Social Media

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Ordinary protests at doxxed SCOTUS homes, Masses and a generic firebomb, as well

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Ordinary protests at doxxed SCOTUS homes, Masses and a generic firebomb, as well

The Roe v. Wade related events of the past three or four days have created a very obvious case study that can be stashed into that ongoing “mirror image” case file here at GetReligion.

Start here. Let’s say that, during the days of the Donald Trump White House, something important happened related to LGBTQ rights — something like a U.S. Supreme Court decision that delivered a major victory to the trans community. At that point, some wild people on the far cultural right published the home addresses of the justices that backed the decision and, maybe, even any hospital that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might be visiting for cancer treatments.

Another group, let’s call it “Bork Sent Us,” announces plans for protests at Episcopal Church parishes because of that denomination’s outspoken support for LGBTQ causes. Some protestors promise to invade sanctuaries and violate the bread and wine used in the Holy Eucharist. Along the way, what if someone firebombed a Planned Parenthood facility?

Obviously, Trump’s press secretary would be asked to condemn this madness, including violations of a federal law against intimidating protests at the homes of judges.

Let’s set that aside for a moment. I want to ask a “mirror image” journalism question: Would this be treated as a major news story in elite media on both sides of our divided nation and, thus, divided media? Would this, at the very least, deserve a story or two that made it into the basic Associated Press summary of the major news stories of the weekend?

Let me say that these events would have deserved waves of digital ink, with good cause.

This brings us, of course, to the leaked copy of a draft of a majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that points to a potential 5-3-1 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Twitter users may know many of the details of the anger this has unleashed in mass media and among Sexual Revolution clergy, both secular and sacred. There has been some coverage, including (#DUH) at Fox News. A sample on the church angle:

The White House on Sunday defended people's "fundamental right to protest" but warned against efforts to "intimidate" others during pro-abortion protests planned at Catholic churches across the country.

Multiple activist groups are planning protests defending abortion rights outside Catholic churches on Mother's Day and the following Sunday after a draft opinion from the Supreme Court threatened to overturn Roe v. Wade.


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Memory eternal: What were the big ideas that drove the work of Chuck Colson?

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Memory eternal: What were the big ideas that drove the work of Chuck Colson?

As a D.C. Beltway power player, the late Charles W. Colson worked with a "Thank God it's Monday" attitude that meant his colleagues always knew they could contact him about hot topics and decisions.

But there was one exception -- visits by his autistic grandson Max.

"If Chuck was with Max, his phone was turned off," said Dave Carlson of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. "Max could stop him in his tracks."

This bond was rooted in a conviction that shaped the Nixon White House strategist's work after his 1973 born-again Christian conversion and guilty plea for Watergate crimes that put him in federal prison, said Carlson, who spent two decades as a Colson aide and editor. This same conviction led Colson to create the global Prison Fellowship ministry in 1976.

"It didn't matter if you were in prison or what kind of crimes put you there. It didn't matter if you were missing a chromosome or were autistic," he said. Colson believed "we are all humans made in the image of God -- Imago Dei. He was passionate about that until the end."

The 80-year-old Colson died on April 21, 2012, felled by a brain hemorrhage moments after a speech about rising threats to religious liberty. His colleagues marked the 10-year anniversary by rebroadcasting that speech during a BreakPoint radio commentary.

"What we're witnessing in our culture … is but the tip of the iceberg. It's the latest visible manifestation of a growing hostility towards Christianity mainly because -- this has always been the case -- government officials feel threatened by the power of the church because we all worship a king higher than the kings of this earth," said Colson.

Cultural issues are bigger than mere politics, he stressed.

"Elections are important. Whoever serves in office, it makes a difference what kind of person that is and what that person believes," he said. "But elections can't solve the problem we've got. The problem we've got is that our culture has been decaying from the inside for 30 or 40 years, and politics is nothing but an expression of culture. So how do you fix the culture?"


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What is religion's role if powerful social media trends are endangering America?

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What is religion's role if powerful social media trends are endangering America?

