Sexual abuse

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Plug-In: What 'Never Trumper' Russell Moore's departure from ERLC means for SBC

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Plug-In: What 'Never Trumper' Russell Moore's departure from ERLC means for SBC

Religion News Service national writer Bob Smietana picked up one Moore big scoop this week.

Back in March, Smietana broke the internet with news of Beth Moore no longer identifying as a Southern Baptist.

This week, Smietana — one-time “longhaired, hippy wannabe songwriter” turned highly content religion reporter — was the first to confirm the embattled Russell Moore leaving the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

The ERLC’s president since 2013 will join Christianity Today, the influential evangelical magazine founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham in 1956. He’ll “serve as a full-time public theologian for the publication and … lead a new Public Theology Project.”

At the Washington Post, religion writers Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Michelle Boorstein point out that Russell Moore “blasted former president Donald Trump and his evangelical fans.” His ERLC resignation prompts questions about the SBC’s future:

Moore’s departure from the convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) follows other high-profile exits from the denomination, including popular Bible teacher Beth Moore (no relation) and Black pastors. Some evangelicals are wondering what their departures signal about the direction of the convention, which has included louder voices on the far right in recent years.

Read additional coverage from The Tennessean’s Holly Meyer, the Wall Street Journal’s Ian Lovett and GetReligion’s Terry Mattingly.

Also, if you can’t get enough of Smietana and the Southern Baptists, check out this piece on “the grievance studies hoaxer and atheist” who is “on a crusade against what he sees as a ‘woke’ invasion of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.”


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When covering Moore's exit from SBC power, scribes should ponder what made him 'liberal'

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When covering Moore's exit from SBC power, scribes should ponder what made him 'liberal'

This may be a strange place to start when discussing early news coverage of the Rev. Russell Moore moving from the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission — the crucial Southern Baptist camp in Beltway land — to what looks like a Christianity Today think tank on theology and public life.

So be it. This is where we will start — with the whole Moore is “too liberal” thing.

What does “liberal” mean in that curse that has been tossed about in Baptist social media?

Remember that one of Moore’s primary duties in Washington, D.C., has been to help Southern Baptists defend against attacks on religious liberty and the First Amendment in general. With that in mind, let me return to a question that I have been asking here at GetReligion — while focusing on the role that labels play in American journalism — for a decade or so. This is from a 2015 post:

What do you call people who are weak in their defense of free speech, weak in their defense of freedom of association and weak in their defense of religious liberty (in other words, basic First Amendment rights)?

The answer: I don't know, but it would be totally inaccurate — considering the history of American political thought — to call these people "liberals."

So what do you call someone, like Moore, who has been defending free speech, defending the freedom of association and defending religious liberty?

Wait. For. It. You can accurately call him a “liberal” in that context. In this framework, the New York Times editorial pages and, in many cases, the American Civil Liberties Union, are now — what? What is the accurate term, these days?

Note that this struggle to define “liberal” was at the heart of the celebrated clash between Bari Weiss and the Times. I would argue that it was part of the newsroom warfare that led to the ousting of Liz Spayd as the Times public editor (when she dared to ask if the newspaper was committed to fair, accurate coverage of half of America). It’s at the heart of the growing tensions between gay-rights icon Andrew Sullivan and the LGBTQ establishment. I could go on and on.

But back to another cluster of issues linked to Moore.


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Plug-In: Murder convictions in death of George Floyd -- why faith angles were important

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Plug-In: Murder convictions in death of George Floyd -- why faith angles were important

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

This week’s big news — former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s conviction on all counts in George Floyd’s murder — is a story about police brutality. And racial justice. And yes, the power of faith.

USA Today captures this powerful scene:

George Floyd's brother Philonise Floyd was sitting with his head bowed and his hands folded in front of his face in prayer before the verdict was read. As each verdict was read, his hands increasingly shook and his head nodded up and down.

"I was just praying they would find him guilty. As an African American, we usually never get justice," Floyd said.

