Ryan Burge

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People keep asking: Why does press say 'religious left,' as opposed to 'Religious Left'?

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People keep asking: Why does press say 'religious left,' as opposed to 'Religious Left'?

Every now and then, readers — or people I meet in daily life — ask this question: Why do journalists write so much about the Religious Right (capital letters), while devoting way less digital ink to the actions, policies and beliefs of the religious left (no capital letters).

That is a complex question and you can hear me struggling with it all the way through this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). The hook for this episode was my post that ran with this headline: “Thinking with David Briggs and Ryan Burge: Whoa, is religious left really on rise (again)?”

For starters, people tend to ask this question every four or eight years (hint, hint), when the mainstream press does another round of stories about the religious left surging into action in an attempt to counterbalance the nasty Religious Right.

The Religious Right, you see, exists all the time — because it is one of the largest camps inside the modern Republican Party. The religious left doesn’t play the same role in the Democratic Party, unless we are talking about the importance of politically (as opposed to doctrinally) liberal black-church leaders in strategic primary elections. You can ask Joe Biden about that this time around.

I guess the simple answer to the “RR” vs. “rl” question is that journalists tend to capitalize the names of groups that they see as major political or social movements — like the Civil Rights movement or the Sexual Revolution.

The religious left, you see, isn’t a “movement” that exists all the time — in my experience — for many mainstream journalists. The religious left is just ordinary, good, liberal religious people doing things that are positive and logical in the eyes of gatekeepers in newsrooms. This is “good” religion.

The Religious Right, on the other hand, is a powerful political movement consisting of strange, scary evangelicals who keep coming out of the rural backwoods to threaten normal life in American cities. This is “bad,” even dangerous, religion.

Now, there is another big irony linked to press coverage of progressive forms of faith.


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Thinking with David Briggs and Ryan Burge: Whoa, is religious left really on rise (again)?

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If you know your religion-beat history, then you know this name — David Briggs, who is best known for his years with the Associated Press.

If you know your GetReligion history, then you know that — for 17 years — we have been saying that the “religious left” deserves more attention. This is specially true in terms of the doctrinal beliefs of people in these blue pews and how those beliefs help shape their politics.

It seems that, every four years or so — a telling interval — we see a few stories about a surge of activity on the religious left and how that will impact politicians opposed by the Religious Right. It’s like politics is the only reality, or something.

Thus, several readers noted this recent Briggs byline for the Association of Religion Data Archives: “The decline of the religious left in the age of Trump.”

Say what? Here’s the overture:

President Trump has had a powerful mobilizing effect on the liberal and secular left in U.S. politics.

But will religious liberals also play a significant role in getting out the vote for Democrat Joe Biden in November?

Almost immediately after the 2016 election, some commentators began heralding the likelihood that a revived religious left would emerge from what many liberals considered the ashes of Trump’s victory.

But such hopes may be based more on a wing and a prayer than solid evidence of any such new awakening. Rather, there are several signs indicating “a notable decline” in political activity among religious liberals.


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Thinking with Ryan Burge and Damon Linker: Blessed be the ties that used to bind America?

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A friend of mine who was a data journalist long before that was normal — Anthony DeBarros — used to tell my Washington Journalism Center students the following: A good reporter can look at almost any solid set of survey statistics and see potential news stories.

So here we go again. When the Pew Research Center released its epic “Nones on the Rise” study in 2012, all kinds of reporters studied the details and saw all kinds of stories. The updates on those numbers keep producing headlines, with good cause.

But if was veteran scholar John C. Green — yes, I quote him a lot — who saw, even before the public release of those numbers (click here and then here for GetReligion reminders), a very important politics-and-religion story. Here is the crucial info, as he stated it on the record in 2012:

The unaffiliated overwhelmingly reject ancient doctrines on sexuality with 73 percent backing same-sex marriage and 72 percent saying abortion should be legal in all, or most, cases. Thus, the “Nones” skew heavily Democratic as voters — with 75 percent supporting Barack Obama in 2008. The unaffiliated are now a stronger presence in the Democratic Party than African-American Protestants, white mainline Protestants or white Catholics.

“It may very well be that in the future the unaffiliated vote will be as important to the Democrats as the traditionally religious are to the Republican Party,” said Green, addressing the religion reporters. “If these trends continue, we are likely to see even sharper divisions between the political parties.”

