The Religion Guy (as usual) dissents somewhat on the votes for 2023's top religion stories

When it comes to religion news, what ultimately mattered in 2023?

Colleagues in the Religion News Association (RNA) divided their annual choices of the year's top stories into two categories. Incidents of hatred against Jews and Muslims ranked number one in U.S. matters, while the related Israel-Hamas war led international items. Thirdly, Pope Francis was deemed the year’s top newsmaker in religion for the fourth time.

It’s hard to argue against the two top stories, but The Guy observes that we have no idea whether U.S. hatreds are a temporary sickness that will subside, or whether anything can really alter the essential questions in the decades-long Mideast conflict. Thus, The Guy leans toward the importance of permanent changes in direction as depicted below.

he results of the RNA members’ poll were released just before Monday’s revolutionary “declaration” from the Vatican’s doctrine agency, following frequent nudges from Pope Francis, that lets priests provide blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples and for Catholics in “irregular” situations, presumably meaning those divorced and remarried.

The Church of England’s parallel approval for same-sex blessings, implemented the day before the new Vatican edict, gravely worsened this year’s split over marriage and sexuality among Anglicans worldwide, a divide that has been widening for decades.

Several important stories are ongoing and we cannot yet judge their long-term import.

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Terry Mattingly

December 18, 2023

Baptists, Worship, Terry Mattingly, Religious Liberty, Politics, Lawsuits, Neopagans, New Age, Evil-Satan, Atheists & Agnostics, Godbeat

Journalism question for our day: Are all attacks on public statues considered equal?

Terry Mattingly

December 18, 2023

Baptists, Worship, Terry Mattingly, Religious Liberty, Politics, Lawsuits, Neopagans, New Age, Evil-Satan, Atheists & Agnostics, Godbeat

Journalism question for our day: Are all attacks on public statues considered equal?

Another day, another religious and-or political statue destroyed.

This is the age in which we live. In this case, however, the act of vandalism has received national coverage in the mainstream press, since this event was — with good cause — unique and controversial.

The Associated Press headline, for those who who have ignored this media storm: “Former Mississippi House candidate charged after Satanic Temple display is destroyed at Iowa Capitol.” Here is the overture:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A Satanic Temple display inside the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines was destroyed, and a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot who was recently defeated in a statehouse election in Mississippi is accused of causing the damage.
The display is permitted by rules that govern religious installations inside the Capitol but has drawn criticism from many conservatives, including presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. A Facebook posting by The Satanic Temple … said the display, known as a Baphomet statue, “was destroyed beyond repair,” though part of it remains.
Michael Cassidy, 35, of Lauderdale, Mississippi, was charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief, the Iowa Department of Public Safety said Friday. He was released after his arrest.

Yes, there are important “equal access” angles attached to this story. If Iowa created a law allowing temporary placement of religious symbols in its facilities, then — once again — the law should apply equally to all groups without “viewpoint discrimination.” Yes, this was the topic of last week’s “Crossroads” podcast here at GetReligion.

There are some angles to this latest Satan worship story that are rather interesting and worthy of further investigation by journalists. Let me list a view:

* The Des Moines Register story about the crime included an important detail about the attacker. Read to the end of this chunk of that story:

The solicitation for donations on GiveSendGo, the contribution platform, said Cassidy "tore down and beheaded a Satanist altar erected in the Iowa State Capitol." It said he "pushed over and decapitated this Satanic statue before he discarded the head in a trash can."

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Podcast: How long to sing this song? Yes, we have another (M.I.A.) 'equal access' story

How long to sing this song? Audible sigh.

How often, during GetReligion’s nearly 20 years online, have your GetReligionistas critiqued church-state stories about public schools, libraries and other state-funded facilities in which officials were wrestling with “equal access” guidelines — but it was clear that journalists didn’t know (or didn’t care) that they were covering an “equal access” story?

That was the Big Idea that loomed (once again) over this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). Before we jump into this new case study, let’s do a flashback into a few recent “equal access” headlines at GetReligion:

* “Washington Post looks at 'school choice' bills, and (#surprise) omits 'equal access' info.”

* “Another SCOTUS win for 'equal access,' whether most journalists realized this or not.”

* “Fellowship of Christian Athletes wins an 'equal access' case, even if LATimes missed that.”

* “Reminder to journalists (again): Private schools — left, right — can defend their core doctrines.”