The exceptional coverage by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Chao Xiong and Paul Walsh contains this important highlight:

As news spread of the verdicts — guilty on all counts — social media sites reposted the Minneapolis Police Department's initial report that Floyd died of a medical event at the scene, an assertion that might never have been contradicted so forcefully were it not for a teenage girl, Darnella Frazier, walking by and recording Floyd's death last May 25 on her cellphone and posting it for the world to see.

"I just cried so hard. This last hour my heart was beating so fast, I was so anxious, anxiety [busting] through the roof," Frazier, who was 17 at the time, posted on Facebook after the verdict. "But to know GUILTY ON ALL 3 CHARGES !!! THANK YOU GOD THANK YOU … George Floyd we did it!! Justice has been served."

The Los Angeles Times’ Kurtis Lee recounts this scene:


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Thinking about 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick's rise and fall: Did Catholic leaders learn anything?

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Thinking about 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick's rise and fall: Did Catholic leaders learn anything?

If you have followed the career of fallen cardinal Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick, you know that for a decade or two he was probably the most influential Catholic leader in the United States — especially with journalists (think “Team Ted”) and gatekeepers in the church hierarchy.

With McCarrick, it wasn’t enough to discuss his evil deeds. That was a tragic, hellish story, but it wasn’t the most important story.

The big question was how he managed to land a cardinal’s “red hat” and a throne in Washington, D.C. — even while, behind closed doors, warning lights were flashing and sirens were sounding in America and in the power centers of Rome.

Once journalists have asked that question, they need to ask (a) who promoted McCarrick, (b) who protected him and (c) who were the McCarrick disciples who used their connections with him to climb the ladders of Catholic power?

This brings us to a think piece at The Catholic Herald in England that received some attention in social media and probably deserved more. The headline: “How McCarricks Happen.”

The big idea: Are we talking about a “bad apple” or about multiple “bad barrels” that consistently produce rotten apples? Thus:

Barrels influence apples, sure: how big the barrel, how tightly packed, one’s position within it, who one’s neighbors are, how regularly the apples get mixed, removed, or replenished. But the apples themselves, good or bad, influence both each other, and collectively, the barrel environment as a whole. Furthermore, while barrels come in different shapes, sizes and materials – as whisky connoisseurs know, outwardly indistinguishable single casks can produce subtly different drops – there are significant commonalities between them.

This is precisely why, to leave barrels behind for a bit, when reading exposés of high-profile sexual predators (and we’ve read more over the past several years than is probably mentally healthy) they start to feel a little samey.


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Thinking with two key Southern Baptists: Concerning those scary Gallup Poll numbers

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Thinking with two key Southern Baptists: Concerning those scary Gallup Poll numbers

Let’s fly up to high altitude for a moment, before reading two interesting think pieces about those Gallup Poll numbers — “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time” — that launched a kazillion headlines.

If you’ve been paying attention to the state of Christianity in America for the past 50 years or so, you’re aware of several broad trends.

* In terms of demographics, the world of oldline Protestantism — the “Seven Sisters” churches — is in freefall, with these aging denominations losing around 50% of their members after peaking in the 1960s.

* Catholic churches have grown, kind of, in part due to rising numbers of Latinos in the pews. Worship numbers are down. New vocations for priests and nuns are way down (but it’s fascinating to note the cases in which numbers are steady, or rising). Mass attendance and birth-rate trends are crucial.

* Evangelical Protestants surged, especially in the Sunbelt, filling much of the public-square void created by mainline decline. Growth was especially strong with charismatics and Pentecostals — Black and White. In the past decade or two, the rapid growth of nondenominational or even post-denominational churches and networks has hurt mainstream evangelicalism, especially the Southern Baptist Convention. Most evangelical numbers have stalled or gone into a slower decline.

Summary: Churches are growing or holding steady if members are (a) having children, (b) raising children in the faith, (c) retaining the loyalty of those children into the next generation and (d) winning converts (that final point has more to do with doctrine than politics).

Notice that the words “Donald Trump” are missing. Like I said, this is a view from the heavens.