Of course, the modern Democratic Party also includes one of America’s most fervently religious camps, as well — African-American churchgoers.

Many have predicted the obvious: At some point, there will be tensions there. Woke Democrats are, for example, on the rise and grabbing lots of headlines. But who saved Joe Biden’s political neck in the South Carolina primary? How does he please the woke choir and the black church?

With that in mind, let’s look at two must-file charts that political scientist Ryan Burge circulated the other day via his must-follow Twitter account. And keep in mind that we are building toward a new Damon Linker essay with this blunt headline: “Could America split up?”


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Joe Biden, Democrats face tough religious issues in public life that will not go away

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Joe Biden, Democrats face tough religious issues in public life that will not go away

It didn't matter where Pete Buttigieg traveled in Iowa and the early Democratic Party primaries -- voters kept asking similar questions.

Yes, they asked about his status as the first openly gay major-party candidate to hit the top tier of a presidential race. But they also wanted to know how his faith journey into the Episcopal Church affected his life and his take on politics.

"Those who are on my side of the aisle, those who view themselves as more progressive, are sometimes allergic to talking about faith in a way that I'm afraid has made it feel as if God really did have one political party," said Buttigieg, addressing a webinar for clergy and laypeople in his denomination's House of Deputies.

"It was very important to me to assert otherwise, but also to talk about the political implications of the commandments to concern ourselves with the well-being of the most marginalized and the most vulnerable and the idea that salvation has to do with standing with and for those who are cast out in society. … That energy carried the campaign, in ways that I never would have guessed."

But highly motivated religious believers are, of course, often divided by conflicts about doctrine that then spill over into politics.

Buttigieg waded into one such controversy during the campaign when candidate Beto O'Rourke said congregations and religious institutions that reject same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status.

“If we want to talk about anti-discrimination law for a school or an organization, absolutely. They should not be able to discriminate," said Buttigieg, on CNN's State of the Union broadcast. "But going after the tax exemption of churches, Islamic centers or other religious facilities in this country, I think that's just going to deepen the divisions we are already experiencing."

Other Democrats face similar hot-button issues. Former vice president Joe Biden, during his fight over the "soul of the nation" with President Donald Trump, is sure to hear questions about his Catholic faith and his evolving beliefs on moral and political issues.

Biden backed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993 and the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. His views changed, while serving with President Barack Obama.

A key moment came in 2016, when Biden performed a same-sex marriage rite.


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Thinking with Ratzinger and Burge: Concerning sex, marriage, doctrine and church decline

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When historians write about the career of Pope Benedict XVI I predict that they will include a sobering quote that dates back to his life and work as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany.

I am referring to that 2001 interview when — looking at trends in postmodern Europe — he put all of his hopes and fears on the record. I thought of this exchange during a Twitter dialogue the other day with GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge. Hold that thought.

Ratzinger had been candid before. German journalist Peter Seewald probed on this topic by noting an earlier quote in which Ratzinger said that the future church would be "reduced in its dimensions; it will be necessary to start again." Had the leader of Rome's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith changed his views?

That led to this famous reflection by the future pope. This is long, but essential:

[The Church] will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes … she will lose many of her social privileges. … As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. …

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. … The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain. … But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith.


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Thinking with Ryan Burge: God 'anointing' presidents -- a Trump thing or an American thing?

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Maybe something strange leaked into the American water system a dozen years or so.

I am not a Republican, so I wasn’t part of the choir that sang the praises of Ronald Reagan. I do remember that journalists and historians were nervous about Reagan referring to America as an “anointed” land (example here). However, I don’t remember his followers using similar “anointing” language to describe the president. Ditto for George W. Bush.

I do remember (I was still a Democrat at the time) the wave of interesting semi-religious images and language in press coverage of the young Sen. Barack Obama as he started his bid for the White House. Folks who have been around will remember the online feature — “The Obama Messiah Watch” — that Timothy Noah launched at Slate. Here is the overture for the first post in that series:

Is Barack Obama — junior U.S. senator from Illinois, best-selling author, Harvard Law Review editor, Men’s Vogue cover model, and “exploratory” presidential candidate — the second coming of our Savior and our Redeemer, Prince of Peace and King of Kings, Jesus Christ? His press coverage suggests we can’t dismiss this possibility out of hand. I therefore inaugurate the Obama Messiah Watch, which will periodically highlight gratuitously adoring biographical details that appear in newspaper, television, and magazine profiles of this otherworldly presence in our midst. …

Readers are invited to submit … details — Obama walking on water, Obama sating the hunger of 5,000 with five loaves and two fishes — from other Obama profiles.

