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Question for 2020: Can Episcopal clergy consecrate bread and wine through the Internet?

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Question for 2020: Can Episcopal clergy consecrate bread and wine through the Internet?

In the late 1970s, the Episcopal Ad Project began releasing spots taking shots at television preachers and other trends in American evangelicalism.

One image showed a television serving as an altar, holding a priest's stole, a chalice and plate of Eucharistic hosts. The headline asked: "With all due regard to TV Christianity, have you ever seen a Sony that gives Holy Communion?"

Now some Anglicans are debating whether it's valid -- during the coronavirus crisis -- to celebrate "virtual Eucharists," with computers linking priests at altars and communicants with their own bread and wine at home.

In a recent House of Bishops meeting -- online, of course -- Episcopal Church leaders backed away from allowing what many call "Virtual Holy Eucharist."

Episcopal News Service said bishops met in private small groups to discuss if it's "theologically sound to allow Episcopalians to gather separately and receive Communion that has been consecrated by a priest remotely during an online service."

Experiments had already begun, in some Zip codes. In April, Bishop Jacob Owensby of the Diocese of Western Louisiana encouraged such rites among "Priests who have the technical know-how, the equipment and the inclination" to proceed.

People at home, he wrote, will "provide for themselves bread and wine (bread alone is also permissible) and place it on a table in front of them. The priest's consecration of elements in front of her or him extends to the bread and wine in each … household. The people will consume the consecrated elements."

Days later, after consulting with America's presiding bishop," Bishop Owensby rescinded those instructions. "I understand that virtual consecration of elements at a physical or geographical distance from the Altar exceeds the recognized bounds set by our rubrics and inscribed in our theology of the Eucharist," he wrote.

However, similar debates were already taking place among other Anglicans. In Australia, for example, Archbishop Glenn Davies of Sydney urged priests to be creative during this pandemic, while churches were being forced to shut their doors.

During a live-streamed rite, he wrote, parishioners "could participate in their own homes via the internet consuming their own bread and wine, in accordance with our Lord's command."


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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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Christian in NBA suffers horrible, funny injury: Was cruel ESPN tweet a news story or not?

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I realize that few GetReligion readers seem to care much about sports. But what about a mixture of race, religion and sports?

With that in mind, let me ask a serious journalism question linked to those three topics.

Would it be a news story — a hard-news story — if an ESPN personality (or the social-media team working with his show) asked if it was funny if an athlete who backs #BlackLivesMatters suffered a horrible, painful injury soon after making a high-profile statement about how his convictions were rooted in his faith?

Wait. We know an ESPN host and/or the show’s social-media team would never do such a thing.

But what if a conservative media star — Tucker Carlson, let’s say — asked that same question?

It’s safe to say that this would explode into mainstream news coverage.

That brings us to this headline in the New York Post (a conservative paper, of course): “ESPN’s Dan Le Batard posts poll wondering if Jonathan Isaac’s torn ACL is funny.”

Dan Le Batard issued an apology for his ill-advised poll Monday afternoon.

The ESPN radio host’s show, “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz,” ran a poll on Twitter poking fun at Magic forward Jonathan Isaac, who tore his ACL Sunday night.

Isaac was the first player in the NBA bubble not to kneel during the national anthem, and also did not wear the “Black Lives Matter” warm-up donned by the rest of his teammates.

“Is it funny the guy who refused to kneel immediately blew out his knee?” the poll asked.

Oh, right. I turned that question around, didn’t I?

Isaac is a black Christian — he is ordained, in fact — who made headlines by linking his faith to his decision not to take part in the official NBA pre-game rites. He wasn’t protesting the protests, exactly. He had a larger point that he wanted to make, one rooted in his work as a minister.


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What's a hot take on Israel worth? Depends on one's media celebrity status (Hello Seth Rogen)

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How do you tell the difference between a Jewish pessimist and a Jewish optimist?

Easy. The pessimist says, “Things just can’t get any worse. The optimist says, “Sure they can.”

Well, they certainly have — as far as the fraught connection between Israel and liberal American Jews goes.