For starters, what are we talking about here? Let’s flash back to a summary that I have used in posts more than once. Sorry for the echo-chamber effect, but that’s kind of the point of this post:

What we keep seeing is a clash between two different forms of “liberalism,” with that term defined into terms of political science instead of partisan politics.
Some justices defend a concept of church-state separation that leans toward the secularism of French Revolution liberalism. The goal is for zero tax dollars to end up in the checkbooks of citizens who teach or practice traditional forms of religious doctrine (while it’s acceptable to support believers whose approach to controversial issues — think sin and salvation — mirror those of modernity).
Then there are justices who back “equal access” concepts articulated by a broad, left-right coalition that existed in the Bill Clinton era. The big idea: Religious beliefs are not a uniquely dangerous form of speech and action and, thus, should be treated in a manner similar to secular beliefs and actions. If states choose to use tax dollars to support secular beliefs and practices, they should do the same for religious beliefs and practices.
At some point, it would be constructive of journalists spotted these “equal access” concepts and traced them to back to their roots in the Clinton era (and earlier). But maybe I am being overly optimistic.

Once again, the Bill Clinton era wasn't about throwing red meat to the Religious Right. Instead, you had old-school First Amendment liberals trying — more often than not — to find ways to prevent “viewpoint discrimination” in the use of public funds and facilities.

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Terry Mattingly

December 13, 2023

Terry Mattingly, Supreme Court, Religious Liberty, Politics, Godbeat, Got news?, Kellerism, Lawsuits, Church & State, Evangelicals

Let us attend: Mark Kellner offers readers a visit from the ghost of church-state past

Terry Mattingly

December 13, 2023

Terry Mattingly, Supreme Court, Religious Liberty, Politics, Godbeat, Got news?, Kellerism, Lawsuits, Church & State, Evangelicals

Let us attend: Mark Kellner offers readers a visit from the ghost of church-state past

Every now and then, religion-beat readers are granted a visitation from the ghost of church-state past.

In this case, we are dealing with a Washington Times report by former GetReligionista Mark Kellner, who has spent enough time inside the D.C. Beltway to understand that mass transit is the true public square for most citizens.

Thus, spot the classic church-state ghost in this headline: “Christian group, ACLU sue Metro over rejected bus ads featuring a praying George Washington.”

Need a hint? Who were some of the major players in the broad coalition that backed the near-unanimous votes in the U.S. Congress for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993?

OK, here is Kellner’s overture:

A Texas-based Christian education group has filed a free-speech lawsuit backed by the ACLU over the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority‘s rejection of the group’s ads that feature images of a praying George Washington.
WMATA earlier this year rejected the ads from WallBuilders, an Aledo, Texas, organization founded by evangelical author David Barton to communicate “the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation” of the United States. The ads would have been displayed on Metro buses.
Wallbuilders was joined in the suit by the American Civil Liberties Union and its D.C. chapter, the First Liberty Institute and the law firm of Steptoe LLP.

Wait a minute. The ACLU and a conservative Christian group are on the same side in a First Amendment free speech/religious liberty case?

Of course, there was a time when this kind of broad church-state coalition was common, as in the RFRA era. But, these days, it’s tempting to think that this kind of First Amendment logic can only be achieved with the help of a time machine (or a case involving a small, sympathetic religious minority group).

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Finding religion ghosts in the Ivy League wars, with help (sort of) from Andrew Sullivan

If you have been following the horror shows at Ivy League schools, you know how agonizing this situation has become for old-school First Amendment liberals.

Are the tropes of anti-Semitism still protected forms of speech? Back in the 1970s, ACLU lawyers knew the painful answer to that question when Nazis wanted to legally march through Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago-area community containing many Holocaust survivors.

America has come a long way, since then. Today, the illiberal world considers a stunning amount of free speech to be violence, except in myriad cases in which speech controls are used to prevent “hate speech” and misinformation/disinformation in debates when one side controls the public space in which free debates are supposed to be taking place.

Clearly, death threats, physical intimidation and assaults are out of line. But what about a slogan such as, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”? Is that automatically a call for genocide? The Associated Press has this to say:

Many Palestinian activists say it’s a call for peace and equality after 75 years of Israeli statehood and decades-long, open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians. Jews hear a clear demand for Israel’s destruction.