Whew! Within a matter of days Elon Musk bids $44 billion to get full control of Twitter, Netflix's market value plummets $54 billion, Florida's conservative version of "cancel culture" penalizes the Disney empire, and CNN kills off its streaming service in a month after investing $300 million -- perhaps the worst industry flop since Time Warner's 2001 merger with AOL.

Anchor Kasie Hunt, who left MSNBC for CNN+, embraced a life-goes-on attitude: "The news is the news is the news is the news." (She was quickly named CNN's Chief National Affairs Analyst.)

By the way, a certain influential newspaper in New York City also named a new team of top editors. Did you see those photos of incoming editor Joseph Kahn?

Maybe all that media turbulence is far less important than the inexorable accumulation of 21st Century cultural power by Twitter and other "social media: giants.

Thus, readers will want to consider this warning from Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University's business school, in the May issue of The Atlantic: “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.”

American democracy is now operating outside the bounds of sustainability. If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse during the next major war, pandemic, financial meltdown, or constitutional crisis.

Religion writers: Despite Haidt's imagery of failed communication taken from the biblical Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), his article sidesteps whether faith groups could help restore societal calm and how they're being reshaped by ubiquitous media. Perhaps he'll get into that in his book "Life After Babel Adapting to a World We Can No Longer Share," due from Penguin next year.

Though critics often say conflicting religions erode social cohesion, is it only coincidence that organized religion's slump to near-Depression status since A.D. 2000 occurred simultaneously with the disintegration Haidt decries?


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Thinking about 'bothsidesism' and sad changes in American politics and journalism

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Thinking about 'bothsidesism' and sad changes in American politics and journalism

This is Holy Week for those of us in the ancient churches of the East. Thus, I am spending lots of time at my local parish as we march through many hours of ancient prayers, scriptures and liturgy. Yes, we are hearing more than a few prayers for peace in Ukraine and for the victims of that hellish fratricidal conflict. Will there, at the very least, be a ceasefire for Pascha (Easter)?

At the same time, my “Crossroads” partner — Todd Wilken of Lutheran Public Radio — was on the road to attend a funeral, so we didn’t record the podcast at our usual time. That should go live here at GetReligion tomorrow (mid-day Saturday).

Thus, I would like to point readers to a “think piece” that I have had in the hopper for some time now. It’s an opinion essay by Damon Linker that ran at The Week with this headline: “The noble and needful philosophical tradition of bothsidesism (no, really) — A call for equanimity in a polarized time.”

The term in question — “bothsideism” — is closely linked with another hot-button word that is frequently used as a semi-curse in social media. That would be “whataboutism.” Click here to read Merriam-Webster on that.

My interest in “bothsideism” is rooted in journalism theory, as opposed to pure political science.

During my days leading the Washington Journalism Center, two of the key lectures focused on four models of the press that dominate journalism debates in religious circles. For some people these days, discussions of balance, fairness and even accuracy — think the “American model of the press” — are one jump away from “bothsideism.” Here is a bite of an essay based on those lectures (.pdf here):

The American Model fit well with other American values — promoting a lively public square in which citizens could believe that their views would be treated with respect. It was possible, reading coverage over a period of time, to see which newsrooms were striving to be accurate and fair-minded. This approach meshed with a liberal approach to the First Amendment, as well.

Yes, this is a challenge for journalists as they do their work. I’ll be blunt. I think the most important skill in journalism is the ability to accurately report the views of a person with whom you disagree. Journalists are supposed to strive to show respect to people on both sides of hot- button debates.

This brings us to Linker.


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White evangelicals, again: New York Times urgently probes praise music on political right

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White evangelicals, again: New York Times urgently probes praise music on political right

At this point, it’s safe to say that some New York Times editors are still engaged in a passionate quest to find a large group of Americans to blame for the 2016 general-election victory of Donald Trump of Queens.

There’s an obvious answer: White evangelicals. And it’s certainly true that independent and, especially, Pentecostal Protestants played a strategic role in the shocking rise of Orange Man Bad. It’s also true that independent evangelicals, fundamentalists, charismatics and Pentecostal believers have played high-profile roles in video-friendly pro-Trump events, including the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol to hunt down Vice President Mike Pence — a mainstream White evangelical if there ever was one.