The latest stressor is a predictably nasty media exchange over high-profile liberal commentator Peter Beinart’s recent declaration that he no longer backs a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A single bi-national, or perhaps a confederated, state, said Beinart, is the best remaining equitable option. This, he concluded, is because of Israel’s deeply entrenched West Bank settlement project. Further undermining the two-state option, he said, is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat to annex much of the occupied West Bank that Palestinians want to include in their own independent state.

Beinart detailed his thoughts in this New York Times oped and, in much greater detail, in this Jewish Currents essay.

For liberal Jews — who have long argued that two independent states coexisting side by side, one Jewish-run and one Palestinian, is the best and only realistic option — Beinart’s abandonment of full Jewish nationhood was nothing less than Zionist heresy.

Naturally, given today’s insatiable 24/7 media universe — in which all who dare venture are but a tweet away from “woke” fame or “cancel culture” renunciation — the verbal warfare started immediately.

Beinart’s, you may be wondering, is but one voice in a cacophony of voices claiming to know what’s best for Israel-Palestine, so why the fuss? Moreover, he lives in the United States, not Israel, so to what degree does his opinion even matter?

The answer, of course, is his American media prominence. His frequent talking-head appearances, (he’s a CNN regular) and voluminous writings have won him a place in the liberal Zionist media firmament, where he’s long been a harsh critic of Netanyahu and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. That’s not Hollywood famous, but it’s a start.


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Religion is the hidden theme in this coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine controversy

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A group of doctors in white coats was the big news last week and for those of you living under a rock, I am referring to some press conferences in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. They featured a racially mixed group of about 10 people dressed in white lab coats.

All of them — who were doctors of one sort or another — gave their names and that of their workplaces, making it easy for anyone to check them out. Their plaint? The anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is a proven tool in treatment of COVID-19 and there’s something rotten in Denmark when you can’t even post a video on social media about it.

But did you see much reporting examining their arguments?

No, you heard about “demon sperm” and “alien DNA.”

It didn’t take long before Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were treating the event as akin to anti-vaxxer screed. Censors at all three platforms were working overtime to get this presser erased. Certain media managed to get a look-see at these medics, and what did they concentrate on in their reports?

Their religious views, of course.

Especially the religion of the one black woman in the crowd. We’ll get back to that shortly. First, some background from the New York Times, which was in quite a swivet about the whole thing.

In a video posted Monday online, a group of people calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” and wearing white medical coats spoke against the backdrop of the Supreme Court in Washington, sharing misleading claims about the virus, including that hydroxychloroquine was an effective coronavirus treatment and that masks did not slow the spread of the virus.

The video did not appear to be anything special. But within six hours, President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had tweeted versions of it, and the right-wing news site Breitbart had shared it. It went viral, shared largely through Facebook groups dedicated to anti-vaccination movements and conspiracy theories such as QAnon, racking up tens of millions of views. Multiple versions of the video were uploaded to YouTube, and links were shared through Twitter.

Well, surely the public can’t be allowed to see that, right?


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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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Podcast: What did those Big Tech hearings have to do with religious life in America?

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There have been some wild clashes between religious groups and the czars of the Big Tech institutions that have tremendous power in American public discourse. Certainly there have been more important skirmishes than Twitter shutting down that inspirational Tim Tebow mini-sermon the other day.

Many of my friends — as an Orthodox Christian layman — started paying close attention to this issue back in 2015 when a strategic set of cyber-lords informed these believers’ priests, all of a sudden, that they couldn’t put “Father” in front of their names on their Facebook pages.

This was part of a general policy about honorary titles of all kinds. But the title “Father” plays a different role in the lives of people in ancient Christian flocks. It’s not a professional title, it’s a sacramental title.

My own Orthodox godfather — the popular online scribe Father Stephen Freeman — responded by putting “(Father Stephen Freeman)” after his name. Other priests found clever ways to add their identity to the top of their Facebook pages. That, of course, doesn’t help people find their sites with searches for their actual names, including the word “Father.”

Like I said, there have been more consequential clashes between the Big Tech czars and religious believers, but that one was symbolic.

The key is that faith is part of daily life, for millions of folks. These days, social media software has a massive impact on how people live their lives. Thus, Big Tech is a powerful force in the lives of believers and their families. That’s why “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I talked about this week’s Big Tech Congressional hearings, during this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in).