I bring this up to point readers to an interesting feature entitled “Trump The Anointed?” at the Religion In Public blog — written by Paul A. Djupe and GetReligion contributor Ryan P. Burge.

Here is how that post opens, referring to people who — in polling nearly a year ago — believed that Donald Trump was “anointed by God to be president of the United States”:

Just 21% believed this, but evangelicals were more likely to believe it (29%), and pentecostals were the most likely (53%). This belief didn’t come out of nowhere, it was making the rounds of conservative media, with figures such as Rick Perry suggesting that Trump is “the chosen one,” a label Trump embraced and used (while pointing toward the clouds) in an August 2019 presser. Others used variations on the theme; he was compared to King Cyrus; “God was behind the last election;” and Trump is the “King of Israel,” and the “second coming” according to Wayne Allen Root.

Now, there is a theological point that needs to be made here.


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Thinking with Ryan Burge: Religious faith, moral convictions and obeying the law

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You can learn a lot about protest and civil disobedience by studying this history of religious movements in America and around the world. I did that in college and grad school.

I also learned quite a bit these topics while, as a reporter, hiking out into the vast expanses of northeastern Colorado in the mid 1980s with some Catholic peace activists who planned to stage a protest at the gate surrounding a set of nuclear missile silos. I saw one of the same nuns get arrest at an abortion facility.

At some point, of course, protesters face a choice — will they break the law. That sounds like a simple line in the legal sand, but it isn’t.

Here is what I remember from that experience long ago. I offer this imperfect and simple typology as a way of introducing another interesting set of statistics — in a chart, of course — from social scientist Ryan Burge of the ReligionInPublic blog, who is also a GetReligion contributor.

This particular set of numbers looks at various religious traditions and the degree to which these various believers say they obey laws, without exception. You can see how that might affect questions linked to protest, civil disobedience and even the use of violence in protests.

But back to the very high plains of Colorado. We discussed several different levels of protest.

* Protesters can, of course, apply for parade permits and, when they have received one, they can strictly cooperate with public officials.

* It is possible to hold protests in public places where assemblies of various kinds are legal — period.

* Then again, protesters can obstruct city streets for as long as possible and, when confronted by police, they can disburse without a major confrontation.

* Or not. At some point, protesters can peacefully violate a law and refuse to leave — whether that’s a major road crossing, the whites only rows of a city bus, the front gates of an abortion facility or the security zone outside a nuclear missile silo. Hanging protest banners — or similar actions — is another option here. In civil disobedience, protesters accept that they will be arrested.


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Could Democrats win more Latter-day Saint Votes? Here's where they diverge from evangelicals

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I’ve long been fascinated by the dynamic between Mormons and white evangelicals.

On the surface, the two groups look remarkably similar. Both communities are religiously devout, remain focused on evangelizing while maintaining strong social ties within their faith community and tend to lean to the right in American politics.

Under that veneer there’s been a lot of turmoil. It’s been my impression that Mormons have always felt a bit ostracized from the general American public. To combat this, the LDS church (or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) put together a media campaign called “I’m a Mormon” with the goal of normalizing their faith to the average American. I think, in some ways, that Mormons wanted to be seen as evangelicals.

But, many evangelicals want to ensure that doesn’t happen. Some of the leading voices in conservative American evangelicalism have labeled Mormonism a “cult.” Even the Billy Graham website once described Mormonism in cultish terms before the nomination of Mitt Romney in 2012. External similarities papers over the fact evangelicals and Mormons are some strange bedfellows, to be sure. But, do they really see politics in the same way? The data tells a pretty complicated story.

Let’s start broadly, with a look at partisanship and political ideology. In both cases, white evangelicals tend to be more apt to identify with the right side of the spectrum. For instance, 73.3% of white evangelicals identify as Republicans. It’s a bit lower for Mormons at 65.7%.


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