However, White evangelical voters were not the crucial Rust Belt voters that put Trump in the White House, although Latino evangelicals and charismatics were a major force in Florida

Therefore, what are discerning religion-beat readers supposed to make of that long, vague Times sermon that ran the other day with this dramatic double-decker headline? (Sorry for the delay getting to this piece, but surgery slowed me down last week.)

The Growing Religious Fervor in the American Right: ‘This Is a Jesus Movement’

Rituals of Christian worship have become embedded in conservative rallies, as praise music and prayer blend with political anger over vaccines and the 2020 election.

Here is one strong opinion that is drawn — with his permission — from an email I received from Kenneth Woodward, for decades the religion-beat pro at Newsweek and the author of “Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Ascent of Trump.”

This is the most naive religion story I’ve read in decades and illustrates precisely why the Times still does not get religion. … Only the Times could publish a piece as misinformed as this one.

Why does Woodward think that? To some degree, he is blaming a newspaper story for lacking the kind of depth seen in interpretive magazine pieces produced during the glory years of religion-beat work at Newsweek and at Time by GetReligion patriarch Richard Ostling. For a short period of time, Emma Green was allowed to do similar work at the Atlantic.

Depth is an issue here. But this Times feature is quite long and has lots of room for anecdotes, when what is missing is a hard skeleton of facts that link (if this is possible) these vague trends and illustrations to actual denominations, publishing houses, parachurch groups, think tanks and academic institutions at the heart of American evangelicalism.


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Ukraine war savagery will loom over this year's World Council of Churches Assembly

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Ukraine war savagery will loom over this year's World Council of Churches Assembly

If Russian invaders continue their current aggression, how much of Ukraine will be turned to rubble and how many innocent civilians will be dead by August 31?

That's opening day for the 11th global Assembly in the 74-year history of the World Council of Churches (WCC). COVID willing, the delegates from 352 Protestant and Orthodox church bodies will be joined by thousands of observers, including Catholic and evangelical Protestant representatives.

The WCC has gotten little media ink in North America during recent times, but 2022 sparks obvious news interest in how the organization deals with the Ukraine imbroglio at the Assembly, which runs through Sept. 8 in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Media that do original international reporting and have the money should be laying plans to staff the event, which The Guy knows from covering the 1975, 1983 and 1998 Assemblies supplies numerous trend stories and features alongside the spot news. Reporters unable to attend in person should be lining up contacts to help interpret the goings-on long distance.

This is a critical moment for the WCC, Orthodoxy and global Christian unity. The Russian Orthodox Church, some of whose leaders have made public statements hacking Vladimir Putin's war, is by far the WCC's biggest member — claiming 113.5 million parishioners plus another 30 million in its Ukraine jurisdiction and with ties elsewhere. That compares with the WCC's reported over-all church constituency of 580 million.

On Sunday, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams all but demanded that the WCC expel the Russian Orthodox Church from membership:

“The riot act has to be read. When a church is actively supporting a war of aggression, failing to condemn nakedly obvious breaches in any kind of ethical conduct in wartime, then other churches have the right to raise the question and challenge it — to say, unless you can say something effective about this, something recognizably Christian, we have to look again at your membership.”

Also last week, Bishop Rob Schenck of America's Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute in Washington, D.C., took to Religion News Service to promote a Ukraine petition campaign. It urges the WCC to expel the Russian Orthodox from membership over Moscow Patriarch Kirill's "unholy compact" with Russian dictator Putin.


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Press quiet as a mouse when it comes to Catholic angles in this Disney-DeSantis fight

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Press quiet as a mouse when it comes to Catholic angles in this Disney-DeSantis fight

I was never nuts for Disney. I’ve never been to one of their a theme park, either as a child or now as a parent of two children, and never indulged in their movies much over my lifetime. I’ll freely admit that puts me in the minority, both in the United States and around the world, when it comes to Disney consumption.