So what were these hearings all about? Apparently, the answer to that question depended on one’s political ties. As I wrote the other day:

Democrats have their own reasons to be concerned about Big Tech, whose clout in the lives of modern Americans make the railroad tycoons of the Gilded Age look like minor-league players. These companies, after all, resemble digital public utilities more than mere Fortune 500 powerhouses.

Meanwhile, you know that — at some point — Republicans are going to roll out a long list of cases of viewpoint discrimination against cultural, moral, religious and — oh yeah — political conservatives.

So what happened, when the mainstream press covered the Hill showdown with the glowing digital images of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos of Amazon and The Washington Post?


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Old 'liberal' views of the New York Times news bubble -- one from left, one from right

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It’s been awhile since Bari Weiss of The New York Times wrote That. Resignation. Letter. to publisher A.G. Sulzberger, but I am still thinking about what she wrote and some of the published reactions.

Yes, I wish someone would leak some Times newsroom Slack discussions about the aftermath. As always, I am more interested in what is happening in the newsroom, as opposed to the offices of the editorial-page staff (click here for the GetReligion podcast post on that subject).

Two commentary pieces jumped out of the swirling online mix, for me, in the days after that firestorm. I often read lots of material on the cultural left and then on the cultural right and look for thoughts that overlap.

With that in mind, let me recommend this piece by Jodi Rudoren, who is editor in chief of The Forward, a progressive Jewish publication. Rudoren spent more than two decades at the Times.

It’s safe to say that she worked there during — to frame this in terms of the Weiss letter — the era of the “old orthodoxy,” which was basically old liberalism, to one degree or another. The Times was a culturally liberal workplace, but it was not — at least not deliberately — trying to preach its gospel to readers. Now there is a “new orthodoxy” on the rise in America’s most influential newsroom.

Thus, the headline for Rudoren’s piece: “I don’t recognize the NYT that Bari Weiss quit.”

By all means, read all of that piece. But here is a crucial chunk of that, which starts with a discussion of the forced resignation of editorial page editor James Bennet after the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s essay calling for the use of U.S. military troops to quell violent protests. Rudoren writes:

I found the argument that publishing the OpEd endangered anyone’s life to be specious, though it was repeated by many of my former colleagues on Twitter; I thought that organized, open revolt violated every code of collegiality; and I worried that the paper was cowering from its historic role as the host of raucous but respectful debate.


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Mark Hemingway: Campus free-speech fights almost always include religion landmines

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On one level, arguments about free speech on secular college and university campuses are “secular” arguments.

However, if you know anything about the First Amendment wars in recent decades you know that topics linked to religion — especially when they involve the Sexual Revolution — are frequently in the mix. Things also get dicey when religious believers start talking about salvation, heaven, hell, etc.

Someone like Mark Hemingway totally gets that. As a former GetReligionista, Mark (click here for obligatory 30 Rock nod to Hemingway) knows the landscape of media coverage in the battlefield where fights about religious liberty and free speech frequently overlap.

This brings me to a RealClearInvestigations.com piece that he wrote recently that ran with this headline: “A Push in States to Fight Campus Intolerance With 'Intellectual Diversity' Laws.” Here is a key passage:

In March of last year, President Trump issued an executive order making federal research funding contingent on universities having adequate free speech protections. At the state level, Texas last year became the 17th state since 2015 to enact legislation protecting First Amendment rights on campus. Currently, the conservative National Association of Scholars is working with four states – Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona – to go further: pass laws to increase “intellectual diversity” at public universities.

South Dakota has already done so, and the law’s requirements amount to the most sweeping campus reforms in the country. It was triggered last year by a minor controversy over the stifling of a planned “Hawaiian Day” on one campus -- a last straw for critics of cultural hypersensitivity, which revived intellectual diversity legislation opposed by the state Board of Regents.

Under intellectual diversity laws, not only must dissenting views be tolerated, but college administrations are required to actively take steps (yet to be specified) to ensure that students are exposed to competing cultural and political viewpoints.

So what would “competing cultural” viewpoints look like in campus debates about gender, sex and marriage? Is it more accurate to say that there are “Republican” beliefs involved there doctrines linked to traditional forms of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.?

It was on Twitter that I saw Hemingway connect some dots in ways that I thought would be of interest to religion-beat writers and religion-news readers. For example:


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