Bible Belt (#horrors).” Here’s that second meaning for Byzantine, as an adjective: “(of a system or situation) excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail.”

That is certainly true and, to be blunt, there are journalists covering the painfully divided world of Eastern Orthodoxy — think Ukraine, of course — who should read that second definition several times and then meditate on it.

This is a classic case of journalists, as my journalism mentor used to say, needing to learn to “know what they don’t know.” There are subjects so complicated that, even if you think of yourself as an insider (I am a convert to Orthodox Christianity and have studied church history at the undergraduate and graduate levels), you need to approach them with great care.

This brings me to this weekend’s “think piece” from the must-bookmark website called Orthodox History: “How Did Orthodoxy Get Into This Mess?” It was written by the website’s editor, Matthew Namee, who a lawyer who serves as General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer for Orthodox Ministry Services. He is also a friend of mine and a colleague and in work linked to the Saint Constantine College in Houston.

What does “this mess” mean, in the headline? Basically, the “mess” is the early 21st century. To dig into this puzzle requires (#DUH) understanding the tragedies of the 20th century: This essay is very complex — “Byzantine,” even — but I will note a few (rather long) passages.


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'Ethnic cleansing' of Armenian Christians: Time for the press to rethink persecution?

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'Ethnic cleansing' of Armenian Christians: Time for the press to rethink persecution?

What with Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine raging unabated, and now Israel’s retaliation after extensive Hamas terror attacks from Gaza, it’s understandable that journalists, their audiences and politicians have paid little attention to a massive ongoing humanitarian crisis in interior Asia where western media lack observers on the ground.

Beginning Sept. 19, Azerbaijan’s military crushed the self-proclaimed (and not internationally recognized) Artsakh republic in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh enclave within its borders.

The attack panicked and drove out at least 100,000 ethnic Armenians — now forced to cope as refugees in neighboring Armenia. This followed Azerbaijan’s cutoff of the crucial transit corridor from Armenia that had resulted in dire shortages of food, fuel and medical supplies. One factor here is the erosion of Russia’s history of providing Armenia’s security and regional peace-keeping because of its Ukraine entanglement.

The September takeover of the population’s ancient homeland is a straight-up case of “ethnic cleansing,” according to the European Parliament and a Council on Foreign Relations analysis. “In one fell swoop, one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships destroyed one of the world’s oldest Christian communities,” writes Joel Veldkamp, the head of international communications with Christian Solidarity International.

The vanishing ethnic enclave dated back to 1,722 years ago when Armenia became the first state to collectively adopt the Christian religion. As geography evolved, the Nagorno Armenians found themselves caught in a sector within Azerbaijan.

The latest “World Christian Encyclopedia” edition reports that Azerbaijan is 96% Muslim while most of the Nagorno population, and 84% of the population in neighboring Armenia, belong to the Armenian Apostolic (Orthodox) Church. Tensions were contained when the entire area was controlled under the Soviet Union, but that regime’s collapse led to the ongoing religio-ethnic struggle between newly independent Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Nagorno collapse is historically important in its own right but, importantly, it raises how religious liberty should be understood and championed.


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Podcast: What would happen if GetReligion provided 'hot' GOP debate questions?

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Podcast: What would happen if GetReligion provided 'hot' GOP debate questions?

I’m not a fan of the cable-television festivals called “presidential debates,” because they rarely feature any substantial debates and the candidates don’t act presidential.

Maybe this is more evidence that I am what I am, a journalist who is a registered third-party person who doesn’t fit in America’s Republican-Democrat binary vise (rather like Megyn Kelly’s take here).

However, the producers at Lutheran Public Radio had an interesting idea for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). They asked me to prepare questions — thinking religion-beat, GetReligion-oriented stuff — that I would ask if (#ducking) I was the moderator at last night’s GOP presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Library.

I came up with 10 or so questions and I’ll share some of those shortly. However, I knew that the subjects that most interest me — as an old-school First Amendment liberal — would not be on this debate’s menu.

First, let’s deal with the orange elephant in the room. The New York Post, in it’s “exclusive drinking game for the second Republican presidential debate,” reminded viewers to:

Take a sip of WATER …

… every time Donald Trump is mentioned. This will keep you hydrated.