With all that in mind, let’s look at two essays: “Why American Church Membership Is Plummeting,” by historian Thomas Kidd, care of The Gospel Coalition website, and “Why the Church Is Losing the Next Generation,” in the latest newsletter by the Rev. Russell Moore of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

First, here are two crucial chunks of the Kidd essay, which opens — logically enough — with a discussion of the weaknesses of polling data.

… (A)s I have suggested before, we should take religion polls with a grain of salt. … They usually tell us about some trends on the religious landscape, to be sure, but they are almost always open to widely varying interpretation. Polls are at their best when there is little wiggle room for interpretation in the data.


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Returning to Kamp Kanakuk: Is this new expose a work of journalism, theology or both?

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Returning to Kamp Kanakuk: Is this new expose a work of journalism, theology or both?

Readers with long memories will recall that, when the Internet arrived it had an immediate impact on important subjects that rarely received adequate coverage in mainstream media.

Take religion, for example. The lower cost of publishing online led to an explosion of forums, listservs, newsletters, online “radio” channels, podcasts and weblogs. Some failed or evolved into new forms — consider the long and complicated histories of Beliefnet and Patheos — and others became, well, normal.

Now, in the “cancel culture” era, it’s clear that another example of online evolution is affecting serious coverage of religion, as well as other complicated topics.

I am referring to the controversies surrounding Substack and the myriad newsletters and alternative publications thriving there. For a sample of the fea paranoia surrounding Substack, click into this thread from a professor at the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry or read between the lines of this Washington Post column: “The Substack controversy’s bigger story.” Here is a sample of that:

Substack is a start-up for self-publishing email newsletters: Writers decide how often to write and whether and how much to charge; Substack sends the newsletters and collects any fees. The ease of use has made it popular with journalists. …

Some of the most prolific users are heterodox political writers who had found mainstream publications an increasingly poor fit. A number quickly rose to the top of the Substack leader boards. This attracted the gimlet eye of the cancelers: Other online writers — some of whom had their own Substack newsletters — have leveled accusations of transphobia and other offenses. A nascent boycott aims to pressure Substack into deplatforming the alleged offenders. Reportedly, their campaign is having some effect.

“Heterodox” is an interesting word. It appears, in this context, to define the work of various kinds of conservatives or, even worse, free thinkers (Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss, for example) who accuse many “liberals” or “progressives” of turning dangerously illiberal.

This brings me to this weekend’s must-read missive from Nancy and David French, care of The Dispatch, an alternative conservative online publication that is thriving in this new online environment. Here is the dramatic double-decker headline atop this long feature:

‘They Aren’t Who You Think They Are’

The inside story of how Kanakuk — one of America’s largest Christian camps — enabled horrific abuse.


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Purity culture questions: A friendly, but crucial, dialogue between two evangelical thinkers

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Purity culture questions: A friendly, but crucial, dialogue between two evangelical thinkers

The purity culture wars continue over on Twitter, where a crucial question — from a journalism perspective — can be seen in the following sequence.

There is no question that some church leaders went too far with purity culture themes and rites, including hellish actions by abusive men. Can anyone deny that? However, can journalists (and their academic and activist sources) assume that because evil happened in some cases means that it happened in all cases? And, to be specific, do journalists have on-the-record evidence that the alleged shooter in Atlanta was, in fact, warped by abusive people at an abusive church?

GetReligion published two posts linked to these debates. Check out Julia Duin’s post here: “Panning purity culture: What the press doesn't get about basic Christian doctrines on sex.”

Then, I raised other basic journalism questions here: “Wait a minute: How is a sermon on the Second Coming linked to shootings in Atlanta?”

Before we get to this weekend’s two “think pieces” on this topic — by religious-liberty activist David French and Crossway books executive Justin Taylor — here is a flashback to a key passage in my post, which is linked to some of Taylor’s constructive criticism of the French piece.

It’s not enough to say that this or that conservative congregation, or counseling center, or parachurch ministry is “evangelical” and, thus, the public can assume that Christian doctrines were used in manipulative ways. …

Ponder this equation: Journalists cannot assume that a specific evangelical flock advocates dangerous doctrine X, simply because there are experts (progressive evangelicals even) who insist that all evangelicals teach dangerous doctrine X and, thus, we know that dangerous doctrine X causes broken, manipulated individuals to do hellish things.