Ah, but what does Hamas say? The same AP report notes:

“Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north,” Khaled Mashaal, the group’s former leader, said that year [2012] in a speech in Gaza celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas. “There will be no concession on any inch of the land.”
The phrase also has roots in the Hamas charter.

The key is that Hamas opposes a two-state solution allowing Israel to continue as a Jewish homeland. How is Israel eliminated without the eliminating, to one degree or another, millions of Jews?

This brings us back to the Ivy League. At this point, I think that it’s time for someone to ask if other minorities on Ivy League campuses have — in recent decades — experienced severe limitations on their free speech and freedom of association. To what degree are other minorities “ghosts” on these campuses? Do they barely exist? Has the rush to “diversity” eliminated many religious and cultural points of view?

Ah, but the Ivy League giants are private schools. They have rights of their own.

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Richard Ostling

November 30, 2023

Surveys & polls, Richard Ostling, Religious Liberty, Pope Francis, Politics, Mainline, Journalism, Hispanics, Got news?, Evangelicals, Church & State, Catholicism, Supreme Court

One more time -- GetReligion wants press to focus on white Catholic vote in 2024

Richard Ostling

November 30, 2023

Surveys & polls, Richard Ostling, Religious Liberty, Pope Francis, Politics, Mainline, Journalism, Hispanics, Got news?, Evangelicals, Church & State, Catholicism, Supreme Court

One more time -- GetReligion wants press to focus on white Catholic vote in 2024

Fellow GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge’s November 20 Substack column (“The Myth of the White Catholic Democrat”) was as informative as usual, with solid data that reinforce one of The Guy’s perennial contentions in these Memos.

Such as? Consider this previous headline: “Repeat after me: White Catholics voting in 2004. White Catholics voting in 2024 ...” If that isn’t enough, search through this Google News file for more. The Big Idea is that journalists should pay more attention to white Catholics, who’ll very likely decide who wins the presidency next November.

Those much-covered white evangelicals are important, but where they count is with intra-Republican primary maneuvers, whereas for decades they’ve given the party’s presidential nominee predictably wide margins. (White “Mainline” Protestants are weaker and divided. Hispanic and Black Christians are politically distinct from white co-religionists.)

The Pew Research Center defines the nation’s three major religious blocs as evangelical Protestants (25.4% of the population), Catholics both white and Hispanic (20.8%), and “Nones” without religious affiliation (22.8%). With evangelicals lopsidedly Republican and “Nones” overwhelmingly Democratic, the Catholics are always the swing vote to watch. World without end. Amen.

Burge reminds us there are tons of Catholic voters and they’re widely distributed around the U.S. as a factor in many states. Note Pew Research data for the Catholic populations in these swing states: Arizona 21%, Florida 21%, Michigan 18%, Nevada 25%, New Hampshire 26%, Ohio 18%, Pennsylvania 24%, and Wisconsin 25%.

White Catholics’ move toward the Republicans is one of the era’s most important political developments (and, as our own tmatt has stressed for years, something appears to be brewing with Hispanic Catholics). Their margin for the GOP is modest but increasingly dependable, and in states like Florida that really matters.

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Podcast: CNN offers an old opposition-research file on Speaker Mike 'theocrat' Johnson

Before we return to the never-ending saga of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and his efforts to create a totalitarian theocracy that destroys democracy in America, let’s pause for a Journalism 101 case study.

Don’t worry, this is directly related to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Now, gentle readers, are any of you old enough to remember Marabel Morgan, the evangelical superstar who wrote “The Total Woman,” which sold something like 10 million copies? Morgan was an anti-feminist crusader clothed in pink (as opposed to something else) who had a knack for infuriating blue-zipcode elites. Here is a quick flashback, via the Faith Profiles website:

An editor at Time magazine once confided in Marabel Morgan that he came away from a cocktail party with high-heel marks all over his chest at the mere mention of her name.
And what heinous crime did Morgan commit that could provoke such a sharp reaction? Morgan wrote a book in the early 1970s that sold more than 5 million copies about how she salvaged her marriage. The widespread belief was that she proposed that women rekindle their marriages by such innovations as greeting their husbands at the door dressed in Saran Wrap or having sex under the dining room table.
Whee!

During my early 1980s religion-beat work at The Charlotte News, I ventured out to a suburban megachurch where Morgan spoke to several thousand fans. I left that meeting absolutely furious, my mind packed with outrageous punchline quotes from her (I had to admit entertaining) speech.