Later, the Post team offered these style points:

Take a sip of your drink …

… every time a candidate says “woke”

… when a candidate calls another candidate by an unflattering nickname

… when someone references the Biden Crime Family

… when a candidate uses a 3-letter acronym (think FBI, IRS, DEI, CDC)

… when a candidate tries to deflect when asked if they think the election was rigged

… when a candidate says they support Trump’s movement (but think they’re the one to finish the job)


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Hey, Tennessean folks: Has SBC President Bart Barber changed theologically? Yes or no?

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Hey, Tennessean folks: Has SBC President Bart Barber changed theologically? Yes or no?

This is a strange one. In a recent profile of the Rev. Bart Barber — the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention — the Nashville Tennessean team did something that was both unusual and totally predictable.

Unusual? My state’s dominant newspaper used a theological term when it needed to find an accurate political term, of some kind. Yes, you read that right. I just urged some journalists — in this case — to use accurate “political” language instead of mangled doctrinal language.

Predictable? The abused theological term was “fundamentalist.”

To make matters even more complicated, the Tennessean used an ACCURATE historical-political reference in the headline — “Bart Barber defied the Conservative Resurgence. How it is now shaping his SBC leadership” — and then turned around and used “fundamentalist” in the overture.

Dang it! (I will also ask: Is the pronoun “it” in the headline a reference to Barber’s decisive act of defiance or to the Conservative Resurgence itself?) Here’s that flawed overture:

Bart Barber defied the top brass.

In May 2018, the Texas pastor and his fellow trustees at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth fired seminary president Paige Patterson, the architect of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Following years of financial-related controversies, revelations about Patterson mishandling reports of sexual abuse pushed Southwestern’s board past a point of no return.

Barber, once a loyal foot soldier in Patterson’s movement, was a decisive vote in Patterson’s dismissal, thereby severing his allegiance. 

The emphasis on the “Conservative Resurgence” as a movement inside the SBC is accurate, since that is a commonly used term among historians. The Tennessean kind of explained that term later in the story, and we will get to that.

After making that wise choice, why use the church-history term “fundamentalist” at the top of the story? That’s a word that fit with some Southern Baptists who supported (as opposed to leading) the “Conservative Resurgence,” but not to all. Using that term also suggested that Barber has changed some of his theological beliefs, as opposed to his stance on crucial issues in SBC politics.

I see zero evidence in this news report that Barber has changed theologically. It that is the case, then ask him hard questions about that and then report the answers.


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News hooks? Gender, sexual orientation and religion among American college students

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News hooks? Gender, sexual orientation and religion among American college students

I know people will be surprised to hear this, but it’s rare for me to get my hands on some new data. I basically use two or three surveys for everything you see on this Substack and my social media.

But last week was a very good one because I got data that is a bit different, but very interesting, and quite newsworthy.

It comes from FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), which is an organization that fights for the ability of individuals (students and faculty) to be able to freely exercise their First Amendment right to free speech. If someone on a college campus is punished for nothing more than their speech, FIRE often steps in and sues the university. You can read several examples of this on their Wikipedia page.

One of the major research projects that FIRE undertakes is an annual survey of college students to gauge how they think about the issue of free speech and if they feel like they have to stifle their speech because of hostility on campus. Often, this includes speech connected to religious beliefs.

This is a real treasure trove of data about how the next generation thinks about all kinds of topics. Their full report of their results (which runs to 85 pages) is here. The survey that they collected contains a total sample size of 55,102 respondents who had to be currently enrolled at an institution of higher learning in the United States. A thorough description of the methodology used is here and here.

I am making one adjustment to this data — I restricted my sample to just those who are between the ages of 18 and 25 years old. While I do think the views of 40-year-old graduate students are important, I wanted to just focus on college aged folks for this bit of data analysis. That means my sample is a bit smaller — 39,178. That’s still more than enough to analyze, though.

I am going to write a series of posts with this data, especially topics related to free speech and allowing speakers on campus that generate controversy, but I gleaned so much from just the demographic variables that I had to write about them specifically.

The theme here is simply three variables: sexual orientation, gender identity and religion among college-aged folks.

What really kicked this off was a report from Brown University that indicated that 38% of their student body identifies as homosexual, bisexual, queer, asexual, pansexual, questioning or other. When that same poll was conducted ten years earlier, that share was just 14%. Is Brown an outlier here? Or are huge percentages of college students not straight and/or not cisgender? Are these issues linked to religious beliefs, or the lack thereof?


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