At some point, journalists need to find specific people advocating specific ideas and actions — using research methods that are deeper than second-hand reports and the convictions of hostile experts on one side of fights about the Sexual Revolution.

This brings us to French’s must-read piece:


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Catholic journalists are must-read sources for those seeking reality of Cuomo scandals

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Catholic journalists are must-read sources for those seeking reality of Cuomo scandals

It was just two months ago, in the aftermath of the U.S. Capitol riot, that an idea was floated that could help stop all the misinformation in our society: a “reality czar.”

It was a New York Times piece by tech columnist Kevin Roose (his new book “Futureproof” is a must read if you’re interested in automation replacing you at work) on Feb. 2 that quoted experts who floated ideas to stop what the paper called the “scourge of hoaxes and lies.”

Roose’s piece threw out some interesting solutions — although “reality czar” is Orwellian, a Soviet-style solution to misinformation.

The harsh reality is that news consumers will need to read a wider variety of news sources if they are interested in finding solid facts, on-the-record sources and some sense of balanced reporting. On issues linked to religion, culture and politics, that will mean paying more attention to independent religious publications — including Catholic websites — that are now punching way above their weight. Hold that thought, because we will come back to it.

The truth is reality used to be what journalism purported to report on.

That’s no longer true given how polarized the news media has become over the past decade, a progression that sped up during the Donald Trump years and following the proliferation of partisan news sources during the internet age.

From a political standpoint, this brand of one-sided journalism has allowed politicians to earn cover from many mainstream newsrooms for alleged wrongdoings. On the left, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, embroiled in dual scandals regarding nursing home deaths during COVID-19 and growing claims of sexual harassment, is a prime example of this phenomena.

At this time last year, professionals at news organizations were fawning all over his press conferences as the country plunged into the pandemic. Many journalists considered Cuomo the coronavirus reality czar.

Why? Cuomo, a Democrat, served as the counterweight to then-President Trump.


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Wait a minute: How is a sermon on the Second Coming linked to shootings in Atlanta?

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Wait a minute: How is a sermon on the Second Coming linked to shootings in Atlanta?

The hellish shootings in Atlanta have unleashed fierce debates combining questions about sex, sin, salvation, repentance, race and various combinations of all of those hot-button topics.

The debates center, of course, of statements by Robert Aaron Long — the suspect in the killing of eight people, including six Asian women — and his complicated and troubled history as a young member of Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Ga., a Southern Baptist congregation.

Eventually, court testimony will provide hard facts about this case. At this point, all the evidence is that Long was raised as a conservative Christian, was active in his church youth group and that he abandoned his faith and then, quite literally, all hell broke loose in his personal and family life. Long has said that a “sex addiction” drove him to frequent massage parlors and his family, apparently, sent him to a Christian counseling center for treatment. His conservative Christian parents “threw him out of the house” the night before the shootings, according to reports in the Washington Post and elsewhere.

Like I said, on-the-record details will emerge. Right now, I want to raise a journalism question or two about coverage of the SBC congregation that is involved in this story. What do we know about this church and, well, how do we know what we know? One Post story notes the following, quoting a solid, factual source:

The evangelical congregation’s minister, the Rev. Jerry Dockery, is an energetic preacher who advocated for a socially conservative brand of Christianity that, as the church bylaws put it, views “adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, pornography, or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex” as “sinful and offensive to God.”

This isn’t shocking material, if you know anything about traditional forms of Christianity. It would be easy to find specific quotations from recent Catholic popes — including Pope Francis — condemning behaviors such as these, and more.

This congregation is also connected to several doctrinally conservative organizations or movements linked to SBC life, such as the Founders Ministries. All of this leads me to a specific sermon reference discussing the end of the world and Christian teachings about the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oh, and if you stop and think about it, this includes the church’s pastor — indirectly — offering a warning about Christians worshipping political leaders such as Donald Trump.

Say what?


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