Driving back to the newsroom on deadline, I started figuring out what would be in the crucial first two or three paragraphs of the story. Then I realized that, if I followed my own prejudices, I was going to frontload this story with stuff that would fire up my editors and others who detested Morgan and her tribe.

Thus, I decided to attempt a story that opened with material that included (a) what Morgan said that I knew would appeal to her critics and (b) what she said that drew cheers and applause from her supporters.

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Julia Duin

November 9, 2023

Baptists, Evangelicals, Julia Duin, Politics, Kellerism, Marriage & Family, People, Religious Liberty

When it comes to Speaker Mike Johnson, some journalists have become unhinged

Julia Duin

November 9, 2023

Baptists, Evangelicals, Julia Duin, Politics, Kellerism, Marriage & Family, People, Religious Liberty

When it comes to Speaker Mike Johnson, some journalists have become unhinged

Much to the rejoicing of the American populace, the House of Representatives got back to work Oct. 25 when the Republicans finally agreed on a speaker after an agonizing three weeks with no one in charge.

But to read media reports about the new speaker, you’d think the Rev. Jerry Falwell had risen from the dead and was occupying the spot. There’s an evangelical Christian at the podium and that’s red meat for a lot of scribes out there.

Watch the above video and listen to the two anchors scoff at the very idea of monitoring your kid’s internet content. Imagine, they said, being concerned about whether your son is watching porn!

It’s hard not to listen to such repartee without one’s mouth falling open. Youth suicides are soaring; kids are watching stuff online and carrying it out and these folks just think it’s all so ridiculous. I know the parents of a 13-year-old who was into really dark stuff online. By the time they figured out what he was up to, it was too late. They found his body in the garage.

A lot of America does believe in monitoring their kids’ internet viewing, porn included; a concept that some of the media I’ll be discussing cannot comprehend. Some of the most unhinged coverage has come from the Rolling Stone and finally backlash over the Stone’s over-the-top coverage is starting to emerge. More on that in a moment.

At the base of the media hysterics is the news about a father/son arrangement between Johnson and his 17-year-old son, to use a shared software program to make sure the other hasn’t been looking at porn. My prize for the most faux rage headline comes from the New Republic:

Mike Johnson and His Son Monitoring Each Other’s Porn Intake Is Worse Than You Think
The House speaker admitted to a wild new detail about his personal life. And it’s a bigger deal than it seems.

First off, this headline is deceptive. What Johnson has said is not that the two of them are perusing dark websites on the sly; the point is neither of them are looking at porn at all.

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Here is a solid news peg for the severely under-covered story of Christian persecution

With all-important developments in the Middle East and Ukraine, it seems off-kilter to state that another major international story is being severely neglected, and has long been so. But such is The Guy’s opinion about mainstream media neglect of the waves of evidence for ongoing global persecution of Christians, on which we now have a Nov. 1 news peg.

A previous GetReligion Memo addressed the plight of Armenian Christians within Islamic Azerbaijan. That’s just one of many tragedies detailed in the annual “Persecutors of the Year” report for 2023, just issued by International Christian Concern (ICC).

Yes, followers of other world religions also face inexcusable abuse in several nations. The parallel 2023 report produced last May by the federal government’s independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which is also important to check out, emphasizes the plight of both Christians and other minorities in Iran but “sounds the alarm regarding the deterioration of religious freedom conditions in a range of other countries.” Click here for that report (.pdf).

But the scale is distinctive if, as ICC reports, “there are an estimated 200 to 300 million Christians who suffer persecution worldwide.” There’s corroboration of such a vast problem in the latest edition of the “World Christian Encyclopedia.”

The overall global scenario warrants coverage, but many specific situations are newsworthy.

In ICC’s estimation, the world’s five worst individual persecutors today are Yogi Adityanath, the Hindu chief minister of India’s most populous state; Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s dictator; the better-known President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and atheistic Communist dictators Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

Here’s the ICC list of the most bloodthirsty non-governmental organizations: Allied Democratic Forces (Islamic State affiliate operating in Congo and Uganda), Al-Shabab (al-Qaida affiliate in Somalia), ethnic Fulani jihadists in Nigeria, the five terrorist groups jointly disrupting Africa’s Sahel region, the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s army) and the famous Taliban who again rule Afghanistan.

The ICC material from 50 researchers, half at Washington headquarters and half working overseas, shows that action against Christians is frequently linked with oppression of ethnic minorities and of political dissenters.

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