I was, however, once a Disney employee. No, I didn’t work in one of their stores. Instead, I was employed at ABC News in New York, where I worked for their digital unit running the website and other internet assets such as social media. It was a great place to work — although not “The Happiest Place On Earth” as the official tagline for Disneyland states. It was, after all, a newsroom — but one of the perks was free tickets each year to their amusement parks.

I say all this in the context of the ongoing feud regarding the Florida “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which is now law after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it. This is the much-discussed bill that bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade “in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

The law continues to get media coverage for two reasons. First, because of Disney’s involvement and second due to the larger notion that DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, is — everyone chant the media mantra — “engaging in a culture war.” This remains a political story, a business story and a pop culture story.

Is this also an important religion story? It certainly is (tmatt takes on this very topic in GetReligion’s most recent podcast).

My most recent GetReligion post focused on the news media’s largely ignoring the Republican DeSantis’ Catholic faith in regard to the widespread news coverage around the bill, which opponents effectively labeled “Don’t Say Gay” even though the bill never used those words.

At the same time, the news coverage for conservative press around the legislation has centered much more on Disney’s late-in-the-game activism in opposing it. The coverage among mainstream and progressive news sites continues to center on that activist “Don’t Say Gay” mantra.


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Will Smith's Oscars slap turned heads; Denzel Washington quietly warned about temptation

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Will Smith's Oscars slap turned heads; Denzel Washington quietly warned about temptation

Moments after the Academy Awards slap heard 'round the world, Will Smith huddled during a commercial break with Denzel Washington, another of the Best Actor nominees.

No one could hear what Smith discussed with the man who is both an A-list player and the rare Hollywood superstar who has – after years in hot press spotlights – emerged as a mentor on issues of faith and family.

But Smith appeared to have Washington on his mind during his emotional remarks after winning the Oscar for his work in "King Richard." Smith apologized to his peers for slap-punching Chris Rock after his jest about his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith's shaved head. The comic apparently didn't know she was suffering hair loss with Alopecia.

“In this moment, I am overwhelmed by what God is calling on me to do and be in this world. … I'm being called on in my life to love people and to protect people," said Smith, tears on his face. "I know that to do what we do, you gotta be able to take abuse, you gotta be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business, you gotta be able to have people disrespecting you. And you gotta smile and pretend that that's OK."

When Washington offered quiet words of encouragement from offstage, Smith thanked him and added: "Denzel said a few minutes ago: At your highest moment, be careful – that's when the devil comes for you."

This was not ordinary Oscars God-talk.

This drama triggered waves of social-media angst, with critics and millions of viewers debating who to blame for this crisis during an otherwise meandering Academy Awards show shaped by politics, pandemics, gender, race and low ratings.


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Podcast: Concerning the many religion-beat stories linked to that 'Don't Say Gay' bill

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Podcast: Concerning the many religion-beat stories linked to that 'Don't Say Gay' bill

Let’s talk news-business realities for a moment.

If you do an online search for the following terms — “Parental Rights in Education,” Florida — you will get about 43,000 hits on Google News (as of Thursday afternoon).

Then again, if you run a search for these terms — “Don’t Say Gay,” Florida — you will get 6,820,000 hits on Google News and 24,100,000 hits on Google (period).

That’s a pretty big difference. What’s going on?

On this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) I argued that the real name of this bill sounded way, way too much like a whatever it was that parents in Virginia wanted during that recent election that left the Democratic Party establishment in shock.

As it turns out, a new Public Opinion Strategies poll (.pdf here) found that registered voters — a majority of Democrats, even — liked the contents of this controversial Florida bill when shown its key, defining language:

“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in Kindergarten through third grade or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

Clearly, “Don’t Say Gay” worked much better for political activists who wanted to keep the focus on LGBTQ-era sexual education for prepubescent children. The whole idea was that way too many parents are burdened with religious, moral and cultural beliefs that were on the wrong side of history. Thus, “parental rights” and classroom transparency are not helpful concepts.

What does this have to do with the many religion-angle stories that journalists could be chasing linked to this legislation and variations on this bill that are sure to show up in other states?


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